Tiera's Earth (Andromeda 9 Book 1)

by Ethan T. Marston

  Passing through this new opening, Tiera made her way to the beach. The prison-issued shoes she was wearing were pretty thin, so she had to walk gingerly on the black rocks that filled the space between the two hallways of cells. As she walked, Tiera looked up at the overcast sky, then at the concrete-slatted windows of the cells to her right and left. She hadn’t seen it rain on this little island yet, so she wondered if those slats would close should the weather prove nasty. If not I’ll have some water to wade through in the morning.

  Tiera still hadn’t seen anyone else waiting to go to the beach today, but that was pretty normal. It wasn’t just the overcast skies or the rocky path that deterred people, but the fact that if you didn’t get back inside the cobblestone ring by dinnertime, you’d be shut out for the night. A lot of people didn’t care enough to risk it, but that’s why Tiera liked to—she was practically guaranteed some alone time.

  After rounding the bend in the path, Tiera could finally see the ocean: a vast expanse of steely blue that reached over the horizon on all sides of this lonely island. Several large rocks, like pitch-black knuckles, jutted out of the shore below, and that’s where Tiera went.

  Looks like I’m alone this time, Tiera thought, looking around as she walked down the rocky slope to the beach, then she slipped her green shoes off and stepped onto the damp, gray sand. She could see a speck or two of green in the distance, but whoever those prisoners were, they weren’t close enough to bother her. After taking a deep breath of salty air, Tiera sat on one of the boulders at the water’s edge, rolled her pants up, and dipped her feet into the water. It was nice and warm. That probably explains why the weather here is never that cold. We’re so far north I’d expect—

  “Tiera?”

  “Huh?” Tiera twisted around to see Kert standing on the beach behind her. He looked so approachable—just an old man with his shoes in one hand and his pants rolled up to his calves like he was taking a casual walk on the beach. But Tiera knew better. “Oh. Hello, Kert.”

  “Hello.” Kert looked around warily, then switched from Original to English. “Do you want talk to me now?”

  Tiera frowned, but followed his lead and spoke in English too, slow enough that he could keep up. “Sure, but why do we need to talk in English? Can they hear what we say all the way out here?”

  “I do not know. Maybe robots near. It is safer in . . . English?” Kert didn’t seem to know that that was the name of the language he had learned.

  “English, yeah.” Tiera looked Kert up and down, then patted the rock next to hers. “Have a seat.”

  “I thank you.” Kert shuffled forward, rinsing his feet in the lapping waves, then sat down. He took a deep breath, then, still staring ahead at the ocean, said, “I do not think you are here long. I think you go back to Faroa soon.”

  “What? Why?” Tiera always figured Parliament would try to keep her locked up for as long as possible.

  “You do not know your prison time, do you?” Kert turned and looked at her. “You do not know how long you stay?”

  “No, they’re still holding my trial. I asked the intercom woman last night.” Tiera looked down at her feet as she dragged them back and forth through the water. I ask her every night.

  “If you had a bad lawyer, you already know how long you stay,” Kert said. “But you were here two weeks and still no prison time. You have a good lawyer. You leave soon.”

  Tiera remembered that she told Xana she could ask her dad to give Tiera a ride home, and she felt a spark of hope in her breast. Maybe Xana isn’t looking for a new roommate after all. She whipped her head up and faced Kert. “Why are you telling me this? Why do you care if I go back to Faroa soon?”

  Kert looked affronted. “So you can save the Earth, clearly! If you use my plan.”

  “And why do you care so much that I save the Earth?” Tiera tried to think of any possible angle he might have.

  “Because it’s right,” Kert said. “But that is a history lesson for a different day.”

  “A history lesson?” Tiera asked, puzzled.

  “Yes, I taught history before physics,” Kert explained, though Tiera wondered if something was lost in translation, because she still didn’t find any of this relevant. “But this is not important now,” he continued. “Do you want save the Earth? Or do you want hide and do nothing?”

  Tiera opened her mouth to argue, but then thought better of it. Besides, she was curious to know what Kert was planning. “I want save the Earth,” she said, the corners of her lips pulling up into the slightest smile. I shouldn’t poke fun at ESL people.

  “And you are sure? If you tell people my plan, it fails. They ruin it.” Kert held up his hand like he wanted a high five. “If I tell you, you promise not to tell more people?”

  After considering the weight of Kert’s words for a moment, Tiera nodded, then gave Kert a high five. “I promise.”

  Kert frowned at his hand, then said, “Okay.” He turned on his rock so that he was facing Tiera now instead of the ocean. “My students know the keys. You know my students?”

  “Yeah, I know Dav—”

  “Do not say names!” Kert practically yelled, then he brought his voice down. “Maybe robots near—robots have ears.”

  “Right,” Tiera said, trying not to feel startled. “Yes, I know three of your students. We’re friends.”

  “Good friends?”

  Tiera wasn’t sure why that was important, but she nodded anyway.

  “Amazing,” Kert said, completely straight-faced, and Tiera figured he didn’t know a different word would have been more appropriate. “They need do three things—three things I pointed them to when I taught them. First, they need the lab. I made them still have access to the lab when I left. Their phones still code the door. Understand?”

  She figured by “hands” Kert meant their palm prints, so she nodded. She was beginning to feel excited, and she wasn’t sure why.

  He continued, “Second, before we searched the Milky for planet life, I showed them an Andromeda star with conditions for a life planet, but no life planet was there. They need find that star again. Understand?”

  “Yes,” Tiera breathed. She felt like her mind was at the very edge of understanding something amazing—something perfect and hopeful—and Kert’s next words could provide the final push she needed to have a purpose again.

  “Third, I made my students work on an extra project without explanation. It was a machine that makes a wormhole large. Larger than a planet. They must finish this project. Understand?”

  “Yes! Yes I do!”

  Kert’s serious expression melted away into a smile as he perceived Tiera’s excitement. “You understand everything? You know what happens?” he asked.

  “I do,” Tiera said with a smile, then she hugged him before he could do anything about it. “We’re going to save the Earth!” she said, giving the old genius a squeeze. “We’re going to bring the Earth to Andromeda!”

  Chapter 20

  It was either day 7 or day 8 of month 10 of 6027, depending on whether or not it was already after midnight—or 0, as they said here—and Tiera was lying face-down on her cell mattress, wondering why she had just woken up.

  “Tiera Jasperson, get up. I haven’t got all night.”

  Tiera sleepily gave her moon-lit and empty cell a once-over before realizing that the voice was coming from the intercom—it was the night shift woman.

  “Wha—” Tiera cleared her throat, then tried again. “What is it?”

  “The warden would like to speak to you in his office. Gather your things if you would like to keep them—your cell’s about to be cleaned out.”

  Her only “things” were the two baskets she had woven in the crafts room, now sitting unused in the corner by the sink. I’ll just make new ones later, she decided, sitting up to put her shoes on. “What time is it? And why does he want to speak with me? Is it about my case? You said it hadn’t been decided earlier tonight, didn’t you?”

  �
��It’s 0:04, ask him yourself, ask him yourself, and sometimes I lie,” the woman said tersely. “Now get up and stop talking. You will be escorted to his office. Goodbye.”

  “Love you too, I guess.” After getting up, Tiera walked over to her cell door to wait for her escort. But after hearing a few thuds from behind her, she realized that her escort was already in her cell.

  Seven feet of man-shaped cement, stone, and steel had just emerged from an alcove in the wall, and Tiera backed into her cell door as she watched it unfold itself in the moonlight. The bots always fit so perfectly into the walls that it was impossible to tell where they were unless you already knew, and Tiera had had no idea that the cells themselves housed bots—she thought they were only in the central building of the prison. But here one stood, its body made of huge chunks of wall connected by steel joints and beams.

  “Hello,” Tiera whispered, unsure of what else to do. Her last encounter with one of these made her very anxious to stay on its good side.

  The titan stretched its hand out toward her, so Tiera figured she was supposed to do the same. As soon as their hands met, Tiera jumped, because in less than a second the bot’s spindly metal fingers had condensed to form a tight—but not uncomfortable—cuff around Tiera’s wrist. Just as soon as it was in place, the cell door slid open with a soft grinding noise, and the bot led Tiera out of her cell and into the hall.

  Maybe Kert was right . . . maybe I’m headed back to Faroa! She wasn’t sure if she should hope for that this soon—it had only been two days since she and Kert had spoken on the beach, after all. But Tiera couldn’t help but feel excited as her stony guide led her past the closed cells of her neighbors and into the central building.

  After climbing up several flights of stairs, the bot let Tiera through one of the R group’s unused corridors, and just as they were passing cafeteria S, the bot stopped. Tiera and the bot stood there for a moment, facing the featureless gray of the concrete wall, before Tiera heard a familiar grinding sound and noticed what was happening.

  A large, rectangular slab of wall retreated inward and then slid to the side, revealing a double-wide doorway and a dimly lit concrete chute. The only thing Tiera could see in it was the foot of a spiral staircase. Without warning, the bot pulled Tiera inside, then led her up the stairs, its rocky feet clanging against the grated steel with every step. They really should consider installing an elevator in this place. What am I, six stories up? As they rounded the last bend of the staircase, a metal door opened ahead of them, flooding the stairwell with bright light and revealing a section of the building that was starkly different from what she had seen downstairs.

  Thin, violet-and-gray carpet ran down the length of the hall, splitting off at the open doorways of the patterned stone walls and ending in front of a thin, holo-box portrait of a very bored- and austere-looking man. Tiera could hear a conversation coming from one of the nearest open doorways, but the bot she was cuffed to pulled her down the hall so quickly that she couldn’t investigate. After walking for a bit, Tiera and the bot entered some sort of sitting room, and she found herself face to face with the man whose portrait she had just seen in the holo-box.

  “Tiera Jasperson,” the portly and balding man said as soon as Tiera entered the room. “You’re returning to Faroa City to receive further instructions from Chief Uedent. You will no longer be staying with us. The items that were on your person when you were arrested are in this bag. You will be escorted to our WG chamber now.” The warden had droned everything off in such monotone that Tiera hadn’t quite processed it until the escort bot was pulling her up from the chair she had barely sat down in, leading her out the door and grabbing the gray tote bag of her things with its other hand.

  “Thanks!” Tiera said over her shoulder, just before the sitting room door closed. I’m “no longer staying” with them? Does that mean I’m being released? Not including the conversation she had had with Kert two days ago, Tiera couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so genuinely excited about something. Kert though. And Berado. Tiera’s heart fell as she realized she wasn’t going to be able to say goodbye. She dwelt on this for a while as she and the bot climbed another couple of flights of stairs. This particular stairwell was fancy enough to have a few windows, and Tiera drank in their views with every chance she got, tugged along as she was by her unfeeling escort.

  Tiera looked out over the dozen or so identical hallways of cells she could see from this part of the building, all of them curving at the same clockwise angle and reaching for the sea, where the light of a yellow moonrise reflected off of the otherwise dark waters. I’ll come back, she thought to herself. I’ll see them again.

  Tiera just hoped that she wouldn’t have to be arrested again to do so.

  Only minutes later, Tiera traded the yellow-mooned sky of Hyran for the moonless sky of Faroa as she walked through the pressurization chamber of yet another wormhole and into the WG station outside of Faroa City, where Leon was waiting for her. Unsure of how to greet him—and still trying to process everything while operating on only a few hours of sleep—Tiera just stood in her terminal and stared at Leon from several yards away, until he finally realized he was going to have to approach her, and not the other way around.

  “I almost didn’t recognize you. You could pass as a Rencinite without that hair of yours.” Leon’s awkward attempt at conversation really only made Tiera self-conscious about her hair, and Leon apparently realized his mistake as he watched her frown and put a hand on her head. Then his eyes flickered to the green tattoo sleeves on her arms and she felt worse. “I’m sorry. Let’s get going, shall we? Or do you want to change first?”

  Tiera plucked at her green prison clothes, then looked into the gray bag she had received from the warden to see that the outfit she had worn to Nov Nasim was in it. But ultimately she decided she was too tired. “I don’t care,” she sighed, then asked, “So where am I being sent now? Or am I being released?”

  “They didn’t tell you?” Leon asked, surprised, but then his face hardened. “I guess I shouldn’t have expected anything more from Warden Sanser. He . . . ” Leon trailed off just as it sounded like he was about to badmouth the warden. Fiddling unconsciously with the silver crest on the breast of his purple uniform—which Tiera recognized had the same seven-pointed star that she saw at the Grand Hall of Parliament—Leon continued, “Anyway, I’ll fill you in when we get to the car. You deserve a bit of privacy after all of that press.” He shot a glance at a nearby security guard, then started walking.

  Tiera hurried to keep up, almost stumbling for lack of sleep. “Press?”

  “Please—when we get to the car.” Leon sounded as tired as Tiera felt, and she wondered what the past couple of weeks had been like for him.

  Surely not worse than prison, Tiera thought, her internal tone dry. She wasn’t certain what to think of Leon as he led her out of the mostly empty wormhole generator station. He was a rigid authority figure in a government that didn’t want anything to do with her, but at the same time he seemed like a decent person, and he had always treated Tiera with fairness, as far as she could tell. Stern—and almost unfeeling—but fair.

  As soon as they had left the stadium-like building, hurried to the car port through the cold night air, and climbed into their waiting magnet car, Tiera started firing off questions. “So what happened at my trial? What did they decide? Who represented me?”

  Instead of responding right away, Leon looked outside his window at the soft white glow of the WG station’s crater, and the details of the individual rocks and crystals began to blur as they picked up speed. Tiera was about to ask if he had heard her, but then Leon finally looked over and faced Tiera.

  “The short story is that you have Councilman Pit Seeli to thank for the timeliness of your freedom. He hired one of the best lawyers on Faroa to defend you, and . . . well, some say he made a few donations to appease Parliament, but we can’t be sure. Whatever the case, your lawyer thoroughly defeated all opposing
arguments in just ten days.”

  “But I was in prison for over two weeks,” Tiera interjected. “And I was told the trial had already started as soon as I woke up there.”

  “I’ll get to that,” Leon assured her. “But I’ve only answered one of your questions. You asked about the judge’s decision, didn’t you?”

  Tiera gave Leon a slow nod, wondering why he didn’t just answer right away.

  “Well, you were found innocent of all charges except for disturbing the peace at a meeting of Parliament—and the charges were for speaking without clearance, not for all of the—well, self-defense.” Leon said the word as if he were still unfamiliar with it. “Pit Seeli’s lawyer made compelling arguments that all of your violent and psychotic behavior was because you thought your life was in danger. And when your friends and I attested the integrity of your character, the prosecutor had a very hard time convincing the judge you were dangerous.”

  “You and my friends attested . . . ” Tiera trailed off, feeling a happy sort of confusion that there were people here who thought so highly of her. “Thank you, Le—Chief Uedent,” she said awkwardly. “Which friends testified? Or can you tell me?”

  “It’s public record—you could watch it all yourself if you like. But it was Xana Seeli, Daven Theo, and—I forget the two others’ names, but they said that they had spent considerable time with you at Daven Theo’s residence.”

  “Darshy and Byrani,” Tiera said, smiling. I guess I’m friends with Byrani after all.

  “Yes! Now if only I had their surnames.” Leon frowned. There was something about him and using peoples’ full names that Tiera never pretended to understand. “But the case was finalized when it was discovered that you hadn’t been taking your mood regulators, despite having two full containers in your apartment. One of the conditions of your release was actually that a physician verify that you’re taking your regulators on a weekly basis for the next several months. The others were that you continue your weekly meetings with me until I decide otherwise, and that you refrain from any further display of violence, even if it’s only in demonstration.”