Page 122 of Shades of Earth (Across the Universe 3)

I look up at the rogue hybrid leader, who’s watching me intently. And my stomach twists as I see the pity in his eyes.

68: ELDER

It takes time to load up the auto-shuttle, and the delay makes me anxious. Now that I’ve decided what I have to do, I just want to do it. The waiting is miserable.

Before Bartie gets everyone and everything strapped down, I get inside the escape rocket and detach from the auto-shuttle. Using the manual controls, I maneuver the escape rocket directly behind Godspeed. The map on my screen shows a line of dots: me, then Godspeed, then the space station. I just have to move the dot in the middle until it crashes against the other dot.

Simple.

Bartie coms me from the auto-shuttle. “We’re loaded and ready,” he says. His voice sounds worried. “Are you sure about this?”

“Very sure,” I say.

“I’m departing now,” he says.

“Bartie?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for everything. ”

“I’ll see you on the ground, right, buddy?”

I don’t answer him. I disconnect the com link and watch as the auto-shuttle breaks from Godspeed and shoots away, a stream of rocket fire blasting out as it heads for the planet.

* * *

Godspeed floats before me, hanging impossibly in the black sky. It looks broken, the jagged bottom lacking the shuttle, the Bridge blown out so that it looks like twisted scrap metal. And even though I cannot see through the metal to the emptiness I know lies inside the ship, it seems hollow in the same way a dead body looks soulless.

Godspeed is dead.

But it has one last task, one last service for the people it lived to protect.

And so do I.

It was not an official part of the studies Eldest taught me while I lived on the Keeper Level with him, but Orion once slipped me a book about the Titanic, an old ship on Sol-Earth that sank and killed many of its passengers. Looking back, I wonder if Orion had some deeper meaning in giving me the book, perhaps something about the different classes or that those stuck in the bowels of Titanic were frozen. Or maybe just that we were all destined to die, like the people on board.

But the thing that really stayed with me was the way the captain went down with the ship.

This escape rocket seems tiny compared to the hulking mass of Godspeed, but I know, from that same book that Orion gave me, that a tiny tugboat can move a massive ship. Godspeed needs only a push from me.

I go slowly, very slowly, until I’m only a few meters away from Godspeed. I don’t want to crash into the side; I need to push the giant ship toward the space station. I take a deep breath and check my seat belt. Fortunately, the bottom of the escape rocket extends farther out than the cockpit, but it’ll still be a near thing, especially if I have too much speed.

Adjusting the output of the orbital maneuvering rockets, I nudge the escape rocket forward.

Even though I expect the impact, it still knocks me breathless and rattles me to my bones. My eyes search the seams of the cockpit window frantically, looking for any crack in the heavy glass.

Impact detected, a computerized vo

ice says. Red lights flash all along the dashboard.

The computerized voice continues: Warning: external damage. Warning: external damage. It repeats this message over and over, and I have no idea how to silence it.

“You’re going to get a lot more damage before this is done,” I say, and I increase the outputs on the orbital maneuvering rockets. The blinking dots on the screen that represent me and Godspeed jolt to life, moving closer and closer to the station.

It’s not long before I can see it, my view obscured by the husk of Godspeed. The station is large, but no bigger than the ship. It reminds me very much of the Sol-Earth insects called dragonflies. The center is long and cylindrical, with mechanical arms and circular hatches dotting the top, clearly intended to connect to the tube from the auto-shuttle. The central area is large enough for people to live there comfortably, but no one is there now. Maybe the FRX once thought it would be a place for peaceful communication between humans and hybrids, but I don’t think that’s a possibility anymore.

The space station itself doesn’t just store the goods of Centauri-Earth, it also operates the communication link between the planets, and the flat “wings” extending out on either side of the station are lined with satellites and relay receivers. Somewhere inside its metal body is the tesseract-relay device, the thing that enables high-speed travel between planets. Destroying it will isolate Centauri-Earth from communication and eliminate any chance of visitation from Sol-Earth for decades, if not longer.