Alyssa Redd's Arc

Chapter 4 of 15

The ship coasted. Alyssa watched the nav crystal pulse green and matched the numbers on the panel to the numbers in her head. The coordinates were close. Marla slept in the seat behind her, helmet cradled in her lap. The comm chirped. Not the ship's channel. A back channel, thin and scraped, riding a frequency Alyssa did not recognize. "Hello. Hello. Do you hear me." Alyssa froze. A woman's voice. Steady. Tired. "I was with the Bureau," the voice said. "I found something. I turned my back on them. Please answer." Alyssa keyed the mic. "Who is this." "An agent. I still have the badge. That's why the signal reaches you." A pause. "Have you found Earth." Alyssa checked the panel. Marla stirred. "No," Alyssa said. "I'm almost at the coordinates. If it's empty, the government wasn't lying to us. If it isn't, they were." "Find proof," the voice said. "Anything. A visual. A reading. Send it back on this channel and I will push it to the civic screen. Every resident will see it at once." "Why you." "I watched my supervisor sign a false report six weeks ago. I sat in a garage for forty minutes after. I'm done sitting." Alyssa believed her. She did not know why. "Sasha," the voice added, quieter. "If you need a name." Marla was awake now, hand on Alyssa's shoulder. The nav crystal pulsed faster. The panel counted down the last thousand kilometers. Alyssa closed her eyes. She saw the ship in her head, every seam, every weak point. The crystal held. The seals held. The gasket the crystal grower had pressed into her helmet held. She opened her eyes. Through the glass, a curve rose out of the black. Blue. White cloud in bands. A brown edge of land under the cloud. Water. Real water. "Marla," Alyssa said. Her voice cracked. "Do you see it." Marla leaned forward against the harness. Her lips parted. "It's Earth," Alyssa said into the comm. "It's really there." She swung the forward camera and locked it on the planet. The screen filled with blue. She hit transmit. The signal climbed back the way they had come, a thin line reaching for the world they had left. "Received," Sasha said. "Pushing it now." Alyssa pictured the civic screen waking in the square, the image of Earth crossing it, ten thousand residents in the layered domes looking up. She pictured the Bureau building with its clean stone face and the people inside who had signed the lie. She pictured her grandmother's grave. The comm cut. Not static. A hard cut. Someone on the other end had reached the channel. Marla's hand tightened on her shoulder. "Alyssa." The panel flashed a new warning. Atmosphere entry in six minutes. Below them, Earth turned. Behind them, on a world that now knew the truth, something had already started moving.