Tundra 37

by Aubrie Dionne

  Sud­denly, the walls pressed in like a fist squeez­ing the blood out of her veins. A pres­ence bey­ond the ghosts of memor­ies lurked in the air like a dis­ease. Mestasis searched the elec­tronic pulses, con­nect­ing to a dark cen­ter. The pres­ence thrived the deeper she fell, suck­ing at the very es­sence of her soul. It was old, older than she was, older than she could ima­gine. It wanted some­thing; her en­ergy, her soul? Mestasis couldn’t tell. But she did sense an aching for things that could never be again. Was it the es­sence of mel­an­cho­lia it­self?

  §

  Mestasis yanked back so hard, her mind dis­lodged from the scene. Part of her screamed to go back, as if she’d ripped only half of her­self away, leav­ing a fun­da­mental part of her soul be­hind. Re­liv­ing pre­vi­ous memor­ies was ad­dict­ive, but it ac­com­plished noth­ing. She had to con­tact Al­pha Blue, she had to tell them to des­troy the beacon. The cool, re­cycled air of the con­trol cham­ber sur­roun­ded her once again as she opened her eye. She tried con­nect­ing to the com­mu­nic­a­tions chan­nels, but some­thing blocked her, push­ing her back.

  Com­puter, con­tact Al­pha Blue. Code Beta Prime. Mes­sage: des­troy the beacon.

  The wires in the room tightened around her, and Mestasis fought to keep her body in con­trol. Status of trans­mis­sion? Com­puter?

  The sys­tem didn’t re­spond. The elec­tric im­pulses she had sent came back at her, suf­foc­at­ing her con­scious­ness as if the com­puter tried to blink her out of ex­ist­ence.

  Her mind­speak barely came out. Con­tact Al­pha Blue.

  Some­thing moved from the ceil­ing. Mestasis froze in shock. Abysme twitched like a ro­bot come to life. Her sis­ter’s head jerked to the side, and her blind eyes stared at her with chilling cal­cu­la­tion. Re­quest denied.

  §

  Spot­lights shone on Vira as she twirled in a glit­tery, plum-colored gown to the cen­ter stage. The fab­ric glistened in the golden light like dia­mond dust, cos­mic swirls stream­ing in gold along her waist. Flutes played in the or­ches­tra be­low her feet as the con­ductor matched every pose she made with the mu­sic. She ex­ten­ded her gor­geous long leg in an ar­abesque, and the flutes rose up with a flurry of high-pitched notes.

  Vira waved her wand, sparkles fly­ing through the air and rose up, bal­an­cing on the square toes of her bal­let shoes. The toned muscles in her legs cata­pul­ted her across the stage. She felt as though she danced on air with no need of wings. Her legs took her wherever she wanted to go. She pi­rou­et­ted to the back of the set, where the nutcracker stood, brushed his beard with her fin­gers, and then slid back to the front. She fin­ished her per­form­ance with a bow, and the dark mass of the audi­ence in front of her ap­plauded, throw­ing roses at her feet.

  §

  “Wake up, space­head.”

  Vira felt a punch on her arm and bur­ied her head un­der­neath the pil­low, will­ing the dream to come back again. Maybe if she ig­nored her sis­ter she’d go away.

  “Mom wants you in the kit­chen—pronto.”

  Squeez­ing her eyes shut, stars blos­somed on the back of her lids. No stage, no sugar plum fairy dance. Dis­ap­poin­ted, she peeked out from her pil­low.

  “Aw, Rizzy. You just woke me up from my baller­ina dream again.”

  “Silly dreams aren’t good for you. They fill your head with non­sense. Now, come on.”

  Her sis­ter pulled her up and car­ried her to the kit­chen. She felt like such a bur­den. Los­ing her hov­er­chair was all Rizzy’s fault, be­cause they wouldn’t have been up on the higher decks if her sis­ter hadn’t run away to kiss Daryl.

  “And your poster isn’t non­sense?”

  “No, that’s a real story from Old Earth.”

  “Yeah, a real-made-up story.”

  “Whatever.”

  Her par­ents sat at the table with a mea­ger amount of food spread out be­fore them. Her mom’s hair looked greasy from not be­ing able to shower, and her dad wore the same clothes he’d gone to work in yes­ter­day. They still had smiles on their faces, but their ex­pres­sions seemed sad and forced.

  “Hey sleepy eyes, break­fast is ready.”

  Rizzy placed Vira in her seat and she slumped down, hold­ing her shoulders with her arms. “It’s freez­ing in here.”

  “The Seers are work­ing on get­ting us ex­tra power, don’t worry, peach.” Her dad gave her a wink and handed her a bowl of squishy grapes and a soy­bean wafer.

  She wanted so badly to turn the elec­tri­city on again, to have hot cooked food like scrambled eggs, but the pres­ence be­hind the com­puter sys­tems scared her too much to go back.

  “You’re not eat­ing, dear.”

  “I’m not hungry.” Most of the grapes were shriveled up, be­gin­ning to look like rais­ins. Vira wondered how long ago the bi­oteam picked them and if any new food was still grow­ing. She stuffed a grape in her sleeve and dropped it on the floor for the clean­ing droid. Then, she re­membered she’d stolen it and dis­em­boweled its cent­ral pro­cessor.

  Her mom pleaded with her. “At least take a bite.”

  Vira crunched off a piece of her soy­bean wafer and stuck it in her mouth. She wanted to talk about some­thing to get her mind off of the fact she was so cold her fin­ger­nails turned purple, and all they had to eat was old food. “I had my baller­ina dream again.”

  Her mom frowned as if she didn’t like hear­ing about it, but her dad gave her mom a stern look and then smiled at her. “That’s great, dear. Tell us about it.”

  Vira chewed the piece of soy­bean wafer and swal­lowed be­fore go­ing on. Talk­ing about her dream brought back her ap­pet­ite. “I was on stage and all the people were clap­ping. They threw roses at my feet.”

  “There’s no stage on the ship, or any roses,” Rizzy said, ob­vi­ously jeal­ous she hadn’t had a spe­cial dream.

  “I was back on Old Earth, space­head.” Vira stuck out her tongue be­fore she took an­other bite.

  Her mother in­ter­rup­ted. “No one’s call­ing any­one space­head, today. You hear me?”

  Rizzy ig­nored her and glared at Vira. “You’re the space­head. How do you even know it was Old Earth? You’ve never been there.”

  Vira took a breath to an­swer, but real­ized she had no clever reply. She sighed. “I just know. All the lights looked real big like an­tiques.”

  “Oh that makes per­fect sense. Big lights.”

  “Enough girls.” Their dad put down his fork with a clang. “We’re all stressed-out over this crash, and we shouldn’t take it out on each other.” He sighed as if he didn’t want to say it, but had to. “We’re all hav­ing strange dreams of Old Earth.”

  “What?” Her mom leaned against the table. “You too?”

  He nod­ded. “World War II, I be­lieve, from the looks of my uni­form. From the looks of all the medals and badges I wore, I must have been a great war hero.”

  Rizzy crossed her arms. “My dreams are of work­ing in some silly food store. Why can’t I have cool dreams like every­one else?”

  Be­fore her dad could an­swer, his loc­ator beeped. He looked down and read the mes­sage. “There’s a prob­lem in the en­ergy core again.” He shot up from his seat and gave their mom a peck on the cheek. Al­though he took the time to kiss her good-bye, his eyes had that strange, faraway look when things went wrong and he tried to hide it. “Gotta go, girls. Don’t fight. Be good for your mom.”

  As he left, mom and Rizzy ar­gued, but Vira paid more at­ten­tion to the vi­bra­tions of en­ergy cours­ing through the ship from the tab­letop con­nec­ted to the floor. As much as she wanted to shut her powers off, she could never totally get away. Everything she touched linked to the in­ner work­ings of the ship, even her sleep pod.

  The ship’s sys­tems had changed while they bickered at the table. The im­pulses had weakened, like the ves­sel was dy­ing slowly, an ill-ten­ded plant with no gardener.

/>   Nausea came up in a wave, the soy­bean wafer fer­ment­ing in her stom­ach. Could her powers help? She gripped the table edge with shaky fin­gers. The evil pres­ence scared her too much to try.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Destiny

  Gemme awoke to the sound of grat­ing metal. She opened the flap to her tent, the il­lu­min­a­tion of Sol­aris Prime cast­ing a tri­angle of light at her feet. Even though the star’s rays felt weak and dis­tant, the bril­liance re­flect­ing off the ice-crus­ted snow lent her hope. Squint­ing against the glare, she saw the drill hanging over the ex­posed min­eral sur­face, spin­ning so fast the twist of sil­ver blurred.

  Tech hollered in tri­umph from the con­trols. Not want­ing to miss the mo­ment the drill struck, she shoved her boots on and stepped out into the frosty morn­ing. She walked up to the con­sole to get Tech’s at­ten­tion. She shouted, cup­ping her hands around her mouth. “Got it run­ning, huh?”

  “Yessir­ree.”

  She guessed he’d stayed up all night work­ing on the drill. She’d stayed up late as well, ana­lyz­ing the min­eral de­posit us­ing Tech’s min­is­creen and send­ing the ini­tial cal­cu­la­tions to the Seers. Strangely, enough, they didn’t ac­know­ledge the re­ceipt of the in­form­a­tion. She thought they’d at least send her a “well done.”

  By her cal­cu­la­tions, they’d have enough hy­perthium for gen­er­a­tions to come. The min­eral de­posit spread un­der­neath them like a gla­cier in an ocean, small at the top with a wide girth the farther she meas­ured be­low. She still had moun­tains of data to ana­lyze con­cern­ing the con­cen­tra­tion of the min­er­als, and how long it would take them to pro­cess it, but she figured she’d have the en­tire jour­ney back to work on her cal­cu­la­tions. A greater pur­pose lay be­fore her. They’d only com­pleted one of the two mis­sions, leav­ing the mys­tery of Beta Prime.

  A shot of re­morse stung her in the gut. Beta Prime had been Luna’s mis­sion, and now she’d take it up in­stead. As much as Luna had bothered her, the team felt small and in­com­plete without the blonde beauty. She wondered how the other mem­bers took her death. Es­pe­cially Brent­wood. She scanned the camp­site. A small fire sizzled out, the rem­nants of break­fast sat in a con­tainer, and the plat­form res­ted de­tached from the vehicle.

  “Where’s Brent­wood?”

  Tech gazed up from the con­trols. “Went back to his tent. I be­lieve he’s plot­ting your course.”

  “Good.” She gave Tech a thumbs-up and grabbed a bite of powdered eggs, now cold. Al­though she was anxious to see Brent­wood, she figured she’d wait un­til he came out. The drill dipped in the air, the tip hov­er­ing over the min­eral.

  Tech shouted, “Heads up.” He ran his fin­gers over the panel on the con­sole, and the drill pricked the sur­face, rock crack­ing and crum­bling as the point dug in. A keen­ing wail re­soun­ded through the val­ley and Gemme covered her ears. A rush of re­lief and pride came over her as she watched the drill des­cend. They’d suc­ceeded. The Ex­ped­i­tion would have an al­tern­at­ive en­ergy source. Fer­ris and her par­ents would be so proud.

  Of course this mis­sion didn’t come without sac­ri­fice. Every time she thought of Luna, a fresh pang shot through her chest, and the un­fin­ished busi­ness of Beta Prime lurked in the back of her mind, cast­ing shad­ows on the bright day.

  Move­ment caught the corner of her eye. She turned just as Brent­wood emerged from his tent with his travel gear packed. She wanted to run up and throw her arms around him, but after Luna’s death any phys­ical con­tact didn’t seem right. Be­sides, they were on a mis­sion to save the colony, not a ro­mantic ex­cur­sion.

  Gemme re­frained from run­ning into his arms and smiled when she saw him. He gave her a ser­i­ous look. “Are you sure about this?”

  “More sure than any­thing.”

  How could she let him go alone? When he ran into the mam­moth horde she thought she’d die watch­ing. She wasn’t about to lose him again es­pe­cially after learn­ing his true feel­ings. Be­sides, she wanted an­swers as well, and it seemed as though the beacon held the key to this whole mis­sion.

  “All right.” His took a deep breath. “Fol­low me.”

  They walked around the con­sole and he shouted up to Tech, “Have fun. Dig up some­thing good.”

  Tech waved at them, look­ing like a little kid at re­cess time. “You too.”

  Brent­wood leaned down to speak to her over the din of the drill. “I don’t think this is go­ing to be a pic­nic in the biod­ome.”

  Gemme smiled, try­ing to raise his spir­its. “Oh really, I brought the checkered blanket just in case.”

  They piled into the landrover, Gemme in the pas­sen­ger seat, and Brent­wood as the driver. A blink­ing dot ap­peared on the radar, sixty meters from the min­ing site over the val­ley’s West­ern ridge. Brent­wood’s face turned ri­gid, the muscles in his jaw clench­ing.

  Gemme put a hand on his arm. “You don’t have to do this. We could tell the Seers the beacon was in­ac­cess­ible, or des­troy the whole site with lasers from meters away. Tech and I won’t say a word.”

  He shook his head, fin­gers grip­ping the wheel so hard his knuckles turned white. “No. We need an­swers. What if these ali­ens come back? What if it’s some sort of weapon they’ll use against us? What if there are more of them?”

  Set­tling back in her seat in si­lence, Gemme knew he was right. The po­ten­tial know­ledge gleaned was worth the risk. She watched his pro­file as he drove head first into the un­known. “You’re the bravest man I’ve ever known, and I’m proud to be by your side.”

  Her words softened his fea­tures and he turned to her, green gaze spark­ling. “I’m proud to be by yours.”

  The landrover ca­reened through the snow, un­hindered by the min­ing plat­form. A week ago, Gemme would have shaken in her boots, but this mis­sion had taught her to em­brace chaos, that life wasn’t all pre­planned, and some amount of chance was okay, ne­ces­sary even to grow. Most of all, she’d learned to let go.

  Brent­wood turned to her. “How do you feel about the pair­ing sys­tem be­ing gone?”

  It was a loaded ques­tion, and she sighed, think­ing about where to start. If she were go­ing to tell him she’d de­leted their match, now would be the op­por­tune time. She couldn’t keep it from him forever, es­pe­cially if she wanted their re­la­tion­ship to de­velop into some­thing more.

  “At first I hated it. I thought I couldn’t go on without my job as the Match­maker. I val­ued or­gan­iz­a­tion over chaos, pre­des­tin­a­tion over choice. When the ship crashed, my world shattered.”

  “You don’t seem so shattered now.”

  “No.” Gemme smiled, think­ing about why. “I guess I real­ized that there’s more to life than ana­lyz­ing data. Some­times you have to let go be­fore you really find the truth, be­fore you find your­self.”

  He scratched his head, sud­denly bash­ful. “What I’m get­ting at, Gemme, is that I want to know what you think of us to­gether?”

  His ques­tion hung in the air between them like a tan­tal­iz­ing prom­ise. She took a deep breath. “The day of the comet shower, I was up in my of­fice do­ing matches. That’s why you had to res­cue me from the top floors.”

  Brent­wood nod­ded. “I re­mem­ber.”

  Gemme swal­lowed. “I saw our names to­gether. We were sup­posed to be paired.”

  Brent­wood’s face fell in shock. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I thought you were in love with Luna. Be­sides, it would have come out as des­per­ate see­ing it didn’t mat­ter any­more, and I had no proof.”

  Brent­wood shook his head. “I can’t be­lieve it. All this time…”

  “There’s more.” Gemme played with her glove, tug­ging on the in­dex fin­ger. “When I saw our pair­ing, I couldn’t be­lieve it. Luna had just come in ask­ing to be paired with you.
She tried to bribe me with a ticket to visit the Seers, and I denied her. When I saw my name next to yours, I thought every­one would think I’d hacked the sys­tem and chosen you for my­self. I was afraid of be­ing called a hy­po­crite, of los­ing my job.”

  She closed her eyes, afraid to see his re­ac­tion. “I pressed the de­lete panel. I denied our own pair­ing.”

  Brent­wood sat speech­less, his face a mask. She couldn’t tell if he felt angry, hurt, or be­trayed. She con­tin­ued on, “I didn’t think I de­served you. After I pressed de­lete, I re­gret­ted it so many times. My ac­tions haunted me dur­ing this en­tire mis­sion.”

  “Oh, Gemme.” He reached across the seat and took her hand. “It must have been hor­rible, know­ing we were sup­posed to be paired and see­ing me with Luna. I’m sorry I let it her be­have so badly. I’m sorry I waited so long to tell you how I felt.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you in the first place.” Her hand shook in his and she squeezed, hold­ing his fin­gers tightly. “Can you for­give me?”

  “There’s noth­ing to for­give. You didn’t even know me then.”

  She settled back and took a deep breath. He’d lif­ted the secret weigh­ing down on her this whole mis­sion. She’d shunned the no­tion of or­ganic ro­mance for so many years, and now she be­lieved in it whole­heartedly. She’d want him even if the com­puter had deemed them in­com­pat­ible.

  Brent­wood’s voice came out soft and tent­at­ive, “Would you press de­lete now?”

  Gemme looked away as her cheeks heated up. Maybe it was wrong to pair people in the first place. “No, I wouldn’t.”

  His hand burned so hot in hers, she thought they’d steam up the whole landrover.

  “I wouldn’t either.”

  “So what are we go­ing to do now that the pair­ing isn’t valid?” Gemme asked, her voice shaky.

  He turned to­ward her, in­tens­ity in his gaze. “We make it hap­pen by ourselves.”