Thetis--The Deep Sky Saga--Book Two Page 5

  “They can do that because,” a woman says as she steps out from the doorway’s shadows and into the sunlight. She’s a tall, broad woman, dressed in a blue jumpsuit with long brown and gray hair pulled up into a messy bun. Her face is kind, framed with long wrinkles, dotted with soft brown eyes. Dry sweat glazes her cheeks. A short black stick hangs from her one hand while a bucket swings from her other. “Their claws dig deep into the top layer of the other one’s skin until they hit the skull, and from there, their claws can find these tiny, perfect little indentations in the bone to slide into, locking themselves in. It’s really quite spectacular. Now, young lady, I would suggest pulling your hand back inside the fence before the top one bites it off.”

  Vespa yanks her hand back out of the pen and shoves it into her pocket.

  The woman turns the bucket onto its side, and with a winded breath, she tosses its contents into the middle of the enclosure with a resounding thwap. A dozen white sluglike things slide off each other and begin to crawl in every direction, changing colors as they move. Immediately, the woman jerks her black stick over her head, extending its tip, and then she corrals the slimy things into a three-foot-long line. The bottom frosty bounces over to the slugs and tips toward the ground to eat the closest creatures. The other two hold on, tipping toward the ground to get their fill, too.

  “I’m Francesca,” the woman says as she continues to line up the slugs that try to get away. “Welcome to Thetis. I’m really, truly sorry for what happened to you guys, for the crash—I’m sure you lost a lot of loved ones and it was a horrific experience—but we’re happy you’re here. We’re thrilled you made it.”

  “Thank you. I’m Vespa, and this is Jonah. And you’re like the first person to actually welcome us. Everyone seems to…hate our guts?”

  Francesca bends down to cautiously pet the top frosty before walking back toward the door. “Don’t take it personally, dear. There were just…things that we needed that were on the ship. Has anyone told you about… Tell me, how are you feeling? Having any difficulty breathing?”

  Vespa and Jonah look at each other and then shake their heads at Francesca.

  “That makes sense. You just got here. Commander Mirker wants to be the one who explains everything. But, we’ll all be fine. Humans always find a way to survive.”

  Jonah finds himself monitoring his breathing. When everything feels normal, he says, “But I want to do more than just survive.”

  Francesca smiles at him. “Well, now. That’s a nice attitude to have. Thrive, don’t survive. Why don’t you two stop by sometime when it isn’t the feeding hours, and I’ll show you around in here? Lots of very neat stuff to see.”

  “Definitely,” Vespa says.

  “But what does the commander have to explain to us?” Jonah asks. He looks at Vespa, but she’s busy studying the frosties attacking their lunch.

  “Oh, I’d get into a lot of trouble for speaking out of turn. Just ask him the next time you see him.” Francesca disappears into the shadows, the empty bucket bouncing off her leg with hollow thuds, and eventually Jonah and Vespa pull themselves away from the frosties to see what else feeds along the farm building. In one cage, they see dozens of creatures that look like large squirrels with wet, pebbled frog skin, leaping from branch to branch of a fallen tree. Jonah can’t remember their names but recalls seeing photos of them. The creatures pair up on the branches, standing on their back legs and holding each other’s front paws, practically waltzing for a few seconds before separating and pairing up with someone else. All at once, though, they stop dancing and freeze, save for the tiny wet ears rotating on their heads, and then they scurry into the building in a tight pack.

  “Lunch time,” Jonah says under his breath.

  Behind another fence, Jonah recognizes the two bright yellow animals as capstones: sheep-sized, bird-like beasts covered in feathers. Instead of wings, though, they have extra-long arms that drag limply behind them as they sprint back and forth on their spindly legs. They stop moving only long enough to pick up the flat rocks scattered around the ground with their long arms, and they carefully set them on top of their tiny heads like caps. As soon as they start running again, though, the rocks fall off, and the beasts jump up and down in frustration. The capstones repeat this over and over, grunting in approval when they put the rocks on their heads, growling and hopping mad when they fall off.

  “What’s the point of all that?” Jonah wonders out loud.

  “I’m sure there’s a good explanation, but who knows, maybe they just want to feel pretty.”

  “Well, they’re going to need to do more than put rocks on their heads,” Jonah says.

  “Firstie, come on. Look at these things. They are beautiful. I mean, we’re on a new planet staring at an actual alien right now. Think about that. These are aliens. And they’re weird and goofy and strange, and they probably smell like ass, but I don’t know. I guess I just can’t believe we actually made it here. I honestly can’t believe we’re standing on Thetis. So, it’s all pretty beautiful to me. Even these guys.”

  Her words hover over Jonah like an umbrella, momentarily blocking the constant downpour of fear that follows him everywhere. He hasn’t taken a moment of gratitude yet, to sit and be thankful that he’s here. That he’s…special. That millions and millions of people will never see what he’s seeing right now. There’s a war going on back home. There’s a draft and no end to the fighting in sight, and kids his age are being gunned down by the thousands. But he’s here and not hiding in the bathroom of some terrible new foster home, watching these goofy—no, these beautiful—animals run back and forth and doing something that must have a purpose. Maybe he’ll get a chance to study them himself and figure it out.

  But he also remembers Vespa’s story about her dad. He remembers the faint crucifix tattoo on her chest, a symbol of her father’s mission to control her and her sister and bring them closer to his God at whatever cost. The discovery of Thetis eventually drove him insane, and now here Vespa is, breathing Thetis air, walking on Thetis soil, proving her father wrong that his God didn’t create everything in the universe. He had forgotten what a big deal this is for her.

  The cadets watch the capstones for another minute before the beasts scurry inside to eat, their long feathery arms trailing seconds behind their bodies, and Jonah turns to Vespa. “I’m really happy you’re here with me. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”

  Vespa blinks her big green eyes and shrugs. “And I wouldn’t have made it this far without you, Firstie. I wouldn’t have gone west with everyone else if it weren’t for you.”

  “And I wouldn’t have gone west if it weren’t for Brooklyn.”

  They hang their heads for a moment before turning away from the farm building. The cadets silently walk north, passing more yurts and tents and groups of sullen people trudging along. A pair of white drones zip by overhead, disappearing over the spiked fence a few seconds later. They pass by a couple of acres turned into a thriving garden, thick with green leafy vegetables and tall corn stalks. Two men walk through the tight rows with sheafs in their hands, dictating into the microphones and taking photos of the produce.

  “I could go for some lunch, too,” Vespa says. “How about I get you to your new place, you get settled for a bit and check your shit out, and then we get some food in the dining tent?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  As they walk past the garden, Jonah notices two things: off on his right, in the far northwest corner of the village, a long black tube sticks out of a white roof like a giant spoon sitting in a bowl. The tube must be fifty-feet long, pointed high over his head. The Woesner Telescope. It’s the reason Jonah ran west; his mission was to get himself in the lens of that thing and signal for help. His life had depended on it. Jonah shakes his head; he’s so close to it now he could hit it with a football. And then on his left, far beyond the fence, gathered in an uneven huddle at the bottom of some distant hills, three tow
ering white modules stand straight up. Giant marshmallows in the hot sun. Unlike his ship, the first Mayflower vessel worked as planned. The metal structure opened up, and the modules drifted down under enormous parachutes. And then the passengers got to work setting up the Athens colony.

  Vespa steers them toward a row of small yurts and they find a faded “31” stenciled onto a windowless door.

  “Fancy stuff, huh?” Vespa says.

  “Fancy enough for me.” Jonah has lived in far worse conditions; he’s slept under bridges and in the doorways of shuttered stores. He’s lived in foster homes with angry men and sadistic teenagers. He’ll take a small yurt with a door any day of the week.

  Before Jonah can reach the doorknob, a voice calls out over his shoulder. The cadets turn to see a man marching toward them in a tan jumpsuit, his cheeks covered in a thick black beard, his shoulders flared and pulled back. As he gets closer, Jonah sees he’s no older than nineteen or twenty.

  “So, what the hell happened up there, huh?” the man barks. “How the hell did you get all this way and then crash on the moon and screw everything up?”

  Vespa and Jonah are speechless as the man’s hands tighten into fists. He looks ready to explode. Jonah instinctively tries to push Vespa behind him, but she shoves his hands away and puffs out her chest.

  “Where is it? What happened to it?” the man seethes.

  “Back off,” Vespa says. “Now.”

  He keeps marching ahead, keeps tightening his fists. “Don’t tell me what to do, girl.”

  Vespa takes a step toward him. “Dude, leave us alone. You have no idea what we’ve just been through.”

  The man reaches behind his back and pulls out a small blue handgun. He aims it at Vespa’s head and shouts, “Screw you! You have no idea what we’re going through.”

  Vespa stands motionless, but Jonah puts his hands up and shuffles in a circle until he’s standing on the man’s left. The gun wavers up and down in the man’s trembling hand. Jonah needs him to drop it for just one second. Then this guy is done for.

  Vespa laughs. “You’re going to shoot me? For what? For being asleep on a ship and then waking up in the middle of a crash landing? Yeah, asshole. This is all my fault. Us sleeping passengers in the rear modules are to blame.”

  The man takes a step closer to Vespa. “Where’s Tunick? He with you? And Kip is back, too? They all come back? Where are they?”

  “Kip is back, too?” Vespa repeats.

  A woman’s voice comes from inside a nearby yurt: “Louis, put that gun down! Now!”

  It’s all the distraction that Jonah needs. He rushes at the man with his shoulders like a linebacker. He connects with his ribs, plowing him completely sideways. In the same motion, Jonah grabs the man’s wrist, twisting it until the gun bounces on the ground. The man spins out of control then falls onto his chest. A second later Vespa is on his back. She locks her fingers over the man’s forehead and pulls back, a move she learned from Brooklyn the first time they met. Into his ear, as sweetly as possible, she says, “Nice to meet you, Louis. I’m Vespa Bolivar. Where can I get some fresh towels for my friend here?”

  Jonah grabs the gun and sticks it into his pocket just as a woman with a shaved head stumbles out of her yurt with a rag over her mouth.

  “Hey! Get off of him!” she shouts through the rag.

  Vespa and Jonah look at each other, and then Vespa pulls back a little farther. The man howls and spits, begging for mercy.

  More colonists come out of yurts and tents and running down alleys, all of them yelling for Vespa to get off of the man’s back, all of them looking thin and exhausted. A few men and women raise handguns, shouting for Vespa to let him go. Or else. Jonah pulls his gun out of his pocket but keeps it flat against his thigh. A short woman wearing a blue and yellow headscarf sees this and points at Jonah and shakes her head, warning him not to get involved. Not exactly the welcome he had been dreaming about for over a year.

  “Whoa,” Freeman says as he breaks through the circle. “Everybody, put your weapons down! Everybody! And you,” he points at Vespa. “Get off of him. Now.”

  Vespa releases the man’s head and then casually stands up and brushes the dirt from her clothes. “Asshole pulled a gun on us for no reason.”

  “For no reason?” Louis shouts as he struggles to get to his hands and knees. “Are you kidding me? You guys crashing up on Achilles… You have no idea, do you? You don’t. We’re not going to make it now. We’re dead. We’re all doomed.”

  “What? Why? What does that mean?” Jonah asks.

  “Nobody’s doomed,” Freeman says as he helps Louis to his feet. “Louis is just being dramatic, that’s all. Aren’t you, Louis?”

  Louis grits his teeth and then spits over his shoulder. Jonah can tell he wants to start the fight all over again, but instead he takes a deep breath. “I want my gun back.”

  Everyone looks at Jonah, who studies the weapon in his sweating hand. He pushes a small button to release its cartridge, and then pulls back on the chamber—sending a bullet helplessly to the ground. Instead of handing it over, though, he presses the weapon back against his thigh.

  “Tell me why we’re doomed,” Jonah says to Louis.

  Louis looks to Freeman and then connects eyes with a couple more people in the circle. He shrugs. “Talk to Mirker. There were…there were just a lot of personal items aboard the ship and other stuff, and now they’re all gone.”

  “Yeah, well, there were a lot of people onboard, and now they’re all gone, too, so,” Vespa says. She slowly takes the gun out of Jonah’s hand, flips it around, and gives it to Freeman. “I’m sorry if any of your shit got ruined, but none of you have any idea what happened up on Achilles, so stop treating us like we’re some kind of enemy or that we had anything to do with the ship going down, and start treating us like survivors who just went through a very traumatic event. And just, I don’t know, stop being such fucking dickheads. Because that’d be pretty cool.”

  The woman with the headscarf walks forward with her hands clasped. Tears run down her cheeks. “Did you know my daughter? Ariel Abbasi? She was on the ship. She was coming to be with me. She’s fourteen and very short, and she looks like me. Just like me. Did you know her? Did you see what happened to her?”

  Vespa’s answer sticks in her throat, her grief instant and palpable. “I don’t know who that is, I’m sorry. I didn’t know her.”

  “Me neither,” Jonah says with his head hung low; he doesn’t want to look into Ariel’s mom’s eyes while he’s lying. He remembers Ariel well from the dining module. He randomly sat at her table on numerous occasions, often listening to her talk about an application she was building on her sheaf to show evolution in real time, but mostly he remembers her talking about her goal to explore Thetis and discover more animals on the planet than anyone else, and then she would go on and on about what she would name them. She was sweet and liked to drum on the table with her index fingers and always wore a beautiful headscarf just like her mom’s. The last time Jonah saw Ariel, she was lying face up and covered with burns, dead. A huge gash ran above her eyes from ear to ear. Jonah jumped right over her as he ran to help Garrett and Paul with the trapped girls. But he can’t tell her mother that. He doesn’t want to tell her mother that. He also doesn’t want to give her false hope, but this seems like the better alternative.

  “Maybe she’s still alive then?” Ariel’s mom asks.

  “Maybe,” Vespa says. “Lots of kids got lost up there.”

  “That’s true,” Jonah whispers.

  “Then we have to go back. We have to go back right now,” Ariel’s mom says. She then grabs another woman’s hand, and they run toward the hospital.

  The rest of the colonists stare and linger, and Jonah can see and feel and taste their misery. He always pictured entering the Athens colony as some type of champion, as an elite member of this tiny group living light years away from Earth, as someone relatable and welco
me and desperately needed, a new set of hands and eyes to help build this community from the ground up into something historic and astounding, but standing there gathering the stares of all these angry people, he feels like an outsider, unwanted, another mouth to feed. Different galaxy, same story.

  “Hey, tall guy. You Jonah?” a voice comes from Jonah’s right. He turns to see a boy his own age standing at the open doorway of Yurt 31. He’s short and skinny with skin the color of porcelain. A shaggy mop of black hair covers half his face. The boy brings a mug up to his thin lips and blows steam from its top before taking a loud, slurping sip.

  Freeman hands Louis his gun and pats him on the chest. He then whispers something into his ear and pushes him into the crowd. Freeman walks toward Jonah and Vespa with shrugged shoulders and an apologetic smile. “We’re happy you guys are here. Honestly. Don’t get the wrong impression.”

  “Why could we get that?” Vespa asks.

  The boy in the doorway takes another loud sip. “So, like, is this Jonah, or what?”

  “Yeah,” Jonah says. “I’m him.”

  “Cool. I’m your roommate, Matteo. Want some tea or something?”

  Jonah shares a look with Vespa before asking, “What kind of tea?”

  Matteo laughs and gags, spraying tea at Jonah’s feet. “Jesus Christ. Dude, you were just blind—or, am I wrong?—and you just got rescued after probably thinking you were about to die up there on that moon, and here you are being picky right now about what kind of tea I have? That’s the funniest shit I’ve ever heard. Come on in, ya psycho. Let me show you your hammock and stuff.”

  Matteo turns and disappears inside the yurt, leaving a cloud of steam in the doorway like a ghost.

  “Go ahead,” Vespa says as she gives Jonah a slight push. “Check it out. Get some rest. We’ll eat soon.”

  Jonah crosses his arms over his chest. “All I’ve been doing is resting. What about what that Louis guy was saying about Kip or how we’re all doomed? There was something on that ship we didn’t know about, Vespa. Something obviously super important. And we still haven’t talked about Dr. Z going crazy and spelling out ‘Don’t Leave’ with those dead bodies on Achilles right before we left? And now we have to deal with all these…assholes looking to fight us?”