Tiera's Earth (Andromeda 9 Book 1)

by Ethan T. Marston

  “What are you doing?” one of the officers in her escort called after her, but by the time he had asked, Tiera had already vaulted over the marble railing and rushed toward the podium. Her knees trembled as she gripped the podium for support. Murmurs issued from the audience and Parliament alike at this break in decorum, and Tiera knew she couldn’t waste any time.

  “You cannot destroy the Milky Galaxy—” Tiera faltered as she saw the light on the smart glass in front of her turn off, but she had to keep pushing through. “It’s home to at least seven billion people just like you and me. People under your jurisdiction. To destroy them would be murder!” Tiera’s voice started to break, her anxiety and frustration were so great—and the people around her started to yell and jeer.

  “Bring them here!” she shouted, but she realized too late that they had turned off the microphone in the smart glass panel as well. A rough hand yanked on her right arm, and she screamed “Bring them here!” just before her karate training took over.

  Tiera stomped backward on her assailant’s foot, then brought her left hand up and spun, landing a hammer fist on the side of his head—it was the officer guarding the far end of the speakers’ box. He crumpled to the ground, unconscious, and screams broke out around Tiera.

  Her anxiety was so strong that she had started to cry at this point, but she knew she had to push through. Make a scene. Make a scene. MAKE A SCENE!

  Jumping over the railing and onto the open hardwood floor that separated her from Parliament, Tiera screamed again at the shocked and frightened faces of those politicians—those sneering, stuck up faces, responsible for the deaths of billions of people—before streaks of purple came at her from both sides.

  The officers closing in on her probably thought she was going to run away, but they didn’t know Tiera wasn’t planning on escape—she picked a target, got low, and charged, running as fast as she could just before her shoulder slammed into a female officer’s gut. The officer grunted and tried to get a grip on Tiera’s torso, but her arms were too weak from the shock of Tiera’s attack.

  “Save my home!” she screamed. “Save my galaxy!” Tiera saw the old Parliament coots moving up the risers and disappearing somewhere—there must have been another exit up there that she had missed. “Come back! MURDERERS! You—”

  One of the other officers tackled her to the ground, then rolled to lie on top of her. Before he could pin her down, Tiera brought her knee up and smashed it into his balls, then tried to get as much power into her fist as possible as it crossed the short distance to his throat.

  The man howled in pain, then coughed—Tiera’s punch wasn’t enough to do any lasting damage—but he was still dead weight on top of Tiera. She screamed in frustration as she struggled to push him off, tears streaming down her face—but then she felt something graze her head. Another female officer had just tried to land a running kick on her head, but the officer either had poor aim or didn’t realize how big Tiera’s hair really was, because she missed. In the split second she had to do so, Tiera grabbed the foot that was just leaving her hair with one hand and pulled, sending the already unbalanced officer tumbling.

  Within seconds, two more officers were on top of Tiera, then a third, then a fourth. She writhed on the ground, but there were enough of them now that it didn’t matter.

  “No! You can’t! You can save them!” Tiera yelled, voice hoarse, as the officers picked her up by her hands and feet and towed her away. Looking over at the audience seats, Tiera thought she could see Xana, standing alone next to the red marble railing. “They turned off the camera!” she cried, finally giving in to the despair of her situation with gut-wrenching sobs.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Tiera saw the light gray of a police baton rushing toward her head, and then only darkness.

  Chapter 18

  Tiera woke up to the dull roar of ocean waves slapping the rocks of a nearby shore, but she didn’t open her eyes. As long as Tiera didn’t open her eyes, she didn’t have to face the reality of her situation. She didn’t have to know where she was, or why she was there. She could just pretend that everything had been a dream, and that the sound of the ocean meant that she was still a little girl, visiting a grandmother whose name she never knew in some unknown Alabama beach town. The one her birth mother had failed to mention when the government workers took Tiera away. The one who was the reason Tiera had never thrown away that map of Alabama in her closet at home. Now I’ll never get to look for Mamoo.

  Since her thoughts wouldn’t let her pretend she wasn’t there anymore, Tiera opened her eyes. Weak, yellow light filtered through a long, vertically slatted window, illuminating a small room of concrete and stone with a solitary steel door. The thin mattress Tiera was on didn’t have a frame, but thankfully its material was substantial enough that she didn’t feel the floor beneath it. Other than her mattress and the window, the room’s only decorations were a metal toilet and sink.

  Looking down, Tiera noticed her clothes were different. Prison greens again. She didn’t even feel embarrassed that someone had changed her—she didn’t have the emotional energy. She just got up and walked over to the window, which was high enough that she could rest her chin on it, and each aching movement it took to get there reminded her of the fight she had just been in. All for nothing.

  The window slats were angled so that she could only see to her left, but it didn’t really matter. All she saw was a rocky beach sloping into an endless ocean, all lit by a yellow moon. And Tiera only knew of one planet with a yellow moon.

  I’m on Hyran. They sent me directly to the maximum security prison on Hyran. Tiera had expected to be sent to some local jail, or maybe to be sent back to the cozy Faroa City jail, but they had sent her to the prison reserved for the galaxy’s worst criminals. And she hadn’t even had a trial yet.

  A breeze from the open window blew at Tiera’s face, and it felt strange. Like it was colder than it should have been, but that wasn’t quite it. Tiera reached up to feel her hair—and gasped when her hand met nothing but air. She felt her head with both hands, wincing as her left hand brushed the place where she had been hit with the police baton. Her hair had been buzzed so short that she was practically bald.

  Now she was mad.

  “Well?” Tiera asked the walls, sure that a camera and intercom were hidden in them somewhere. “I’m awake! Don’t you have anything to say?” She walked around the tiny room, waiting. “Aren’t you going to tell me when my court date is? How long I’m going to be here?”

  “Your trial started yesterday morning. Nothing’s been decided yet,” a woman’s voice said from the ceiling, her accent brisk and choppy. “Now go back to bed—or don’t—but breakfast isn’t for another three hours.”

  “Yesterday morning? But wasn’t I arrested yesterday afternoon? That doesn’t make sense.” Tiera looked around for a clock that wasn’t there. “What day is it?”

  “It’s Thursday—barely. Day 23 of month 9 of 6027. You were sedated when you were transported here on Tuesday. Now stop bothering me or I’ll put your room on mute.”

  “But—” Tiera’s mind was reeling at the unfairness of it all. “But don’t I get to attend my own trial? How could they have started without me?”

  “You were deemed too dangerous. I’m muting you now. Your door will unlock at 5, which is in 2 hours and 46 minutes. Goodbye.”

  “Wait! How will I defend myself if I’m not there? Do I have a lawyer? Can I talk to them?” When the woman didn’t respond, Tiera jumped up and down, waving her arms at the ceiling, where she assumed the camera was. “HEY! Answer me!”

  “Shut up!” The muffled yell drifted in from Tiera’s open window, and Tiera cringed as she realized the other prisoners must have their windows open too.

  After waiting for a minute or so with no response from the intercom, Tiera whispered, “Please answer me?”

  After a while she sat back down and tried her hardest not to think about her future beyond breakfast. But of course that
didn’t work. In the time she waited, Tiera thought about what it might look like from Earth for the Milky Way Galaxy to be destroyed, one star sucked away at a time—which made her cry. She wondered how Natalie and those security guards had managed to explain her disappearance, and if her parents were looking for her—which made her cry. Once she had thought about Natalie, she wondered if Natalie had found a new roommate, and then she started wondering if Xana was already looking for a roommate again—which made her cry. Soon she was torturing herself by imagining exactly how Xana, Daven, Darshy, Byrani, and even Leon might be reacting right now. Tiera figured Byrani was taking it best—but then she wasn’t sure. Byrani had actually started asking Tiera questions about herself the last time Daven had hosted a friends’ dinner.

  So much for that budding friendship. Who knows if I’ll even get out of here? Tiera thought about what Kert had said the night he broke into her apartment—about how Origin was just looking for an excuse to lock her up—and then she even wondered if she had disappointed Kert by getting herself thrown in jail! He’s the last person I should be worried about disappointing. It’s his fault I’m even here! Tiera wiped her tears onto her already wet sleeve, and hated herself a little bit for crying so much—or maybe she hated her tear ducts.

  Eventually Tiera’s cell door slid open, and for a moment she considered staying in her cell in protest. But then her stomach reminded her that she hadn’t eaten since that salad she hadn’t finished at Burming Circle Café, and she eventually got up. I’d probably just end up starving to death—and for no reason. Besides, those Origin tools would probably prefer me dead anyway. In an odd way, Tiera actually felt happy to think that her being alive was somehow inconveniencing Parliament. She tried to focus on this as she wandered out of her cell and into a long hallway.

  Luckily Tiera didn’t really have to decide which direction to go, since she could clearly see the abrupt end of the concrete hallway on her right. She walked slowly to her left, passing the open doors of her neighbors’ cells. Afraid to accidentally make eye-contact with someone, Tiera glanced out of the corner of her eye as she passed. Only about every other cell had an occupant—and they all seemed to still be sleeping. Men and women of all shades, shapes, and sizes were still lying sprawled out on their mattresses, and some even snored. Tiera was beginning to wonder if she was supposed to leave her cell right away, but then she finally ran into someone.

  The hallway curved more and more sharply to the right the farther Tiera walked, so Tiera didn’t see the man until she was practically on top of him, but she wasn’t sure she would have seen him right away even if the hallway were straight. Leaning casually against the wall with his arms folded, this man was tall, probably in his mid-forties, and gangly to the point that his body almost seemed lost in his spacious green prison clothes. His skin was a rich copper color—except for two forest green tattoos that took up all the space on each of his forearms—and his similarly green eyes appraised Tiera as soon as she rounded the corner.

  “You’re the new girl, eh? I wondered when you’d wake up,” he said, pushing against the wall with a shoulder to stand up straight again. Tiera wasn’t quite sure how to describe his accent, other than it reminded her of Darshy. He quickly looked Tiera over. “You been crying? Don’t worry—eventually the shock wears off. Most of the time.” He shrugged. “I’m Berado, by the way.”

  Tiera just nodded, unsure what to make of the man. Berado seemed friendly enough, but Tiera was having a hard time trusting anyone right now, let alone alien convicts.

  “That’s alright; you don’t have to talk. Let me take you to breakfast.” Berado gave Tiera a small smile and started walking—he didn’t even look to make sure she was following. After frowning after him for a moment, she finally did.

  Once they reached the end of the hallway, Tiera saw that it was entirely open to the outdoors, though some lines on the ground indicated that a sliding door was put into place at night, but from where Tiera couldn’t tell. After stepping outside, several other hallways were within her line of sight, all of them open to this outdoor space as well.

  “We’re hallway 14. Don’t forget!” Berado said from ahead of her, then he veered left.

  As Tiera followed, she saw that the several yards of open space outside the hallways ended with a wall of the same stone and concrete as Tiera’s cell. Looking to both sides, Tiera could tell that the wall was rounded, and looking up she could see a few stories of wall and windows, which meant that all of these hallways opened up to a large, circular building. A building which, after following Berado past five hallways to find its door, Tiera entered.

  “Our hallway is assigned all of the B rooms, okay?” Berado said, finally looking back at Tiera. “Just think ‘B for Berado’ and it’s easy. If you try to use a cafeteria or library or anything of a different letter, you’ll get kicked out.”

  “How many letters are there?” Tiera asked, looking around the narrow corridor they had just entered. She saw a small directory that listed room numbers for the cafeteria, the crafts room, the gym—all of them ended with the letter B.

  “She speaks! There are only 11 in use right now, but 20 total. There’s a 1,500-inmate maximum per letter, but from what I can tell only about half of the letters are maxed out.” Berado led Tiera to the left. “I mean, you probably saw that our hallway isn’t completely full—only 30 of its 50 cells are being used.”

  Tiera caught a whiff of food coming from somewhere ahead, and she took a deep breath in and out of her nose—which she realized too late sounded like a sigh.

  “I can stop if I’m annoying you—I just thought you might like to know some figures.” Berado said this in the exact same way as he had rattled off everything before, so he probably wasn’t offended, but Tiera was worried she hurt his feelings anyway.

  “Sorry—it’s no problem! I was just smelling the food,” she explained quickly. “Thank you for showing me around.”

  Berado turned around and walked backwards for a few steps. “Yeah! I get a kick out of showing newbies around, don’t worry.” He went on to explain the daily schedule, how rotations worked during mealtimes, and a few of the activities that were going on during the day, and he said it all so cheerfully that Tiera wondered if his life here was actually better than his life wherever he was from.

  As they walked through the halls they didn’t run into too many other inmates—probably because it was still so early—but Tiera noticed each one she saw had the same green forearms as Berado, though the shade of green seemed to depend on the person’s skin color. Wait. For the first time since arriving in the well-lit building, Tiera really looked at her arms.

  And she stopped dead in her tracks.

  “They’re green! What?! How—?”

  “Every prisoner gets those tattoos,” Berado said with a smile. “Keeps costs down, you know?”

  “But nobody asked me!” Tiera balked, twisting her arms around to inspect the dark green bands that ran from her wrists to her elbows. As if taking my hair wasn’t enough! “And what do you mean, it ‘keeps costs down’?”

  “Don’t worry! You can always get them removed—if you leave, that is. And haven’t you heard of these? They’re the same ones the kids on Gemis get.” Berado looked at his arms and shrugged. “Though I guess theirs are a little more artful.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Tiera still stared at her arms in frustration, but hearing that she could get them removed made her feel a little better.

  “Come on! You know.” Berado half smiled like he was expecting Tiera to say she was joking, but when Tiera didn’t say anything he started backpedaling. “I mean, it’s fine if you don’t know! They got chlorophyll in them, and DNA and proteins so that your cells keep producing it. That means you don’t have to eat as much.”

  “Really?” Tiera felt a little more impressed with her tattoos now. “Why doesn’t everybody have these then?”

  Berado snorted, then started leading Tiera to the cafeteria ag
ain. “Right, like anyone would want to look like they can’t afford food.”

  “Oh . . . right.” Tiera felt herself blush, and suddenly wished her prison uniform had longer sleeves.

  Before long, Tiera was following Berado through the breakfast line—which definitely wasn’t what Tiera had expected. Each inmate in the sparse line would step up to a glassy scanning screen on the wall, place their palm on it, and then walk about a dozen feet alongside the wall to a small, shelf-like opening where their meal would emerge on a tray. After both she and Berado had gone through this process, they took their meals to one of the dozens of tables in the expansive room and sat down.

  This doesn’t look terrible, Tiera thought as she surveyed the room, taking a long drink of whatever citrus juice was in her cup. The walls of the cafeteria were the same gray concrete as the halls, and the tables and benches matched, both the same drab, off-white color—but everything was clean at least, and the natural light from the room’s high windows was nice. And it wasn’t too loud, though that may have been because there were only a few other inmates here this early.

  Returning her gaze to her own table, Tiera noticed Berado’s tray for the first time, which had about twice as many carrots and twice as much ham as her own. “Why did you get more food if it’s automated? I’m not jealous or anything,” she added. “Just wondering.”

  “Our meals are custom-made for each of us—so we get the nutrition we need and all that,” Berado explained. “And they want me to eat more, so I get more.” He smiled and put both of his hands at his waist, pushing the billowy fabric of his shirt in—and showed how startlingly skinny he was. “But I don’t want to eat more, so I don’t. Besides, everyone likes it when I give them extra food.” Berado shrugged good-naturedly, but Tiera was exponentially more concerned for him now than she was moments before.

  If he isn’t anorexic, he’s almost there. Tiera started an internal debate about whether or not she should say something, but then Berado spoke again before she could.