by A. G. Wilde
The sand was already growing warm under her feet, even though the suns hadn’t risen fully yet. Suns.
Two suns.
If that wasn’t indication enough that she was far away from Earth then she didn’t know what was.
As they walked, Athena had her eyes fixed on his back. His brown, thick mane flowed down his shoulders, covering his neck and she wondered what other surprises he had hiding behind there.
“Why did you kill it?” She blurted.
Xul didn’t answer but she was positive he heard her.
“Don’t you think I deserve to know?”
“No,” he answered, and Athena felt her brows dive deep.
“Wouldn’t you want to know why one of your enemies kills your other enemy?”
That caused him to stop and she almost bumped into his back.
He turned on her then, his eyes unreadable.
“I am not your enemy.”
Athena blinked a few times. He sounded genuine and to be honest, he really hadn’t done anything to make her feel like he was out to harm her. He’d cut a piece of his clothes to bandage her head for Pete’s sake.
Still…
Then the thought occurred to her that he might have killed the High Tasqal to save her from being its slave. Ridiculous as it sounded, even to her, what other explanation was there?
“You killed him to save me?”
Xul’s eyebrows rose and a hint of a smile crossed over his lips. “No,” he said and turned to continue walking.
Without thinking about it, Athena grabbed onto his arm. His silky suede skin felt warm to the touch and they both looked down at her pale skin against his brown fur.
Pulling her hand away quickly, Athena hurriedly continued, “Why did you kill him?”
Xul narrowed his eyes and regarded her for a few seconds. “Of all the humans, you are the strangest one,” he murmured.
She couldn’t help but feel self-conscious about that. What did he mean by all the humans? What was so different between her and the others?
Hands akimbo, she frowned up at him. He kept calling her strange, yet he was the strange one.
“What makes me so different?”
“All the others have colorful manes. You do not.”
If she remembered clearly, Song’s hair was black. The thought of the other women made her wonder how they were getting on up there on that big ship. Would she even ever see them again?
Frowning up at Xul, she answered him. “One of them had black hair. That’s not colorful.”
She didn’t even know why they were having this conversation. Surely, there were more important things to discuss like, let’s say, where the hell he was going with such purpose.
“Yes, but she was small. You are all small. But she was noticeably so.” He narrowed his eyes and reached forward to grasp her chin.
Athena found she could not move away, or maybe it was her mind that remained transfixed on him.
“Your features are…bland. No identifying horns. Is this how all humans look?”
In one movement, Athena slapped away his hand and a surprised look crossed over his features.
“That’s not answering my question. You killed a man…a thing. You killed a thing. Right in front of me. You just popped out a knife from God knows where and lodged it in its throat.” A shudder ran through her at the thought. The memory was fresh and she reckoned it would have been even more jarring if she’d seen something like that happen on Earth.
Thank God the aliens all looked like elements of her imagination. She could disassociate from it much more easily because of that.
“If you must know, I will tell you, human,” Xul answered.
Finally, some progress.
She swore, he was as stubborn as a bull.
The irony wasn’t lost on her but at least they were getting somewhere. Now, to get him to stop referring to her as ‘human’ every few minutes. It was demeaning.
“Athena,” she said. “My name is Athena.”
10
Xul lifted the spear from the sand and began walking again.
“Ulruq,” he glanced behind him to see if she was following, “the High Tasqal that bought you, was the leader of an underground ring dealing in illegal slaves, bought and sold for sex and breeding.
“The Tasqal species is dying out. Their species is diseased. Their flesh is covered in boils that start developing at the age of sexual readiness,” he said, pausing to glance behind him again.
“You mean puberty?”
“We do not have that word in my tongue,” Xul answered.
“It’s puberty. Sexual readiness just makes it sound so, I don’t know, dirty.”
Xul raised an eyebrow. “Humans think sexual readiness is filth?”
“Yes. I mean, no,” Athena shook her head to clear her thoughts. “Listen, let’s not argue over semantics at the moment. Continue your story.”
Xul frowned but continued. “The Tasqals are dying, so they have been moving from planet to planet spreading their diseased seed.”
“Ugh,” Athena made a face. “You really have a way of describing things.”
Xul frowned again as if he did not understand what she meant.
“Go on, nevermind me.” Athena motioned to him before pointing her gaze to the footprints he was leaving in the sand. She was stepping directly in the ones he made and his feet were gigantic compared to hers.
She’d noticed earlier that his feet were also a lot more suited to walking barefooted than hers were. His seemed to have hardened skin on the sole that was bound to come in handy later. Her feet, on the other hand, were already starting to burn up from the hot sand.
“The boils they carry are contagious. Their young that grows within the other species contaminates. Entire worlds have died because of their scourge.” She could hear that the last words came out through gritted teeth and she wondered if his world was one of the ones destroyed. But he didn’t give her a chance to ask, as he continued.
“They do not care who they mate with. Wives. Mothers.” He paused. “Female young.”
Athena’s eyes widened.
Surely, he could not mean…
“Are you referring to female children?” When Xul didn’t answer she knew she was right.
“They are scum.” He finally said. “My alliance sent me undercover to take out the leader. It was the first phase of our operation.”
“Wait, what operation? You’re a soldier?”
“No,” he said before turning to glance at her. “I am a rebel.”
It was Athena’s turn to raise an eyebrow.
Well, well, well. Maybe she had walked into the Star Wars universe after all.
* * *
They’d been walking for what felt like hours now, their footprints spread a long line marking their path behind them.
The wreckage from the ship was now just a little dot on the horizon and the twin suns were moving high in the sky.
Athena staggered behind. Her throat was burning, her head was throbbing, and it felt like the skin was stripping off her feet.
Xul was a few steps in front of her and, as the minutes ticked by, the gap between them grew larger and larger.
“Hey,” she called out to him, noting that her voice sounded much weaker than before.
Xul paused and turned to look at her.
“Mind telling me where you’re going? Is there even anything in this wilderness?” She was panting by the time she caught up with him.
“We are heading to the Muk outpost. It is five more days’ travel.”
Five more days? She couldn’t continue like this for five more days.
“I can’t walk like this for five more days,” she breathed.
Xul seemed to take a minute to look at her thoughtfully.
“I was right. Your presence will be a problem,” he finally said.
Athena frowned. She didn’t have a lot of energy but she had enough to glare at him.
“Excuse me, but I did
n’t ask to be kidnapped,” she snapped. “Twice at that. Why did you not abort your plan then if you had already figured I would be such a bother?”
Xul crossed his arms over his chest and the action only made him seem bigger.
“A chance to get so close to Ulruq doesn’t come twice. I had to take the opportunity.”
Athena huffed. “And what now? Don’t you think they are going to come after us?”
“No,” he said with such certainty, Athena’s frown got deeper. “Muk is a harsh planet.”
Athena rolled her eyes, pointing behind her at the trail of footprints they’d left from the ship right to the spot they were standing.
“Um, I know you say that but you still haven’t made an effort to hide our location. If this Ulruq was so important, they are bound to come after him and they have a trail leading right to us.”
Xul made to speak but Athena held up a hand, stopping him. “Not to mention, I really don’t think I can continue much further like this.”
Xul’s green gaze washed over her and again she became very aware that she was wearing only the soft, billowy wool.
“A sandstorm is coming soon. We must take shelter and rest,” he said.
Turning to look around them, she wondered if he was seeing something she wasn’t.
“Take shelter?” She gestured around them. “Where?”
Walking a few steps away from her, Xul approached what looked like a small sand dune. She called it small but it was as tall as he was and twice as wide—which meant it was much bigger than she was.
Raising his spear in the air, he punctured the sand in one movement, driving the spear deep.
Athena was about to ask him if he had gone mad when the sand began to shake. Xul pulled out his spear and raised it again, poised to strike.
As the sand shook, something reared from beneath it with a loud sound like tree bark stretching.
“Stand back!” Xul shouted.
She didn’t need to hear twice, she was already stumbling backward.
Something big came up through the sand and between the dust and chaos, Athena could hardly see Xul.
One moment, she saw that he was repeatedly stabbing his spear into the thing’s stalk. The other moment, a loud sound of tree bark crashing to the ground reached her ears.
Coughing on the disturbed sand that made it hard for her to breathe, she waited for the sand to settle.
When she was finally able to see the scene in front of her, her eyes widened in their sockets.
“What the actual hell?”
What she saw in front of her looked like a giant Venus flytrap mated with a woolly mammoth. It had a long stalk that extended several meters into the air. The Venus flytrap part was covered in thick dark strands of hair on the outside and there were spiky thorns along the edges.
Xul speared it again and the thing gave one last twitch.
“What the hell is that?”
Xul glanced up at her before proceeding to slice the flytrap section off the stalk.
“Shelter,” he said.
Ooookay then. Athena glanced around her, counting the number of dunes that she saw in their proximity.
“Do these um,” she pointed to the dunes before wrapping her arms around herself, “do these all have those things in them?”
Even from where she stood she could see the slight amusement on his face. She was happy he was having such a fun time. Resisting the urge to scowl at him, she waited for his answer.
“Yes,” he said, “every lump is a resting zehmip.”
Athena scowled then. “Hey buddy,” she stalked over to him, carefully stepping over the long decapitated stalk of the zehmip, “mind letting me know something like that sooner? What if I had disturbed one?”
“Then I would have killed it,” Xul replied but his matter-of-fact tone only made her want to slap him.
Hauling the head to an area away from the other dunes, Xul planted the thorny bits deep into the sand to make a tent-like shape. As he returned to her position, he chopped the stalk into two sections, the larger of which he split again.
When he hauled the two pieces back to the ‘tent,’ he sliced them into thin strips and stuck them into the sand to make what looked like makeshift doors or, rather, barriers.
Athena watched him work, feeling what was left of her energy draining by the second.
The wind was picking up and it did seem like a storm was heading their way.
The only thing that was keeping her standing was the fact that there would potentially be someplace better to rest than in the scorching sun. The shade of the tent looked inviting.
Using his spear to slice the remaining section into small bits, Xul motioned to the tent.
“You should enter. The storm will be sudden and harsh,” he said.
Moving the barrier, Xul allowed her to enter the tent.
Athena paused for only a second. Climbing in under what was essentially the mouth of the zehmip felt dangerous but not as much as it would have felt like if the thing was still alive.
Gulping as she settled on the warm sand underneath, she breathed out a sigh. The shade was a godsend. Her feet were aching and her throat was dry.
She needed to find water soon. And food. She needed to find food.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten. That would have been on Earth, probably after she’d fed her dog, Magnet.
As her mind ran on the dog again, she felt a sense of loss and longing.
Would she ever see him again?
Would she ever see Earth again?
Hiding the worry behind her eyes, she watched as Xul climbed in under the tent.
With his big frame under the zehmip, the space suddenly felt too small.
“So I guess we’re sharing,” Athena murmured. Not that she minded. She was certainly thankful for all he’d done so far.
Killing her captor.
Taking her on a wild trek through a barren land with sneaky giant man-eating plants.
You know. The usual things that happened when you’ve just met someone.
“We sleep now. Travel at night,” Xul said as he crawled in and settled beside her.
Athena glanced at their shoulders barely touching before moving her eyes swiftly to his face.
He didn’t seem to mind.
Damn.
She’d touched an alien.
Many times now.
The thought was…mind-blowing.
“Wouldn’t it be more dangerous to travel at night?”
He glanced at her, an eyebrow raised. “Your planet has not discovered much of the universe as yet, I suppose,” he mused.
Athena narrowed her eyes. Somehow, she felt the need to defend Earth but what should she say?
He was right.
To most people on Earth, people like him only existed in movies.
“The creatures of Muk are alive in the night. The zehmips raise their heads and feast on anything unlucky to get too close and the sand cats hunt for food for their young.”
He must have taken her shocked silence for her wanting him to continue because he went on. “The daytime is the only time the land is not teeming with life. Only sandstorms and sand twists,” he said.
“Sand twists?” Athena frowned, trying to imagine what that looked like.
“A column of twisting air that goes high in the air,” Xul frowned as if she should know what a sand twist was.
“Ohh, you mean like a tornado? Wait, there are tornados here too?” Athena groaned.
“If that is what you call them in your language,” he said.
“Is there no place in outer space that is safe?” Athena groaned again. “It’s literally been hell since I’ve gotten here. Not exactly a tourist brochure, is it?”
A low rumble sounded in Xul’s throat and a glance told her he was amused again.
Rolling her eyes, she lay down and turned her back to him.
“Sleep,” he said. “We walk when night falls.”
Well, judging from when she’d last looked up into the sky, it must be close to noon if this planet moved around its suns at a similar speed to Earth.
“What happens after we get to your outpost?” Athena rubbed her nose as she spoke. The zehmip had a funny scent, almost like coal.
“I will send the signal for a pickup,” Xul murmured, obviously more focused on whatever he was doing that she could not see.
“And what about me? Where do I fit into this grand plan of yours?”
“That’s the problem,” Xul said. “You weren’t a part of the plan.”
11
That was exactly what a girl wanted to hear when she was literally in the middle of God knows where with no idea how to get home.
Spinning around to face him, Athena glared up at his large form.
“And where exactly is this pickup going to take you?”
“Back to where we started. The Isclit’s ship.”
“Oh, no no no. Why are you heading back there?! Surely, you want to get far away. You just killed one of their leaders!”
“The rest of the Restitution will be attacking other similar ships soon. It is my duty to fight.”
Athena took a moment to digest that news.
“So, there will be a combined war effort in a few days, and you want to head towards it, not away from it.”
Xul glanced at her over his shoulder, his green-eyed gaze catching hers and holding it there.
“It is my duty,” he said.
Athena released a breath and turned her back again.
But the more she thought about it, the more the idea of going back to the Isclit ship made sense. If they did, maybe she could help the other women escape. She wondered what they were going through. She wouldn’t say she was having it relatively easy but she imagined that back on the ship it was much worse.
“What happens after the war?” She was so tired now, she barely had the energy to put any strength in her voice and her words came out in a soft whisper.
“Then the Restitution will regroup.”
“And what about us? What happens to all the slaves and animals that were abducted?”
“You can go to the interplanetary hub and send a message to your home planet for pickup.”