Alien Avatar: An Alien Sci-Fi Romance Page 14

  She said as much as she could without using any words. Marko seemed to be getting the message. And Kiran, to their credit, was a little too observant for their own good.

  “Are you two in love?” they asked.

  Marko and Naeesha traded a look. Marko cocked an eyebrow as if to remind her that her answer was the only one in doubt. Not that it looked like he was doubting her.

  “Yea,”Naeesha said. “We are.”

  “That’s cute.”

  “That’s cute?” she asked. Something about having her complex and evolving relationship with Marko described as ‘cute’ by a four year old was, well, humbling to say the least.

  “Yea,” Kiran said. “You two are perfect for each other.”

  Naeesha wanted to tell them that it wasn’t that simple, but she stopped and thought. Maybe it was. She smiled at Kiran and shifted her focus on her dinner. She didn’t have to look up to know that Marko was sitting across the table with a big, dumb grin on his face.

  ***

  Dinner only seemed to reassure the tribe’s decision to take their journey underground. The dangers were well understood. Marko ensured her that he’d made every case he could for the threats that could have been lurking beneath the ground.

  But every one of the Halians was well acquainted with the dangers that awaited above, and they were happy to take a chance. The way that Marko described it, they were just as worried for Alderoc as the were for themselves. Nobody doubted that an Alderoccan attack on the tribe would result in more Wild Ones.

  Naeesha wondered what would happen if the soldiers caught the tribe in the tunnel. There would be nowhere to go once the shooting started. All that fear and hatred and anger would be trapped, condensed. Purified. She wondered what the consequences of that might be. But she trusted that the Halians knew themselves, and had taken that possibility into account.

  Not that it mattered anyway. Dead was dead. What did she care happened after that?

  They agreed to travel with a similar policy as the days before. A small party would scout ahead of the group, staying a couple miles in front, along with a trailing team who would watch from behind. That way if they did run into trouble, people could at least get a head start on running away from it.

  The plan was to move as soon as possible. That meant that Naeesha and Marko were going to head out as soon as they finished dinner to get a head start on the rest of the tribe.

  They finished eating, packed their bags, and hit the trail.

  Moving through the jungle at night was not a pleasant experience. It might have been even more unnerving than going through the tunnels. At least in the tunnels, the danger could only come from one direction. Out here, the darkness was as confining as the concrete walls were below, with the express difference that bad things could move through the darkness far easier than they could stone.

  When the made it back to the pit and moved underground, she was relieved. But it was an empty relief. The release of one fear only made room for another. There was still something awful behind them, and ahead of them was the unknown. She wasn’t sure which was worse.

  They didn’t waste any time on ceremony. It was straight underground and due south. Rakkan and his group had walked fifteen minutes down the tunnel, just like she and Marko had, and hadn’t reported anything, not even a door.

  Naeesha figured they had at least fifteen minutes before things got interesting.

  “So what do you think is down there? And you aren't allowed to say that you don’t know. You have to guess something?”

  Marko turned up an eyebrow to her.

  “I think there’s going to be a mountain of candy, and a river of whisky, and fruit cups that grow from trees,” Marko said.

  “Well, I think there’s going to be a mountain of whiskey, a river of whiskey, and little tiny bottles of whiskey that grow from trees.”

  Marko laughed.

  “How would a mountain of whiskey work, exactly?”

  “Shh. You’re ruining the moment.”

  “Ok, seriously though.”

  “You first.”

  “I think that the tunnel will link up to the Dynasty compound. I think we’ll find the portal. I think we’ll go through and find Hala.”

  Naeesha looked over at him, his face just barely illuminated by the soft reflecting glow of the flashlights.

  “That’s not fair,” she said. “Now if I say anything else I’m the pessimistic asshole.”

  “Well, only if you don’t say that we’ll find barrels of whiskey.”

  “Ok, ok. I have a good one.”

  Marko smiled at her.

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “I think we’re going to find the future. For the Watchers of this world. For the Halians. And for us.”

  “Ok,” Marko said. “You win.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  An uneventful fifteen minutes turned into an uneventful hour, turned into an uneventful night. The entire tribe made it down into the tunnels, guards made it into position, and the night went by peacefully. There was no sign of danger whatsoever. At least for now, it looked like they’d made the right choice.

  Marko woke up in a panic. It was dark. Too dark. Unnaturally dark. A flashlight clicked on and the world spun and flipped and warped around him as his brain tried to make sense of why it had awoken in a small, dark box.

  His senses came to him and he settled, although his heart continued to pound and the bitter taste of adrenaline still lingered on the back of his tongue.

  Naeesha was curled up in front of him, and he laid back down and held her close. They’d been relieved from guard duty as soon as the tribe was settled in and come back to get some rest. Marko was feeling very rested.

  It occurred to him that with no sight of the sun, he had no idea what time it was. He’d gotten out of the habit of carrying a comm device, or anything else with the capacity for timekeeping for that matter.

  He decided that other parties could be responsible for keeping the tribe on schedule, and he tried to let his mind go so that he could be fully present with Naeesha. She was so warm. So soft.

  Her leaving - his thinking that she’d left, rather - gave him a new perspective. He'd felt the cold sting of loss again and knew that it was too much to take again. When she came back, he told himself that he was never going to let another moment with her go by without appreciating it to the fullest. But it was hard. If he tried to appreciate her, it just didn’t work. It took him out of the moment. It was like an out of body experience. He was touching her with somebody else’s fingers, watching her through someone else’s eyes. It was cheap, and it was hollow.

  No.

  He had to live in the moment. It wasn’t something he could think about, like a riddle or a math problem. She was an experience.

  But sometimes when he let go of all the little things that kept him grounded, he got lost. And when he got lost, he took her for granted. It was a vicious cycle.

  All he could do was all he could do. And he would do his best.

  Tonight - or this morning, whenever it was - he was going to lay with her. Feel her chest rise and fall, hear her breath soft on her lips, feel the heat of her body against his chest. He was going to be with her, and he wasn’t going to let anything come between them.

  Another light clicked on. Naeesha stirred. He clung to each fleeting second, afraid that it would leave. More lights came on, and the entire tribe began to rouse from their sleep. Whatever time it was, it was time to get up, and get moving.

  ***

  Marko sat with Rakkan and Jintak. Apparently, they were concerned about the lack of sun as well. It was possible that the tribe would be spending the next two weeks underground, and they feared what effect the lack of light might have on their psyche.

  The concerns were numerous. Aside from loss of morale, there were practical issues. Apparently, Marko learned, if left in complete darkness, Halians could go into a sort of hibernation, sleeping until they’d made up for all the slee
p that they’d missed over the last several days.

  It was no secret that nearly every member of the combined tribe had been short on sleep for a long while. They both feared that if a strict rotation of guards was not kept, that the entire tribe could fall - and stay - asleep for a stretch of days. Long enough, they thought, to die of dehydration.

  Then there were the other concerns. That every minute the tribe spent on Alderoc was a chance for the military to catch up with them. That they might not be able to get off the world before the Wild destroyed everything. That they would run out of food or water. But then, maybe it was better if they didn’t dwell too much on those things. They certainly weren’t going to make anything better.

  Marko started to wonder what they could do if things did get bad. They were, he figured, not all that far underground. The walls of the tunnel would no doubt be thick, but he could probably get through them. If push came to shove, he should have been able to dig his way back up to the surface in his combat form, especially with the Halians to help get rubble and debris out of the way.

  It crossed his mind that digging a few escape holes might be a good idea no matter what. He and some of the warriors would march ahead, dig a tunnel to the surface, and when the rest of the tribe arrived to set up camp, they could go to the surface to scavenge supplies and get some sunlight. Plus, they’d have ways to escape if they needed, and the dirt and cement from the dig could be used to make barriers in the tunnel. One of Marko’s biggest concerns was that if the military trapped them down in the tunnels, there would be nowhere to run. Plasma bolts will fly for as far as they can go uninterrupted. The tunnels were long and straight enough that a good shot could hit a target miles away. The only limitation, it seemed, was the curvature of the planet.

  A few dirt and stone walls would go a long way to minimize that problem.

  They had plenty of hands, and plenty of time to do it. It would be something to keep everyone busy. Something to keep their minds of off things. Marko decided to bring it up during the next circle.

  ***

  That day’s march was awful. Naeesha stayed back with the tribe to help the medics. A small handful of people had come down with food poisoning, and they were a little overwhelmed and in need of a hand.

  Marko ended up marching out in front of the group with three of the Halian warriors.

  He was eager to learn a little more about them. His interactions so far had been short on words and terribly brief. That was, he learned, because Halian warriors are, by nature, not terribly verbose individuals.

  Over the course of the entire day, he managed to scrape together enough information to get a sense of why.

  Being highly emotional creatures, the Halians avoided conflict at all costs. Sometimes, the use of force was necessary, and in these rare instances, it was important to have emotionally resilient troops.

  One panicked soldier was enough to route an entire unit. The first warrior gets scared, and their fear pushes the next scared person over the edge. A chain reaction goes off, and all of a sudden your entire fighting force is reduced to nothing. All because one person lost their cool.

  So when the Halians trained soldiers, they trained them to be rock solid, completely in control of their emotions. Cold. Calculating. Completely unfeeling. That sort of emotional mettle was useful in combat, but it made it impossible to have a normal life. The warriors were fundamentally disconnected from the rest of tribal life. Halian culture is an emotional experience, and their warriors simply didn't have the capacity to participate.

  They were simply most comfortable sticking to themselves, and Marko had no trouble understanding.

  After all. He was a soldier too. He just had the good luck of living in a world where the civilians were as emotionally stunted as the people who fought their wars for them. But that was their cultural legacy. They’d built a system that robbed everyone of their feelings, not just the warriors.

  That was the only way for it to work. How else could ten billion people live in one big city that was as full of suffering and pain as the capital was? If anyone, Halian, Watcher, or human, tried to walk through the streets of that city with an open heart, they’d be dead of heartbreak before they made it down the first block.

  It had only gotten that bad because people learned to numb themselves to their own cruelty towards their fellow people.

  He hadn’t seen it when he lived among them, but it only took a few weeks with the Halians to open his eyes. Once he’d seen how it could have been, the illusion was shattered. The suffering, the sorrow, the crushing rage. It was too much. He knew there was no way to go back to that world.

  If he’d have known how much his new world was going to look like the old one, he probably would have just become a hermit.

  But that was life on Alderoc. Sometimes you just had to put your head down and try to forget all the awful shit. It was the only way to survive. To live, and try to go on another day.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Naeesha was glad to be helping, but she wished she’d have known what she was getting into when she volunteered to help the healers. Something bad had gotten into the food, and there were about three dozen very sick Halians who needed near constant attention.

  Thankfully, she wasn’t responsible for carrying their stretchers, just keeping them fed and watered and helping them, well, dispose of their various forms of waste.

  It wasn’t her idea of a good time, to say the very least.

  But it was enlightening. She’d spent about half her time in the military as a field medic, and she was more than capable when it came to putting people back together. Most medics only knew as much as it took to keep someone alive until they could get to an autoclinic, but Naeesha had learned her chops during the Fall. There were no autoclinics where she learned to fight. If you wanted to keep a wounded soldier alive, you did it with your bare hands.

  It wasn’t always a compassionate process. Your patient was a problem, and the only concern that you had as a medic was solving whatever problem they had.

  But the Halian healers had a different way. Their job wasn’t to fix their patients. It was to make them feel better. Naeesha couldn’t help but wonder how effective that would be on a life threatening injury or a chronic illness, but for a little food poisoning, it was a hell of a lot more effective than sticking an intravenous solution into their arms, giving them a bedpan, and telling them to tough it out until they felt better.

  It wasn’t that the kind words and gentle laughter were making the food poisoning go away, it was just that it made it a little more bearable. She wondered what other problems could be addressed the same way. What else could kindness and compassion achieve?

  At the very least, all these people wouldn’t be stuck underground, endlessly shuffling through the dark. They would have a lot more of their friends and family still with them. Hell, they wouldn’t even be on this planet. The world would look completely different, for the Halians, for the Alderoccans, for everyone.

  How did all of this get started? What events had put this into motion? Once the first shots were fired, they were all but doomed to this situation. But that first massacre in the Dynasty compound twenty-five years ago wasn’t the first act in this hellish play. She didn’t know what was, and none of the Halians were telling. It was hard to imagine that they had been responsible for it, though.

  Especially when the other party involved was the Dynasty Corporation. The same shadowy organization that had conspired to run the Watchers off this planet, and then proceeded to steal the planet’s riches in the process.

  After the Fall, Alderoc had all but forgotten about Dynasty. There was never any new information about them, so nobody had any reason to care. There wasn’t somebody to pin the problem on. No nucleus for their collective hatred to coalesce around.

  In fact, there were more than a handful of Watchers - and even humans - who blamed the Halians for what Dynasty had done. There was not a single piece of evidence to even suggest tha
t the Halians were involved with the ploy to destroy Alderoc, and all indications were that they had simply been another victim.

  But some people needed a place to put their anger. They didn’t know how to let it go, so they held on to it, clutching it tight, just waiting for a convenient target to unload it onto.

  And the Halians had appeared just in time for all those people to dump all that anger on them. Their only crime was existing.

  But violence creates violence, and each attack on the Halians resulted in Watcher casualties, which fed further violence, which created more casualties, and so on. The cycle wouldn’t end. Not until the Watchers put down their guns, or until the Halians were all dead.

  And it looked like it was going to be the latter. Naeesha took some consolation in knowing that she was on the right side, even if it meant dying with the Halians. Anyway, she didn’t want to live on a world that would threaten its own existence just to destroy something as beautiful as the Halian people.

  Too stupid to save themselves, that’s what the Watchers were. They were ready to shoot themselves in the head just to get rid of a headache that could have been fixed with a little bit of love.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Marko was caught in a strange place. On one hand, he’d felt like he’d been marching for an eternity. With nothing to distract him, nothing to pass the time, and no frame of reference, he was just marching into the abyss.

  On the other hand, when Rakkan ran up ahead to stop their march, he hardly believed that an entire day had gone by. It was beyond explaining.

  He started back down the tunnel to meet the rest of the group. Someone had already brought out an instrument, and a beautiful melody echoed down the hallway, calling him back to the tribe. Another instrument joined in, and then a third.

  It was a small departure from the norm, typically the musicians spread out around camp and played their own songs. Marko guessed that in the tunnels, there wasn’t room for three separate melodies. So they all joined into one. The instruments sang out in a gleeful chorus, carrying harmonies, running off onto improvised phrases, tweaking the song just a little, gradually, so that you never noticed a change, but after a few minutes, they were playing a totally different song.