Alien Avatar: An Alien Sci-Fi Romance Read online

  “This is incredible.”

  “That’s one word for it,” Naeesha said.

  “There’s no rhyme or reason to it. I saw a forest that had been leveled by a tsunami once, it looked just like this, except that all the trees were laid down in one direction.”

  “Maybe it was a whole bunch of tsunamis,” Naeesha suggested.

  It looked more like the entire forest had been scooped up, run through a wood chipper, and spread evenly about as though the responsible party felt suddenly guilty and wanted to put things back where they belonged.

  “You know, I’ve been thinking,” he said.

  “Did it hurt?”

  He picked up a small branch and sidearmed it at her. She ducked and returned fire with a seed pod, scoring a direct hit on Marko’s chest. He clutched the site of the wound and dropped to his knees, falling dramatically into the pulped vegetation beneath him.

  “What were you thinking about, you great big wimp?”

  He got up and brushed the twigs off of his jacket.

  “The smell. What’s up with the smell?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well you’d figure that a smashed up forest would still smell like a forest. Maybe a little more sappy and a little less crisp and refreshing, but still. It shouldn’t smell like a sewage plant.”

  “How do you know what a smashed up forest would smell like? Maybe this is the trees getting revenge.”

  Marko laughed.

  “Seriously though. You’ve seen a clear cut before. What did that smell like?”

  “Not this.”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “Well tell me your theory.”

  Marko squinted and tried to put the pieces together. Problem was, they didn’t really fit.

  “Haven’t got one,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I said I don’t have the faintest clue.”

  “Oh. Fancy that. How about we keep going. We’re bound to reach the end of this eventually.”

  Except that they didn’t. Not for any reasonable amount of “eventually”, anyway. Three hours later and they were still trudging through a decomposing wasteland of destruction with no end in sight. The stench remained excruciating.

  “We should probably start thinking about finding somewhere to camp.”

  “I’ve been thinking about it,” Naeesha said.

  “And?”

  “And I don’t know what to say. We’ve gone this far, and it’s just as bad as ever. We don’t know how far this goes, and I don’t know if our group could camp out in this mess if they wanted. Where would you lay down, right now?”

  Marko looked around. There was what had once been a mighty tree laying a few feet in front of him. A sizeable chunk of the trunk remained, and with a little balance, was almost flat enough to sleep on, in a pinch.

  As far as lodgings for the other 50 or so travellers went, he didn’t have the faintest idea of what could be done for them.

  “We could probably clear a space. If everybody worked together, we could make room. There’s ground under here somewhere.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Or we could just drag a whole bunch of little stuff into a pile, smash it down, put the tent on top of it, and put our sleeping nests on top of that.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Or we can turn back, go to the forest, and try to find a way around this mess.”

  Naeesha looked around.

  “Do you think there is a way around?”

  “Let me check.”

  Marko shifted into a small falcon and took to wing. He breathed deeply, grateful that the bird form had a much less sensitive nose. He flew up into the air, beating his wings fast and flying tight circles around Naeesha, climbing higher and higher in hopes of seeing over the horizon and finding some end to the wastelands that stretched around them.

  A hundred feet off the ground, and he could see see nothing except for the distant treeline behind them. He went higher still.

  Nothing.

  By the time he was five hundred feet in the air, the horizon disappeared completely. Alderoc just vanished into a light blue haze. But buried in the depths of that light blue blur, there were trees.

  He tried to estimate how far it was, and looking back at where they’d come from, he guessed it was at least twenty miles. A full day’s hike at top speed. And nobody was cut out to do that right now.

  Disappointed, but equipped with the knowledged that he’d come in search of, he tucked his wings and dove to the ground, flaring just before he hit, swooping up, and shifting so that he dropped gently to the ground in his natural form.

  “Well?” Naeesha said, indifferent to his theatrics.

  “Do you want the good news or the bad news?”

  “Don’t care.”

  “Well the good news is that there are trees on the other side of this mess.”

  “And the bad?”

  “They’re really far away. Twenty miles, give or take.”

  Naeesha spat a curse at the ground, turned her hands to her hips, and stared at her feet.

  It was her “pissed off and thinking” stance.

  “We can either sleep out here, or turn back to stop the crew and try and get across it tomorrow,” she said.

  “Have a preference?”

  “Well, I don’t like the idea of going backwards.”

  “Me either.”

  “If we can do one night out here, we can do two.”

  “Okay,” Marko said. “I don’t follow.”

  “So we camp out here. A little further, maybe. Then we do the whole rest of the trip tomorrow. The two of us try to find somewhere nice on the other side of this shithole, maybe somewhere that the air is breathable.”

  “And if we can’t find anything, we camp on the edge and go deep the next day.”

  “Exactly.”

  Marko turned it over in his head. It was a good idea. It meant that they’d make good time without marching a breakneck pace. It gave them a solid plan to work with, and even if it wasn’t a great plan, it was better than nothing.

  “I say we do it. And hope like hell that we find somewhere before tomorrow night.”

  “Agreed.”

  “How much further do you want to try and go?”

  “Just a few more miles. Make it an even half-way.”

  “The rest of the group is going to be tired.”

  “Well they can thank us when they sleep all through the night instead of laying awake. Do you think it’s even safe to light a fire? I feel like this whole place would go up in a flash.”

  Marko shrugged and they kept moving, looking for long branches to turn into trail markers. He saw a tall sapling, bent over a bigger tree, but very accessible. It took a little muscle to get it free, but after a couple seconds of wrestling with it he had a nice tall marker.

  “Here’s a good spot for it,” Naeesha called out.

  The best places for the markers were in the dirt. They both agreed that they’d stand up the best there, and it was easier to drive a branch into the soil than to try and cram it into the loose vegetation.

  Marko grasped the tree with both hands and thrust the splintered end into the ground. It sank two feet down, almost effortlessly. He turned and looked at Naeesha, who was just as confused as he was.

  “Am I way stronger than I thought I was?”

  “Those little chicken arms? I don’t think so.”

  “Then can we talk about how I just buried that sapling under a yard of dirt without even trying?”

  Naeesha bent down and examined the tree and the dirt that it had penetrated.

  “Well,” she said. “I think I see what happened, and I don’t like it one bit.”

  “What is it?” Marko asked.

  “I don’t think this is dirt.”

  “Then what the hell is it?”

  “Use your brain Marko. What else is brown and --”

  It hit him.

  “Oh, shit.”


  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Naeesha investigated the pile of crap. It was indescribably large. Marko probed it with the sapling, and it was at least another two feet deeper than they had initially realized. It spread out for twenty feet in every direction. It was a turd the size of a landing pad.

  “There’s no way,” Marko said.

  “What else then?”

  “I don’t know. Something silly happened and a whole bunch of dirt got turned into a big patch of slightly-less-dense-than-normal-mud.”

  “And you know how dumb that sounds.”

  “Yea, but what’s the alternative. We’re standing on top of the world’s biggest pile of shit?”

  “It sure looks that way, doesn’t it.”

  “Okay,” Marko said. “So answer me this. If this is really shit, where did it come from?”

  Naeesha instantly wished that he hadn’t have asked that question. Asking a question like that is practically begging the universe to fuck you up. And that’s exactly what the universe wanted to do at this very instant. It’s chosen agents for the very special task of ruining their day?

  Three lizards the size of buildings, running straight at them.

  “Do you think it might have been them?” Naeesha asked in a way that struck Marko as being awfully sarcastic.

  “I don’t know. We should keep looking around and see if we can find any other giant thundering beasts capable of leveling thousands of acres of forest.”

  “You’re welcome to do that, but I think we need to deal with this problem first.”

  She hoped that he had some ideas, because she was fresh out. The plasma pistol in her bag wasn’t going to do anything but piss the monsters off, if they noticed it at all. There was no cover for miles in any direction, and she had a feeling that she wasn’t as quick as the lizards were.

  “Can you think of anything?” she asked. “A plan? Even a wild-ass shot in the dark?”

  Marko didn’t answer. He was fumbling through his pack, apparently looking for a small, thin disk. It was about the size of a coin, and didn’t look any more useful than one. He turned it over in his hand and poked at it. Naeesha had a hard time imagining how the little disk was going to help them.

  “What the hell is that?” she asked.

  Marko kept messing with the disk, not looking up, barely even muttering a response.

  “A wild-ass shot in the dark.”

  The disk started to glow, bright blue, too intense to look at directly. The lizards were drawing closer. They looked to be about half a mile off, but they were so big it was hard to tell. Naeesha could feel the vibrations of their pounding feet shaking the ground beneath her.

  “Marko,” she said, as though praying. He was still holding the disk out in his hands, staring at it, muttering “please, please, please” under his breath, chanting it like a mantra, like the words themselves could save them.

  The beasts were coming fast. She could hear them now, and see the cloud of rubble that their huge feet kicked up as they raced across the flattened forest.

  Marko looked up to the sky, scanning it in all directions, his desperate plea becoming faster and louder.

  “You have to get out of here,” Naeesha said. “You can still escape.”

  She knew that he didn’t have the energy to shift into anything big enough to carry her out, but it wasn’t too late for him to save himself. But with just seconds between them and death, Marko looked like he was lost in another world.

  The lizards were so close that Naeesha could smell them. She could see the glistening strands of spit dripping from their curved teeth, each as big as a person.

  The light from the disk died away. Marko threw up his arms and cheered. She followed his gaze, and saw why.

  An entire wing of Alderoccan assault craft. The weaponry aboard each aircraft was capable of leveling a small city in a matter of seconds. And now there were four of them fixing their guns on the marauding lizards.

  The sky erupted as the ships opened fire. The lizards disappeared into a cloud of smoke. The ground shook and the noise was deafening. Naeesha had to turn away from the blasts. When the last shell went off, she turned to see if they had succeeded. A swirling black cloud circled around the place where the lizards had just been. She couldn’t see into it. Wind blew in to fuel the flames and carried the smoke up into the sky.

  There was nothing but a smoking crater before her.

  Marko was standing beside her, his arms still raised into the air, a look of stupefied wonder written all over his face.

  “What the hell was that?” she asked.

  Marko looked up at the ships, still hovering over their heads, and then back at her.

  “A last ditch effort.”

  “Where did they come from? How did you do that?”

  He opened his mouth like he was about to say something, but one of the ships broke from formation and started to land just in front of them.

  “I might need to explain that in a minute.”

  A Watcher climbed out of the cockpit of the assault ship, jumped down, and started climbing over the mess of shattered trees, headed towards them.

  “Oh my Gods,” Naeesha said, seeing the Watcher’s face. “Is that..”

  “Prime Commander Tariq,” Marko said, snapping to attention. “It’s damn good to see you.”

  “At ease.”

  Tariq turned to Naeesha and reached out a hand. She took it, even more confused than ever.

  “What are you doing here, sir?”

  “Last I checked, you weren’t in the forces anymore. No need for the ‘sir’.”

  “Yes sir, er… what are you doing here?”

  Tariq smiled and turned back towards Marko.

  “Save your asses, obviously. Saving all of our asses, really.”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  “Marko, how long has she been with you?”

  Marko was starting to look a little uneasy. He was wearing that look he got when she caught him withholding information from her.

  “Three days sir.”

  “And have you briefed her on your mission?”

  Now he was looking at his feet.

  “No sir.”

  Tariq rolled his eyes.

  “Alright,” he said. “I don’t really know where to start with this, so I’m going to throw it all at you and you can tell me what sticks.”

  Naeesha nodded, mostly because she didn’t know what else to do. When the Prime Commander tells you what to do, you listen. It was more of a title now than anything, Tariq didn’t really have a lot more power than any other Watcher on Alderoc, but he was still the Prime fucking Commander, and that meant something to her.

  “As you know, the situation with the Halians is getting out of control. Our best people have told us that it’s already too late, and that the phenomenon they call “the Wild” has reached critical mass and won’t subside until it’s destroyed the overwhelming majority of life on Alderoc. Following so far?”

  “I’ve been brought up to speed on that much.”

  Tariq nodded.

  “Well, not being one to roll over on a good fight, we’ve been working on alternative solutions to this problem. Most of them have fallen flat, as these sorts of things are wont to do, but some of them have been more successful.”

  “Marko is still working for the military?”

  “No. Marko is working for me. He’s one of a handful of Watchers and humans who went out to integrate with the Halian tribes. Their jobs were to learn what they could, and to try and create a diplomatic channel for our two peoples to resolve this issue in the manner that would result in the least amount of bloodshed.”

  “How are the other missions going?” Naeesha asked. Marko was still shamefully silent.

  “A few of them were promising, until the military got our informants killed. The dumb bastards are looking for excuses to pick fights, and public sentiments in the capital have reached a point where there’s nobody trying
to stop them. Anyway, Marko’s our last shot.”

  “And that thing he had, was that a Fold beacon?”

  Tariq nodded. Naeesha hadn’t seen a Fold Drive in use since the Fall of Alderoc. The official story was that all of the technology had been destroyed. She never really bought that, but she hadn’t seen any proof to the contrary until now.

  “Basically. We reverse engineered some of the tech. His beacon provides us with a signature to lock onto so we can Fold people in to do things like save his dumb ass from space lizards.”

  “Ok.” Naeesha said. “So what’s the status of Marko’s mission? What’s he hoping to achieve?”

  “Well, I was hoping he could tell us. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve had a briefing. My last report was that he was bringing his encampment closer to the capital.”

  Marko cleared his throat and got that look like he was trying to figure out how to avoid telling the truth without lying.

  “Military scratched that plan, sir. We’ve got about fifty people left. They’re half a day behind us. Passed a group of about a thousand yesterday, they’re headed to the capital, hope to fill in once everything is flat.”

  He looked to Tariq, then to Naeesa, and continued.

  “Right now my plan is to take my group back to the portal at the Dynasty compound. We’re going to return to their homeworld and try and establish a new settlement there.”

  “And how does that impact the plan here?”

  “Hopefully we’ll be able to move some people to the Halian homeworld. They’ll welcome us gladly. I would only personally request that our people abstain from fucking the Halian’s over, sir.”

  “They’d take Alderoccans after everything we’ve put them through?”

  “The Halians don’t hold grudges sir. Except for those that succumb to the Wild, of course.”

  “Anything else?”

  Marko shook his head.

  “The Halians are good people, but they’re sensitive. If our people want to interact with them, we have to be conscious of who they are and what they need. It doesn’t take much to disrupt their balance, and when that happens… well, you know.”

  “What do you advise?”

  “Find some good people. Some Alderoccans that you trust to cooperate and collaborate. Nobody with a short temper. I’ll give you a heads up when we’ve reached the portal and advise from there. If we can get to the other side, and things look good, you should evacuate anybody you can.”