Alien Avatar: An Alien Sci-Fi Romance (12 page)

              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.”

“And if things
don’t
look good?”

Marko shrugged.

“Then we’re fucked.”

Marko finished packing his bag with the supplies he’d taken from Tariq’s ship. He hadn’t taken much. More food, a light plasma repeater that he’d decided was finally worth the trouble of hauling around, and some new maps of the terrain ahead.

Naeesha had been keeping her distance for the last hour, and he got the impression that she wasn’t all that pleased with him. Understandable, but regrettable. He couldn’t help but worry for the conversation that he knew was coming though. All he could do was hope that she would understand why he’d spared her some of truth.

After all, it didn’t change anything. Everything he’d told her had been true. All he’d done was left out some of the details of how and why and what did all of that matter anyway?

They didn’t talk much as they kept walking towards the distant treeline. By the time it came into view over the horizon and they stopped to set up camp, they still hadn’t said more than about ten words to each other.

The campground they’d chosen was mostly clear of debris. There were a few big trees that had fallen over the bare ground, but nothing that they wouldn’t be able to move once the rest of the group arrived.

For now, they kept themselves busy by getting rid of some of the small stuff littering the ground.

Marko watched Naeesha out of the corner of his eye as he walked around collecting armfuls of dead wood, piling them up for using in a fire later. She was going far out of her way to avoid talking to him, or even looking at him. Maybe it was worse than he thought.

He tried to figure out what to say to her. How to start the conversation. But the words weren’t coming to him, and neither was the courage. He’d never been able to stand up to her when he felt like he’d let her down. For all the ways that he’d grown, that hadn’t changed at all.

Before he could figure anything out, she turned around and climbed onto a tall stump, looking out onto the horizon. He followed her eyes and saw a long line of Halians making their way across the flattened landscape. It would still be an hour or two before they made it. They were still just little dots on the horizon.

He was glad they’d made it. He’d feared that they’d see the smoke from the airship attack and stop and turn back.

Marko followed Naeesha as she climbed down from the stump and went back to collecting debris.

“Hey,” he said.

She pretended not to hear him.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you everything earlier.”

Still, no response. His hands started to sweat and he could feel his throat getting tight. He hated when she got like this. It made it so hard to tell her everything that he had to say. It made him feel like she would always be angry, and that there was no point in trying to fix things.

“The truth is, I’m really not working for Tariq. I mean, I’m trying to help him, and if I can find a way to save some Alderoccans, I will.”

He was pretty sure that even if he started jumping and screaming about another cluster of evil death lizards, she would still ignore him.

“When I came out here to try and understand the Halians, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. It started as a mission, just like Tariq said. But that all changed. I saw who they were, how they lived, and I fell in love with them. I realized that I didn’t care about the Alderoccans anymore. It was the Halians that I wanted to see through all of this.”

Every word that fell on deaf ears hurt him like a dagger to the heart.

“Are you even listening?”

Naeesha didn’t look up.

“No. Why should I believe you?”

“Because I’m trying to tell you the truth.”

“Why start now?” she said, dumping an armful of wood onto the pile.

“Because you deserve it. I mean, you always did, and I’m sorry that I held things back from you. I don’t know why I did that. It was stupid. I guess I was afraid that you wouldn’t believe me if you thought I was just undercover. I wanted you to see the Halians for who they were. I wanted you to understand that I
really
am one of them now.”

She turned and gave him a glare that could have set the whole forest ablaze.

“And why did you think that lying to me was the best way to get me to believe you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh. Maybe you can tell me why you couldn’t trust me then? Twenty-five years of watching your back, no matter what. And you can’t trust me?”

“I… I can trust you. I
do
trust you.”

“Clearly.”

Marko rubbed his temples and sat down on an upturned tree, watching the Halian procession as it creeped ever closer to them. He took a deep breath and tried to center himself. He needed to find a new way of approaching all of this. Naeesha was right. He
hadn't
trusted her. He’d lied to her. He was going to have to do better if he ever wanted her to believe him again. Time would help, but she needed something from him. Needed something that she could believe.

He just didn’t have anything left to give her.