The Sound of Useless Wings by Cecil Castellucci

Author:Cecil Castellucci
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466886285
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

1

No one is safe when the warning sirens on a space station blare.

It could be anything. Imperium battleships. Meteor storm. Asteroid. Pirates. Or maybe my mortal enemy, Brother Blue, the man who killed my family and left me for dead.

I stood in the arboretum staring at Quint, the planet that the station orbited. It was a terrestrial planet, a bit smaller than Earth and mostly made of rock and metals with a gray looking ocean. There was a rust-colored fertile line, the Dren Line, which cut the planet as though it were wearing a belt. It was there that the planet had the tiniest hint of color. It was my favorite part of to look at.

I was light years away from the girl I’d been on Earth. I could hardly remember who she was. At first, I had not wanted to go to space. My mother had dragged my sister, Bitty, and me away from Earth, which was reeling from climate change and pandemics. My mother had been charmed by Brother Blue’s promises of a fresh start by expanding to new planets and of Humanity living in the stars through his organization, the Children of Earth, and eventually so had I.

I had believed in him.

After our colony ship, the Prairie Rose, left without me, it blew up en route to Beta Granade, the planet we were supposed to colonize. My mother and sister were dead not even knowing that I had been abandoned here on this space station. They died thinking that I was being taken under Brother Blue’s wing, being groomed to have a high place with the Children of Earth, aiding in the formation of past and future Earth colonies that didn’t even exist.

Before he left me stranded on the Yertina Feray, I had been keen on helping him with his mission. Once I’d left Earth, I’d always imagined that I would be a settler. I’d grown to love the idea of it.

What a joke that dream was now. He’d fooled us and in a way, I was dead, too.

The strobe lights continued to pulse in time to the sound of alarms, which indicated that all inhabitants should get themselves down to a shelter immediately.

“We should not tarry, Tula,” said Thado, the arboretum caretaker, as he pressed a button with his long tentacle-like arm to close the lead panel over the window. The curtain would help to minimize the station’s radiation levels and protect the precious plants he cared for. My view of Quint disappeared.

I felt blinded, just as I was by so many things that had happened so far in my short life.

I heard the door slide open and the famliar steps of Tournour’s boots. He’d come to make sure that I was accounted for and to let us, his friends, know what the actual danger was before he went about his duties.

“Solar flare,” Tournour said. Thado blew air from his blowhole in relief. There were so many things in space that were worse than a solar flare, not that that was something to be shrugged off.

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