Emerald Flight: Homecoming: Return to Grace (continued)

After donning a t-shirt with an Academy emblem, she waited with undisguised impatience while Jackson dressed himself more thoroughly. While he had fewer items of clothing to choose from—having available only those he had been wearing that night—it seemed to Elizabeth that it took him five times as long to dress as she had. Several times, she considered leaving him behind and venture out herself to find out what all the activity was about.

It could not have been imminently threatening, Elizabeth reasoned, for no warning klaxons had sounded. Yet something had stirred all of the occupants of the base from their sleep like an insect hive coming slowly to life.

As Jackson slid on his second shoe, Elizabeth turned and opened the door, pausing as she watched a now-dwindling flow of hurriedly-garbed people moved along the corridor. A few of them gave her a passing glance. When some looked for a moment longer, or took a second look, she knew that Jackson had come up behind her.

“What’s happening?” he whispered near her ear.

Elizabeth shook her head, her hastily tied-back ponytail brushing from side to side. “I don’t know.”

She was hesitant to ask anyone, for their expressions told her that each of them seemed as uncertain as she and Jackson. Instead, she passed through the doorway and moved with the others traveling down the hallway. It was a kind of her mentality, she knew, but it was also likely the quickest way to find out the answer.

The group slowed as they reached the vast foyer-like entrance of the temporary housing wing. All of the displays, most of which were usually turned off at night, were all active—and nearly all of them showed the same scene.

She could not hear the audio commentary over the rustling and murmurs of the crowd, but she understood clearly what was happening. The fiery structure of a massive ship (probably one of the orbiting cruisers from the size of it, she guessed) blazed down to smash against the Martian surface. Its impact was made even as it smashed against one of the large biodomes, exposing the inhabitants inside—families, Elizabeth realized with sick horror—to the unwelcoming raw atmosphere of Mars. Unlike those who had been confronted with the vacuum of empty space, which had likely been the fate of many members of the ill-fated ship’s crew, those who dwelled within the fragile habitat who were not immediately engulfed in flames might live long enough to truly suffer, to have time to realize that death had come for them unbidden.

Elizabeth pushed the images away. She did not want to deal with them. Not then, perhaps not ever. She had seen the recordings while at the Academy. She knew the fate of both those aboard the wrecked ship and within the fractured dome.

Voices came to her from out of the crowd, vague noises that sounded like words.

“Oh . . . god.”

“Sabotage.”

“. . . was stationed there.”

“Terrorists.”