Alien Avatar: An Alien Sci-Fi Romance (14 page)

Naeesha watched helplessly as the Alderoccan strike crafts lifted off the ground and made their way to the Halian camp. The commander grinned as he watched his soldiers go off to seal their fates. The destruction of Alderoc and the loss of billions of lives would be on his hands. There was a chance that Alderoc could survive the Wild Ones that were already loosed, but any more would be a certain death sentence.

She wondered if he would be smiling then.

It wasn’t far to the camp. The ships grew smaller, and Naeesha gritted her teeth in anticipation of a flash of light as the ships launched rockets and plasma barrages at the Halians below, just now waking and starting their daily chore of tearing down their home, putting it on their backs, and wandering Alderoc in search of a new place to build their lives for a few hours.

The flash of light came, but it was not what she had expected. It was an explosion in the sky. Something had destroyed one of the strike crafts. The commander looked, shocked and horrified. He turned to Naeesha, glaring.

More ships launched and started flying towards the camp.

Another ship exploded in the air.

Naeesha strained her eyes to try and see what was happening. And then the world lit up in a net of a plasma fire. It came from all directions, from the ground up. The telltale red skin and brightly colored robes of Halian warriors appeared all around. Aircraft began to fall out of the sky all around as the plasma fire converged on the lightly armored ships.

She didn’t understand. There were only a few soldiers with their group, and even fewer weapons. She could see at least fifty now, plus however many were in the camp.

Shouts came from nearby. She saw the Watcher guards dropping their weapons, and then a squad of Halians advancing from the perimeter of the airbase. They had the base surrounded, and the Watchers knew it. The commander begrudgingly dropped his weapon to the ground and raised his hands above his head. Naeesha did the same.

The Halians started collecting the fallen weapons, piling them in the center of the airbase. A familiar figure strode up to the Watcher commander and announced that he was taking him and his soldiers prisoner.

“My name is Rakkan. I swear by the sacred oath of the soldier that you and your people will be treated fairly, but that we will respond to any threat of violence in kind,” he said, seeming to tower over the commander.

To Naeesha’s surprise, the Watcher commander started laughing.

“What the fuck do you think you’re going to change, son? Do you have any idea how much whoop-ass you just brought down on yourself?”

“I suggest you give your soldiers the order to stand down.”

“And I suggest you start running right now. Not that it’s going to help, mind you.”

Rakkan turned to one of his soldiers and gave him an order that Naeesha couldn’t understand. The Halians started binding the hands of the Watcher soldiers. She wondered if they knew that cuffing the wrists of a shapeshifter was a strictly useless act.

The Halian leader stepped towards Naeesha.

“He is right, though. We should leave immediately. Your tribe is already making its way to the forest. We would be wise to join them.”

Naeesha grabbed her pack and one of the plasma rifles that the Halians had taken from the Watcher troops.

“We’re coming for you. You’ll never make it to the portal.”

“We’ll see,” Rakkan said, helping himself to some of the Alderoccan supplies. “Do you have any of the rations with the fruit cups? We like those best.”

“Fuck you, red. We’ll see how much shit you want to talk when our reinforcements get here.”

Rakkan looked around at the now thoroughly plundered airbase.

“I hope for your sake that they get here soon,” he said. “Because we’re taking everything that you’ve got.”

The commander laughed again. “You and what army?”

Right on cue, Rakkan’s tribe appeared in the distance, a thousand head strong, making their way towards the base. Rakkan was digging through a crate, and stood up with a meal packet in hand.

He smiled at the commander, holding up the ration.

“We wish you well, commander. Thanks for the fruit cups.”

***

              “Since when did you speak Alderoccan,” Naeesha asked.

Rakkan smiled. “Kiran’s been teaching me.”

“You aren’t telling the truth, are you?”

“We had a Watcher hermit stay with us for a while. He taught me, and a few others.”

“And you didn’t think to share this information with anybody?”

Rakkan shrugged. “You’re the only one that didn’t speak Halian, and I didn’t trust you enough to have any reason to talk to you.”

“And you trust me now?”

“Your tribe trusts you, and that’s good enough for me. Although, I would like to know what you were doing at that airbase.”

“I saw the ships flying in during the night. I tried to convince the commander that launching an attack was a bad idea for everybody. He didn’t listen.”

“Ah, but he found out well enough, did he not?”

Naeesha smiled.

“I suppose you could say that.”

Rakkan and his tribe moved fast. She didn’t do much talking as they marched, it took all her energy just to keep up with them.

By the time the suns were at the top of the sky, their group had already caught up with the smaller tribe. They were waiting at the edge of the forest. A well marked trail lead into the dense brush.

Rakkan spoke briefly with Jintak, and turned back to Naeesha.

“He says that Marko is moving ahead with the trail. He found a clearing about four miles in, and will attempt to clear a path. If we do not see him by the time the first sun goes down, we are to assume that he has been successful and follow into the forest.”

“Okay,” Naeesha said. “That’s great.”

She’d hoped that he would be here, waiting with the survivors. She wished she could talk to him now. She could only imagine what he thought when he awoke to find her gone. It hurt to think of him alone, hacking his way through the jungle with that awful feeling hanging over his head.

But she would see him soon, and she would tell him everything that she’d wanted to say last night.

“Rakkan, what made your people turn back?”

“We saw the Alderoccan ships.”

“And you turned around just to come help?”

“Not just that. The commander was telling the truth. The Alderoccan forces are gathering. There are many thousands of them. I think they mean to try and exterminate all of the Halians on Alderoc.”

“The commander said that was the plan. So your people will try and come to the portal?”

Rakkan nodded.

“It seems as though the Alderoccans intend to take us down with them. My people have decided that our homeworld is safer for us, at least for the meantime.”

“Well it will be good to have you, and thanks for bailing us out back there.”

“It was my pleasure,” he said with a smile and a bow.

After that, Rakkan went to tend to the unified tribe of Halians, reassuring them, and getting them ready to move out once more. But there was no reassurance for Naeesha.

The only thing that would make her feel right again would be seeing Marko.

Marko found the clearing. He’d done a quick flyover earlier and found a nice place to set up camp just a few miles into the forest. It was easier to get to than he expected, and there would be plenty of time before the combined tribes made it. They wouldn’t even leave for another two hours.

He couldn’t stand sitting around doing nothing. Nobody from his tribe and none of Rakkan’s soldiers had seen Naeesha, which he took as a good sign. Well, as good of a sign as he could have if she was really gone. When he saw the Alderoccan attack, he feared that she’d been caught in the attack.

But the Halians were okay. His tribe was safe. His future was intact.

He decided to get to work on the trail for the next day to keep himself busy. It was the most constructive thing he could do, and getting ahead on work would let him do more to help out around camp the next day. The Halians reported that three missiles had hit their camp. No fatalities, thank Gods. But the dining hall had been damaged, and most of their kitchen would be out of commision.

Thankfully, Rakkan’s group would be able to take on the added burden of feeding the fifty or so people in his tribe for now, but repairs would still need to be made. With the way that things had been going lately, he figured that the sooner that could happen, the better.

He’d been right about the forest getting denser. Progress was slow, even though his arms had grown stronger from the days of hacking, and even though his plant-murdering technique had become exquisitely refined.

All the better. It was a shame he couldn’t shift to his combat form. It would have been better for clearing the path, and better for keeping his mind focused. The shift altered his basic brain composition in a way that shut everything out. It was just one step away from untamed animal. He retained enough control to follow basic orders, and enough intelligence to identify his enemies and maximize his capacity to destroy them.

But he knew Alderoccan military strategy. Where there was an assault wing, shock troops followed. Somewhere not too far away was a support base with hundreds, if not thousands of troops.

The Alderoccans were pushing out. They intended to chase the Halians down and wipe them off the planet. But first, the bastard would have to find them. Marko had given Jintak the order to have his people clear the trail behind him as best they could. The same thick jungle that slowed their progress would also help to conceal their movements. The sky was barely visible overhead, and anyone looking down would have an even harder time seeing anything on the forest floor.

Not to mention, the Alderoccans would have to be careful. They were out of their element, far from familiar territory. And they had seen that they were dealing with a capable enemy.

Then again, that meant that they wouldn’t make the mistake of sending a small force after them again. The next time that they attacked, it would be with everything that they had. Either the Halians would have to go on the offensive and start fighting a guerilla war, or they would have to avoid contact with the enemy all together.

This was, of course, assuming that Alderoccans wouldn’t give up on fighting fair and choose to carpet bomb them instead. They’d done it before, and now that they were cornered, he didn’t doubt that they would do it again.

If they did, there was nothing to be done about it. Their bombers could attack from well beyond the range of the soldiers’ weapons, and there would be no hiding from their ordinance.

Marko’s only hope was that they were keeping all of the big guns at the capital.

He stopped to take a deep breath and to collect his thoughts. He’d gotten carried away again, letting his mind race, letting worry consume him. Once he’d taken a few moments to meditate and clear his mind, he started back on his path, focusing on his breath and the techniques of his swing. It worked nicely.

So nicely, in fact, that he didn’t notice the gaping hole in the ground until it was too late.

Naeesha stayed towards the back of the group, her hand resting on the grip of her newly liberated plasma rifle. She kept her eyes on the treeline, and turned around frequently.

She’d been part of enough attacks against the Halians to know that there were more Alderoccan forces nearby, and that they would be looking for revenge for the aircraft and pilots that had been lost in the shattered forest. The tribe was doing a good job of dismantling the trail behind them, and they were moving fast through dense jungle, but she still couldn't shake the feeling that danger was lurking in the darkened trees.

In all likeliness, they wouldn’t attack until they’d been able to get their entire force together. Whenever a Halian group proved to be a capable fighting force the military rarely launched a second assault until they’d amassed a force large enough to crush any resistance.

But that was assuming that it would take time for them to gather their forces, that they didn’t have a standing army nearby already, or that they weren’t already lying in wait on the trail. If Naeesha had been commanding their forces, that’s what she would have done. Follow Marko’s trail and move in between him and the encampment, and set up an ambush.

Rakkan had the same thought, and had his warriors moving through the jungle at one hundred foot intervals, half a mile ahead of the civilians. She felt a little safer for it, but it didn’t mean that she was about to stop looking over her shoulder.

A wave of excitement and relief swept down the line, and she figured that the tribe had reached the campsite. It would still be a fifteen minute walk for her - the caravan was nearly a mile long - but she was overjoyed to be seeing Marko soon. Just thinking about what she would tell him brought tears to her eyes. She hoped that he would forgive her for disappearing the night before, and that he would understand why she had chosen to act alone instead of alerting the tribe to the Alderoccan threat.

When she finally arrived at the new campsite, she wasted no time in looking for Marko. He wasn’t anywhere to be found. She checked the dining hall to see if he was helping with the cooking. Checked the sleeping tent to see if he was helping them set it up. Checked the area where two musicians had started the night’s entertainment. He was nowhere.

She started to panic, and paced around frantically looking for Kiran or Rakkan to ask if anyone had seen him.

Then she saw a small crowd gathered off to the side. She saw Marko’s tall, lean frame in the center of it, and a smile took over her face. She ran over to the cluster and forced her way through to the center.

Marko looked like he’d seen a ghost. He threw his arms around her and pulled her close.

“I thought you left,” he cried.

“No,” she said. “I couldn’t have.”

“But you were gone.”

“I saw the Watcher ships come in and went out to try and talk the commander down.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want to waste any time. And what could you have done?”

Marko weighed what she’d said for a moment.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m glad you’re back.”

He embraced her again, squeezing her tight and not letting go.

“Can we find a place to sit and talk?” she asked. “There’s so much I want to tell you.”

Marko frowned.

“Actually, I’m about to head out. You’re welcome to come with me.”

“Why?” she asked.

“I found something. Something big.”

“What?”

“Come see for yourself.”

They headed down a narrow trail. Naeesha slipped under Marko’s arm and walked with him, side by side. She was surprised and disappointed when the group came to a sudden stop after less than a half hour of walking and he dropped his arm from her shoulder. They spread out, and she moved to the front of the group to see what they had come to find.

It was a gaping hole in the ground.

“A sinkhole?”

“That’s what I thought,” said Marko.

“A cave?”

“Another good guess. But no.”

“What then?”

Marko gestured towards a sloping pile of rubble that lead down into the darkness. Several of the Halians that had come with them produced military issued flashlights and a half dozen beams lit up the darkness. A heavy mist hung around the hole in the ground, creating a tangled web of light inside the blackness.

They climbed down the rubble pile and beneath the forest. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust. At first, it looked like any old cave. There were rocks scattered around on the ground, stalactites hanging from the ceiling, and calcified formations clinging to the walls. But upon closer inspection, she realized that the walls and floors and ceilings were smooth and straight.

“It’s concrete,” she said, running her hand over a patch of bare wall. “Why is there an underground room in the middle of the jungle?”

“I don’t know,” Marko said. “But it’s not a room.”

“Not a room?”

He shined his light into the darkness. The darkness swallowed it.

“It’s a tunnel.”