Alien Avatar: An Alien Sci-Fi Romance Page 18

  There was a small flaw in his plan. If the military were here, looking for them, and trying to kill them, then why didn’t they? The tribe was more vulnerable now than ever and they were getting closer to escaping Alderoc with each passing second. Why wait to launch an attack?

  No. It seemed more likely than not that the military just wanted the Halians gone, and wouldn’t risk losing more soldiers and equipment trying to stop them if they were already on their way out. It didn’t serve their best interests. It didn’t make sense.

  The simplest - and most likely - explanation was that Naeesha had simply gotten lost. After all, she was on strange terrain, and didn’t have a compass or any other navigation equipment to speak of. The hills and the jungle can be confusing, and it’s not hard to get turned around.

  Also, if that were the case, she’d stop wandering and try to get back to the first place she realized that she’d been lost. That’s what she’d been trained to do, which meant that’s what she would do.

  And as soon as Marko had seen the tribe safely to the compound, he would go back and look for Naeesha. She wouldn’t be alone for more than a day. He would fly over the area around the camp in his dragon form - that would get her attention. Then he’d shift into a hawk and watch for her attempt to get his attention.

  It was a good plan, and it would work, and the worst case scenario was that he’d see her no later than the next morning.

  At least, that’s what he told himself.

  The mood in the tribe was high and happy. Marko couldn’t remember the last time that it had felt so good just to be around them. Certainly since the massacre back after Naeesha had joined them, and possibly for weeks before that. He only wished that she could be here. To share the feeling, and so that he could stop worrying and start enjoying himself.

  To keep his mind off of things, he walked with Kiran and Rakkan and listened to one of the elders tell stories about Hala. She spoke plainly about the dangers that lay ahead of them. Blistering heat in the day, freezing cold nights. Food and water was scarce, and the tribes moved often to keep in good supply of what they needed.

  But, she said, on Hala, there had not been a fight between tribes in as long as anyone could remember. When there was need, others helped to provide. Although they moved often, they always knew where they were going, and they never feared that they would walk all day, only to find nowhere to camp.

  She warned that life on Hala would not be easy. It was a cruel and uncaring world, and the planet was not as giving or forgiving as Alderoc. But uncaring is one thing, and hateful was something else entirely. And for everything that Hala was, it was never hateful. And that, she said, is why they were going back, and why they would be happier there.

  This news was bittersweet to both Marko and Rakkan, who had gotten used to the bounties of Alderoc’s natural world, and learned to live with the realities of their destructive neighbors. But neither of them felt it as hard as Kiran. The child was heartbroken to imagine a world without trees and birds and fish and grass. They were almost beyond consoling. The three adults took turns trying to comfort Kiran, telling them about all the good things they could expect on their new home, but none of it helped. Finally, after expending most of their tears, Kiran looked up and caught their breath, holding back their sobs long enough to ask a question.

  “Is Naeesha going to come with us?”

  Marko looked down at the small child, wondering the same thing himself.

  “Yes,” he said. “She’ll be there.”

  Chapter Forty-Five

  One thing was immediately clear. The Alderoccan bastards were just as smug as ever. The big difference between now and ever, was that they had every reason to be. They knew where the tribe was, they knew its size, they know how many fighters had how many weapons.

  The commander smugly told Naeesha this with his smug face and his smug attitude and probably would have died from acute smug poisoning if that was a real thing that could happen to people who were such smug assholes.

  The Alderoccans refitted Naeesha with new restraints and thoughtfully disarmed her, even taking most (but not all) of her hair pins. The fact that she still had her hairpins was of little consequence, since she couldn’t use them to pick the locks anyway. But with as little shit as she had going for her, it seemed prudent to count what she did have, even if that was only the clothes on her back, a few loose pins, and a desire to strangle the commander that could not be contained by any mere mortal.

  Everything else, she had to admit, fell neatly into the Alderoccan’s column. She didn’t know what their plan was, but she the sense that they had one. She didn’t know exactly how big their forces were, or what kind of equipment they were using, but it wasn’t hard to tell that they had bigger guns and more people behind them.

  The only hope she had for Marko and the tribe was that they were smarter, more agile, and more driven. Of course, all of those attributes are only good as consolation, and aren’t widely known for winning fights. When you hear about the “small scrappy bad that stood up against greater forces” it’s usually followed by “and fought valiantly before succumbing to their inevitable defeat”.

  She didn’t mean to be such a downer about it, but she was good at finding the problems and attacking them. Only problem was that she saw a lot of problems and not a whole lot of points of attack.

  But she knew she’d find them. After all, it was that or certain annihilation. Maybe not for her, literally. But almost certainly for Marko, and almost certainly for the Halians. If she knew the military as well as she thought, she figured that they would keep her around long enough to make an example of, and might even lock her up for life instead of killing her, just to show how kind and merciful the high command was.

  Of course, she’d prefer if they killed her, just not before she had a chance to kill them first. And she just knew in her heart of hearts that if she was very patient, and looked very closely, her chance would present itself. What she did with it was all that mattered.

  ***

  It turned out that she didn’t have to wait as long as she’d thought. A buzz swept through the Alderoccan camp and told her that their attack was imminent. The commander saw this as an opportunity to come back and wax philosophical about the nature of conflict, by which she really meant “talk shit and give her more reasons to rip his still-beating heart out of his chest”.

  He informed her that “the savage Halian scum” was walking right into the military’s trap. That he would take “every last red-skinned man, woman, and child prisoner without firing a godsdamned shot” and after that he’d “let the Gods sort them out”.

  That was a little expression that state-sponsored murderers like to use to distance themselves from the horrors that they commit. Naeesha had no doubt that the sorry excuse for a man before her intended to kill her friends, in the commander’s own words “starting with your traitorous boyfriend”.

  She kept her mouth shut. It was the only way that she could keep her cool. That was one of the few things she could control right now, and she couldn’t afford to give it up just to spar with the shit stain of a Watcher.

  He grew bored with her soon enough, and she turned her attentions towards the base, looking for any sign of weakness that she could take advantage of. Not that she knew exactly how she was going to get out of the restraints. She’d been casually testing them since the second the guards put them on her, but she’d found no hope of getting them off just yet. Still, she held out hope.

  Chiefly, because one of the first unwritten rules of warfare is this: if you cannot defeat your enemy, keep moving, stay alive, and they will defeat themselves.

  And true to life, not twenty minutes after the troops started mobilizing, a low-ranking guard came over and began to undo all of her bindings except for her wrist and ankle chains. It wasn’t much, but it was a good start. Just as she was starting to wonder what the occasion was, the command reappeared.

  “Follow me,” he said. “We’re going t
o go give you back to your friends.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Time did not move for Marko on that day. Between the excitement of finally reaching the compound and the worry of not knowing where Naeesha was, every passing minute became an hour. By the time the suns were at their highest point, he’d already lived and died a thousand times, just hoping to see their destination appear through the trees.

  As they finally reached the last hours of their journey, the group came to a stop. Marko nearly lost his mind. The reason for the delay was a good one. It gave them time to feed everybody, to organize the group, and for the warriors to prepare their weapons.

  There was no telling what they were about to walk into, and it was wise to be prepared. But still, Marko could feel his heart pulling in his chest, desperately yearning to press on. He tried to still it, but the attempt was futile. The fact that there was nothing for him to do to help only made things worse. All he could do was wait.

  He paced the trail ahead of the group, practically wearing a rut into the trail.

  When Rakkan stepped out of the crowd and put a comforting hand on his shoulder, it nearly scared the shit out of him.

  “You’re nervous,” his Halian friend said.

  “What gave me away?”

  “We’ll find her. I promise.”

  “It’s not just her.”

  “And the tribe will be fine. We’ve come this far.”

  “And what of Hala?”

  “Who can say?”

  Marko smiled. “You’re right,” he said. “We’ll be okay.”

  Mercifully, the tribe started moving after just a few more minutes. Marko stayed towards the front of the procession, subconsciously trying to set the fastest pace that the group could manage. The excitement that the Halians projected was a happy one, like that of a child on their birthing day. His was that of a child going to the autoclinic for the first time.

  He just wanted to get it over with.

  Two agonizing hours later, a break in the dense jungle appeared and his heart jumped into his throat, beating two hundred times a minute. Although it was more overgrown than the last time he’d seen it, he recognized it instantly. The trees were taller and encroached on the clearing, giving it the illusion of being more ominous and claustrophobic than even the last time.

  Rakkan gestured for the group to get low and proceed with caution. Marko stepped out with him into the forest, keeping their weapons high and moving out around the perimeter, scanning the dark woods for any lurking threat. He went right back to the last time he’d been here, doing very nearly the same thing. He was sure of the danger then, just as he was now. It was some relief knowing that he was not the only one who felt it this time.

  He just wished that he had Naeesha watching his back. He always felt better knowing that she was looking out for him, just as he always felt better knowing that he could look out for her.

  The jungle was still and silent. That bothered him. At the present moment, it should have been alive with animals, snarling and chirping and croaking their warnings of invaders.

  There were all number of reasons why there would be no animals - or why they would be silent - but Marko didn’t like any of them. They all spelled danger, and he wanted nothing to do with it. No, he just wanted to get the tribe inside, to find the portal, and to get back to find Naeesha.

  The Halian warriors filed into the clearing and took up their positions at the perimeters. Rakkan took six of his fiercest fighters and lead them into the tunnel. Marko couldn’t bear to think about going back down there and seeing the destruction that he had fled from the last time he was here.

  He listened carefully to the sounds that carried up above ground. There was the clattering of concrete being tossed around. There must have been a small cave-in from when Naeesha hit the wild one with the rocket.

  The clattering stopped and he surmised that the vanguard had either succeeded in clearing it, or had given up. When they did not return a moment later, he thought the best.

  A sharp whistle carried out of the tunnel, and Marko held his breath, waiting for a second. It never came, and the next squad of soldiers moved to the tunnel entrance, the rest of the tribe following. Moving four abreast, he watched as a quarter-mile long train of his family disappeared into the ground. They were scared. They had every right to be.

  Marko kept a sharp eye on the jungle, just waiting for something to go wrong. But it didn’t. He heard the next whistle, and slowly backed away from the trees, moving towards the tunnel entrance. He would be the last one in. The remaining twenty went down the crumbling stairway and into the darkness, and when the last soldier turned past, Marko followed them in. The tribe was still moving forward. That was a good sign.

  He tried to keep his eyes forward, tried not to look at the blaster marks on the concrete walls or the strange stains or the gouges in the floor where the wild one’s claws had dug deep grooves.

  The blast doors in the central chamber must still have been open, because the long snaking line of the tribe was still moving when the big room came into view. The wall across from the tunnel entrance was completely obliterated from all of the heavy weapons fire that had somehow made it past its target and struck there.

  Marko didn’t dare look down from that wall. He knew that there were the bones of ten of his friends somewhere on the chamber floor, and it was all the better if he didn’t have to see them.

  The big blast door was completely destroyed, much like the one they’d seen the day before. It was hanging off one hinge, folded nearly in half from the bottom corner up. Marko shook his head, unable to believe how much strength it would have taken to do such a thing.

  The tribe wandered through new halls, bigger than before. There were warning signs written in Alderoccan, the sort that Marko always saw in military facilities, especially the ones that were full of things that could kill you before you knew you were in trouble.

  He didn't feel great about being in the back of the group. Everyone agreed that the most pressing danger would be behind them, but it made him nervous walking into the darkness without any idea of what was ahead of him.

  But the group kept moving without any sign of danger. They went down a long flight of winding stairs, dep into the ground. Marko leaned over the railing of the staircase and looked down so far that the bottom was washed out in darkness. He resisted the childlike urge to drop something and listen for the bottom, choosing instead to keep walking. He wondered what was at the bottom of the stairs, or why Dynasty had chosen to bury it so far underground.

  It was nearly a half hour down to the bottom of the stairs. When Marko finally reached level ground again, he was surprised by how much cooler it was there than it had been in the jungle above.

  The group passed through three more enormous blast doors, each of them smashed open like the first. A sense of awe rippled through the tribe and Marko knew that they had arrived. A chamber opened up ahead of him, completely dark. Lights began to shine around the room, exploring the vast cavernous space. He wanted to push and shove his way in to look inside and see for himself.

  When he finally passed through the last door and into the space, he was instantly struck by its enormity. It must have been a hundred feet wide, twice as long, and with a ceiling nearly a hundred feet tall. The room wasn’t concrete like the rest of the facility, it was hewn out of the bedrock. It was crammed full of crates and machines and scientific equipment like he had never seen. The technology was more advanced than anything the Alderoccans had. He’d been on one of the Dynasty colony ships, and that’s what he was reminded of as he went from artifact to artifact, looking over each of them briefly before moving on to the next one.

  Marko could only guess what it was all for. Much of it looked like mining and drilling equipment - the sort of things that he’d seen used to dig out the underground foundations of military outposts.

  The tribe, which was currently spread out in the huge room and milling about in a constant state of awe, sl
owly began to move to the back of the room, as if drawn by something. Marko was unable to resist, and went with them.

  He saw what had caught their attention. On the far side of the room was something completely unlike anything else. It was huge - taking up the entire wall, a hundred feet wide and a hundred feet high. A ring, made of a strange and dark metal, and covered in intricate markings.

  The portal.

  A feeling of great sorrow and terrible loss hit him in the stomach. It was every bit as powerful as what he felt from the tribe when Jintak was killed. Marko couldn’t imagine what could have produced the same response now. He didn’t want to imagine.

  Rakkan stepped out of the crowd and spoke to him in Halian, his voice full of anguish and worry.

  “It’s destroyed,” was all he said.

  ***

  The tribe sat down and went to circle. They needed to make a decision. Marko thought that as long as they were here, they were in danger. It was better to keep moving, to get as far away from the capital as they could, and at least make it harder for the military to find and attack them.

  He thought that they could hide out and that sooner or later, the Alderoccans would destroy themselves when they inevitably drove the rest of the Halians on the planet wild. Marko could fly out every week or so, check on the status of the capital, and keep the tribe up to date.

  They would never be safe, not until the military was gone, but right now they had to figure out what they could do that would make them the safest. In his opinion, that meant running.

  He just hoped that he’d have time to find Naeesha before they left. Leaving a trail for her meant leaving a trail for the military, and that wasn’t an option. They couldn’t afford to risk a thousand lives for her, even though it hurt to admit.

  In listening to the members of the tribe discuss their ideas, Marko got the sense that there were three main ideas. One, his idea, was to run. Two, which was just as, if not more popular, was to stay here and to try and repair the portal. Three was to march on the capital and to try and wipe it out. Marko was shocked that the idea had as many supporters as it did. It was such an unHalian thing to do, but he supposed that as long as this conflict came down to us versus them, it might as well be them. At least, he could understand why some people felt that way.