The door hissed as it made a clunk and closed. The noise sounded so final, like it was an ominous warning that a part of our lives was officially over. I really hoped that wasn’t the case.
All the tiny lights on the console in front of Roch and Kyle lit up as they pressed buttons and moved sticks about. The whole thing looked far more complicated than a car to drive. It must have taken them ages to remember what each of the little lights did. At least, I hoped they knew what each of the little lights did. Apparently it was too late to make a run for it.
The craft moved upwards, rocking a little as it did. I expected something more but it felt like were going up in an elevator. The feeling was tolerable.
And then we lurched forward.
I was glued to my seat as we shot through the air with speed even a theme park rollercoaster couldn’t rival. My stomach shuddered up to my throat as I fought to keep my dinner down. I didn’t want to be the one to throw up and there always seemed to be one that would. A part of me wanted it to be Lochie instead. I was still reeling from our breakup.
“It will get more comfortable soon,” Roch yelled back at us. He seemed buzzed with the excitement of it all. Lucky him.
I gripped the armrests of my chair and held on for my life. I tried to think of good things and go to my happy place. I was on the beach, in the waves, at home, in my room, watching television with my parents, anywhere but here.
As the ship moved, I realized the walls weren’t solid surrounding us. Windows covered them all. Far in the distance were stars. Closer was the horizon just as the morning sun was peeking over the clouds. We were far higher up than any flight I had taken before. But my ears weren’t popping and there was no trouble with breathing. The pressure inside the craft was… pleasant.
The incredible speed didn’t slow down but it did get more tolerable as the hours passed. I found it easier to un-stick myself from the chair and others were starting to move about to stretch their legs.
Lochie was standing by Kyle, studying the console and steering mechanisms. Lola had her head back on the chair with her eyes closed. I wasn’t sure if she was sleeping or not, I wasn’t sure how she could in the current situation. I guess she had always been more adventurous than me.
I listened in on the conversations, it was quite easy in the quiet cabin. “So it’s some kind of magnetic engine thing?” Lochie asked. Trust him to try to work out how the spaceship worked. Boys and their toys.
“Sort of,” Roch replied. “It’s a bit more complicated than that, but conceptually it’s magnets that power us.” It kind of concerned me to think that it was magnets keeping us hundreds of thousands of miles up in the air.
“So where are we going?” Lochie continued. My ears definitely pricked up at hearing that question. I had been dying to ask but didn’t trust myself to say anything yet.
Kyle answered him. “To Trucon. We’ll hide out there until Krom lets us know it’s safe to return.”
Trucon?!
I had thought we might just circle for a while or land in some remote part of Earth where nobody would think to look for us. But Trucon? Seriously? That seemed like so far away – mainly because it was so far away. Behind Jupiter, between Mars and Saturn to be precise.
I swiveled my chair around to face Garrick. “I thought Krom couldn’t help us? That’s what he told my birth father.”
“The only person he told was Kyle. It was safer that way,” Garrick explained. “Your parents won’t get in trouble for helping me, I made sure of that.”
I thought about the ten thousand dollars of bail money they would probably lose. Garrick’s life was worth way more than any monetary value, but still, it would impact them. And it was my fault they’d lose the money, I had talked them into putting it up in the first place.
I changed the subject quickly. “Did you know we’re going to Trucon?”
He shrugged. “I figured as much.”
“It’s got to be a million miles away.”
“It’s also our home,” he replied quietly. “Aren’t you ready to see where we came from?”
I really wasn’t sure I was ready. I had spent seventeen years trying to imagine the planet I came from. I never had any photos or anything so it was all left up to my imagination to fill in the blanks. I pictured a sparse landscape with nothing but rocks and volcanoes. It didn’t seem like somewhere I would like to spend a lot of time.
Once, when I was little, I found a picture of the moon in the newspaper. I stuck it on my wall and pictured my birth parents living there in a little house. I was certain they didn’t think about me, but it made me feel a little closer to them when I looked at the picture anyway.
“It’s going to be a long way from my family,” I sighed before I could stop myself. I didn’t want Garrick to know how fretful I was. I wanted to be brave.
“Yeah, but you have your boyfriend and Lola. And you have me. I know it’s not the same, but it won’t be forever.”
“Lochie and I broke up,” I blurted out before I could stop myself.
Garrick’s gaze shot between Lochie and I. “You guys aren’t together anymore? When did that happen?”
“About ten minutes before I got home.”
“What happened?”
“Stuff. I don’t really want to talk about it. I don’t even know why he insisted on coming.” And I really didn’t. He should have taken off after I got out of his car. None of this was any of his business anymore. Seeing him just reminded me of our huge argument and the look on his face when he was so angry he could barely contain himself.
Garrick didn’t say anything for a moment. I hoped he wasn’t going to press for more of an explanation. The only person I could tell everything to was Lola and I certainly wasn’t going to do it in the spaceship with barely any privacy.
Finally, he said, “I hope it wasn’t my stuff that got between you two. I’m really sorry you’re going through all this because of me. I never wanted to get you involved.”
I looked him directly in the eyes so he would know how sincere I was. “No more apologizing, Garrick. I’m here because you are my friend and friends protect each other. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I wasn’t here with you.”
“Still, if-”
“Shush. We’re going to see Trucon. That’s an amazing opportunity that we wouldn’t otherwise have,” I said, putting as much enthusiasm into the words as I could muster. It didn’t have to be much, just enough to convince him. If I could prove it to Garrick, maybe I would start to believe it too.
“You’re an amazing person, Ame.”
I turned my seat around to face the front again. Lola had woken up and swiveled around to talk to Lochie who had resumed his seat. They seemed to be deep in their own conversation.
A stab of jealously went through me. They used to talk all the time behind my back. Okay, it wasn’t exactly intended to be behind my back, but they still talked when I wasn’t around. Lochie and I had argued about it before so he knew I didn’t like it.
I would have paid a million dollars to know what they were so intently discussing. He was probably offloading about our breakup, telling her how horrible our argument was. She would probably know everything before I got a chance to talk to her.
It bugged me way more than it should have. I was getting angry the longer I stole glances at them. Every time I looked, they were still talking with their heads conspiratorially together. Considering they were the only humans in amongst a spaceship full of aliens, our differences were probably starkly obvious. It had never been an issue before but maybe now it was.
“It’s going to be a while yet,” Kyle started, pulling me out of my horrible daydream. “You should all go down to the sleeping pod and get some shuteye.” There was a sleeping pod? Where? I could see everything in the room and there was definitely nothing resembling a bed.
Garrick must have thought the same thing. “Where’s the sleeping pod?”
Kyle crossed the room to the far side and pressed
a blue button on the wall. The floor beside his feet slid across to reveal a hole in the floor. A light was emanating from it. “Down there is everything you’ll need.”
Garrick was the first to move, followed by the rest of us. A ladder linked our level with the room below. We took it in turns to climb down, leaving only Roch and Kyle above.
I jumped down the last two rungs on the ladder and took in the room. Rows of sleeping bunks were lined up against one side. Against the other was a door to a bathroom and a kitchenette. It was cramped but every space in the room was being used to its fullest advantage. Ikea couldn’t have done a better job of packing it all in.
The others went to explore. I saw Lochie trying some food as I climbed into one of the beds. The mattress was tiny and surrounded by three walls with no space in between. I found it a bit claustrophobic so the guys were going to find it even worse. It was like trying to sleep in the cupboard underneath the sink.
But I didn’t need space to sleep, right? If I closed my eyes I could be back at home in my own bed. If I could just trick myself into believing that, I would be fine.
I took a few deep breaths, trying to close down my mind and relax all my muscles. I ignored the murmurs of the others and tried to sleep.
One by one, they joined me in the pods. Lola took the one directly across from me. Lochie went underneath me and Garrick underneath Lola. At least I didn’t have to see Lochie. I had spent so much time watching him sleep peacefully that I knew every curve of his features.
I listened as their breathing became rhythmic and they drifted off to sleep. Lucky them. I was still wide awake, unable to stop my mind from thinking about everything. I was worried about Garrick’s fate, getting Lola home safely, and the break up with Lochie. I longed to talk it all through with my adoptive mother like we used to. She always found something positive to say.
The sleeping area was tiny and packed full of the people I loved, but it felt so lonely at the same time. I could have been adrift in space outside of the ship and it wouldn’t have felt any different.
I lost all sense of time. My watch said a quarter past two, but I had no idea if it was day or night back home. All I knew was that I had been lying in the bed for over five hours and had barely slept a wink. The occasional doze was all I could manage from time to time. Nobody else seemed to have the same problem.
I eventually gave up because lying there was only making me frustrated. I tiptoed out and went to the bathroom. It took a while to figure everything out, but I eventually got the hang of the bath. It was pretty much nothing more than a moist towel that you wiped over yourself. Still, it made me feel a thousand times cleaner than before.
The kitchenette had some shriveled up dried things. Considering they were in the kitchen, I figured they must have been edible. I gave one a try and popped it into my mouth.
It was disgusting, quite possibly the grossest thing I had ever tasted. It was a mixture of mushroom, dirt, and what I imagined a dusty attic would taste like. I forced myself to continue chewing and swallowed it down. I didn’t go back for seconds. I would never go back for seconds.
Packets of water were also in the cupboards. At least those tasted like actual water and was enough to make me forget about my hunger.
I climbed the ladder and returned upstairs to the chairs. Poor Roch and Kyle were still sitting in front of the console.
The view through the windows was amazing. Blackness surrounded the ship with millions and millions of twinkling stars. Some flew by as we approached. If it wasn’t for their movement, I might have thought we were completely still.
“It’s so calm, almost serene,” I said as I stood behind the guys. Now I was kind of sure we weren’t going to go crashing down and die, my curiosity was getting the better of me.
“Welcome to space,” Kyle replied. “Pretty cool, huh? I totally missed all this.”
“You used to fly through space all the time?”
He nodded eagerly. “On training missions, learning missions, for fun. I would go out at every opportunity I could get.” The fire in his eyes told me how much he loved it even without him needing to elaborate. I’d never seen Kyle so passionate about something before.
“How come you gave it all up to get stuck on Earth?” Considering he loved it so much, it must have been something good.
“Because it was important. Going to Earth would save an entire planet of our people. My love of flying was nothing compared to that,” Kyle said sincerely. It seemed so… noble. My respect for him just doubled.
“Is this your first time back since then?”
“Sure is. Seventeen years. I never thought I would get a chance to get up here again.”
“What are we going to do when we get to Trucon?” I asked. It seemed I had way too many unanswered questions running through my head. Perhaps that’s why I couldn’t sleep.
Kyle looked at me levelly. “Wait.”
Wait. But wait for what? For the police to find the dead girl’s real killer? For the hostilities against the aliens to simmer down? For Krom to negotiate Garrick’s life? I didn’t know the answer and I doubted Kyle did either. We were just the pawns, not the players.
I took a seat behind them and stared out the window. From my position I could see everything they did as we flew through the galaxy. It was just like the pictures that NASA so proudly displayed every time they sent a shuttle up into space.
Vast expanses of black nothingness were broken up only by the stars and an occasional rock from a broken asteroid. It looked to go on forever into the distance. When I thought about how big it all was and how many galaxies were out there, my mind went into shutdown mode and couldn’t think anymore.
Over the next few hours everybody from downstairs wandered up and took a seat. Lola was beside me while Garrick was behind on one side and Lochie was as far away from both of us as possible. Talk about being mature.
We continued our avoidance and routine of sitting and sleeping for another two days. By the end of the third day, the spaceship was starting to feel small and I wondered if we would ever arrive on Trucon. I didn’t want to be the whiny kid that asked ‘are we there yet?’ so I continued to be patient.
The next morning we were all going a little stir crazy. Lochie and Garrick had been snapping at each other, Lola was unusually quiet, and Kyle was deep in conversation with Roch. We sat in the seats and stared out the windows because there wasn’t much else to do.
I watched our captains’ discussion grow with intensity. I couldn’t hear them as they were whispering but it instantly put a knot in the pit of my stomach
All of a sudden, Kyle turned to us. “This is it, guys. We’re going to land in about an hour.” That perked us up as we all sat straighter in our chairs. He pointed out a spot on the window that wasn’t twinkling. “This is Trucon.”
My home planet was in sight. I was both nervous and excited about being able to step foot on it again. I had spent a lot of time over the years waiting for this day, wondering if it would ever come, and it was only an hour away.
I stole a glance at Garrick. His face was impassive but he had to be thinking the same things as I was. We were the only two people in the same boat, none of the others would understand our homecoming.
We kept watching as the tiny speck became the size of a large rock and then continued to grow as we got closer and closer. The knot in my stomach was twisting into an intricate loop as the hour passed by.
Before I knew it, the horizon of Trucon was in sight with the land mass coming into focus. It was dizzying to watch how quickly we barreled toward the earth. I hoped the spaceship had good brakes, if not, we were stuffed.
Roch pulled back on the throttle and it felt like we had suddenly stopped in place. I expected a horrible drop down to the ground where I would lose my stomach and fear for my life.
But we drifted instead. Just like a hang-glider drifted down to the ground in a silent float, so did we. We landed so smoothly on the earth that it felt like the most
natural thing in the world to do. Except we were in space, on another planet, with a bunch of aliens. It wasn’t natural.
We all watched in silence as Roch and Kyle hit a bunch of dials and buttons. All the lights in the craft flickered and turned off. Without their reflection, we could see out all the windows surrounding us again. I got my first glimpse of home.
CHAPTER 14
If there was one word to sum up my first impression of Trucon, it was grey. The ground had a consistency of ash, the buildings on the horizon were made out of a grey material, and the sky was as dark as a cloudy day. Three moons shone in the distance, but Roch assured us it was daytime. Noon, in fact.
I wondered how all the Truconians on Earth were dealing with all the colors in their new planet. How was it not overwhelming for them? I wouldn’t have blamed them for melting down from all the stimulation.
“Come on, Ame. We need to get settled in,” Kyle called out. I had wandered off on my own as I took it all in. The others were all in a vehicle that would take us into the city. It didn’t have any wheels and was nothing more than a box on a track. With no room for an engine, I guessed it worked on magnets too.
I joined them and the door closed automatically behind me. Roch hit a button and we started moving. Huge boulders lined the road. It wasn’t tarred or sealed, just a flat passageway in amongst the grey terrain.
“How is it we can breathe here?” Lochie asked. He was standing at the front of the vehicle, watching everything with eager eyes. He seemed to be enjoying himself.
Kyle took the question. “The atmosphere of Trucon is actually very similar to that of Earth. If we went up into the mountains, it would be impossible to breathe, but down here you won’t really notice the difference.”
“Is that why you chose Earth to settle on?” Lola joined in their conversation. I listened intently, just as curious for all the answers as they were.
“It sure is. Our leaders surveyed many planets when they realized we were in danger. Earth was the perfect candidate due to our similar genetic makeup and planets.”
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