Episode Four Pt 2

CHAPTER TWO

          The lancer frigate shuddered again as another mine detonated in close proximity.

          “I hope everyone’s deactivated their pain receptors,” Danni shouted over the dim of the alarms. Royals had the ability to turn off their bodies’ ability to feel pain, but it took several moments of practiced concentration.

          Priya stumbled to her feet as she raced to the emergency closet on the bridge. Her pulse pounded in her ears over the ship’s alarm. She’d been read in on emergency procedures when she boarded the ship and paid careful attention. She hadn’t expected any danger, but it hadn’t stopped her from worrying.

          “Get that suit on, Jennings!” Danni barked.

          Priya hurriedly grabbed one of the large white belts within and strapped it around her waist. She activated the control stud, causing the white material to come alive like liquid metal, slithering over to cover her entire body. She grabbed a silver collar from the rack and fitted it around her neck. A touch of the stud on the side extended a bubble helmet from flat-space.

          “Break for atmo!” the captain barked at the navigation officer.

          “Trying, sir! But we can’t accelerate inside the asteroid field, we’ll be pasted across a rock.”

          “Go faster! This boat is not long for this world!”

          Priya stumbled to her feet and caught herself against the back of Danni’s chair. “Is there any way this could be an accident?” Not even she really believed it.

          “Not a chance in hell,” Danni said.

          “Those mines could be leftovers from the war…”

          Another vibration shuddered through the ship. “Shields are gone again!” the weapons officer cried out.

          “Primitive nuclear mines don’t work two centuries later, Jennings!” Danni shouted.

          A large asteroid tumbled in front of their view. “Pick up that tail, lieutenant!” the captain shouted.

          The ship powered up its thrust for a moment to shoot ahead of the spinning rock. They narrowly cleared the projectile. The inertial dampeners canceled out the sensation of movement, but Priya felt her stomach dropping anyway.

          Light blasted the viewscreen as a nuclear mine set on the side of the rock they had just cleared detonated. The shockwave bucked the frigate to the side, sending it straight into another asteroid.

          Priya found herself on the deck and lifted her helmeted head up and took in a shocked intake of breath as she saw the rock fill the screen.

          The jagged end of the asteroid tore right through the center of the ship and gutted it from bow to stern. Priya watched in horror as a black mountain smashed through the roof of the bridge, even though it was in the dead center of the hull, ripping it open and exposing them to space.

          Priya desperately grabbed onto Danni’s chair, holding with superhuman strength as the atmosphere in the cabin explosively decompressed out into space. She might not be a soldier, but she was still a Royal.

          The ship accelerated and spiraled through the field. Black rocks whizzed over their heads through the rent open view to space as they tilted wildly in a corkscrew.

          “We’re not going to make it!” the navigation officer shouted into the comm channel. There was no more air on the bridge.

          Over their heads two great asteroids smacked into each other and detonated the mines set on both. Their frigate disintegrated in the explosion. Shrapnel connected with the front of Priya’s head, smashing open her helmet and knocking her unconscious.

          The Fairhaven secret service rushed into the bedroom with practiced efficiency, ignoring whatever state of undress their subjects were in.

          “Mister President, we have a Code Five situation,” the lead guard said.

          President Harrison groaned. “Did you say Code Five?”

          “Yes, sir. You need to come with us, sir.”

          Moments later, the President was seated in his office where a large television screen showed a stern-looking blonde man waiting for him. “Good morning, Mister President,” Kyle Dorian said.

          The President rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. “Mister Dorian, what the hell is going on?”

          “Sir, at 10:12 this morning we detected an extraterrestrial vessel penetrating the minefield.” As Dorian spoke, a rough computer display provided accompanying visuals. “After broadcasting a full spectrum message disseminated across the entire planet, the contact entered the mine field, where it was destroyed by the nukes. At this moment it’s a dead weight hurtling towards the surface somewhere near Diamond City.”

          “Is anyone still alive onboard?”

          “Unknown, sir. I’m going to play you a recording of the message broadcast by the aliens.” Dorian played Priya’s opening message to the Haderans. It was in their language.

          “Wait a second,” the President said. “What recent technological advancement?”

          “We don’t know, sir,” Dorian said. “We were hoping you could tell us.”

          “I’m afraid not, Captain.”

          Dorian nodded gravely. “That would mean it was them, sir.”

          “Wonderful,” Harrison grumbled.

          Dorian cleared his throat. “Sir, what are my orders?”

          Harrison’s eyes fell uncertainly. “I’m afraid Clause Five of the Treaty is very clear on the matter, Captain. The aliens are to be exterminated.”

          Dorian grew uncertain. “Sir, may I suggest that we’ve been presented with a singular opportunity here, a chance to break the cycle of the past two hundred years.”

          “I’m aware of that, Mister Dorian,” Harrison said. “Unfortunately, we have no choice but to enforce the Treaty. If Orland was ever to find out that we violated it…”

          “Sir, based on our preliminary readings of the alien ship, they are in possession of technology far surpassing ours. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of years more advanced. If their intentions are true then they could help us, even if we do break the Treaty. I’m sure a hundred worlds could spare for one.”

          “You’re probably right, Captain,” Harrison said. “But I also think playing dice with the survival of our people is the height of folly. You are hereby ordered to take command of whatever military assets you deem necessary and exterminate any alien survivors. Is that clear?”

          Dorian nodded stiffly. “Yes, sir.”

          “I wish there were another way, Captain,” Harrison said softly. “But we must follow the Treaty.”

          “Yes, sir. I will, sir.”

          “Then get to it.”

          Harrison shut off the screen and took a deep breath. He slowly turned in his chair to face the red phone sitting behind his desk under a glass case. With trembling hands, he punched in his security code and lifted the glass case off the phone. He gently removed the phone from its cradle and gingerly placed it to his ear. “Hello?”

          Priya snapped back into consciousness as her eyelids burned away. She screamed in shock, though not in pain. She had already deactivated her pain receptors before the ship had been hulled. Her screams barely carried in the thin outer layers of the planet’s atmosphere, but they could not be heard over the terrible sound of her plummet.

          Most of her suit had already burned away as her unconscious form raced through the asteroid field and entered the atmosphere. She clamped a hand over her eyes to prevent them from melting away, but she was already blinded by the heat.

          Priya’s lungs burned from the super-heated air she had already swallowed, providing her with no oxygen. Her cilia had been ravaged with the first scorching gasp, and her oxygen-starved system struggled to regenerate them.

          Priya screamed for help in her mind, not knowing if anyone else had survived. Her healing factor had kept her alive, but she still required air to breathe and her helmet was too damaged to reseal itself. She was too weak to fly… and moments away from death.

          A gloved hand clamped onto her arm and stopped her plummet through the sky. It’s Danni, I’ve got you, a voice floated in her head. Priya felt a helmet collar sliding around her neck followed by an intake of fresh, cold air.

          Thank you… thank you… Priya lamely returned, over and over.

          Shut up, Jennings. Let me work here. Danni flew through the upper atmosphere with Royal speed, holding her breath and protecting them in a TK bubble. She had given up her helmet for Priya.

Priya’s lungs and eyes healed themselves. Her vision had returned, albeit as a blurred mess.

          Danni finally descended far enough to start breathing again. She halted their descent to hang in the air. “Are you okay?”

          “Better… now…” Priya panted. “You saved my life.”

          “Don’t remind me.”

          “Is anyone else…?”

          Danni grimly shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

          “My god…” The lancer frigate had a crew of twenty. Twenty lives lost under her command, on a mission she’d been so excited about…

          “The ship broke up and you went flying out. I flew after you. The reactor blew after I left… I didn’t see anyone else make it out.”

          Priya clutched her arm. “What do we do now?”

          “We land. I’m exhausted.”

          “Then what?”

          “Let’s save the philosophical debate for later, Jennings.”

          Priya looked at her exposed, blood-red skin covered with slowly fading burn blisters. She was in shock in more ways than one. Her brain couldn’t yet grasp the full horror of their situation.

          Beneath their feet and hundreds of kilometers below, a large city lay sprawled along a river. Danni aimed them towards it.

          “Where are we?” Priya asked. She’d had a chance to gather her thoughts and was feeling more coherent and less panicked, though the balance was a fragile one.

          “Fairhaven,” Danni said. “The nice one, fortunately.”

          “Nice? They blew up our ship!”

          “We don’t know who controls the asteroid field, though I imagine it’s both sides in cooperation.”

          As they descended towards the city, they spotted the wreckage of their frigate tumbling through the sky with a thick plume of black smoke trailing behind. They watched as missiles screamed through the air and detonated the wreck, blasting it into confetti.

          The largest piece of debris plummeted straight for the center of the city. It smashed cleanly through the tallest downtown skyscraper before lodging itself halfway through the next building.

          Danni pointed at the smoking chaos below. “Let’s go there. Anarchy loves company.”

          They landed on the tip of the spire extending far above the skyscraper. Diffuse plumes of white smoke with black coils running through wandered up from the smoking hole fifty stories below.

          Danni steadied herself on the maintenance ladder rungs set into the spire and peered over. “We’ve left quite a greeting card.”

          “God, this is horrible,” Priya said. She dreaded to think how many innocent civilians had died from their ship crashing into the city. This was beyond any worse-case scenario she’d gamed out. “All those people on both sides, dead. What chance do we have for peaceful relations now?”

          Danni shot her a look. “They’re the ones who tried to kill us, Jennings.”

          “I don’t understand why!” Priya said with frustration. “Nothing from signal intercept said they would be so xenophobic.” Any thoughts of her ruined moment had gone out the window the moment a human life was lost, her only anger for the tragedy of others now.

          “Reason has little to do with how people behave.”

          She was always disappointed when Danni’s bitter worldview was validated. “I suppose you’re right…”

          A faint roar reached their ears. A trio of jet fighters appeared in the distant sky on swift approach.

          “Here comes company,” Danni said. “We need to get as far away from the crash as possible. They’ll be looking for us.”

          Kyle Dorian peered out the window of the VTOL jet and pointed at the black plume rising from the skyscraper.

          “Put me as close as possible,” he said into the helmet mike. “Tell the regional commander to meet me there with everything on hand.”

          This was a situation he’d hoped to never experience. Hunting extraterrestrials had always seemed a far-fetched scenario at best. His private worry had always been executing innocent people who wandered in with the best of intentions. But now Diamond City was burning and who knows how many people had died. The time for second thoughts had passed.

          An ominous shudder ran through the concrete at their feet, closely followed by a low-pitched rumble.

          “The building’s going to collapse,” Priya said with concern.

          Danni smiled. “Good. We’ll ride it down.”

          The VTOL kicked up a maelstrom of debris as it hovered to a stop twenty meters above the elevated highway running alongside the twentieth story level of the downtown city.

          The jet bumped clumsily as its rear wheels hit the pavement then gently touched its nose gear. The engines had begun to cycle down when the cockpit popped open and Dorian leapt out, running with his head low.

          “Captain Dorian?” a uniformed man called out over the roar of the engines.

          “That’s right,” Dorian yelled.

          The man shook his hand. “Corporal Silas, sir, in charge of the 5th Reserve Regiment.” Silas was a mountain of a man with crew-cut black hair and an unfriendly countenance. Dorian did not know him, but could instantly tell his sort. The kind of soldier he wouldn’t want to have a drink with, to say the least.

          They jogged together towards a collection of police and military wheeled vehicles, including a pair of large green tanks. The VTOL jet increased its roar as the pilot cycled up the engines and slowly lifted off into the air.

          “What’s our situation, Corporal?” Dorian asked as the sound of the jet slowly diminished.

          “I’ve got two hundred men on the ground with three hundred on the way. Thirty tanks are in a covering position on the building with another sixty on approach. We’ve got a dozen fighter jets on CAP awaiting your orders.”

          Dorian could tell the other man was much too enthused about the level of force on display. “Good work, Silas. Keep the jets in position for now. I want any collateral damage kept to a bare minimum.”

          “Yes, sir.”

          Dorian strolled up to the lip of the el-road, planted his hands on the railing, and stared pensively at the smoking crater in the skyscraper. “Why are we so far away?”

          Silas stepped up next to him. “Structural integrity’s gone, sir. Building’s going to collapse any second.”

          Dorian nodded. “We’ll have to sift through every pound of wreckage. At least we shouldn’t have any survivors to worry about.” It was early morning on a weekend and this was an office building, so it should have been nearly empty when tragedy struck. A small miracle on a dark day.

          Another loud series of cracks sounded beneath their feet.

          “Why aren’t we flying away?” Priya asked. Intellectually, she knew she could fly or float and shouldn’t be worried. But she still panicked every time the floor shifted anyway.

          Danni was hanging her head over the edge and staring at the smoking hole beneath them. “This’ll be the perfect cover to exfil.”

          Priya felt a sudden swell of gratitude that Danni was with her. She would have been hopeless alone. She probably would have surrendered to the authorities and hoped to talk her way out of it.

          The floor dropped out from beneath them. Priya shrieked for a moment before stopping herself. The top half of the structure snapped clear of its structural supports and smashed through the missing gap into the rest of the building below.

          Danni punched a hole into the concrete wall next to them and stuck Priya’s hand into it. “Hold on!”

          The top structure leaned to their left as its base crumpled into the lower half, slowly collapsing into itself level by level.

          “My God,” Silas muttered.

          They watched the hundred story building slowly implode, only to be replaced by a blossoming cloud of white dust.

          “At least it’s the weekend,” Dorian said. “The building was all but empty.”

          Dorian and Silas rode on the exterior side of a tank in towards the crash site. Though they stood twenty stories above ground level, thick plumes of white dust continued to roll by and clouded their vision.

          “Almost there, sir,” Silas shouted.

          The tanks rolled to a stop, closely followed by military jeeps packed with troops. They stood at a curving track of the el-road parallel to the wrecked structure only fifty meters away offering them a clear view below. The last curls of smoke rolled past them, revealing what remained of the building.

          What had once stood a hundred stories tall was now closer to twenty, though little remained save a few broken panels stabbing up into the sky. Powdered concrete blanketed the area.

          Soldiers piled out of the transports and took up flanking positions around the tanks, pointing their rifles alertly at the wreck. A second team moved in tandem with them on the surface.

          Dorian spoke into his mike. “This is Captain Dorian. I want the rules of engagement to be clear; nobody fires without my express permission, unless to defend yourself. If there are survivors, I want to talk to them first.”

          “Talk to them, sir?” Silas asked uncertainly. “What about Clause Five?”

          “We’ll be following it,” Dorian said. “But nowhere does it say we can’t interrogate the intruders first.”

          “Sir, I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”

          “That’s why I’m in charge, Corporal.” He’d have to keep a close eye on Silas. The man was clearly incapable of higher thought. And Dorian wanted answers as to why these aliens were here before he performed his required duty.

          “Yes, sir,” Silas said stiffly.

          Dorian reactivated his mike. “Move forward with caution.”

          On the surface level troops slowly began to advance through the remaining traces of dust clouds, followed closely by the tanks. Dorian watched their progress from above with a pair of binoculars, though visibility was difficult through the dust.

          A clatter sounded from within the ruins below. The lead soldiers held up a right fist; everyone froze. “Movement, we have movement,” a voice whispered onto the radio channel.

          A pair of women stumbled out of a gaping hole in one of the remaining walls, clutching loose-fitting coats to themselves. Both were badly burned, though one was much the worse for wear. The soldiers aimed at the women’s chests.   

          “Hold your fire!” Dorian shouted into his mike. “They’re civilians. Get them out of here.” His heart swelled to see survivors, but it in turn raised the grim question of who else might be trapped.

          The closest soldier dropped his rifle and jogged to the two women. “Are you all right?”

          They stared at him uncomprehendingly. The soldier repeated himself. The two women shook their heads and pointed to their ears.

          “They’ve been deafened by the collapse, sir,” the soldier reported.

          Dorian stared at them through his binoculars. He noticed a glint of reflected sunlight off the woman with fewer burns. “Wait, that one is wearing a space suit!”

          The soldier stepped back hastily and brought his rifle back up. The woman lurched forward, moving faster than humanly possible, knocking away his weapon with ease and ensnaring him with a tight grip around his throat.

          “Hold fire! Hold fire!” Dorian shouted into his mike. “Get me on the loudspeaker.” Not only did the aliens appear to be interchangeably human, but they had physical abilities beyond Haderan capability. Even with only two of them, the threat level was unknown and thus potentially catastrophic.

          Armed men surrounded Danni and Priya shouting orders in an alien language they didn’t understand.

          “What are you doing?” Priya hissed at Danni. Her greatest gift was in negotiation, dialogue, empathy… but Danni had detonated any hopes of a peaceful solution.

          Danni tightened her grip on the soldier as he attempted to wring his way free. “Keeping us alive.”

          “You’re holding one of them hostage…”

          Danni squinted at the shouting aliens. “What do you think they’re saying?” They did not have the innate ability to understand alien languages and had planned on relying on their tech to translate. People within the GA used Trade as the common tongue, so language barriers were usually not an issue.

          “How should I know? My Wrist burned up alongside everything else on my body. Yours did too?”

          Danni nodded tersely. “His mind is too alien. I can’t read it. I’ll need to dig in further.” High-level Royals had telepathy, but could not read alien minds like the Baraki or the Ronains. The Haderans were just different enough to be a similar problem.

          “No!” Priya shouted, running forward to wring Danni’s shoulders around to face her. “You will not invade his mind! We’ve done enough damage as it is. If he fights too hard you could cause permanent harm.”

          “How else do you intend to communicate?” Danni asked icily.

          Priya’s mind raced. She was out of her element. Unused to being in danger. “I don’t know. We need to go into hiding and plan our next move.”

          “Just what I was thinking.”

          “You need to let him go, Danni. We’ll lose any hope of making peace if we take a hostage.”

          “You’re on, sir,” Silas said.

          “This is Captain Dorian addressing the two intruders. We’re willing to hear your terms for surrender.” Dorian watched the two women cock their heads and look at each other in confusion. “I don’t think they understand us,” Dorian muttered to Silas.

          “Not terribly advanced, then, are they?” Silas said derisively.

          Dorian swallowed what he wanted to say. “They spoke our language on the broadcast. They survived an atmospheric re-entry without a ship. Maybe their translator’s broken.”

          “Let him go!” Priya said.

          “Fine,” Danni said testily, and pushed the soldier free.

          One of the surrounding troops fired off a single round by accident.

          “Cease fire, cease fire!” Dorian’s voice immediately screamed over the radio channel.

          Danni and Priya both flinched, but the bullet froze in place one meter away. Danni waved her hand and the bullet fell. She’d had the instincts and concentration to catch it with her telekinesis; Priya would never have been steady enough.

          The ground thundered as the closest tank fired. There was a faint breeze as the dust pushed away from Danni’s hands, leaving small bubbles of TK shields surrounding her forearms.

          Danni punched the cannon shell which deflected away and impacted against the neighboring building.

          “I said cease fire!” Dorian screamed.

          Three more tanks fired anyway.

          Dorian leaned over the railing, watching shell after shell bounce away from the aliens and impact against the surrounding buildings. The woman with the short hair was a blur of movement, her arms moving faster than he could see, smacking away the tank rounds with her bare hands. Dorian watched in shock as the burned woman’s brown hair regenerated before his very eyes.

          “What are they?” he muttered. A single woman was holding off a military assault with her bare hands. What if there had been a hundred of them?

          The el-road shook beneath Dorian’s feet as one of the deflected shells detonated against the support beam.

          In the distance he watched a large section of the elevated highway collapse from the tank barrage. Sunlight twinkled off metal cars as they plummeted twenty stories, the screams of their passengers lost in the roar of the battle below him.

          “Those monsters!” Silas cursed.

          “They’re not doing it, we are,” Dorian said. Was Silas truly that deluded, or was he trying to sound tough? “All hands, cease fire! We’re only harming ourselves.” Reluctantly, the tanks ceased fire. “Call in the jets.”

          Danni lowered her hands which were held up like a boxer’s.

          “The tanks… they’ve stopped,” Priya said in a haze. Watching Danni’s martial prowess both awed her and put her into a bizarre sense of unreality.

          “What are you, the narrator?” Danni snapped. “Let’s get moving before those jets get here.”

          “What jets?”

          “Just listen.”

          Priya noticed a faint scream in the air. “Where do we go?”

          Danni pointed at a small collection of men looking at them from an el-road. “For starters, let’s go grab the CO.”

          Dorian watched the jets approach under the el-road level, shooting through the city street between skyscrapers. They fired a missile salvo at the base of the ruined building then peeled off into the air for another pass.

          Any concerns for civilian survivors in the collapsed structure had come and gone. The aliens had incredible powers, the limits of which they didn’t know. Dorian’s wish to speak with them was no longer plausible. It was time for brute force.

          An explosion blasted apart the base of the building right where the aliens had been. Dorian saw them disappear in a blur of motion just before the hit.

          “Where did they go? Did anybody see?” he asked on the radio.

          “They’re heading right for us!” Silas shouted.

          A wave of air rushed at them from below as the two aliens passed overhead. Silas screamed as some invisible force grabbed a hold of his legs and dragged him down the street. He desperately clung onto the tire wall of a jeep, crying for help, before he was sucked into the air and disappeared.

          “Silas!” Dorian shouted. “Hold your fire! Where did they go?”

          The aliens and their hostage had disappeared right before his eyes.

Episode Four Pt 3

Episode Four Pt 3

CHAPTER THREE

          Dorian hopped into a waiting helicopter that took off the moment he boarded. “I want the entire city locked down,” he shouted into his mike. “Not a single car leaves the perimeter until we’ve searched it!”

          The copter began a high orbit around the downtown area and circled the skyscrapers. The order was slightly ridiculous given that the aliens were capable of flight, but every option had to be taken.

          “Still no sign of them, sir,” one of the lieutenants reported in.

          Dorian growled in frustration. “They have Silas! How can they stay invisible like this?”

          “Maybe they can turn invisible, sir.”

          “For all our sakes, I hope you’re wrong,” Dorian said before cutting off the channel. He stared out the open door for a moment, his eyes inexorably falling to the black column of smoke billowing from the crash site. The number of superhuman abilities ticked by in his head; strength, speed, flight… “Where are they?” he muttered to himself.

          Silas began to stir, so Danni telekinetically pinched a blood vessel in his brain. He went back under.

          You don’t actually think this’ll work, do you? Priya asked telepathically.

          They were clinging to the underside of one of the patrolling helicopters, hanging off the landing skids. The sound of the rotor was deafening to their unprotected ears, but it also made it impossible for the crew above to detect their presence.

          Wait, here we go, Danni sent, looking below.

          The copter wandered outside of the city perimeter where endless military checkpoints thoroughly searched all passing vehicles.

          We need to get a little farther away… Danni sent.

          And no one’s going to notice three people slowly floating out of a helicopter? Priya asked.

          Who said anything about slow? The copter finally meandered away from the checkpoints. Here we go! Hold on!

          Danni tightened her grip on Silas’ unconscious body and pushed off from the copter. Priya let go next. They plummeted in freefall until Danni telekinetically shoved on them and tripled their speed.

          “Danni…!” Priya shouted as her stomach lurched.

          Danni aimed them for an empty field far away from the nearest highway.

          “Ground! Ground!” Priya breathlessly cried.

          “Take my hand!” Danni shouted. Priya reached out and tightly grabbed onto Danni’s free hand.

          When they were a mere meter from impact Danni halted their descent, continuing their momentum horizontally to skim over the ground at incredible speed. Priya squeezed her eyes shut.

          “Now to hitch a ride,” Danni said.

          At the end of the field a highway stretched across the flat earth. Danni flew them towards it, keeping low enough to avoid being spotted. She aimed for a large red cargo truck. In the split second before they smacked against the side of the cargo bed, Danni peeled open the hull with her mind, allowing them to slip inside before reforming the gap.

          “There, that’s better,” Danni said, tossing Silas’ body to the ground and sitting on a large box.

          Priya tried to regain some sense of composure. “That was quite a feat, Danni.”

          Danni sat with her head between her knees, panting slowly. “I need to rest. It’s times like this I wish Sarah was around.”

          “Tell me about it. We’d probably still be safe on the ship!”

          “It’s been an hour, sir, no sightings,” the lieutenant reported over the radio.

          Dorian’s chopper had landed at one of the highway checkpoints. Dorian stood by the inspection crews.

          “There’s no way they could have left the city without us spotting them from the air,” Dorian said. Unless they actually can turn invisible, he didn’t say. “I can only conclude they’re still hiding out somewhere. We’ll have to conduct a building-to-building search.”

          “But, sir, that will take weeks…” another lieutenant said.

          “I know!” Dorian snapped. “The battle is already all over the news. We have to make it clear to the other side we’re doing all we can to find the aliens.” As dangerous as these aliens were, the true threat came from the opposite side of the globe, with Orland.

          Priya peeked out the gap between the rear doors of the cabin. “Looks like we’re gonna make it.”

          “Good,” Danni grunted. She shuffled to her feet and over to Silas, who was moaning and returning to consciousness. “Maybe now we can find out why the hell you’re trying to kill us.” She hauled Silas up to his feet, waking him fully.

          “What are you doing?” Priya asked.

          “Getting answers,” Danni said thickly. Silas’ features tightened in a grimace of uncomprehending pain as Danni dived into his mind.

          Priya hopped to her feet. “Stop it! You’re going to hurt him.” Such a telepathic intrusion would be illegal except under the most extreme of circumstances, which they were admittedly in, but Priya still found it reprehensible.

          “Damned alien brains,” Danni cursed. “I can’t make out his thoughts.”

          Silas uttered a long, slow moan while spittle ran out the side of his mouth. “Please… stop…”

          “One way or the other, I’ll get what I need,” Danni said darkly, not caring if he understood.

          “I said stop!” Priya shouted, and shoved Silas away from Danni. Silas went flying through the air and impacted against the rear doors, which flew open and deposited him on the asphalt racing by outside.

          “You idiot!” Danni seethed, darting to the rear doors. They had already lost sight of him.

          “Let him go, he can’t help us,” Priya said.

          “He can tell them where we are, though!” Danni shouted.

          “You took his radio! We’ll be long gone by the time he can call in.”

          Danni shoved Priya backwards. “You don’t seem to comprehend the situation we’re in here, Jennings. This entire planet is trying to kill us!”

          “I know!” she shot back. She refused to be intimidated by Danni; her morals were too important. “But I still have faith we can find a peaceful solution.”

          “I tried to learn their language, but you went and made a hash out of that!”

          Priya held up her hands. “We need to work together if we’re going to succeed.”

          “I’ll tell you what, Jennings,” Danni said archly. “We’re in a military situation now, and I’m in charge. You follow my orders now, got it?”

          “Yes, sir,” she said sarcastically. There would be little point in arguing with Danni; she certainly had the right to pull rank given the situation. But that didn’t meant Priya wouldn’t continue to be the little angel on her shoulder.

          The truck ran out of gas thirty kilometers after they kicked out the driver. Danni pulled the vehicle off the highway and along a dusty side road as the sun fell behind the tall fields of the local equivalent of wheat.

          “Help me bury the truck,” Danni said.

          “In what?” Priya asked blankly.

          “In the dirt, stupid,” Danni shot back.

          Together they reached out with their minds. The dirt beneath the truck slowly churned like quicksand, compressing and replacing itself as the earth swallowed the truck whole, leaving a large mound of dirt rising up from the ground.

          The effort exhausted Priya. “Now what?”

          Danni pointed behind her to a rickety wooden farmhouse. “Hopefully, get something to eat.”

          Priya began to object to breaking into someone’s house, but knew it would be pointless. Besides, they did need shelter and food.

          It was the slightest of efforts to unlock the door and gain entry. Danni and Priya moved through the dark house for the kitchen. Danni wrenched open the fridge and stared lustily at the food inside. She reached out a hand for something, but Priya grabbed her wrist.

          “Wait!” Priya whispered. “How do we know their food isn’t poisonous to us?”

          “Who cares?” Danni snorted. “We’ve got a healing factor.”

          They both dove into the food. Danni got so carried away she didn’t even sense the sleepy presence of the farmer in one-piece pajamas in the doorway, staring at them in slack-jawed shock.

          Dorian’s helicopter alighted on the ground, sending swirling plumes of dust to blanket the waiting troops. He hopped out of the copter before it touched the earth and strolled over to the men. “Where did you find him?”

          “We’re at 410 at the 53rd kilo marker,” the officer in charge said.

          “What’s out here?” Dorian asked, not pausing to look at him.

          “Nothing, sir. Just farms.”

          Dorian strolled briskly over to Silas, wrapped in a blanket and sitting on the ground surrounded by medics. “Silas,” Dorian said with relief. “Are you injured?”

          “Aside from a splitting headache, fine, sir,” Silas growled.

          “How did you get away from them?”

          “I didn’t. They got into an argument. The dark-skinned one with the long hair knocked me out of the truck.”

          Dorian blinked in surprise. “What were they arguing about?”

          “They were speaking in an alien tongue, sir,” Silas said crossly. “How should I know?”

          “What were they doing at the time?”

          “Let’s see,” Silas said sarcastically, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “The crew-cut one was busy driving a plow through my brains…”

          “The other woman protected you?” Dorian asked.

          “Or she wanted to be the one doing it.”

          Dorian grunted and stood up to look out into the wheat fields. This changed the equation. “If one of them let you go rather than hurt you… perhaps a peaceful resolution isn’t totally out of the question.”

          “We have our orders, sir,” Silas said slowly.

          Dorian ignored him and turned back to the waiting officer in charge. “What’s at the end of this road, lieutenant?”

          “More of the same, sir,” the officer said. “Nearest town’s fifty kilometers away.”

          Dorian nodded. “I want all available teams concentrated along this road and the entire surrounding area. We have them now.” Perhaps he’d get that conversation after all… before the executions.

          Danni grabbed the hapless farmer by the neck and easily hauled him into the air. She slammed him against the wall.

          “Danni, take it easy!” Priya shouted.

          “Oh, this one is much easier to read,” Danni said.

          Priya grabbed Danni’s hands, trying to wrench them away from the farmer’s neck. “Stop it! You’re going to hurt him!”

          “I’m not hurting him,” Danni said thickly. “Merely… sampling his language center…”

          The farmer gurgled and spittle leaked out from his mouth.

          “Leave him alone!” Priya punched Danni to knock her free of the farmer.

          Danni coughed as she stood up from the floor, unperturbed by Priya’s attack. “No worries,” Danni said casually, wiping a hand across her cheek. “I got what I needed.”

          “What is wrong with you, Cayale?”

          “Nothing,” she said as she strolled to the farmer.

          “If you take one more step towards him…”

          A switch seemed to be thrown inside of Danni. Her face became a cold mask. She grabbed the cowering farmer by the scruff of his pajamas and marched him through the door outside.

          “What is it? What are you doing?” Priya asked, confused.

          “Please, please don’t hurt me…” the farmer weakly pleaded. “Where are you taking me?”

          Danni held the farmer’s face in front of hers. “Take us to the device,” she ordered in his language.

          Priya lamely followed alongside them. “Danni, where are you going?”

          Danni strode forward, almost at a trot, while the bewildered farmer pointed directions. They traversed small pathways through the tall wheat fields.

          “I don’t know,” Danni said. “But I’m not gonna like what I find.”

          The farmer took them into the dead center of the field. He ducked through a tightly knit crop of wheat into the hollow within.

          “My god…” Priya said. “What is it?”

          In the center of the hollow lay a large black dome ten feet high. It had no features save a thick antenna rising up from the center. Priya sent a faint telekinetic probe down the dome into the dirt, sensing the entire structure ran some two stories underground.

          “It’s a bomb,” Danni said darkly.

          A faint whine was their only warning as a missile detonated into the dirt a few dozen feet away. The force of the blast knocked Danni to the ground, but she snapped up a shield a second later.

          Danni looked up at Priya, who was still standing, wavering slightly on her feet. A massive piece of black, twisted shrapnel stuck out of her chest, dripping blood into the dirt.

Episode Four Pt 4

Episode Four Pt 4

CHAPTER FOUR

          Danni knelt over Priya as she dropped to her knees. Danni wrapped her in her arms as three more missiles detonated around them. There was a succession of loud pinging noises as the shrapnel bounced off her telekinetic shield.

          “I can’t taste my tongue…” Priya said thickly.

          Danni slapped her cheek hard. “Stay with me, Jennings! Stay awake!”

          Another salvo detonated against her shield. Danni pushed her bubble into the ground at the same instant, using the impact’s momentum to drive them under the surface.

          “Targets eliminated, sir,” the pilot reported.

          A small cloud of smoke rose from the field, visible as grainy green on white night vision.

          “Any damage to the device?” Dorian asked.

          The pilot shook his head. “Takes a lot more than a few conventional missiles to dent one of those things, sir.”

          Dorian grunted in frustration. “What the hell were they doing next to one?”

          Silas shrugged. “Maybe that was their mission, sir. It’d be the easiest way to wipe both sides out if they wanted the planet for themselves.”

          Dorian shook his head. “I can’t believe that. Why spare your life? Or the driver’s?”

          “Who knows? They’re aliens.”

          “We’re all people, Silas.”

          Silas didn’t bother responding. He studied the image on the monitor closely. “Do we have playback on this?”

          Dorian leaned forward and showed him the button. Silas rewound the footage, freezing it at the moment of the first missile detonation.

          “What are you looking for?” Dorian asked.

          “Confirming the kill,” Silas muttered.

          Dorian looked at the image of black metal sticking out of the dark-skinned woman’s chest. “I think you’ve got it.”

          Silas advanced the tape forward, frame by frame. “Where’re the bodies?”

          “Blown to shreds. You can see some of them right there.” Dorian pointed at the screen.

          “That’s not enough for three corpses, sir.”

          “What are you suggesting?”

          “I’m suggesting we continue searching for another hour, sir. Just to be sure.”

          Dorian eyed him warily. “Very well. Just to be sure.”

          Danni moved her bubble back to the surface, fifty meters from the device and safely shielded from sight by the thick plumes of wheat. She waited until a helicopter passed by overhead then raced forward at speed, holding Priya in her arms, to the farmhouse crawling with troops. She spotted an old shed some distance away, braced against the wheat and forgotten. After making sure no one was watching, she darted across the open field and into the shed.

          Danni locked the door behind her and set Priya on a battered old table. “There.” The mission was screwed enough as it was, and now Jennings was grievously wounded. Again. Danni would have to pause the larger mission until she made sure her co-worker survived. It was annoying.

          “I can’t feel anything…” Priya slurred.

          “That’s because you turned off your pain receptors, Priya.”

          “Can’t feel anything at all. Feel cold.”

          Danni gingerly placed her hands on the shrapnel jutting out from Priya’s chest, seeing if it was loose. “You can’t feel anything, but you feel cold?” Priya was a Level Four Royal, but a major wound to the heart could take out anyone. It didn’t look good. Danni had to keep her awake and talking. Her will to live mattered as much as anything Danni could do in the next few moments.

          “Yeah, I guess,” Priya said distantly. “Where’s the farmer?”

          “He’s smeared across the dirt, Priya.”

          “Oh, that’s not good,” she said dreamily.

          Danni slapped her again to keep her awake. “Stay with me, Priya!”

          “I don’t… I don’t…”

          “I have to take it out now, Priya,” Danni said quietly.

          “No… don’t…”

          Danni didn’t waste any time. Using her mind to form a tight TK seal between Priya and the shrapnel, she wrenched it free and threw it away.

          “Guh…”

          Danni held her wrist over the gaping wound. With her fingernail she sliced open her wrist then held the dripping blood over the wound. Danni’s blood would be sure to heal Priya if she could stick around long enough. “God, Jennings, I can see your lungs from here,” Danni said tightly.

          The blood fell into Priya’s open wound. Her body absorbed the healing cells and the jagged tear slowly closed. Priya moaned and thrashed around but Danni held her firmly on the table until the wound had sealed shut. The damage to the heart was now repaired, but Priya was still dangerously low on the blood which powered her healing factor.

          “Okay, Jennings, we’re doing good so far. Now I need you to drink.” Danni held her bleeding wrist up to Priya’s mouth. Priya recoiled at the taste and said something obscured. “Drink it! Or you’ll die!”

          Priya relented and sucked the blood from Danni’s wrist. Danni briefly worried about the potential consequences of such an action… but Priya’s life was more important at this moment. Danni let her take as much as she dared before finally yanking away and letting her wrist seal shut.

          “There…” Danni said woozily. Now she felt like passing out from blood loss. But she would recover fast. She was strong. Stronger than anyone knew.

          Priya’s head fell back to the table and hit some metal tools with a loud bonk. “Ow…”

          Danni dropped onto the ground across from her, drowsy herself from the blood loss. “Hey! Stay awake.”

          “I can’t…”

          “You need to keep talking, Jennings. Your heart was damaged. If you fall asleep, you might not wake up.” Priya’s eyes drifted shut, and Danni kicked the table leg. “Priya!”

          “What?” Priya slurred in annoyance.

          “You need to fight, Priya. You want to live, don’t you?”

          “I guess…”

          “You guess,” Danni snorted. She was aware of Priya’s difficulties in dealing with her husband’s loss. She sympathized up to a point, but enough was enough. They didn’t have the luxury of grief at the moment. It was time for some tough love, the kind Sarah was too kind to give. “Show a little backbone, you coward!”

          “Aren’t you supposed to be nice to me?” Priya asked in drunken confusion.

          “Why should I be? If you won’t respect yourself, why should anyone else?”

          Priya scrunched up her face in vague anger. “I respect me, you little…”

          Danni got up to slap her hard across the cheek.

          “Ow!” Priya said sharply, rubbing her face.

          “Just keeping you awake, darling. You don’t want to leave Alex an orphan now, do you?”

          “John… I wish John were here… I’d give anything to get him back…”

          Danni filed that away for future use. She wanted to accost Priya for her weakness, but knew she couldn’t push her too far in that direction. Jennings was weak like that. She would sooner break than bend. “Good to know. But we’re talking about Alex.”

          “Alex,” Priya said. “I don’t think he would care if I was gone.”

          Danni cocked her head. “What the hell are you talking about?”

          Priya shook her head back and forth. “Alex doesn’t care about me. I’m an embarrassment to him.”

          “You’re the Director of State, Priya,” Danni deadpanned. She found Priya’s self-pity revolting, but forced herself to stay positive. After everything Danni had been through in her life, Priya’s problems seemed so petty in comparison. So small. But she had to play the counselor.

          “Do you think it’s a coincidence he’s a Conservative like you? He never agreed with my politics. He’s always had this quiet disdain for me.”

          Danni knew Alex was oblivious to politics and picked Conservative as the safe middle-of-the-road choice. “I’m sure that’s not true, Priya.”

          “It is!” Priya slurred loudly. “All his life he’s done his best to slip away. He’s always been self-reliant… never needing me.”

          Danni certainly agreed with Alex trying to distance himself from his doting mother. Danni’s relationship with her mother was… complicated… but somehow, she found the thought of a spoiling overly emotional mother to be even worse. “Well, that’s a good thing…”

          “You don’t understand what I mean! He always avoided me… because he blames me for what happened to John.”

          Danni reached forward to place her hands on Priya’s wrist. The notion was ridiculous, but she knew a thing or two about survivor’s guilt. Finally, she found some legitimate sympathy for Jennings and could stop play-acting. “That’s ridiculous. John was killed in a perfectly normal shuttle accident. It had nothing to do with you.”

          “I was supposed to be on the shuttle!” she said in a breaking voice. “I was supposed to go with him, but I cancelled at the last second. I should’ve died, too…”

          Even Danni was forced to admit she would have felt the same in a similar situation. “Then he’s lucky you didn’t. Do you think Alex would rather have lost both his parents when he was one year old? This is survivor’s guilt, Priya.”

          “You think I don’t know that?” Priya said angrily with tears leaking down her face. “I know what it is, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling it.”

          “I understand it, I truly do, but you must know it’s completely irrational,” Danni said.

          “I can’t help myself. You wouldn’t understand.”

          “Oh, I think I might,” Danni said. “I lost someone that way, too. Jonas. We were… it never quite worked out for us. On again, off again. Stationed on the other side of the Sea. But… I loved him. And then one day, he was gone. An accident, just like John.” She shook her head and returned to the present. “You’re projecting this feeling onto Alex. He doesn’t hate you. He’s a young man in the Naval Academy. Becoming a soldier. It’s perfectly natural for him to grow apart from you now. And to feel embarrassed by you.”

          “So my therapist says.”

          “You need to get out of here, Jennings. If only to talk to Alex about all this.” There, that should do it. Give her a reason to keep moving. One connected to her issues.

          Priya snorted. “Just to confirm his low opinion of me? I don’t think so.”

          “That’s not how it would go.”

          “Oh please. He disdains me as much as you do… though he’s more polite about it.”

          Danni rolled her eyes. “I don’t hate you, Jennings. You just annoy me.” Well, that was a rarity. Speaking the honest truth to her about something.

          Priya eyed her with a lame smile on her face, clearly of a sounder mind now. “You once called me the most asinine creature ever created.”

          Danni laughed and waved her hand. “I’m sure I didn’t mean it.” She remembered that day, and she certainly had. But that was neither here nor there.

          “You’ve called me worse.”

          Danni got up and leaned against the table by Priya. She crossed her arms and looked away, the smile on her face slowly fading. It was a risk, but she decided to drop her guard a little to let out a bit of the truth. “Let me share a secret with you, Priya. I treat everyone that way.”

          “Why?” Priya asked.

          “Because I have to,” Danni said earnestly, still looking away. She had to pick her words carefully. “I’ve got a hell of a job. Every day I make decisions that could mean life or death for billions of lives. I’ve got so much blood on my hands, Priya… and there’s going to be a hell of a lot more before this is all over. But I know it’s necessary… to save the world. I’m not callous out of cruelty, but necessity. I have to push people away. I don’t think I could go on if I cared the way that you do.” She finally met Priya’s eyes. “I may ride you for it, but that’s what makes you a good diplomat. You honestly and earnestly care for everyone around you… sometimes too much. That’s what lets you find the solution no one else can.”

          They didn’t say anything for a time. Priya smiled at her. “Thank you, Danni. That means a lot.”

          Danni laughed shortly. “Let’s forget this ever happened.” It was strange, being so honest with someone she didn’t even care for. But that moment was past now. The walls were back up.

          Priya leaned forward to place a reassuring hand on Danni’s. “Sure.”

          “How do you feel now?”

          Priya smiled. “Like someone saved my life.”

          “You’re stable now?”

          “Yeah.”

          “Good. Once I feel a little more rested, why don’t you and I go out there and get some revenge on these sons of bitches?”

          The sound of helicopter blades grew louder. Danni ducked closer against the stalk of wheat she hid behind. She froze as the searchlight played around the field though the stalks around her whipped around crazily from the copter’s downwash.

          Danni waited patiently until it passed directly over her and then closed her eyes as she concentrated intently.

          “Grid G-40 is clear,” the pilot said into the radio.

          “G-40 clear,” dispatch repeated. “Move onto to G-4-1, over.”

          “G-41, roger.”

          Four armed soldiers rode in the cargo hold of the chopper, belted in, watching the dark landscape pass by with disinterest. One soldier didn’t even notice his radio slowly wiggle free from his belt and sail out the window.

          One of the other men guffawed. “Hey, Jimmy! You dropped your radio!”

          Jimmy slapped his hand to his belt. “What? Damn it!”

          “Too late now, man.”

          “Everyone’s checked in, sir,” Silas reported. “All grids within a ten square kilometer distance are clear.”

          Dorian turned to look at him, listening faintly to the muffled roar of the helicopter engine over their heads. “But you still think they’re alive.”

          “Yes, sir.”

          “If we can’t find them, what do you suggest we do about it?”

          Silas shrugged. “Don’t know, sir. Might have to blanket the area with napalm.”

          Dorian grimaced. Of all the soldiers to get paired with, Silas was the worst possible option. If Dorian didn’t thread this needle perfectly, a lot of innocent people would die. “There’re people living here, Corporal. Farmers.”

          “Yes, sir, but a hell of a lot more back in Diamond City…”

          “You can’t possibly…”

          A brief blur of motion shot through the copter. Silas blinked. Dorian had disappeared from the cabin, leaving only broken harness straps and a wired helmet behind.

          Priya tensed as the shed door slammed open, but it was only Danni carrying a dazed Kyle Dorian over her shoulder. Priya had physically recovered from her injury, though she was still emotionally traumatized and jumpy. But she knew she had a job to do, and how to do it. The mission came first.

          “I guess congratulations are in order,” Priya said.

          “Thanks,” Danni said dryly. “The hardest part was following a language I barely understand well enough to track where all those radio reports were going to.”

          Dorian came to his senses and looked up warily at Danni standing over him.

          “What are you going to do with him?” Priya asked uncertainly.

          “Finish what I started with the farmer,” Danni said.

          Dorian looked back and forth between them, attempting to discern what they were talking about. He held out his hands and slowly stood up.

          “Get back down,” Danni barked.

          Dorian slowly held out his left hand, making a V sign with his thumb and forefinger.

          “What the hell does that mean?”

          Dorian smiled uncomfortably and pointed to his head over and over.

          Priya squinted. “I think he wants you to enter his mind… willingly, I mean.” This was encouraging. If the man was willing to listen, they could begin a dialogue towards a peaceful resolution.

          Danni grunted. She knelt over him, closed her eyes, and touched their foreheads to each other. Dorian didn’t resist. “He’s letting me take his language. Offering it up. Here, share.” Danni poured the knowledge into Priya’s mind, giving her a splitting headache. “Can you understand me?” Danni said slowly to Dorian, speaking in his language.

          Dorian looked up hopefully. “I can. Can you understand me?”

          “Yes, we can,” Priya said. “What’s your name?”

          “Captain Kyle Dorian.”

          “I’m Priya Jennings. This is Danni Cayale.”

          “How did you do that?” Dorian asked Danni.

          “I can read your mind and take things from it,” Danni said.

          Dorian’s eyes widened. “Amazing… no one on my planet can do that.”

          “No one on our planet could at first, either,” Priya said. “We didn’t get this power until—”

          “The history lesson can wait,” Danni said sharply. She turned on Dorian menacingly. “Why are you trying to kill us?”

          Dorian hung his head. “I’m sorry. We have no choice… the Treaty must be obeyed.”

          “What treaty?” Priya asked.

          “The one that ended our war with Orland two hundred years ago. The one that created the world you see before you today.”

          “Is one of your clauses a standing order to kill all alien visitors?” Danni asked sarcastically.

          “Yes,” Dorian said.

          “Why?” Priya asked. She was horrified to hear such a thing… but then remembered the GA Founding Charter had a clause calling for the execution of any Shifters or Negators. Perhaps they weren’t so different after all.

          “Two centuries ago, we had a terrible war with the other global power, Orland. They invaded us, by the way. It was a long and grueling fight ending with a nuclear exchange.”

          “I take it that’s why your moon is an irradiated debris field?” Danni asked.

          “Yes,” Dorian said sadly. “Billions died on each side and the planet was gravely wounded. It’s only in my lifetime that the earth became green and bountiful once more.”

          “You’re still not explaining why you’re trying to kill us.”

          Dorian swallowed. “We came within a hair’s breadth of the annihilation of our species. After the war, both sides decided a system had to put into place to ensure we could never come so close again. Clause Five calls for a complete embargo from the interstellar community so that they could never interfere with the Treaty, even to the point of killing any visitors who came to our planet.”

          “What are you so afraid of us doing?” Priya asked.

          Dorian hesitated. “Why did you come here?”

          “To make peaceful contact… nothing more.”

          “Then I’m truly sorry, and all this death has been for nothing. There can be no peace on Hadera.”

          “Why?”

          “Because of the MAED devices.”

          “MAED?”

          “Mutually Assured Economic Destruction.”

          Danni tightened her fist. “How many are there?”

          Priya saw the legitimate anger on Danni’s face. This must have been the dark secret she saw.

          “Thousands… millions. Spread across the entire planet. Most are nuclear but some, like the one you discovered, are merely for poisoning crops.”

          Priya blanched, but again found an analogue in their society. The Commonwealth bordering the Baraki Empire used a similar method to discourage invasion.

          “Whose finger is on the button?” Danni asked.

          “Both sides.”

          Danni eyed him coldly. “All it would take is a single mistake, a single frayed wire, a single maniac with access to the button…”

          “I know,” Dorian said grimily. “I hate the Treaty. Most of us do. But there’s nothing we can do to change it. It ensures there can never be a Second Great War. Either side could push the button and render the entire planet uninhabitable. Those who aren’t blasted or irradiated would be cursed with the lingering death of starvation.” He laughed. “To tell you the truth, I was hoping you had come to conquer us. Maybe then you could have saved us from ourselves.”

          Priya shook her head. “I’m sorry, but we can’t do that. My people would never invade another world, not even to save it from itself. We have strict rules about military intervention.”

          “I understand,” Dorian said sadly. “Were I in your position, I wouldn’t lift a finger to help us, either. We’ve sealed our own demise, and we deserve it.”

          All three sat in silence for a moment.

          “May I ask a question?” Dorian said finally.

          “Shoot,” Danni said.

          “Why do you look like us?”

          “Parallel evolution,” Priya said. “On the vast majority of worlds we’ve encountered, everyone has the same general appearance. There are only three major non-human species.” The Baraki, the Ronains, and the ancient but now extinct Astrians who had birthed the Prophets.

          “That’s amazing… but surely the differences in environments would produce drastically divergent appearances? That’s what our scientists say.”

          “According to legend an ancient race called the Primary, the first galactic civilization, seeded the planets. We’re all descended from them.”

          “Do you have scientific evidence these Primaries once existed?”

          “Yes, but not that they were responsible for it,” Danni said. The Primary had disappeared thousands of years before the Somontrans journeyed amongst the stars; they knew almost nothing of that great ancient race.

          “One other thing,” Dorian said. “When you arrived in orbit, you mentioned our recent technological advancement. What did you mean?”

          “We have a rule about contact with emergent civilizations. It’s strictly forbidden until they develop faster than light technology.”

          He stared blankly at her. “I asked the President this myself. We’ve made no such advance.”

          Priya blinked in surprise. That was the reason they were here in the first place. If Fairhaven didn’t know about it… “It must have been the Orlanders then,” Priya said.

          “This technology… could it be used as a weapon?”

          “Anything can be weaponized,” Danni said. Priya rolled her eyes. What a quintessential Danni response.

          Dorian rubbed his mouth. “Then our situation is even more hopeless, if the status quo has changed.”

          Priya rested her hand on the top of his. “Perhaps there’s a peaceful solution to your problem. We could host negotiations with your enemy to let both sides disarm and live in peace.”

          Dorian shook his head. “Orland would never agree to it. Though our contact with them is only indirect and our intelligence is spotty, we know they remain an aggressive nation still intent on annexing our continent.”

          “Unfortunately, entry into the Great Alliance requires a global government. If you form a coalition with them you could petition for membership, and then we could peacefully intervene.”

          “You’re wasting your breath, Priya,” Danni said. “Dorian knows the quality of their character. There’s nothing we can do here.”

          “What do you want, then?” Dorian asked.

          Danni raised her eyebrows. “To get off this stinking hell-hole.”

          “I’m not sure how I can help you. While your crashing ship cleared a path through the orbital mine field, we have no craft readily capable of spaceflight for you to commandeer.”

          “How do you service the mine field?” Priya asked.

          “Each side has a single space shuttle, but it requires months of preparation and the work of hundreds to ready it for flight. Right now, our shuttle is sitting in mothballs.”

          Danni furrowed her brow. “With a decent sized transmitter, I could contact my people in space. Doubtlessly there’s a number of rescue ships waiting for us outside the mine field.”

          “As you saw firsthand, our airspace is crawling with missile batteries. Unless these ships are in possession of technology superior to what you arrived in, they’ll never get through.”

          “Then the question becomes, how do I get those missiles deactivated?”

          Dorian looked filled with doubt. “I may have an idea, though it shames me to suggest it.” He looked up at Danni. “How much more fight have you got left in you?”

          Danni smiled cruelly. “Plenty.”

Episode Four Pt 5

Episode Four Pt 5

CHAPTER FIVE

          “Still no sign of them, sir,” dispatch reported.

          Silas growled in frustration and slammed his hand into the side of the copter. “Get me President Harrison.”

          “Yes, sir.”

          Silas waited impatiently, staring out the window into the darkened fields, wondering where the invaders had gone and what they were doing to his commanding officer. Some horrendous torture for information, no doubt.

          “You’re on with the President, sir,” dispatch said.

          “Mister President?” Silas asked. He puffed his chest out a little more at the thought of addressing the President himself. A dark day for Fairhaven, but a great one for his career.

          “Who is this?” the President said. His voice was hard to hear through the interference.

          “Corporal Silas, sir. I’m sorry to inform you that the aliens abducted Captain Dorian and I’m in charge of the task force.”

          “What?! Where the hell are they?”

          “We don’t know, sir. We’ve been searching the area for hours, but they must have some means of eluding detection. Earlier we located and attacked them, but they managed to disappear long enough to grab the captain and disappear again.”

          “Are you telling me you can’t find them, Corporal?”

          Silas swallowed, not out of fear, but frustration. His glorious moment wasn’t going as well as he’d hoped. “Sir, I was the first man they abducted. They violated my mind before I escaped. Diamond City is my jurisdiction. It was my city they ravaged. I assure you, sir, it is not for lack of trying.”

          “I have to call the President of Orland in another hour, Corporal. Do you suggest I tell him we can’t find them?”

          “No, sir. I suggest that looking any further would be useless. We need to change tactics.”

          “And what tactics would you suggest?”

          “This is a sparsely populated area, sir, with only a few hundred in the entire province. We have a timestamp on their last known sighting and we know how fast they can move. We have a target range.”

          “You want me to blanket the area with napalm?”

          “No, Mister President. I want you to nuke it.”

          Danni waited until the copter was right underneath them before she flew up into the air holding Priya and Dorian in either arm. One brief struggle later, Dorian was piloting the copter while Danni buckled into the co-pilot seat and Priya sat in the back.

          “You’re controlling their descent, right?” Dorian asked Danni suspiciously.

          “Yes…” Danni said. She would have been happy to have let them die, but she was bowing into peer pressure.

          “I only agreed to help you on the condition that you wouldn’t kill any more of my people.”

          “Need I remind you, Captain, it was your side that fired the first shot, and your side that murdered my entire crew in cold blood.”

          “That wasn’t my choice, Cayale.”

          “That makes me feel so much better.” Danni relaxed slightly. “They’re safely on the ground. Happy?”

          “Ecstatic,” Dorian said blankly. He picked up the radio from its charger and held it out to her. “Now get on the squawk and report an engine malfunction in the auxiliary turbo and request permission to return to base.”

          Silas sat at the base commander’s desk shuffling reports and growing more agitated by the moment as the lieutenant entered the office with more papers.

          “I, ah, take it the President denied your request, sir?” the lieutenant asked stiffly.

          “We’re still here, aren’t we?” Silas shot back. He had always respected Harrison from afar, but his first conversation with the man had been a disappointment.

          “Yes, sir.”

          A helicopter thundered overhead and landed on the tarmac at the far side of the strip.

          Silas pounded his fist on the desk. “The damn fool doesn’t understand what we’re facing… these aliens are unstoppable! Every second we waste means more land we have to target. We have to nuke this entire area now!” He looked up from his desk to see the lieutenant staring out the window. “What’s so damn interesting out there, lieutenant?”

          “Nothing, sir,” the man said. “I’m wondering why that helicopter crew is carrying all that gear into the VTOL.”

          “What?” Silas snapped, leaping up from the desk to the window. He watched a helmeted trio climb into the jet, clearly one man and two women. “It’s them!”

          Dorian banked the VTOL jet and narrowly avoided a stream of cannon fire from the ground. “That was close. You two comfortable back there?”

          Danni grumbled. Priya sat in her lap, crudely strapped in against her body. Neither was happy with the arrangement. “Shut up and fly, Captain.”

          Dorian smirked in spite of himself. “Sorry we don’t have any three seaters.”

          “Will they be able to track us?” Priya asked.

          “I’ve turned off the FOF, which means they’ll have to make radar contact to trace the bird. I’ll fly us nice and low. That way they’ll only get the occasional hit. Then I’ll enter a commercial lane and disappear into the confusion.”

          “Sounds like a plan,” Danni said.

          Silas sat in the back seat of his VTOL jet in hot pursuit. “Any more contacts?” he asked the pilot, attempting some semblance of patience.

          “Yes, sir, should be on your scope right there,” the pilot said.

          Silas looked at a confusion of small screens filled with code. “I don’t know how to read these. What does it say?”

          “Contact bearing north-west, sir.”

          Silas felt a tight ball form in the pit of his stomach. “There’s nothing out that way but the ocean.”

          “Yes, sir.”

          “They’re not heading for the water. It’s a misdirect. There’s only one place they could be going. The capital. They’re after the President.”

          “Sir, Corporal Silas has arrived at the residency,” an aide said.

          President Harrison didn’t move as he regarded the display screens arrayed before him in the Situation Room.

          The aide cleared his throat. “He’s demanding to speak with you immediately, sir.”

          Harrison sighed. The man was a loudmouthed jarhead incapable of rational thought. Dorian had been much easier to deal with. “Very well, let him in.”

          Security agents reluctantly let the doors open. Silas shoved his way in, closely followed by a pair of additional agents. “Mister President,” Silas said urgently. “We need to move you immediately, sir.”

          “Shouldn’t you be out looking for the invaders, Corporal?” Harrison asked coolly.

          Silas didn’t flinch. “I don’t have to, sir. They’re coming here... for you.”

          Harrison struggled not to ridicule the man, but he had to project professional authority. “And what makes you say that?”

          “They were last spotted headed north-west out of the fields, sir.”

          “There’s a lot of cities out here, Corporal.”

          “But what would they want there, sir?” Silas asked with a raised voice. “Where was the first place they went to? They know about the Treaty. The moment after they crashed, they made a bee-line for one of the devices. We shot them up before they could do anything, but they grabbed Captain Dorian after that and turned course straight for here!”

          Harrison studied him for a moment. Perhaps the fool had a point. “What do you think they want?”

          “You, sir! They’ve already abducted me. They can get in your head, read your thoughts, probably even control you. That’s what they’re coming for, sir. They’ll make you into a meat puppet to do their bidding, like they’ve done with Captain Dorian.”

          Harrison thought Silas was veering off into melodrama again. “To what end?”

          “To start a war with Orland! All it would take is one incident and the Treaty would level the entire planet. They could destroy us all without firing a single shot.”

          The President leaned back in his chair. “Let’s say I believe you, son. What do you suggest I do about it?”

          “They’ve stolen a jet, sir. We need to establish a no-fly zone around the capital and shoot down any trespassers without hesitation.”

          “Sir, we can’t do that, not without more proof,” one of the generals spoke up.

          Harrison looked at the general. “And what if the corporal here is right?”

          “At the very least, sir, we need to change your location,” Silas offered.

          It was a reasonable precaution. “Very well, I—”

          One of the technicians shot up to his feet. “We’ve spotted them, sir! They’re on the Lethe and heading downriver, right here for Diamond City!”

          Harrison raised his eyebrows in legitimate surprise. “It appears you were right after all, Corporal.” Though probably not about the meat puppet part.

          “Sir, we need to get you into the bunker ASAP,” one of the generals said.

          “Let’s go,” Harrison said absently, nodding to himself. It was important to project calm at this time. A frantic retinue of agents and staffers hugged closely to the President as he was escorted into a waiting room which opened into a tight tunnel. A rail car waited at the mouth of a steep drop into darkness.

          “Mister President! Mister President!” Silas shouted, desperate to be heard over the din.

          “Yes, Silas?”

          “We need to exercise our nuclear option, sir, immediately!”

          This again? “There’s five million people living in Diamond City, Corporal!”

          “That’s nothing compared to the death toll if the Treaty is violated, sir.”

          “I’ll not waste so much life so freely. We have endless battalions lining the streets of Diamond City; let’s give them a crack at it.”

          The exhaust nozzle kicked up an angry spray as the VTOL jet flew meters over the river.

          Priya nervously pushed against the sides of the fuselage, crushing Danni behind her. “Shouldn’t we be going a little higher?”

          “We’re trying to avoid radar tracking, Jennings,” Dorian said patiently.

          “But wouldn’t it be really easy to, ah, dip down a little…?”

          “The good captain knows better than that,” Danni said with an edge to her voice. “And even if he does try something, I’ll pick up the intention before he has a chance to do it.”

          “I’m not interested in suicide at the moment, thank you,” Dorian said. “I’m trying to protect my planet. Fortunately for you, that means getting the two of you off of it as soon as humanly possible.”

          The jet wildly veered to the right to narrowly avoid a vast supertanker slowly churning its way downriver. Priya yelled and crushed Danni back into the seat again.

          “Would you relax, Jennings?” Danni snapped.

          “Sorry,” she said with embarrassment.

          Their jet cleared the bow of the tanker. Directly before them lay a pair of smaller cargo ships driving close to each other. Dorian spun the jet onto its side and shot through the narrow gap in-between the ships.

          Priya frantically pointed forward. “That one has guns!”

          “Damn,” Dorian muttered to himself.

          Their jet passed the ships only to reveal a battleship waiting for them at broadsides. Before Dorian could even maneuver, the ship fired a full salvo. Danni threw up a TK shield but the explosive shells demolished it and scored through the fuselage. The metal loudly reverberated as shrapnel pinged through the jet. Danni managed to keep the cockpit protected, but the rest of the ship got shredded.

          “We’re going down!” Dorian shouted, frantically trying to bank higher into the air.

          “Get us as close to the Palace as you can,” Danni said loudly over the alarms.

          “We’re putting down in the river! If this jet crashed into the city, it could kill innocents!”

          “I don’t have much power left, Dorian. I need to get as close as possible!”

          “I don’t care!” Dorian shouted, and smacked the eject button.

          The rail car slowly ran along the track and deeper into the earth. Its engines groaned nosily as it towed the President’s retinue to safety.

          One of the generals walked up to the President holding a radio to his ear. “Navy reports the hostile destroyed, sir.”

          “Don’t believe it,” Silas interjected. “They’ve pulled this trick before!”

          “I’m inclined to believe Corporal Silas,” Harrison said.

          Silas stared at the general. “Trust me, sir, they’re still coming.”

          Danni flew into the city at high altitude with Priya and Dorian tightly holding onto her belt to leave her hands free. They crossed over land and into a forest of skyscrapers.

          “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that much armor at one place in my life,” Dorian mused out loud.

          Lining the streets of the city below them were nothing but heavy tanks and military jeeps. As they grew closer to one of the elevated highways, the tanks arrayed there opened fire. Danni made an elaborate loop to dodge the hastily aimed shots.

          The second salvo hit closer to home. Danni punched away the shells that would have connected with her bare hands. “I can’t keep this up… at all,” Danni panted.

          “Then I suggest staying out of the sky,” Dorian said.

          Danni dropped like a stone. She stopped their descent only moments before touching to the ground right in the midst of a shocked company of soldiers standing listlessly around a tank aimed towards the heavens. They barely had time to register their surprise before Danni took off, sprinting along the road at speed and sailing past the endless security blockades.

          The rail car shuddered to a halt. The President’s group hastily moved through massive armored doors which slid shut behind them.

          “They’re moving along the ground now at speeds too fast for anyone to target them,” one general reported.

          Silas grimaced. “Mister President, we can’t win this battle with conventional arms. We need to nuke the targets before they get in the tunnel!”

          “They are headed straight towards the Palace, sir,” one general observed uncomfortably.

          “You can’t do that; there’s five million people here!” one outraged suit said.

          “It’s five million or five billion!” Silas shouted. His face had become distended with stress and covered with a thin sheen of sweat. “These aliens are unstoppable. They’ll destroy the entire planet if we don’t stop them here and now!”

          “Restrain yourself, Corporal, or it’ll be done for you,” the President said. Silas had made some correct points, but Harrison felt little affection for the man.

          “You’re wasting time! Every second brings them closer to us!” He lunged for the quiet aide with the nuclear briefcase who always accompanied the President. “We have to hit them now!” Silas wrenched the briefcase out of the aide’s hands and roughly fumbled with the combination lock on it.

          “Arrest him!” Harrison shouted as a bevy of guards threw themselves on top of Silas and tackled him to the ground. The soldier had clearly had a mental break; this was beyond any acceptable behavior.

          “No!” Silas screamed as they wrestled the briefcase away from him.

          “I want him in handcuffs!” the President shouted over the rabble.

          “Sir, we lost contact with the men in the Palace,” one guard reported quietly into Harrison’s ear. A few seconds later there was a loud boom against the armored doors.

          “We’re too late,” the panicked general shouted.

          Doom. Doom.

          The President nervously looked around. Funny how a little personal danger made crazy notions sound plausible. “Do we still have the nuclear option?”

          The more restrained generals eyed each other nervously. “Yes, sir.”

          Harrison nodded stiffly to himself. For the good of the nation, and the world… though at this point it would probably mean death for him. “Very well, let’s…”

          The metal doors screamed in protest, causing them all to cover their ears. The guards lamely attempted to raise their weapons as the center of the doors distorted and twisted apart wide enough to emit one person.

          Within seconds the guards were all unconscious with their guns on the ground and the three intruders stood before a trembling but defiant President.

          “President Harrison, I presume?” the blonde woman panted, poorly attempting to mask her exhaustion.

          “I… I won’t cooperate with you!” Harrison nervously shouted. He’d seen the images, but still, the mundanity of this very human-looking woman being an extraterrestrial boggled the mind.

          Dorian stepped forward. “Mister President, I realize this is irregular, but these aliens mean us no harm. They just want to get off the planet.”

          Had Silas’ insane meat puppet theory actually been correct? “I’m not talking to you! You’re not Captain Dorian, not anymore! They’ve hollowed out your head and put their thoughts inside!”

          The dark-skinned alien stepped forward and smiled politely. “Mister President, we’re not here to threaten you. We haven’t done anything to Captain Dorian. We’re trying to find a peaceful solution to our situation. We know about the Treaty. We understand why you attacked us. I realize how overwhelming this all is, but you must believe me when I say we haven’t come here to harm you. We came to make a peaceful diplomatic contact, not start a war.”

          The President gestured to the ripped doors. “You call this peaceful contact?” As if the situation couldn’t get any more bizarre, now the other alien was preaching diplomacy and understanding!

          “Hey!” the blonde alien stepped forward. “You fired the first shot! You murdered my crew and then hunted us to the ends of the earth!”

          The dark-skinned woman put her hand on the blonde’s wrist and pulled her back. “All we ask is that you let us depart in peace. But I also want you to know this situation doesn’t mean that we still can’t become friends… after the proper reparations have been made.”

          The blonde snorted but said nothing.

          “As I said in our initial message, we represent a great coalition of worlds called the Great Alliance, a group held together by cooperation and trade, not by force. We would welcome you into that brotherhood… if you could make peace with your enemies.”

          The President sputtered. “Make peace with Orland? Are you mad? They’re savages! Conquerors!”

          “You’ve been separated for two centuries. Surely, they could have changed in that time?” Harrison said nothing. The dark-skinned woman held her clenched hands together to her chest. “If you could let go of the past, let go of old hatreds, and look to the future, you could ensure the safety of all your people.”

          “Could you simultaneously deactivate every single MAED device without the enemy becoming aware of it?”

          She paused. “No.”

          “Could you shield us from the bombs while you moved in an occupation force to subdue the Orlanders?”

          “Of course not.”

          Harrison shook his head. “Then we have nothing to discuss. Do what you will with me, but I’ll not aid you willingly.”

          The woman smiled. “Mister President, even if you’re uninterested in making peace, we’re still going to need safe passage for our rescue craft, which is probably already waiting outside your asteroid field.”

          “Clause Five is quite clear on the matter, ma’am. Any aliens must be destroyed immediately. Aiding and abetting them is a violation of the Treaty.”

          Dorian cleared his throat. “Mister President, there is an easy way out of this.”

          “I can’t trust a word you say, Captain. You’ve been compromised.”

          “Then listen to logic, sir. They’re holding you hostage against your will. You don’t have the power to resist these implacable alien invaders. You’ve been forced to deactivate the orbital defense grid against your will, which allowed the aliens to escape in their waiting ship. Despite our noblest, well-documented efforts to catch them, they got away. I’m sure even the Orlanders will be content with that.”

          Everyone fell silent for a moment while the President mulled over the offer. No one noticed Silas stir back to consciousness on the floor, hidden in a pile of sleeping security guards. He flexed his hands, still cuffed in front of him, and slowly looked around.

          “No, it’s too risky,” Harrison said finally, shaking his head. “If Orland discovers the truth, it could mean an end to everything. I can’t allow—”

          “Mister President, please!” Dorian pleaded. “These people are peaceful explorers, and we’ve murdered and hunted them. They blindly stumbled onto our cursed world through no fault of their own. A doom may lie over our heads, but there’s no reason it should condemn them as well. Let them go and live in peace. They haven’t committed our sins. Let them go.”

          “Traitor!” Silas slurred loudly, raising himself up with one of the guards’ dropped pistols in his hands. He aimed for Dorian, but his aim was off; he fired the stolen weapon straight at the President.

          Harrison shouted in alarm and fell back to the ground, throwing his hands over his face. The gunshot echoed loudly in the enclosed space. He opened his eyes to see the bullet aimed for his heart hovering in the air.

          “We just want to get out of here, Mister President,” the blonde alien said patiently, before sending the bullet flying away with a wave of her hand.

          Harrison stared at himself wide-eyed, patting himself all over with his hands to see if he was uninjured. “Thank you,” he said finally.

          It was nighttime when the GAN rescue shuttle descended out of the sky and alighted on the roof of the Presidential Palace. Danni stood firmly on the deck with a pistol shoved into the President’s neck, surrounded by a retinue of armed guards aiming at her and a media crew filming the entire event for the benefit of Orland.

          The hatchway of the shuttle extended downwards, spilling white light onto the roof.

          “Don’t be getting any cute ideas about shooting at us once we’re in the air, either,” Danni snarled to Harrison. “I’ve placed a microscopic bomb in your body that can be detonated from a thousand kilometers away.”

          “You win, you monsters,” the President shouted. “Get the hell off of our planet!”

          “We won’t be back,” Danni shouted as she ran up the ramp with Priya.

          “We’ll come back someday, I promise,” Priya said warmly to Dorian, minutes before the shuttle arrived.

          “Perhaps it would be best if you didn’t,” Dorian said. “We’re a mess you’re better off without.”

          “It’s you I’m worried about. If your people haven’t developed FTL technology, that means your enemies have. And from what we’ve heard of them, they won’t use it peacefully.”

          “That’s our burden, not yours.”

          “Man has a point, Jennings,” Danni observed. “Not like we can legally intervene militarily.”

          “We can do something,” Priya said, looking halfway to Danni. She turned back to Dorian. “Goodbye, Captain. Thank you so much for your help… I don’t know what we would have done without you.”

          “I don’t either… are you sure you didn’t mess with my mind, to make me help you?” He said it with a smile, but the question was clearly serious.

          Priya smiled. “No, I promise.”

          “Do you need blood, sirs?” the pilot of the shuttle asked as Danni and Priya stepped inside. Priya collapsed into the first open seat she could find. The entire affair had been traumatic and overwhelming, but it was finally over now. She felt relief wash over her.

          “We’ve been better, Lieutenant,” Danni said. “But not now.”

          “What’s our ROE, sir?”

          “Leaving the way we came; in peace.”

          “The President has agreed to deactivate the defensive grid and let us go,” Priya said.

          “And we’re trusting him, sir?” the pilot asked.

          “Yes, we are.”

          Danni plopped into the chair behind Priya, swigging a flask she had been supplied with. “Get us out of here, Lieutenant.” The ship ascended through the atmosphere. “Well,” she said after a moment. “Good to be back with the GAN.”

          “God, that was so close,” Priya said. “I don’t know what we would have done if that crazy corporal hadn’t taken a shot at the President like that.”

          “Yes, that was convenient. That’s why I altered his aim, so he would hit the President instead of Dorian.”

          Priya nodded for a moment and then did a double take when she registered what Danni had said. “You did what?”

          Danni chuckled. “You didn’t think he was actually going to miss by that much, did you? Or that he would wake up at such an opportune moment?”

          “You went in his head?” Priya wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Royals had to be very careful with how they treated Mundanes, but it had been a life-or-death situation…

          “He was a little unhinged from our last encounter. Didn’t take much.”

          “I… you… I’m at a loss for words.” Priya decided not to argue. It was a combat situation and that was Danni’s arena, not hers.

          There was another brief silence between them. Danni cleared her throat uncomfortably and lowered her voice. “You should talk to Alex when we get back.”

          Priya smiled sadly. She’d forgotten about Danni’s heart-to-heart amidst all the running around. “And why would I do that?”

          “You almost died. How would you have felt if you never got that resolved?”

          “I don’t think I would feel much of anything, being dead and all.”

          “You know what I mean.”

          Alex hated talking about his father. He was only one when he died and had no emotional connection to him despite Priya’s attempts otherwise. It was the surest way to shut down any progress between the two of them. “I appreciate the sentiment, but things are the way they are. I don’t want to make things worse by bringing it out into the open.”

          “It’s your life… but I think you’re making a mistake.”

          “Wouldn’t be the first time,” Priya said warmly. At the time she’d figured Danni had simply been trying to keep her talking and alert. But to bring it up now, it seemed like she legitimately cared. It was a pleasant surprise. “So… does this make us friends now?”

          Danni snorted.

          A few days later Priya returned home to Parid. The shuttle landed on the roof of the Federal City-sphere. Priya disembarked a few moments later.

          “Mom!”

          She looked up in surprise to find Alex waiting for her in the lounge. She broke into a wide smile. “Alex!”

          Alex stood up and awkwardly hugged her. Priya returned it with a tight squeeze.

          “I, uh, heard you were almost killed out there,” Alex said.

          Priya laughed in spite of herself. “That’s right.”

          “Well… glad to see you made it back okay.”

          “Thanks, honey. I love you, you know. It’s important you know that.”

          Alex shifted uncomfortably. “I know, Mom. I love you too.”

          She felt his discomfort and felt embarrassed, but found more words spilling out anyway. Words she’d been mulling over on the flight home. “I’m so proud of the man you’re becoming. And I know your father would be as well.”

          “I know, Mom.” She could tell he didn’t want to be hearing this and was wondering how much longer he would have to hug her.

          Priya looked deep into his eyes. “We don’t talk anymore.”

          Alex avoided her piercing gaze. “I’m at school. The military kind.”

          She squeezed his arm. “You can still call. I need you to call. You’re all I have left of your father, you know that?”

          He nodded dutifully. “I’ll call more often. Promise.”

          “You never talk about him. If you ever want to…”

          Alex took a long breath. “Look. I don’t want to sound insensitive, but… I was one year old when he died. I have no memory of him whatsoever. I don’t feel the grief that you do. I’m trying to be a good son, but… he doesn’t hold the meaning for me that he does for you. I’m sorry.”

          Priya hugged him again. It hurt to hear those words, for her son to feel nothing for his father, for the love of her life. “I understand. But it’s important you know who your father was. I can tell you about him.”

“Okay, Mom,” he said dutifully. “Maybe put it in a letter or something…”

“I love you.”

          Alex was cleared embarrassed when he said “I love you” in return. “Okay, I’m going to detach now. We’re getting looks.”

          Her confession had clearly done little for Alex, but Priya felt a weight lifted off her chest saying those words aloud to him. Hopefully with time, and a little more maturity, Alex would be ready to hear those words again and understand them. In the meantime, she would have to accept the relationship they had and continue to chip away until she could change his mind. That was her specialty, after all.