Alien Avatar: An Alien Sci-Fi Romance (13 page)

The Halians arrived and spared Naeesha from the agonizing silence that followed her argument with Marko. She was glad that he’d stopped talking. She hated fighting with him. But just because the silence was preferable to him trying to explain what a shitlord he’d been, it didn’t mean that she enjoyed it.

It didn’t take her long to realize how isolated she was in the Halian cmap without Marko. Before, she’d been able to get by through him and through Kiran. Now she couldn’t talk with anybody.

Still, she kept herself busy by helping people unpack, moving more logs out of the way, and setting up the tents. There wasn’t much room for anything besides the dining hall and the sleeping tent, and with all hands helping, it didn’t take long before those tasks were finished and she found herself standing around with nothing to do and no one to talk to.

There were still a few hours before the circles, and most of the Halians got around to making the most of their time and trying to enjoy themselves. There was music and laughter and dancing and talking, but it didn’t fill her with joy or compell her to happiness the way that it had the previous two nights. Even though she could feel how content and grateful the Halians were, the emotions couldn’t make it through the wall that she’d put up to protect herself from Marko.

So she sat on a stump outside of the celebrating Halians, and moped.

What the fuck was she doing?
Five hundred miles from home. Or the quiet place with lots of whisky in it that passed for home. Either way, it was better than here. Where there was only one person she could talk to, and that person happened to be a lying asshole.

And she thought she was ready to spend the rest of her life with him and his band of three-eyed, red-skinned aliens? After three days? It took her back to when she’d met Marko. The younger version of him, anyway. She’d felt inexplicably drawn to him. To his mystery. To his quiet calm. After only
really
knowing him for all of a week before they’d gone into the Dynasty compound together.

Those two hours changed both of their lives forever. In a way, that failed mission ensured that they’d spend the next twenty-five years together. Who else could understand what they’d gone through but each other. And even though the conflict between the Alderoccans and the Halians created a whole new generation of horror for her fellow soldiers to share in, none of it had come close to the first moment when hell came to Alderoc.

Through all of it, she and Marko had been together.

And why? Because he was a good fuck? Because he was as fucked up as she was? If that was all, then why hadn’t she just found someone who could outdo him on both counts. There were plenty of them around, it wouldn’t have even been that hard to do.

After all, she’d found dozens of them. All those times that something had pushed her and Marko apart, and she thought it would be the last time, and she tried to move on and find something or someone else to fill the space. She always did. And then those things went away. And then she found herself back alongside him again.
How many times?
And here she was again.

It was pathetic. Disgusting.

She wouldn’t let it happen again. And she certainly wasn’t going to let herself wind up going through some ridiculous interdimensional hole in space-time to travel to another planet with him.
Fuck that
.

She was going back to the capital, and she was going to go back to her apartment, and get her wallet, and go to the market, and get some good whiskey and drink away a few more years.

The last three had been the easiest, most peaceful years of her life. No, she didn’t remember much of them. She hadn’t accomplished a great deal of anything. She hadn’t grown or changed in any real way either.

And that was fine.

She also hadn’t wasted any tears on Marko. She hadn’t nearly gotten killed a half dozen times either. If she wanted to talk to somebody, she could. And more importantly, if she didn’t want to talk to someone, she didn’t have to.

No. The last three years had been perfect. Not some bullshit fantasy version of perfect that had never existed in the real world. The had been perfect in the only way that reality could ever be. Free of pain, and free of want.

She watched the Halians dance and sing along to the mockingly happy music, and started to plan.

It wouldn’t be hard to pack up what she needed and sneak out during the night. She had a good sense of what direction to walk to get back to the other side of the flattened wastes, and in the morning, she’d find the trail. After that, it would only be a little more than a week’s walk back to the point where the ‘fisherman’ had dropped her off. She still had the radio in the bottom of her bag. She could probably reach him from the tops of the Andar, and arrange to get picked up the minute she made it back to the river.

Her pension would have piled up nicely in the time that she’d been away, and she’d sell all the bullshit equipment that she’d stashed up, thinking that she’d want to play soldier again one day.

If she budgeted right, she could live and eat and drink on that money for another twenty years. That was more time than she wanted anyway.

It was a good plan. All she had to do now was wait for everyone to get to sleep and she could be on her way.

Marko was having second thoughts. He’d left the capital three years ago thinking that he could take Naeesha out of his life and fill her space with work. And then he’d found the Halians, and thought that they were all that he needed.

And then she’d shown up, and everything seemed perfect.

But now she was distant. He was losing her again. He’d lost her so many times before, and always found a way to get her to take him back.

How many more times could he pull it off? How long until she realized that she was better off without him. He hoped it wouldn’t be this time. He hoped, selfishly, that she’d stay long enough to get to the portal. Just another week. Enough time to win her back until they made it to Hala.

The further he took her from the capital, the harder it would be for her to leave him.

He felt awful for even thinking it. He didn’t own her. If she wanted to leave, then that’s what she should do. But he couldn’t bear the thought of it. Couldn’t stand the thought of watching her walk away again, knowing that this time, it might be the last.

Would he be able to fill that hole one more time? Before, he’d only ever been able to patch it up. He’d gotten better at it over the years, but how much more of it did he have the patience for? Not much.

He sat behind the dining hall helping with preparations for dinner. It was something to keep his hands busy, and he could watch Naeesha while he worked. She was sitting alone at the edge of camp, just staring off into space. He wished he could know what she was thinking. He wished he knew the right thing to say to win her back, to convince her that he still loved her and still needed her, and that she needed him too.

But that was her decision to make. If he wanted her to stay, he needed to give her a reason. And he couldn’t even pretend to have one.

The elders announced that it was time for the small circle. It didn’t take long. There wasn’t much news. Marko updated the group on their plans for the next day of travel, and told them what the cause of the huge plume of smoke had been. He’d lied and said that he’d used an Alderoccan weapon. Everybody believed him because nobody believed that he would lie. Nobody except for Naeesha, who sat outside the circle glaring at him as he spoke.

Big circle was over just as quickly and they went to eat. He was one of the first to sit down, finding a place that was off to the side. Somewhere that there would still be a seat for Naeesha when she came to get dinner, somewhere quiet that they could talk.

But she didn’t come.

He sat alone, pushing food around his bowl and trying to figure out what he’d done to fuck up so badly. Naeesha probably wanted her space, but he couldn’t sit there doing nothing any longer. He decided to take a chance.

There was still plenty of food, so he filled up a bowl and carried it out of the dining hall. He found Naeesha sitting where he’d seen her earlier, on a log just outside of camp, staring up at the stars.

“Go away,” she said as soon as she heard his footsteps approaching.

“I brought you dinner.”

“Not hungry.”

“You need to eat. You need to keep up your strength.”

“Put it on the ground. I’ll come and get it when you’re gone.”

He put the bowl on the ground and started to turn away. But something in the way that she was looking out at the darkness made him stop. He knew that look. It was the look that she always had right before she disappeared from his life.

“I know you don’t want to talk to me, and you don’t have to. But I have some things that I need to say, and I hope that you’ll hear them.”

She didn’t do anything to let him think that she was listening.

“I’m sorry for lying to you earlier. You don’t deserve that. You’ve given me every reason to trust you, and I didn’t. I regret that, and not just because it put distance between us, but because you worked hard to earn that trust and I threw it away.”

He could hear her crying softly. If he was a better man, he would have turned away and left her in peace. But he wasn’t a better man. He still needed to be heard, even if that meant hurting her even more.

“I can’t make up for what I’ve done to hurt you, and you have every reason and every right to leave. If you want to, I hope that you’ll tell me and let me help you. If you want to go back to the capital, I want you to get there safely.”

If she was still crying, he couldn’t hear her over the sound of his own sobs.

“I wish I knew what to say. I wish I could give you a reason to forgive me, a reason to stay. I’ve spent all day trying to think of something, but I still don’t have anything for you.”

He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself so that he could say the last thing that he needed to before going back inside.

“I just want you to know that I love you, and that I’m sorry for everything I’ve ever done to hurt you, and that I just want you to be happy, even if that means you can’t be with me.”

Marko stood with tears in his eyes, waiting, watching, hoping for some kind of sign that his message had been received. He prayed that Naeesha would turn and run to him, or call him to her side. But he knew she wouldn’t. And she didn’t. She just sat there, crying softly, staring up at the stars.

Naeesha wanted to to call out to Marko, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t even begin to talk. All she could do was sit and cry it out. There had been thirty years of tears that were waiting to be let out, and she wasn’t going to stop them anymore.

The tears poured out of her eyes and each drop that fell from her cheeks was a terrible weight that she didn’t have to carry anymore. She freed herself, there on an upturned tree, looking out at the night sky in the middle of nowhere.

The Halians were all in the dining hall, only a soft murmur of their noise escaping and making its way to her. She was alone. Perfectly alone.

And that was alright.

She kept crying, kept letting out all the pain and sorrow and anger and suffering, and when she was done, she was ready to heal. To be happy. To forgive. To go to Marko and tell him that his lies had hurt her, that his lack of trust had made her afraid. That she wanted to run away, but that she knew that it wouldn’t fix anything. She wanted him to know that she loved him too, and as long as they both loved each other, they could fight through the hard times. Hell, they could fight through anything, because they had each other and that was all that mattered.

The last heavy tear rolled down her cheek and she breathed in joyful air. She wanted a minute. Just a little more time alone with the stars. The world was so sublimely beautiful, and she knew that this moment would pass and she’d never experience anything quite like it again. That was fine. There would be more beauty and more wonder, she just wanted to take this in a little longer.

And when she was done, she would go to Marko and tell him that she loved him, that she was grateful for him, and that she was sorry for doubting him. She would ask for his forgiveness and he would laugh and tell her that there was nothing to forgive her for and they would kiss and sit together and be happy.

There would be pain. There would probably be more tears. She knew it wouldn’t be easy, not tonight, not ever. But the price would be worth it, because that pain was the price of a shared life, and of happiness that she would never find at the bottom of a bottle.

As she was taking the final cleansing breaths and trying to piece together what she would say to Marko, Naeesha saw a light on the horizon that didn’t match any star she knew. The light flickered and swayed, and what she thought was just a trick of the eye turned out to be something else. She wasn’t sure what, but there was no doubt that the light was moving.

It came closer, and she realized that it wasn’t one light that she was looking at, it was three. And although she could see nothing more than the three small lights, moving fast over the wastes, she knew what she was looking at.

It was an Alderoc strike craft. She’d seen them coming and going during many night raids, and recognized the configuration of lights any day.

She kept her eyes fixed on the horizon, and saw more lights. Dozens of them. They flew in low and fast, and every one of them settled down to the ground just on this side of the horizon.

The military was preparing an attack, and she didn’t have to guess what their target was.

There was no telling how far out the airbase was, but it was her guess that they wouldn’t launch their strike until dawn. If she moved fast, she might be able to make it there in time to warn the commander of the mistake that they were about to make.

She grabbed her pack and started running.

As it turned out, running wasn’t a very accurate description. It was more like scrambling. She was down on all fours, climbing over twisted roots and shattered trunks and struggling to free herself from grasping branches. But she moved fast. More crafts came in. There must have been one ship for every single Halian at the camp. She wondered if her camp was the only target, or if this was part of a larger operation. It didn’t matter. She had to do something about it either way.

Of all the times that she envied the Watchers’ ability to shapeshift, she felt it now stronger than ever. Climbing over the twisted wreckage of the forest in the dark was a huge pain in the ass. Literally. There were dozens of jagged sticks every step of the journey, and even after a few minutes, Naeesha was already sore from dozens of pokes and prods and cuts and scrapes.

But those injuries would pale in comparison to what would happen if she didn’t make it to the airbase before they launched their attack.

She’d thought about warning the Halians, or getting Marko to help, but  decided against it. The military knew that Marko was here. He was a target, and bringing him into the situation wasn’t going to make it any better. And besides, there was nothing that he could do for the Halians anyway. They were on foot, fifteen miles from any kind of cover. The Alderoccan aircraft would tear them apart, and there was no way to stop them except for a diplomatic appeal.

Any kind of disturbance in the camp would be a signal to the military that the had to launch their strike now, and that would spell certain disaster.

So Naeesha kept moving, frantically trying to reach the base before it was too late.

***

The first sun was coming up when Naeesha breached the security line of the improvised airbase in the middle of the ruined forest. Watcher guards greeted her with raised rifles. She was too tired to raise her hands in surrender, but in her bruised and bloodied state, nobody considered her to be much of a threat.

Her throat was so parched that she barely managed to croak her request to speak to the base commander. The fate of the Halian survivors, and possibly the continued existence of the Watcher species, hinged on her meeting with the commander going well.

The first challenge was to make sure that it happened at all. And thankfully, that challenge went her way.

She was escorted into a temporary housing unit and seated at a table. The guards were careful to relieve her of her bag and her pistol, but did not feel the need to restrain her. In a few short minutes, and older Watcher commander was sitting across from her with a scowl on his face.

At least he was taking this seriously.

“Who are you?” the commander barked.

“My name is Matron Naeesha Haro, Retired. I’m here on special orders from Prime Commander Tariq.”

The commander laughed.

“And I’m here on orders from the Magical Witch of Windsor.”

Naeesha did not acknowledge his joke.

“This group of Halian refugees is being accompanied by another soldier on special assignment to develop diplomatic ties with the Halian people in order to secure a peaceful resolution to the conflict at hand. I implore--”

“Peaceful resolution?” the commander shouted. “There won’t be peace until every last one of these red-skinned pricks is dead and gone.”

“They’re our best hope for containing the Wild threat and securing livable communities outside of Alderoc.”

The general scoffed and sneered.

“You and the Prime Commander can do all the containing you like. I’ve got orders from the people of the capital to annihilate the Halian threat, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

“The Halians aren’t the enemy, commander, and by attacking them, you’re only going to make the problem worse.”

But the commander wasn’t listening. He was already steaming at the ears, his face was red and his eyes were bulging and all that he could think of or talk about was attacking the small group of tired refugees.

“Those bastards have killed hundreds of my men.
Fine young men.
Dead at their hands. You want to tell me that they aren’t a
threat?
Tell that to those soldiers families. To their children.”

“The Halians fought to defend themselves. If you don’t believe me, talk with the operative in their camp.”

“Marko is a fool and a traitor and I won’t listen to a damn thing that he says,” the commander spat.

He climbed up from his chair and went to a nearby guard to take his radio.

“This is Commander Artak. Prepare for joint strike on enemy encampment number four two four. Wheels up in three hundred seconds.” The commander returned his radio to the guard and sat back down in front of Naeesha with a smug look on his face.

“We’re going to ‘resolve’ this little conflict alright, and I don’t need any red-loving shitbird sneaking around on the weak-necked Prime Commander’s orders to tell me how to do it. See, I’ve got a strategy.”

The commander scowled, jabbing his stubby finger towards the camp on the horizon.

“Kill all the savages.”

Chapter

Marko woke, and was not surprised to find that Naeesha was nowhere to be found. He had hoped that maybe,
maybe
he’d been able to change her mind. That he’d wake up and she’d be sleeping next to him and that they could fix things.

But it wasn’t to be.

He went to the dining hall, heated up some of the last night’s dinner over the dying embers of the cook fire, and mourned. By the time he’d finished his gruel and coffee, his head was clear and he was ready to get to work. He cleaned up a little in the kitchen, took his time walking back to the sleeping tent, took his pack, and headed out.

The shattered forest was a lonely place. There was no beauty, and nothing to distract him. All he could do was to focus on his task of making a trail for the Halians to follow. It wasn’t enough to distract him from the thoughts of Naeesha eating at the back of his brain.

It was a cruel trick of the universe, giving her back to him only to take her away. In time, he could have taken the patched over hole in his heart and actually mended it. He didn’t know if he’d ever recover from having that wound ripped open like this.

But he would try. He would find a way to persevere. It’s what he did.

There were trees in the distance, and he kept his eyes on them as he crossed over the remnants of the once great forest beneath his feet. To him, it represented the future. Possibilities. No matter how much destruction surrounded him, there was still hope. Still something else to be created.

He would have plenty of opportunities to do that, and plenty of obstacles to keep him busy until then.

There just wouldn’t be time to be distracted on the way to the Dynasty compound. The forest was turning to jungle as they went south, and soon the path would be so dangerous and so difficult that it would demand all of his attention. Especially now that he was going alone.

And once they got to the portal? Who knew. The future from that point on was unknowable. He didn’t know what they’d find on the other side. He didn’t even have an idea of what Hala was like. What he’d gathered from Halian culture, he didn’t imagine it to be a terribly hospitable place, but that didn’t make any difference. It was just another set of obstacles, more challenges. He would overcome them, and he would help the Halians to carve out new lives.

He would be busy.

And what would he do with the new life that he made? Would he find a mate? Raise a family? Or would his tribe be his family. They already treated him like an esteemed member. They valued him. For his hard work, for his knowledge, for his dedication to their wellbeing. He could do more to prove himself. He would.

It made him smile, imagining himself as a pillar of the tribe. He would grow old with them. Maybe become an elder. That made him happy. The idea of sitting around a campfire with old friends, watching a new generation of Halians grow up. Children who didn’t know the sorrows and sufferings of their embittered lives on Alderoc.

It was all possible. And he could make it happen.

The future looked brighter as he moved towards the looming forest in the distance. Just a few more miles to go. He wanted to shift into his combat form. It was better suited to moving over the twisted landscape. But it would also take more energy. Energy that was better saved for the struggles ahead. His day’s work wouldn’t be finished even once he made it to the treeline. He’d still have a few miles left, and he expected that they would be hard miles. He carried on in his natural form, climbing over the fallen trees, picking branches and saplings out of the ruination, standing them up in the mud below.

Just keep moving. That’s what he told himself. He repeated it over and over like a mantra, just saying the words to keep his mind from wandering to more painful subjects. Thinking of the future wasn’t good for him. Unless he focused his mind, it would always try to insert Naeesha into his fantasies. That hurt too much.

He wandered numbly towards the trees, making good time. Alone, he could move faster. He was more focused. No distractions. The suns were still low in the sky when he stopped to rest against a tree, the first live and standing tree that he’d touched in two days.

Marko turned around to look over his trail, to see if he needed to go back and add any markers for the Halians to follow. He looked over the line of upright boughs, and at the end, just over the horizon, he saw a pillar of black smoke winding into the sky.