She caught up to Tria just as her friend ducked behind a tangle of browning branches and leaves, dying plants biochemists had shoved into the corner for fertilization. “Back here.”
Aries stepped through the compost, the earth feeling strange and squishy underneath her boots. Adventures like this filled her heart with nervous excitement and enriched her imagination, two things the community frowned upon.
Her friend stuck out an arm and pulled her into the overgrowth. Aries saw a red skin poking out of Tria’s pocket.
“You stole a tomato.” Aries’ eyes widened in shock. This little rebellion had gone too far.
“So?” Tria pulled it out of her pocket and took a bite. “It’s just a tomato. It’s not like I’m a space pirate or anything.”
Even the smallest offense made Aries uncomfortable, but her friend did have a point. The space pirates stole entire ships. They’d even taken over the last working space station. A tomato was small beans compared to that.
“I wish I could live in here.” Aries settled on a log, daydreaming about the past. She peered out from between the leaves. “I bet this was what it was like.”
“You mean on old Earth?” Tria frowned. “It’s all barren, and you’d die of radiation poisoning in a day.”
“No, silly. I meant before all the wars. When there was peace.” Her words sounded wistful, and she placed a strand of hair behind her ear sheepishly.
“Humph.” Tria scoffed at the notion of humans living peacefully together. Aries should know. They’d shared the same history class for three years. Tria’s essays were all about the sinful nature of man, as dictated by the Guide. She wondered how much of it her friend really believed and how much she spouted to pass the tests. Aries settled into silence on her share of the log.
Tria spoke with more compassion. “Well, maybe you’ll test high for bio skills.”
“Nope.” Aries sighed, crumpling a brittle leaf between her fingers. “I’ve already shown promise in technical engineering.”
“Me, too.”
Tria surprised her. Aries chewed on her words, thinking about their futures. The thought that Tria would be with her made the idea of working in life-support systems more bearable. She smiled and patted her friend’s arm. “Looks like we’ll be working together, huh?”
“Yeah.” Tria looked away, as if she didn’t believe it. Aries wanted to ask why, but they heard voices from the far end of the bio-dome.
“Shh.” Tria put a finger to her lips. “The commander’s coming.” Her eyes held a spark of curiosity and something more, a defiance which scared Aries.
A small group of people dressed in the blanched-out uniforms of bio-engineers paraded through the main aisle of the bio-dome. To Aries, they looked like walking test tubes among all the natural vermilion and russet tones of the foliage. All men with graying hair, they were two or three generations older than she and Tria, and the main reason why she’d never get to work in the bio-dome. Another ten years would pass before their jobs became available, and by then, she’d already be assigned. She wished the group would return to the upper decks and stop intruding in her fantasy land.
“Look, over there.” Tria pointed to the far end of the assembly. The commander sat in his hoverchair like a king on a throne, his arms and fingers spread over the keyboards in the armrests, as if he could feel every movement of the ship at his fingertips.
“How’d you know he was coming down here today?” Aries held down a branch to get a better look.
“I overrode the information database.” Tria shrugged as if it had been as easy as zipping up her jumpsuit.
“Whoa.” Tria’s computer skills impressed her. Making a mental note to ask Tria to teach her someday, Aries shifted the branch to get a direct view of the commander. “This is a lot closer than we can get at the assemblies.”
Tria smiled. “You bet.”
“Do you think he’s really over 300 years old?”
“How old he is doesn’t matter.” Tria’s eyes turned frosty. “What I wonder is if he’s really the prophet leading us to paradise that everyone boasts of, or just another ordinary old man.”
“Tria!”
Her friend stuck her nose in the air. “I want to live my life my own way, and no old man is going to tell me what to do, I don’t care if he’s 300, or chosen by the Guide, or the King of the Universe.”
Tria’s heresy stung Aries’ composure. No one ever questioned the mission. They were supposed to pass on the genetic line in order for their descendants to colonize Paradise 21. But what if they had a choice of how to live, and where? A whole new dimension of thinking opened to her, a place both frightening and exhilarating. Just as she parted her lips to respond, the chair turned in their direction and both girls gasped, crouching down on all fours.
Aries peeked out from underneath a branch. The commander stared in their direction, his distant, pale-blue eyes focusing on their position. Aries thought she’d melt on the spot, becoming part of the primordial sludge the dying foliage withered into. She thought for certain he’d expose them. And punish them.
The commander paused, his chair floating in midair. Instead of showing anger, his face turned placid and calculating, as if he made a note of them in his mind. With only a few clicks on his touchscreen, he turned away and continued to instruct the bio team.
Tria let out her breath. “That was close.”
“What did you mean about him being an ordinary man?” Aries’ eyes were still glued to the commander’s white head.
“It doesn’t matter.” Tria waved her hand. “Paradise 21 is another 200 years away. We’re not going to be around to see it, anyway.”
…
Aries opened her eyes to royal-blue light and reflective glass. She wondered if she’d truly awakened from her dream, because it looked like she was lying in a giant sapphire. The sterile atmosphere reminded her of the New Dawn, and a streak of panic shot through her arms and legs. Sitting up, she whipped her head around, expecting Barliss’ condemning eyes.
Tubes and wires ran across the walls of the chamber. Panels with unidentifiable symbols pulsed in and out like a sleeping heartbeat. Aries stood up slowly, feeling dizzy and nauseous, and stared at the ornate hieroglyphs, trying to make sense of the shapes. Although she was well-versed in many of the world’s extinct languages, the symbols were nothing she’d seen before. This was definitely not the New Dawn.
Was it the work of the lizard men? Aries ran her fingertips along the smooth, glass-like walls. The panels throbbed with light at her touch. This technology was too sophisticated to be built by their hands. Had she been taken by an alien race, unknown to humankind? Out of the thousands of scout ships that had scoured the galaxy as Earth had withered, none had found any sign of intelligent life beyond primitive indigenous species.
Someone had put her here and allowed her to roam free. There was no door to the chamber, only a threshold of shadows. Aries searched for a weapon. She’d lost her pocketknife in the fight with the lizard men. The only device she had was the locator from the New Dawn, stuck in her arm. The weight of the energy cell felt reassuring in her pocket. A tiny voice told her she could plug it back in. They’d come get her in an instant.
No. Then this whole trip would be for naught.
Aries chanced hesitant steps forward, staying near the wall. The corridor outside the chamber was dim, lit at intervals by the blue, pulsing light. She heard a crash of metal down the passageway to the right and cringed against the cool wall. If she wanted to hail the New Dawn, now would be the time. But Barliss would never give her a second chance to escape. She’d be stuck under his control for life. Aries stiffened her resolve and headed toward the direction of the crash. She’d rather be a slave to aliens than a slave to him.
Movement around the corner cast shadows on the gleaming walls. Someone or something shuffled across an adjoining corridor. Aries tried to make sense of the shadows, but whoever it was, they were either crouched down or three feet tall. She could
hear tiny clicking noises and couldn’t tell if it was the being’s actions or its speech. If anything, it didn’t seem very threatening. Whatever it was, it had saved her from the desert elements, the scaly lizards, and the sandworm.
Cautiously, she peeked around the corner. A humanoid wearing a long black cloak and a welding mask the size of a small shield crouched over an open panel, the wires spewing electric sparks. The humanoid worked with small, lighted tools, shooting tiny lasers into the circuit board. Aries tried to focus her eyes beyond the sparks, but the light diffused any semblance of what lurked behind the mask. The humanoid was too broad to be one of the lizard men from the desert. She checked to see if its fingers had three prongs, but gloves covered the hands.
Suddenly, her pocket started to beep. Aries clutched her side, realizing she still carried her life-form locator and the device had picked up the presence of the humanoid crouched before her. She thrust her hand in her pocket to turn it off, but it was too late. The humanoid rose from its work, standing a foot taller than she was. It stepped toward her, wielding the tools.
She lost her balance and stumbled backward. The humanoid towered over her, a dark blot framed in sparks. Slipping on the slick floor, she pushed back on her hands.
The humanoid held up a hand as if to stall her, and she scrambled up and turned to run.
“Wait!”
Aries froze, then turned slowly. The figure dropped the tools, metal clanking on the floor, and pulled off his mask. He was a human, with a head of wavy jet-black hair, smoky gray-green eyes, and a face that would have looked like an ancient Grecian sculpture if it weren’t darkened by stubble.
Aries blinked, trying to make sense of the situation. She’d expected an ugly space invader and gotten a handsome Outlander instead. He looked different than all the men on the New Dawn. His skin shone like bronze, much darker than the skin of her fellow Lifers.
“You’re not an alien,” she said, trying not to sound like a child, as if he’d tried to trick her with a mask.
“That’s right.” He seemed to find her accusation amusing, because his lips curled in a sly smile. “Sorry to disappoint.”
Aries ignored his apology. It was obviously insincere. Besides, he didn’t disappoint in the least. “What are you doing on this ship?”
“I should ask you what you were doing parading through the desert with no food or water.”
“I had a sufficient amount of supplies to last for days before those…lizard men surrounded me and stole my backpack.”
The man nodded as if he sympathized. “Ah, the raiders. They’ll steal everything you’ve got and eat you for breakfast if you’re not careful.”
Aries thought back to when the creatures had dragged her toward their tunnels. They’d been planning to eat her? She shivered.
“You’re lucky to be alive.”
She squinted her eyes. “Who are you?”
The man extended his hand. “The name’s Striker.”
Aries reached out and let his hand envelop hers. His fingers were rough and warm to the touch. Bizarrely, the skin felt more like hardened leather. How did a man’s hands get that way?
“And you are?” he prompted her.
“Aries Ryder.”
“Well, Aries, how is it you came to be in this little slice of heaven?”
Aries looked away. “My escape pod crashed.” She wasn’t about to share all of the details. He might try to contact the New Dawn, if he didn’t like living on this desert planet.
“What happened to your mother ship?”
She thought about all the possible demises of a deep space transport vessels, things like asteroids, a loss of fuel, or a busted engine, but couldn’t bring herself to make anything up. He looked like the kind of guy who would want to fix any problem she posed. “The ship is fine. Everyone on board is doing peachy.”
Surprise flashed across Striker’s face. “Won’t they come looking for you?” He nodded at her arm. “That looks like some kind of locator device.”
Aries frowned and crossed her arms over her chest. “It is. If I can’t get rid of it, they’ll come. I know it for a fact.”
Excitement flashed in his features. “Great. We have to get you back out on the surface so they can find you.”
Her heart skidded. “What do you mean, back on the surface? Isn’t this a spaceship?”
Striker looked amused. “You think this ancient hunk of junk is flying right now, as we speak?”
He laughed, but Aries could only stand, dumbfounded.
“This ship crashed here years ago. It’s buried underneath several feet of sand,” he explained.
Aries’ heart dropped to her stomach. “You mean to tell me we’re still on Sahara 354?”
“Yup.”
“We’re not in space, flying away?”
“That’s right. We’d better get you up there before your shipmates think you’re dead.”
He moved to take her arm, but Aries stepped back and put up her hands defensively. “No, you don’t understand. I crashed here on purpose. To get away from them.”
Striker shook his head as if to rid his ears of her words. “Hold on, little lady. You’re saying you left your cozy spaceship and crashed on this godforsaken planet intentionally?”
Aries looked down. “Yes.”
Striker folded his arms across his chest. “Then, there’s no hope for saving you. You really are crazy.”
“Hey, that’s not fair.”
“I hate to tell you this, but with the sand monsters, the raiders, the desert heat and no water for miles on end, this isn’t the place to settle down and raise a family.”
“That’s exactly what I don’t want. That’s what I’m running from.”
Her confession seemed to leave Striker astonished. He stood there, mute and looking confused, with his lips parted in an unspoken question.
“You can’t turn me over to them,” she begged. “You don’t understand what it’s like. You can’t imagine how awful it is, how life is nothing but obedience, what it’s like to only be valued for your DNA.” She turned away, ready to escape yet another ship.
“Hold on and calm down.” He grasped her arm before she could walk away. “Exactly who are you? What kind of ship did you abandon? I’m all ears.”
Aries took a deep breath and recited the words directly from the Guide. “I’m a Lifer: a sixth generation colonist bequeathed to a computer-designated mate to propagate the species for the next generation, furthering our bloodlines until the colony reaches a paradise planet 200 years away.”
“You’re telling me you’re from one of those wacko communal transport ships, running from an arranged marriage?”
“Yes.” She spat out her words. “Any wasteland of a planet is better than that.”
Striker’s face softened, his dark brows rising. “Jeez, why didn’t you tell me that in the first place? Although you picked one hell of a planet to land on, I get it.”
“So you’re not going to turn me in?”
Striker waved her fear off like swatting a fly. “Nah.”
She sighed and let her shoulders sag. At least someone was on her side. No one had shared her burden, ever. She hadn’t had anyone to confide in, not since Tria had died.
He stepped very close to her, his eyes looking directly into hers. “But are you sure this is what you want?”
It was the first time anyone had ever asked what she wanted. She could barely believe it.
Aries stared right into his gaze, her face inches from his. She’d never leaned that close to a man on purpose, but his expression drew her in. “More certain than anything else that’s ever happened in my life.”
Striker paused as if he considered closing the distance between them. Aries’ heart quickened. She felt his warm breath on her lips. Would he kiss her like the Lifers did at the end of the wedding ceremony? Excitement fluttered in her chest like a thousand butterflies startled into flight.
Striker blinked and gestured down the passageway
to the chamber where she’d slept. “Come on, I’ll find a way to get that locator off without triggering an alarm.”
Chapter Five
Revenge
Barliss hated the heat. Heat made him sweat, and sweat was seen as a sign of weakness among Lifers. He couldn’t allow his lower officers to see his vulnerability.
His father’s voice resonated in his head. “Suck in your gut and pull up your pants. A general never shows signs of slovenliness in front of his troops.” He’d always seemed to disappoint the old man, as if Barliss were responsible for his recessive genes.
Barliss stiffened, brushing a grain of sand from his camouflaged uniform. He’d gotten the last laugh and proven his old man wrong. Even though his father was genetically superior, he’d never made it as far up the chain of command as Barliss already had. Barliss had tested low for emotional intelligence, but he’d climbed farther in forty years than his father had in sixty. While he received direct orders from the commander, his father drowned in the bureaucracy, filing life-system reports.
Barliss shook his head in disgust. Although the old man loyally followed the Guide, he didn’t have the stomach for politics. He chose poorly with his colleagues and allies. Barliss knew the type of people to gravitate toward: not the do-gooders trying to make the colony a better place, but to those with a penchant for power. He’d become their right-hand man, and they’d rewarded him for it.
Ironically, his greatest prize, Aries Ryder, had developed into his biggest embarrassment. The bitterness tasted sour on his tongue. Barliss spat onto the ground. He wished he could curse the entire desert in a similar fashion.
The squadron leader approached as the search and rescue team pegged tents into the sand. Barliss greeted him formally with a salute. “Awaiting your report, Skyman.”
The man looked a generation younger than he was, with his eyes still full of naivety. Although his inexperience irked Barliss, at least this skyman would be easy to control. “Our scanners show pieces of metal on the horizon, sir.”
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