Tiera's Earth (Andromeda 9 Book 1)

by Ethan T. Marston

  Tiera hardly breathed as she watched Darshy’s serious expression, wondering if they had offended him and hoping he wasn’t going to take his gloves back. But he just sat down, furrowing his thick brow. Is he upset or is he thinking? He stayed like this for so long that Tiera was starting to panic, grasping frantically for anything she could say to keep him on board, even if he didn’t want to build the thing directly. But as soon as she opened her mouth to say something, Darshy looked up.

  “Okay.” He slipped the goggles onto his head, adjusted its straps, and put the nano-gloves on.

  Tiera and Byrani exchanged a surprised look, then glanced back at Darshy, who was already moving the electrodes that Byrani had just placed.

  “Awesome,” Byrani said, her tone much lighter than before.

  “Thank you,” Tiera added.

  “No problem,” Darshy said dismissively. “And don’t mention it.”

  Tiera smiled, realizing that in Original that last phrase was always taken literally. “We won’t.”

  After watching Darshy work on the remote WG for a while, Tiera realized she had a question. “Byrani?”

  “Yeah?” Byrani looked away from their smart glass TV to give Tiera her full attention.

  “Origin’s researchers are going to use remote WGs to connect black holes to the Milky Galaxy, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “Won’t the remote WGs be sucked into the black holes too?” Tiera had only learned the basics of how remote wormhole generators worked, so she figured she must be missing something.

  “Probably, yeah.” Byrani stared blankly at Tiera. “Why?”

  I’m definitely missing something. “Well . . . isn’t that a problem? Won’t the wormholes close without the remote WGs?”

  “Oh!” It seemed that Byrani finally realized what Tiera was asking. “WGs aren’t necessary to keep a wormhole open; yeah, you need them to open, close, or move a wormhole, but wormholes can last a while on their own.” Byrani tilted her head to the side. “I mean, a WG does provide stability, so some of the wormholes will collapse right away, but a lot of them will remain stable for long enough to get the job done.”

  “Well here’s hoping they don’t get the job done,” Tiera said, and she and Byrani returned their attention to Darshy’s work. Tiera didn’t say so, but she could tell that Darshy was much better at this than Byrani. It would have taken her days to do as much work as Darshy had done in the last hour, at least as far as Tiera could tell.

  That reminded Tiera to check the time on her smart glass. It’s nearly 18 . . . that’s when the exam review is. Tiera had been skipping class more and more since she got back from prison—the main reason she had wanted to learn so much was to save Earth, and since she didn’t need her classes anymore to do that, she didn’t see the point in perfect attendance. But she also knew she’d draw attention to herself if she dropped out entirely. Not to mention she’d get kicked out of her students-only apartment, and that just wasn’t an option. I should probably go. Flunking out of school would look just as bad as dropping out.

  Tiera hailed a car on her smart glass, then stood up from her squishy chair. “Hey guys, I need to go to an exam review right now. You can keep working though, if you want,” Tiera said, grabbing her loose white coat and pulling it around her rip-off Earth clothes.

  “Does it look like I’m working?” Byrani asked. She was lying on their couch with her feet up, eating chips as she watched Darshy’s progress on the smart screen display.

  Darshy pulled his goggles off to look at Byrani, then barked a laugh. He turned to Tiera. “What class is it for?”

  “Uh.” Tiera tried to think of the title—it was a long one. “Introduction to Original Government and Recent History. It’s from 0 H.F. to the present.”

  “Sounds boring.” Darshy put the goggles back on. “Good luck!”

  “Thanks,” Tiera said dryly, and they all exchanged goodbyes as she left the apartment. She only had to wait a couple minutes in the chilly air before the car picked her up, and then it only took about 15 minutes to get to the University of Humanities. That meant she was about 10 minutes late when she finally found the lecture hall her classmates were meeting in.

  About a dozen students sat in the very front two rows of the hall, so Tiera had to descend the equivalent of two flights of stairs to reach them. When she was almost at the bottom, she noticed the recording light of the square smart glass in front of the teacher’s assistant and instantly felt dumb. I could have streamed this all from home.

  “You’ll definitely want to understand Origin’s terms of settlement in the Hyranian Charter and how they influenced the next 2,000 years of Hyran’s history. Professor Selson is pretty obsessed with the Charter.” The TA—a frail-looking girl with shoulder-length blond hair and violet eyes—was looking down at her notes as she spoke. “As you can see—oh! Tiera!” She looked up just as Tiera was taking a seat in the third row of the cobalt benches. “We all have the Hyranian Charter open; you can follow along on your smart glass, if you’d like.”

  “Thanks.” Tiera tried not to feel annoyed as the students in the front two rows shot her nervous looks. Even the TA looked a bit uncomfortable, glancing at Tiera intermittently as she addressed the students both in the room and at home. I guess this is the other reason I skip class. She had always attracted stares, but since Tiera had “attacked” Parliament, she seemed to be attracting a lot of fear as well. I guess I can’t blame them—the news made me seem practically homicidal. Tiera still hated it though.

  Trying not to feel too sorry for herself, Tiera fished her smart glass out of her pocket and pulled its edges until it expanded to the size of a tablet, then opened up the Hyranian Charter and followed along with the rest of the class. But when the TA started reviewing the inalienable rights that belonged to all citizens under Origin rule, Tiera’s thoughts began to darken.

  All citizens under Origin rule, huh? How convenient that the Earth doesn’t fall into that category. The Charter listed the rights to life, to resources, to free speech—everything the Earth didn’t have. Everything that Origin denied the Earth, one of its lost colonies. As they continued through the Charter, Tiera’s anger burned darker and darker until the black flames threatened to drive her from the room.

  “Alright, I think we’ll move on to the history portion now,” the TA announced. “The—”

  “But there’s an entire page left of the Charter,” a student in the front row interrupted. “Are we not going to cover that?”

  “Well, it’s not really important to the examination,” the TA explained, pushing a loose strand of hair over her ear. “I mean, it’s important—don’t get me wrong,” she backpedaled, “but Professor Selson doesn’t put a lot of weight on this section. It’s really just a formal closure of the Charter. It’s almost identical to every other planet’s Charter.” The TA shot Tiera another nervous glance as she spoke—and that, on top of everything else, was enough to get Tiera to do something very petty.

  “If it’s so important, I’d like to read it. All of us together,” Tiera said, then she pouted. “I’m afraid that if I read it alone my simple, violent Earth brain just couldn’t comprehend it.”

  “Oh.” The TA looked around uncomfortably at the rest of the class. “Well . . . let’s read it together then.”

  “I can start,” Tiera volunteered, taking her time as she scrolled down to the bottom of the Charter. “Where is it again? Oh here it is, never mind.” Tiera cleared her throat, then read:

  “Hyran and all Hyranian citizens, both approved for immigration and natural-born, shall contribute to the governance of the Republic of Origin, be it through the Parliament of Origin, the Origin Police Bureau, the time-honored leaders of Origin’s grand tradition, or any other approved planetary or local system of law.”

  Tiera droned on through the next few paragraphs, fully intent on annoying everyone by reading the entire page herself, but she stopped in surprise when she reached the next to
last line. “All inhabitants of Hyran hereby submit themselves to the Origin Right and pledge themselves to the Republic of Origin: the governor, lawgiver, and defender of all Andromedan life and sentience.”

  What. Tiera reread the sentence in her head, picking it apart to make sure she understood correctly. Defender. All Andromedan life. And sentience. She looked up from her smart glass and met the eyes of a very angry-looking TA. “This is law, right?”

  “What, aren’t you going to finish?” the TA asked brusquely, and several students turned around to glare at Tiera. But she just ignored them.

  “This is law, right?”

  The TA closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. After taking a moment to breathe, she finally responded, “Yes, it’s law. That’s what a planetary charter is—that’s the very definition of a charter. It’s law.”

  “Okay, thanks.” Tiera stood up and hurried across her row of benches until she reached the carpeted stairs, which she sprinted up as fast as she could.

  “Goodbye!” the TA yelled after her, abandoning all pretense of professionalism. Tiera just waved her arm in response, not even bothering to turn around.

  Tiera ran through the glowing white halls of the university, flying past sculptures and paintings and people, before skidding to a stop in front of an elevator. Once amidst the blue and white swirls that decorated the elevator car’s interior, she shifted from foot to foot until the doors opened and she could run again.

  They have to. Once the Earth is here they have to keep it safe. Tiera threw all she had—which she had to admit wasn’t very much—into getting to her apartment as fast as she could, rushing through the night air until her eyes watered from the cold, blurring the world around her into a happy mess of light and color. Her energy finally gave out when she reached Dawning Court, and she still had to walk up the stairs and to her apartment door. But that didn’t quell her excitement.

  Panting hard, Tiera stepped into the warm light of her apartment and tried to think of something coherent to say to convey her excitement to her roommate. “Xana!” she breathed. “Xana, guess what?” Stumbling through their small entryway on shaky legs, Tiera made for Xana’s bedroom, but then she kicked something before she even made it through the kitchen.

  Her vision still blurred, Tiera squinted at the white floor, then bent down to pick up a rugged and clear chunk of something. Broken smart glass? Did Xana drop it? I thought it was drop-proof. As soon as she knew what to look for, Tiera realized that there were more chunks of the plastic-like material all over the floor. She turned around to face the living room, which gave her a good view of the front side of the couch for the first time.

  Xana sat on the floor in the fetal position, her back to the red couch, loosely holding a mallet in her hand. A nest of smart glass shards surrounded her—it looked like Xana had smashed every tablet she owned. Even their TV-sized display was gone!

  “Xana? What happened?” Tiera spoke softly as she tiptoed around the smart glass and into the living room. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m so sorry, Tiera,” Xana gasped, her voice strained and muffled from crying. She lifted her tear-streaked face from her knees and looked at Tiera. “They caught me. I can’t help anymore.”

  Chapter 25

  “What? What do you mean? Who caught you?” Tiera’s excitement was quickly replaced with nervousness. She had never seen Xana like this before—whatever happened, it must have been bad.

  Xana took a deep, shaky breath. “I was on the government interface, checking for updates on the plans for the Galactic Defense Bill. My level of encryption can sneak me past most security programs and firewalls, but they must have had an actual person watching the interface’s traffic tonight. Once I realized my encryption was being decoded, I barely had enough time to throw up my fake accessor information.” Xana put her head back on her knees. “But that wasn’t enough,” she sighed, her voice muffled. “They started tracking me. And I could only lead them in circles for so long—I had to destroy my network and every piece of smart glass connected to it to keep them from finding out who I was.”

  “That’s awful!” Tiera shuffled through the remains of Xana’s technological collection to reach the couch, then she sat and put her hands on Xana’s shoulders. “But why—sorry, never mind,” Tiera stopped herself midsentence. She’s upset. I should comfort her, not interrogate her.

  “Why what?” Xana sniffed and turned so she could look at Tiera. “You can ask me.”

  “Well I have more than one question, actually. But I don’t want to stress you out.”

  “I doubt you can stress me out any more than I already am,” Xana said, her tone as dry as her eyes were wet. “Go on, then.”

  “Right,” Tiera gave her friend a sad smile. “To start, you said you couldn’t help anymore earlier. Why is that?”

  Xana looked away. “Everything I was working on was on my network. All of the things I needed to hack into the government interface, to hack into the university’s surveillance systems—even to hack into my mom’s business interface and make her coffee machine overflow—all of it is gone.”

  “But why did you have to delete your network? Couldn’t you have just made an excuse when they found out it was you?”

  “They wouldn’t have just found out it was me,” Xana replied after another sniff. “They would have remotely accessed my network. They would have seen all of the illegal stuff I’ve been doing—and that includes the footage of what you and Byrani have been doing.”

  “Oh.” Tiera was beginning to see how this was such a big deal. “And you can’t just do it again from a different network?”

  “I can, but it will take me months to recode everything again. And you don’t have months. Earth doesn’t have months.” Xana leaned her head back on the couch. “I feel so stupid. And now we don’t even know for sure if day 3 of month 11 is still the black hole date. And now you and Byrani can’t go to the lab anymore. I should have been more careful.”

  “No! No, you’re fine!” Tiera was surprised at how hard Xana was taking all of this. She knew it was all a disaster, but Tiera didn’t want Xana to feel like it was her fault. “We already got everything we needed from the lab anyway, and next time we visit it will be to use the remote WG, and that’ll use so much of the city’s power that stealth won’t matter.” She squeezed Xana’s shoulders reassuringly—but then she remembered the other part of what Xana had said.

  “Xana,” Tiera began in the gentlest tone she could muster, “what did you mean when you said we don’t know the black hole date anymore?”

  Groaning, Xana pushed herself up from the floor and sat next to Tiera on the couch. “I meant that we don’t know anymore. It could be the same, but the whole reason I accessed the interface tonight was to check an alert I got from a bug I planted in the bill’s plans. It was only supposed to go off if someone edited the plans, but I didn’t get to see what they edited before their security caught me.”

  Even though she was still on regulators, Tiera could feel her anxiety buzzing back to life. How are we supposed to know when to move the Earth now? How will we know when it’s too late for Origin to send the Earth back? She took deep breaths, trying to force her heart rate back down. Think, Tiera. Don’t panic. Just think.

  “Can we use a telescope or something? Watch for the black holes?” Tiera asked, trying to keep her voice calm.

  “You can’t see black holes; you can only see what they do,” Xana said, unable to miss an opportunity to educate someone. “And we’d have to watch for the wormholes that connect the black holes to your galaxy, anyway, and they’ll be just as hard to see.” She sighed, slumping into the couch so much that she was more on her back than her butt. “And it’s probable they’ll target Earth in the first wave of black holes, since they consider it such a threat. It would be too late by the time we saw it.”

  “Then . . . we have to get on the government interface again!” Tiera’s breathing exercises weren’t working. “Do you have any hacker fri
ends? Or—I don’t know—any government friends?” Tiera gasped. “Your dad!”

  “My dad isn’t going to help us,” Xana put as much disdain into the word as she could. “Do you know what it would do to his career if anyone found out he was tied to all this? It would be just as easy to get Chief Uedent to help.”

  Tiera thought of how deeply Leon Uedent trusted anything to do with Origin’s government and shook her head. “But couldn’t you just access it from your dad’s smart glass? He doesn’t have to know about it.”

  “Smart glasses have security features, you know,” Xana said with a frown. “He’d have to unlock his smart glass and hand it to me, then I’d have to stay within sight of him while I get onto the government interface—all without him noticing what I’m doing.”

  “Well—” Tiera couldn’t think of what else to say. What other shot do we have? “Can’t we—can’t we trick him or something?”

  Xana snorted. “He’d have to be drunk.”

  “Then let’s get him drunk! How hard can that be? He thought meeting his daughter’s new roommate for the first time was occasion enough to drink!”

  “It kind of was,” Xana muttered, turning away from Tiera as she blushed.

  “What?” Tiera wondered if celebrating new roommates was a cultural thing.

  “I mean, you have a lot of friends, so you probably wouldn’t get it,” Xana dodged, looking at her knees.

  “I only have four friends in this galaxy, Xana. That’s not very impressive. And I probably only have that many because being foreign makes you interesting.”

  “Well, you’re the only friend I’ve had since I started university,” Xana admitted. “And once this is all over I’ll probably never see you again.”

  “Xana . . . ” Here’s the woman who took me in, weaseled me out of jail, and risked so much to help me save the Earth—and she thinks once this is over we won’t be friends? Tiera wasn’t sure whether pity or outrage was the appropriate response. She just grabbed Xana’s hand instead. “After everything we’ve been through together, we’ll never stop being friends. I promise.”