Tundra 37

by Aubrie Dionne

  The new in­form­a­tion tickled the hairs on the back of Gemme’s neck. Here it was: proof they weren’t alone in this galaxy, and yet her stom­ach still churned with bit­ter­ness. The secret mis­sion ex­plained a lot of Brent­wood and Luna’s private con­ver­sa­tions, yet it didn’t ex­plain any­thing about the kiss she’d just wit­nessed.

  She glared at him as he con­tin­ued. His words faltered when he looked at her. “My re­la­tion­ship with Ms. Leg­acy is purely pro­fes­sional. There’s noth­ing go­ing on between us, des­pite some of the things you may have heard or seen us do.”

  Gemme couldn’t con­tain her hos­til­ity. She’d thought Brent­wood was vali­ant and noble, and in­stead he snuck a kiss on the most im­port­ant mis­sion the Ex­ped­i­tion offered him, and lied about it af­ter­ward. Why couldn’t he just come clean? Tell them he had feel­ings for Luna? He was as bad as the politi­cians from Old Earth. “Pfft. You don’t see me kiss­ing Tech.”

  Tech scratched his head. “What?”

  “I caught them with their faces stuck to­gether.” Gemme seethed un­der her breath. A small doubt that Brent­wood had kissed Luna on pur­pose nagged at her heart and she squashed it down. “Just a few minutes ago.”

  Tech shook his head like she sug­ges­ted hy­perthium and oxy­gen com­bined to make up air. “Brent­wood and Luna?”

  “Enough.” Brent­wood in­ter­rup­ted them. “Luna mis­un­der­stood me, that’s all.”

  “That’s one hell of a mis­un­der­stand­ing,” Gemme shot back.

  Luna frowned. “It was pretty clear to me.”

  Brent­wood shook his head, wav­ing his arms to calm every­one down. “Luna, you should never force your­self on any­one, es­pe­cially a higher of­ficer. What you in­stig­ated was wrong, and would be rep­rim­anded had we still been on the Ex­ped­i­tion. But we’re trapped in a cave in the middle of nowhere—”

  “With pos­sible little green men.” Tech in­ter­rup­ted, shift­ing un­com­fort­ably in his seat.

  Brent­wood nod­ded. “Yes, with pos­sible ali­ens, and we have a mis­sion to ac­com­plish.” He turned to Gemme. “I’m sorry you had to see that, and Tech, I’m sorry to have to wake you up.”

  Tech waved his hand. “No apo­logy ne­ces­sary, sir.”

  “Right. Thank you, Tech.” He per­used the three of them, meet­ing Gemme’s gaze. When his eyes locked on hers, they held a glim­mer of deep mel­an­choly and pain and she wondered just what he re­gret­ted: the fact that he kissed Luna on the mis­sion, or the fact that she caught them red-handed, or red-lipped for that mat­ter.

  Brent­wood tore his gaze away and con­tin­ued. “Above all, we have a mis­sion to ac­com­plish; two mis­sions if you heard me cor­rectly. The Ex­ped­i­tion is re­ly­ing on us and us alone. We can’t bicker like this among ourselves. For de­cency pur­poses, all our con­ver­sa­tions from now on will be held out in the open.” He stared at Luna. “No more private meet­ings about Beta Prime. No private meet­ings between us. At all.”

  Gemme thought back to the com­ment Luna had made in the landrover about Beta Prime. Maybe all of their secret meet­ings had been centered around work. Maybe Brent­wood was right? She thought about the kiss and stifled the thought. No, that lip-lock looked pretty real.

  Brent­wood paused when he saw her face, and faltered on his words be­fore he con­tin­ued. “N-now, get some rest. When the storm lifts, we have a six-hour drive ahead of us. Then, we’ll find this alien ob­ject while Tech sets up the min­ing equip­ment.”

  “Yes sir, chief.” Tech stood up, pat­ted Brent­wood on the back, and re­turned to the landrover. Brent­wood stormed away into his tent be­fore any­one could ask any fur­ther ques­tions. Once again, the men left Gemme with Luna, alone. She moved to her tent, but Luna caught her arm.

  Her eyes shone so fierce, she looked like a wounded an­imal about to pounce. “He’s still mine, you know. He’s just cov­er­ing it up be­cause you caught us.”

  “Good.” Gemme gave Luna a curt smile be­fore dart­ing into her tent. “No need to push me into a re­cyc­ling shaft this time. You can have him.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Sacrifice

  Lieu­ten­ant Brent­wood flashed on the main­frame. Dark circles framed his eyes, and he’d pushed up his hair at odd angles. His hag­gard ap­pear­ance heightened Mestasis’s con­cerns. For a mo­ment, she for­got about the pull of her memor­ies to listen. “We’re stuck in a snowstorm, but it should blow over by morn­ing. Tech says we’re only a day away from the min­ing site. After we reach it and get the equip­ment set up, we’ll be­gin our quest for the beacon.”

  The beacon. A drop of sweat ran down her cheek, dangling from her chin, and dripped onto the chrome floor. Did she really want them to find the beacon?

  Abysme had ordered it, not her. Now her sis­ter lay hanging like dead weight.

  A thought tugged at her mind. She could call the mis­sion off. Would Abysme even know?

  But the orb and the beacon were the only ob­jects in­ter­est­ing her sis­ter. How could she take away Abysme’s last wishes?

  Her heart panged. The old muscle beat feebly, but the ache was still acute. Only one thing eased the pain. Memor­ies. Sweet memor­ies.

  §

  Old Earth, 2446

  “Ex­cel­lent. I’ll se­cure two com­mander seats for you and your sis­ter and three hun­dred ci­vil­ian po­s­i­tions on­board. Now, if you’ll just press the touch­screen here for a di­gital fin­ger­print sig­na­ture…” An older man with thick black eye­brows and a head bald as a pin hovered over his desk, lean­ing to­ward Mestasis. He looked so eager she could pic­ture him rub­bing his palms to­gether once they’d com­pleted the deal.

  A tinge of doubt tweaked in her stom­ach. She paused, fin­ger hov­er­ing over the touch­screen as golden swirls of pixels danced at her fin­ger­tips. “What about TINE, Mr. Leg­acy?”

  “They will be well taken care of, of course. We’ll of­fer Dr. Fields a place on on­board the ship as well.”

  “And James Wil­fred?”

  “Cer­tainly. Gran­ted, every­one must pass cer­tain blood and DNA tests to en­sure the health and well-be­ing of the crew and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions aboard the ship.”

  Her fin­ger twitched above the screen, fluor­es­cent light re­flect­ing off her dark skin. “Routine tests?”

  His eye­brows rose like two cater­pil­lars on his face. “Yes. Harm­less and prac­tical to en­sure we have a di­ver­gent sup­ply of DNA. With the ex­cep­tion of you and your sis­ter, of course.”

  “And what’s this about fa­vor­ing the Leg­acys through­out each gen­er­a­tion?”

  “Just a little con­di­tion I put in to en­sure my des­cend­ants aren’t over­looked.”

  “Looks to me like these ar­range­ments des­tine them for lieu­ten­ant­hood, among other things.”

  “Well, you can’t be too care­ful, now can you? I need to know my chil­dren and their chil­dren’s chil­dren will do well.”

  Al­though the bar­gain did fa­vor the Leg­acys, it saved many oth­ers and seemed too easy, too good to be true. Mestasis thought back to the day she took a chance on TINE. Be­sides the dis­tance it caused from her mother, that risk had kept her and her sis­ter well fed and safe all this time. She’d take it again if she had the chance, and here it was: an op­por­tun­ity off this doomed planet in a con­trolled en­vir­on­ment com­plete with food, med­ical sup­plies, and everything they’d ever need. No more wor­ry­ing about se­cur­ing jobs or the fu­ture of TINE, no more search­ing for nukes in the sky. She pressed her fin­ger down on the di­gital con­tract and the screen beeped as it read her im­pres­sion.

  “Won­der­ful! The Ex­ped­i­tion’s crew mani­festo is now com­plete. We leave in two days.” Mr. Leg­acy tilted his head, press­ing a panel on his desk. The top drawer opened and he pulled out a ci­gar that smelled sweet enough to be made from real to�
�bacco leaves, some­thing Mestasis had never seen be­fore.

  “So soon?”

  He lit the end of the ci­gar and a puff of sweetly scen­ted smoke waf­ted her way. “We’re be­hind as it is. A ship called The New Dawn took off three months ago, destined for Para­dise 21. We’ll be headed to Para­dise 18, a smal­ler planet, but chocked full of wa­ter and green­ery with only a small amount of ter­ra­form­ing ne­ces­sary. We won’t reach it in my life­time, or that of my chil­dren or grand­chil­dren. But at least I know my fam­ily will en­joy a safe and pro­duct­ive life, and that my des­cend­ants will live on.”

  His an­swer still didn’t ad­dress the rush to leave. If his planet had already been se­cured, and they wouldn’t reach it in his life­time, why did he feel such an ur­gency to leave? “But why the rush?”

  “Be­ware the things they don’t tell you on the news, my dear.”

  She leaned for­ward, her fin­gers shak­ing, des­pite the cool­ness she kept in her voice. “Is the world fall­ing apart?”

  “The For­eign Union is dis­solv­ing as we speak. Wars over rivers rage in Europe, and you know about the refugees out­side the city?”

  She thought back to what James had told her. “I’ve heard, yes.”

  “Patrols shoot who­ever gets close to the bor­der, but the guards don’t have enough fire­power for them all.”

  Hor­rific im­ages flashed through her mind and she blinked them away. “What is every­one go­ing to do?”

  “Who knows? It’s not our prob­lem, is it?” Mr. Leg­acy’s leather chair creaked as he sat back and sucked on the end of the ci­gar. “I’ve been plan­ning this es­cape for most of my life, sav­ing cred­its to pur­chase the sup­plies, con­duct­ing re­search on para­dise plan­ets. I was lucky enough to see into the fu­ture, to make pre­par­a­tions. So many did not.”

  He reached over and clasped a track­ing brace­let on her wrist. Mestasis shot him a look as if he’d be­trayed her.

  “You’re too im­port­ant for me to risk los­ing. This will mon­itor your health at all times. Noth­ing more. This one’s for your sis­ter. Make sure she at­taches it im­me­di­ately.”

  He handed her an­other brace­let and mo­tioned for one of his guards to es­cort her out. “I’ll send word when the pre­par­a­tions are com­plete.”

  She put her other hand over the brace­let as if it stung her skin and bowed her head. “Thank you, sir.”

  His dark eyes widened with in­tens­ity. “No. Thank you.”

  The guard led her through an at­rium with real, fresh plants, and she res­isted the urge to reach out and touch a leaf, the shiny green re­mind­ing her of the one blade of grass they had cul­tured as chil­dren. The memory of her mother came back to her, and she pushed it away. She couldn’t deal with it, not now. Part of her felt as though she left her mother be­hind. She had to re­mind her­self that her mother was gone, her body cremated, and their small apart­ment is­sued to an­other fam­ily, just as des­per­ate. There was noth­ing left for her here on Earth.

  They crossed a cor­ridor between Thadi­ous Leg­acy’s build­ing and the re­cycled food com­pact­ors the gov­ern­ment had is­sued built in Quad­rant Three. The pun­gent smell of stale com­post and hu­man waste waf­ted up from the heated vats be­low. The guard left her at the gate with only a nod. Eager to get out of the fact­ory, she dar­ted through the main lobby and into a court­yard con­struc­ted between the fact­ory and other of­fice build­ings.

  Green­houses lined the walk­way, each glass door panel locked and wired with an alarm. The en­ergy of the se­cur­ity sys­tems buzzed in the air around her, and she had to block out her tend­ency to con­nect to the elec­tro­mag­netic pulses. A fig­ure ap­peared between the glass domes and Mestasis ran to him, bur­row­ing her­self into his arms.

  James held her close, his breath tick­ling her hair. “How did it go?”

  “As­tro­nom­ic­ally well. I se­cured your three hun­dred seats, and a place for you, my­self, and my sis­ter.”

  James pulled his head back, his eyes full of awe. “All three hun­dred?”

  Mestasis shrugged. “When the ves­sel car­ries sev­eral thou­sand, three hun­dred isn’t much to ask for, I guess.”

  James shook his head as if he couldn’t ima­gine it. “I never meant this to help so many people; I just wanted to make you happy, keep you safe.”

  Mestasis put a fin­ger over his lips to si­lence him. “I know. I wanted to give you some­thing in re­turn. No one has ever shown such an in­terest in help­ing me, be­sides Dr. Fields. But his in­ten­tions lay solely to de­velop my abil­it­ies for TINE. Most people, that’s all they see. I’m not a per­son, but a tool. When they see what I can do, they see end­less bound­ar­ies, un­lim­ited con­trol, un­hindered power.”

  “I don’t.” James trailed a fin­ger from her cheek down to her neck. Her skin tingled un­der­neath his touch. “I only see you.”

  En­gines roared above them and Mestasis watched the sky. Five hov­er­crafts, all mil­it­ary mod­els armed with mis­siles on either side flew by. TINE didn’t need her to de­tect those bombs.

  “Where are they go­ing?” Mestasis ran in between the green­houses to the edge of the roof. The city sprawled out be­fore her. High-rises poked up like weeds, so close a kid could jump from one to the next. She fol­lowed the arc of the hov­er­crafts as she held back stray wisps of her hair freed by their ex­haust winds.

  James ran up be­side her. He gripped the rail­ing with both hands, star­ing at the ho­ri­zon, his face slack. “While you were in the meet­ing, the Razor­necks launched an at­tack on Uto­pia. They’ve killed all the guards and claimed it for them­selves. All ship­ments of food have stopped. They’ve taken over the build­ing as their own. I didn’t think the re­tali­ation at­tack would come so soon.”

  “So the gov­ern­ment is just go­ing to blow it up? Waste all that food? It’s the largest green­house in the city. How will every­one eat?”

  “There’s noth­ing else they can do.” James shook his head in resig­na­tion. “They can’t let the Razor­necks have it. They’ll grow too strong and take over the city. It’s the only chance they have to elim­in­ate their ter­ror cell while so many of them are con­tained in the same place.”

  Mestasis clasped James tighter. “Thadi­ous Leg­acy was right. The world is fall­ing apart.”

  In front of them, a plume of black smoke rose from the cen­ter of the city, mix­ing with the smog in the gray sky. The des­ol­a­tion in James’s eyes made her chest tighten so hard she couldn’t breathe.

  James held her close, his body warmth giv­ing her com­fort against the cool, tain­ted air. “If so, we’ll leave just in time.”

  §

  Mestasis stared at the blank white of the snow cov­er­ing the main sight panel. She’d never see any­thing out­side the ship ever again. But, in her memor­ies, she saw the en­tire city where she’d lived. And most of all, she saw James.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Samples

  The ten­sion in the landrover made Gemme’s hairs stand up on the back of her neck. Brent­wood and Tech sat in the front seats, leav­ing her with Luna in the back. No one spoke about the pre­vi­ous night. In fact, no one spoke at all. The min­ing site lay only hours ahead, and the cul­min­a­tion of their mis­sion heightened Gemme’s anxi­ety.

  What if the first scout team re­por­ted the de­posit in­cor­rectly hun­dreds of years ago? What if the min­er­als were gone, already mined by the own­ers of the beacon?

  And more im­port­antly, what kind of device did the orb send them to? Who or what would be there to re­ceive them?

  Her own per­sonal mat­ters seemed trivial com­pared to the an­swers ly­ing just hours away. Peer­ing out the sight panel at the newly fallen snow, she marveled at how Tun­dra 37 seemed fri­gid, harsh, and un­pre­dict­able, and her stom­ach clenched as she an­ti­cip­ated the day to come.


  The landrover plod­ded slower than usual. Tech had wel­ded two metal slabs to the front bender to plow through the newly fallen snow. The vehicle wove a path like a tun­nel, and Gemme could see their trail twist­ing in a worm shape all the way back to the ice moun­tains they’d left be­hind.

  Even­tu­ally, her mind roamed back to last night’s kiss. Luna had been pushy her whole life, and Gemme had wit­nessed Luna’s cap­ab­il­it­ies first hand by the heel of Luna’s palm. An ink­ling of doubt festered as to her ac­cus­a­tions to­ward Brent­wood.

  Maybe Luna had pushed her­self on him. Gemme wouldn’t put it past her. But en­ter­tain­ing that idea just gave her heart hope, and it made her feel weak and vul­ner­able all over again. No, it was easier to make him the bad guy, not to trust her heart, but trust her head.

  “Look!” Luna squeaked, press­ing her fin­ger against the sight panel. “Stop the landrover!”

  “What is it?” Brent­wood soun­ded sus­pi­cious, and after last night, Gemme would ques­tion any­thing that came out of that wo­man’s mouth. But the sheer ex­cite­ment on Luna’s face made her change her mind. She pressed her face against the glass. “Ve­get­a­tion. A whole field of it.”

  Brent­wood slowed to a stop and opened the hatch. Luna pushed by him and jumped out, jog­ging across the ice.

  “Well, take me out to a black hole and drop me in.” Tech shook his head. “Guess she was in­ter­ested in samples after all.”

  Gemme wasn’t as eas­ily con­vinced. Maybe since she couldn’t have Brent­wood, she de­cided on the next best thing: her ca­reer. Try­ing to ap­pear sup­port­ive, Gemme fol­lowed Brent­wood and Tech to where Luna knelt on the ground. Thin grasses sur­roun­ded her, bend­ing in the light wind. Gemme thought of the wheat field, but these grasses were white with a tinge of blue, so close to the hue of the snow she’d never no­tice them.