Transmission Lost (21 page)

Gasping for breath, Aria dug her claws in further, the soft pricks threatening to fully pierce his flesh. Realizing she might hurt him by accident, she instead snaked her hands around his back and pulled him into a raised, sitting position. She wrapped her arms tightly around him, pressing his face into her breasts, and she hooked her legs around his waist. Touching her muzzle to the top of his head, she rocked against him, feeling the pleasure build within her. Jack groaned into her soft bosom, and Aria could tell he was very close as well. She nosed his forehead, and it fell back, letting her flick her tongue down his face and into another kiss. She gazed at the lovely blue eyes of this beautiful male, this human to whom she owed her life.

“Aria...,” Jack managed to croak out. “I can't...I mean, I'm gonna...”

“Yes...,” she hissed. “Please...” Aria curled her tail around him, wrapping it about both of their bodies. She tightened her grip around his back. “Jack...”

Crying out in agonized bliss, Jack buried his face against her breasts. His hands went down to her rear, and he pulled her hard against him, thrusting up into her as hard and deep as he could manage. Aria's eyes widened, her body tensing up as she felt him spill his essence into her. She squeezed her legs about his waist, her own body losing itself to the pleasure of the moment. For what seemed like hours they clung to each other, warmth washing over the both of them, bathing them in heated passion.

When finally it ended, they slumped against one another, supporting each other in their exhausted state. Aria brushed a hand through his hair, and he rubbed his own up and down her back. As the glow faded from their minds, they sank down to the floor, entwined in each other.

And at last they slept.

******

The next morning was chilly and cold. Jack and Aria spent much of it in the warmth of the tent, though in a more clothed state than the night before. They never strayed very far from the radio, though Jack didn't expect much to come from that. The only sounds it had made since the night before had been faint noises of feedback and static from space interference. Still, he humored Aria. They kept their position for most of the morning, only leaving the tent to retrieve food from the stores in the commando ship.

While returning from the second such trip, getting provisions for lunch, Jack was greeted at the tent by the sight of Aria poking her head out of the entrance. She looked excited.

“Come!” she shouted to him. “I get a response!”

Hardly believing what she was saying, Jack dropped the load he was carrying and ran to the tent, rushing inside. Aria was already crouched next to the radio, talking animatedly into the transmitter. Jack couldn't understand a word of it, but Aria's excitement was contagious, and he watched her eagerly. Every now and then she would pause in her talking, and a voice, somewhat garbled by interference, would respond to her in the same language. After nearly ten minutes of back-and-forth conversation, Aria replaced the transmitter on the radio set and leaned back, seeming breathless.

“Well?” Jack asked. “What did they say? Are they coming?”

Aria turned to him, a mixture of joy, fear, and sadness on her face. “They coming,” she confirmed. Jack felt a pang of terror. While he was definitely ready to get off of this unknown planet, he knew that he would be going as a prisoner. “They very close. We have few minutes before they land.”

Jack swallowed. “So...This is it, then.” He looked at the floor of the tent. His mind was a haze of uncertainty. Already he wondered if he had made the right choice, but it was a little late to reconsider now. He looked back up at Aria. “What's going to happen when they land?”

“They know I have prisoner,” Aria told him. “They will land, send out squad of soldiers to get us. Then they will take us into ship.” She glanced away from him. “I sorry, but I have to handcuff you...Make you look like prisoner...”

“You're sure they won't just kill me?”

Aria's eyes blazed, a fierce light coming into them. “I not let them do that. You not worry. I keep you safe until they separate us.”

******

Twenty or so minutes later they both were out of the tent, on the outskirts of the commando camp near the wreck of the
Cha'la'fa
. Aria stood next to Jack, who was on his knees in the grass. His hands were secured behind his back with a pair of handcuffs from the commandos. Aria was gazing into the sky, waiting for her peoples' ship to arrive.

“There,” she finally said, pointing up into the sky.

Jack looked up, the sun in his eyes. He squinted, unable to see what her sharper eyes were seeing. His ears perceived it before his eyes did. A low rumbling sound reverberated through the air, and Jack recognized it instantly as the sound of a powerful ship engine. About a minute later he saw a black speck in the sky, which grew larger every second. Before long it resolved itself in a shape which was recognizable as a ship, and one which looked like a medium-sized transport to Jack.

The ship slowly descended, an angular, jagged-shaped craft not unlike what Aria's ship had once been. The vessel cast a shadow across the pair of them, and Jack felt his heart racing fast enough that he thought he might pass out. They both watched as it settled down to the ground a short distance away, and the ground beneath them shook from the weight of the transport. The sound of the engines quieted somewhat, though they didn't die completely.

Aria put a hand on Jack's shoulder, squeezing gently. He looked up at her, then looked back to the ship. After several minutes of suspense, a hatch finally opened in the side. A ramp extended out from it, lowering to the ground.

Out of the ship emerged two tall Ailians, both black-furred and both appearing to be male. They were wearing light armor and carrying weapons identical to Aria's. They seemed to be ground soldiers rather than pilots. Spotting Aria standing next to Jack, they walked down the ramp and advanced towards them, their heads turning this way and that as if on the lookout for a trap. Behind them, two more Ailians came, one white-furred female with black stripes and a male with dusky blue fur. Those two remained at the bottom of the ramp.

“Courage,” Aria whispered, barely loud enough for Jack to hear. He wasn't sure if she was speaking to him or to herself. She raised her hand in greeting to the rescue party.
“Ha'shai. Kela se na aria me'lia cha.”
She waved a hand towards Jack.
“La'a me kara na'fa'le.”

The two black Ailians eyed her impassively, then looked to Jack. He saw the same sort of animosity in their eyes that he'd seen in Aria's when he'd first met her. One of them moved towards him, keeping his rifle trained on Jack. He tensed up as the Ailian grabbed him underneath the arm and hauled him to his feet. Aria bit her lip, but kept her silence. One of the males said something to her in Ailian, and then started walking back to the ship. Aria followed him. The other male starting pushing Jack, roughly, in the same direction.

When they got to the bottom of the ramp, the male and female standing there met Aria while the two black-furred males stayed behind with Jack. The female exchanged a few words with Aria, smiling slightly, then she gestured up the ramp. Aria looked back to Jack, a helpless look in her eyes, and then she turned and began to walk up into the ship.

Jack felt breathless. For weeks now he'd been with Aria nonstop, and now they were about to be separated. She was almost up into the ship now, and he might never see her again. The two males with Jack began patting him down, searching him in preparation for taking him into the ship, he assumed. Desperate, Jack opened his mouth.

“Aria, wait!”

He saw her back stiffen, and then she slowly turned around, near the top of the ramp. She looked down at him, surprise on her face. The two Ailians who had been accompanying her walked a few paces ahead, then stopped as well when they realized Aria wasn't moving. They turned as well, puzzled.

Jack swallowed. His heart was pounding. “Aria, I need to tell you something,” he said. He felt short of breath. “If I don't say it now, I might never be able to.”

Aria's tail twitched, and she began to tremble slightly. “No, Jack...,” she whimpered, suddenly fearful. She took a step down the ramp, shaking her head from side to side. “Do not...You can't...” The female with white fur came to her side, placing a hand on her arm.

“I'm sorry, Aria,” Jack said. He lowered his eyes to the ground. “I wish I could change it, but I can't.” He raised his gaze again, looking into her eyes. “I love you.”

Clapping a hand to her mouth, Aria squeezed her eyes shut. She stood there for long moments, not moving, just standing stock still on the ship's ramp. The other female's hand tightened on her arm. She said something insistent to Aria, urging her to continue back up the ramp. Then Aria suddenly shrugged the female's hand off of her arm and ran down towards Jack. One of the males searching him turned to her, trying to block her path, but she hurled him out of the way and he fell to the ground. Aria wrapped her arms around Jack tightly.

Before he knew it her lips were pressed against his, and they kissed passionately. There were shouts of surprise and confusion around them, but neither of them paid them any mind. Jack felt wetness on his face, hot tears flowing from Aria's eyes and dripping onto his cheek. She broke the kiss, burying her face against his neck, her shoulders shaking as she cried.

“Se le ch'aa ara,”
she sobbed. “My dear heart...”

Hands grabbed Aria then, dragging her away from Jack. The female and male who had been with her gripped her with force, hauling her towards the ship's ramp. She stared over her shoulder at Jack as they forced her up into the ship. He struggled, trying to get away from the two Ailians with him to get to her, but they were too strong for him.

Before she disappeared into the ship, she opened her mouth to speak once more. “No regret...,” Aria said, just loud enough for him to hear.

Then one of the Ailian soldiers struck Jack on the back of the neck, and his vision faded into black.

Act Two

Refugees

- 1 -

Space is nothing like it is in films. In all of the great space epics told in human history, space is depicted as this dynamic environment, full of marvelous things and extravagant beauty. Perilous dangers lurk there, and myriad planets full of verdant life and adventures to be had.

In reality, space is vast, dark, and empty. Almost nothing survives in the vacuum of space apart from a few strange lifeforms that science has only begun to start to understand. While hundreds of thousands, even millions, of planets exist in the universe, only a scant handful of these are capable of life. Of those that are capable of supporting living beings, survival is a shaky venture. And of that tiny handful, even a smaller number has ever produced intelligent life. So, to reiterate, space is a very empty place, indeed.

Even more than that, space is quiet. Sound does not carry through a vacuum, after all. For someone insane enough to brave it without the benefit of a protective suit, their ears would register absolute silence. For those who travel the cosmos in vessels, the only sounds to be heard are the hum of engines, the chirping of electronic signals, and if one is very lucky the conversations of shipmates.

******

Lieutenant Aria Me'lia was not one of the lucky ones. For her, confined to her quarters on the Ailian ship she was traveling in, the silence was deafening. Every now and then, she would hear a crew member walk by her door, speaking in the language which she had not heard anyone save for herself speak for nearly three weeks. She was surprised to find how odd it sounded to her ears. She had been speaking mostly the human language since her own ship had crashed on an uncharted world. For of course Aria was not a human at all. She was an Ailian, a species of tiger-like humanoids that inhabited a large segment of the known universe in an empire called the Ascendancy. Her species was at war with humanity, in fact, in a decade-long conflict that spanned over thousands of star systems and had resulted in unfathomable casualties. A war which, for the majority of it, her people had been winning.

Aria longed to talk with one of her people, even if just for a few minutes. Confined as she was, though, she wasn't holding out hope for that.

Not that her current situation was without comforts, of course. Even with her predicament being the way it was, her status as an officer still afforded her a certain level of respect. Upon being brought on board, she had been taken to an empty set of officer's quarters and shut inside. The room was as spacious as could be spared on a starship, and contained a few items of furniture including a bed, a computer terminal, and a chair. A small door off to one side led to a reasonably-sized bathroom. More than most prisoners would receive, but again, Aria received certain courtesies due to her rank and family status.

For the past two days, Aria had mostly remained on the bed, reflecting silently on her present situation. She knew she was facing charges of treason. Since this was during a time of war, she could face summary execution at any time. Since she still lived, however, she was assuming that she was being transported somewhere to stand trial. What the destination was, and how long it would take to get there, she had no idea.

Periodically, her thoughts turned to agonizing worry. In the time that Aria had spent stranded on an alien planet, she had not been alone. The whole reason that Aria had wound up there had been tied to her previous duties in the Ascendancy. Aria had been assigned as a combat patrol pilot, monitoring a section of Ailian territory near suspected human smuggling lanes. Her routine patrol had been interrupted one day when she'd encountered a human transport ship. After a brief and vicious battle, the human vessel had fled and Aria had followed it blindly into hyperspace. Both ships had emerged near an uncharted world, and damage forced them both to make a crash landing on that same planet. There Aria had met the human pilot, a man named Jack Squier. Knowing that survival meant cooperation, they had set aside the conflict pitting their peoples against each other, and had worked together to get off the planet. Somewhere along the way, the pair had grown very close, had begun to trust each other, and formed a bond.

The bond had been shattered upon their being retrieved by an Ailian military ship. Now they were separated, though surely they were both still on the same ship. Aria felt an almost crippling need to see him. She would have fought to get to where he was, but she knew it would do little good. Most likely it would result in the both of them being killed, and Aria also did not want to fight her own people. But she still wondered what he was doing right now...

******

Jack groaned, waking up for what felt like the third time in as many hours. He looked around the meager cell that he was being kept in. When the Ailian soldiers had rescued him and Aria from the planet they'd been stranded on, Jack had been knocked unconscious before being brought aboard the ship. When he'd finally come around, he'd had quite a headache. The past few days, the number of which he couldn't be sure of, had been filled with numerous interrogations. The fact that none of the Ailians on board this ship seemed to speak English as well as Aria did was little deterrent to his “rescuers”, even though Jack knew little that might be of value to them. To top it off, they seemed to be subjecting him to some of the usual passive wearing-down techniques. His cell was as bare bones as could be, with nothing in it except for a metal slab for a bed and a small alcove with a rudimentary toilet that, being apparently designed with Ailian prisoners in mind, was too big for him to use without difficulty. The room was perpetually flooded with bright light, making it nearly impossible to get any sleep, and this was compounded by a low, dull humming noise that was piped into the cell by a speaker hidden somewhere.

About the only good thing was that Jack seemed to have been given some medical care while he'd been unconscious. The wound he'd received from a tumble over a waterfall had been almost completely healed, and the gunshot wound he'd been given by a covert team of human commandos was also taken care of. Aria had been rather skillful as a field medic, but Jack was glad to have been tended to by someone with a little more talent for the art of medicine.

Jack had to admit to himself that he hadn't been treated badly, exactly. While it was true that he wasn't being taken care of like a passenger, he also wasn't being tortured, which was something he'd come to expect from everything he'd heard about Ailians. All he'd known about them before meeting Aria was that they were little more than terrorists, with an aim only to exterminate humanity. Slowly, over the course of getting to know Aria and spending time with her, he'd come to realize that simply wasn't true. Ailians were different from humans, yes, but it was a matter of different cultures and not some black-and-white concept of good versus evil.

Aria,
Jack thought to himself. Despite everything that was going on, he managed a little smile when he thought about her. He remembered the very last thing he'd said to her, his impulsive declaration of love. An Ailian was probably the very last person he would have imagined himself falling in love with, but it had happened. Though they were of different species, Jack found her to be one of the most beautiful women he had ever met.

Jack sighed, swinging his legs off of the uncomfortable metal bed and sitting up, rubbing his eyes tiredly. Of course, he'd probably never meet her again, now. For all he knew, she was already dead. If Aria had been right during their many conversations down on the alien planet, their relationship, however brief it had been, meant she was facing some serious charges, the punishment for which would likely be execution. Not to mention what might happen to him whenever this ship got where it was going.

His eyes snapped wide as the door to the cell slid open. Jack looked toward it, a jolt of fear running through him. So far, the door had only opened when he was brought a meal, or more often when he was going to be hauled out for an interrogation session.

This time, however, seemed to be different. Striding into the cell was an Ailian he hadn't seen before. This one was a female, and she was not clad in the bulky armor that the soldiers Jack had dealt with before had been wearing, nor in a form-fitting flight suit of the type that Aria had been clad in. She was wearing flowing robes of a smooth, white material that hung loosely about her. She had dusky blue fur striped with gold, an unusual, regal color combination. Her loose, flowing style of clothing made it tough for Jack to gauge her body type, but she didn't seem like a soldier. She seemed to be somewhat on the short side for an Ailian, and he thought she looked of a much slighter build than Aria.

The Ailian looked over her shoulder, jerking her head a little. A guard, black-furred and clad in armor, stepped into the cell beside her. Jack felt apprehensive again. Maybe he was about to interrogated after all. The female looked at him, then waved a hand.

“Cha...,”
she said, apparently speaking to the guard. He walked over to Jack, grabbing him roughly by the shoulder and jerking him to his feet. Jack was dragged away from the metal slab bed and pushed harshly up against the wall. When the guard released his shoulder, the human slid to the floor, sitting there.

The blue-furred female strode into the cell, her long tail waving slowly behind her as she walked. Jack watched her, still confused as to what was going on. She sat down on the bed where he'd been moments ago, facing him. Crossing her arms, she stared him down for a few long moments. Her eyes were a deep, blood red, dark enough that it was hard to discern any pupils in them.

“Ah le re'aki,”
she said, looking at the guard. He looked back at her, shaking his head. The female scowled, narrowing her eyes and glaring at the guard. She repeated her order.
“Ah. Le. Re'aki.”
The way she said it the second time sounded very threatening. The guard looked down at Jack, then back at her. Reluctantly, he slowly walked out of the cell. The door slid shut behind him. She watched the door a moment longer, then looked at Jack. Her scowl vanished from her face, replaced by a neutral expression.

“Well, I apologize for the guard's treatment of you just now. He is merely dedicated to his work.”

Jack nearly fell over in shock. He hadn't been expecting that at all. Not the words, though those were surprising enough as it was, but the way in which she'd said them. The female was speaking perfect, educated-sounding English, though with the same rolling, clipped accent that Aria spoke it in. Considering how weak the English skills of all the other Ailians on this ship seemed to be, Jack had assumed none of them cared to learn much of it. Clearly, he'd been mistaken.

“I...I don't...”

“Not expecting one of us to speak your language so well?” the Ailian asked. There was the barest hint of a smile. “That is to be expected, I suppose. So few humans understand any of our language, after all. Why should you assume any of us would understand yours?”

“Aria speaks English,” Jack said, finding his voice. “She told me you force human prisoners to teach it to you. But I guess not everyone bothers to learn.”

The Ailian laughed lightly. “That is true enough. Many in the military seem to think that the only thing we need to understand about humans is how to kill them. However, many others believe that understanding one's enemy is important as well.” She brushed a hand down her robes, smoothing a wrinkle out of them. “Lieutenant Me'lia seems to be one of the second school of thought.”

“I see...,” Jack said, though he wasn't sure he understood.

“Now, because of the...difficulty that our soldiers have had in getting information from you, and considering my skills with your language, I have been asked to speak with you. I trust that will not be a problem?”

Jack sat up straight against the wall, suddenly on his guard. “So this is an interrogation after all.”

“Yes. It is.” The Ailian uncrossed her arms, laying them in her lap. “You may find it less unpleasant than the ones you have been through previously, provided you cooperate, of course.”

With an uncanny feeling of déjà vu, Jack stood up from where he was sitting. He schooled his face into an impassive expression. “Why should I?”

“There is a charming human expression that I am rather fond of...How does it go again?” The Ailian paused for a moment, thinking. “Ah, yes...I remember now. 'You scratch my back, and I will scratch yours.' If you cooperate with me now, we shall turn off the lights and the speakers in your cell. You will be allowed to get some rest. That is fair enough, yes?”

Suspicious, Jack crossed his arms behind his head. “And why should I believe you?”

“What have you to lose?”

Taken aback by her response, Jack blinked. She had a point. Jack had no control over what happened to him in his current situation. He was sleep-deprived, fed less than what he was used to, and kept in solitary confinement. Now one of his captors was offering him a carrot in exchange for a little cooperation.

“Well...I suppose,” Jack said. “But if we're going to be talking like this, can I know your name?”

“Hm...” The Ailian seemed to consider his question for a few minutes, and then she nodded. “Very well. You may call me Li'ren.” She gathered her tail in her lap, crossing one leg over the other.

“...Li'ren...?” Jack prompted her.

“Li'ren will suffice for now. Let us not forget I am the one asking the questions, yes?” Li'ren brushed a hand over the top of her head, smoothing the fur between her short, pointed ears. “And speaking of questions, let us begin, shall we?”