Shades of Earth (Across the Universe 3)

“Operation Genesis in effect,” he says.

I don’t know what Operation Genesis is, but Emma Bledsoe obviously does: she immediately begins calling out to individuals—the other military personnel who’d been frozen—and instructs them to line up in the space between those from Godspeed and those from Earth.

I glance over the heads of the military people and catch Kit’s eyes. She’s struggling to keep her nurses working on the remaining injured, but there’s real fear in the way she holds her stiff body, the way she won’t fully turn her back to us. Fear of my people—fear of my father.

“Dad,” I say, “there are a lot of injured people. The crash was—”

“Sir!” Bledsoe calls back, interrupting me before I have a chance to mention Elder’s theory that the pterodactyl-looking things caused the crash. Her voice is loud and clear, but she has an odd accent—British, maybe, or Australian. “There are three casualties among the shipborn. ” She moves to stand over the bodies of the people who didn’t survive the landing.

“What happened?” My father ignores me as he moves through the crowd to inspect the bodies. “This woman looks as if she was choked. ” In the crowd, I can see the dead woman’s friend quietly sobbing as my father roughly tilts the woman’s head to look at the marking around her throat.

I notice Lorin, the woman whose shoulder I stitched, standing to the side, staring down at one of the dead men. She shuffles nervously back as Bledsoe and my father draw closer to me, too afraid to try to move past them. Her panicked eyes meet mine, and I shoot her a sympathetic smile.

“What happened?” Dad barks again.

“We had to use tethers to secure the people during the landing,” Kit says, trying to keep the quaking out of her voice. “It slipped around his neck, and—”

“Why didn’t you use the magnetic harnesses?” Dad snaps.

“Magnetic . . . harnesses?” Kit asks.

Dad stomps over to the wall—Lorin squeaks in terror and darts out of the way—and he bends down at the floor. His fingers feel along the tiled metal, and he does something—a flick of his wrist, a push of a button—and the metal panel lifts up. Reaching inside, he withdraws a handful of canvas straps with big, black buckles. “There are three thousand harnesses in storage here just so that you can secure your people to the floors and walls in the event of an emergency shuttle landing. Why didn’t you use them?” His voice is angry, accusing.

“We . . . we didn’t know they were there,” Kit says meekly, her eyes wide with shock.

I can’t rip my gaze from the dead. What a stupid, stupid way to die. Killed just because we didn’t know about the damn harnesses.

“The captain should have known about the proper procedures for emergency shuttle launch,” Dad says. He exudes frustration and anger, and even though he’s wearing a silly green medical gown that opens in the back, he still carries with him more authority than I’ve ever seen from him before, and everyone—people from Godspeed and those from Earth—is listening to his every word.

“It’s not like that,” I say. “You don’t understand, Dad, things—”

He cuts me off with a glance, and I shut up. “This is a mess,” he growls. “Bledsoe, where are the medical personnel?”

“Here, sir,” Bledsoe says, drawing aside five people—three men and two women.

“Dr. Gupta,” Dad says, addressing one of the men. “Have your team aid with the injured,” Dad commands.

The medical professionals step forward, but I can already see this won’t work. If the people from Godspeed worried about me with my pale skin and red hair, at least they’ve had three months to see I wasn’t a threat. I can see these people through their eyes, and while I know it’s silly, I understand why they flinch away from the Indian man, why they don’t understand the woman with the Southern accent, why they rush to Kit instead of allowing the black man to wrap their wounds. I want to stay and help—but what good could I do?

“Let’s suit up,” my father tells Bledsoe. In shifts, the people from the cryo chambers go to the trunks on the far wall and begin dressing in the clothes they brought with them from Earth. My father and the rest of the military dress in fatigues.

Their clothes, so different from the homespun tunics and trousers made by the residents of Godspeed, do nothing but separate everyone even more. Synthetic fibers and bright colors pop up like blemishes among the browns and blacks worn by most of the crew from the ship.

The people from Godspeed are more than ten times the number of people from Earth, but they’re cramped together all along one wall. The room is sticky and hot, and the air stinks of sweat and fear. And anger.

I open my mouth to call my father aside—if he can’t prove that he’s there to help, that he’s not the threat Orion said he was, he’s going to be labeled an enemy. But then he turns to Bledsoe and says, “Let’s inspect the armory. ”

It’s bad enough that suddenly ninety-seven people from Earth have woken up and are taking charge, but adding guns to this mix will not end well.

The door to the armory is shut and locked, and it doesn’t open when Dad punches the code into the keypad.

“What’s wrong, sir?” Bledsoe asks.

Dad shakes his head and punches the code in again. It still doesn’t work. And why should it? Orion reprogrammed it long ago.

“Dad, I need to talk to you,” I say, trying to emulate the authority in his voice.

“Not now, Amy. ”