by Sonia Nova
Rachel cursed Adrian probably for the thousandth time. She replayed her words to him in her mind. Had they been bad enough to get her fired from her job as an intern, rather than earning her the promotion she so richly deserved?
“You know, Adrian, it’s bad enough I’m missing out on spending Christmas with my family as it is. I shouldn’t be called in for something as trivial as this. What are they even paying you for?”
He had shoved his owl-glasses further up his nose and glared. “Now see, that’s just the sort of attitude that’s kept you from moving up from intern to Communicator,” he’d pointed out. “I know how much you want to be the one observing the battlefield and directing the Union troops, but that’s never going to happen if you can’t learn to be a team player, all right? Maybe that’s something for you to think about while you are home alone tonight.”
And of course, after that she’d left, annoyed that she had only been in the building a short time after the grueling, half-hour drive to get there. She’d pulled all of her warm clothes on again and stomped right back outside into the bitter cold.
Right now, she was wrapped up like a caterpillar in its cocoon in an effort to stay warm in the blistering cold. She had donned two sweaters, a thick jacket, jeans with a thick pair of winter pants over the top, a pair of knee-high socks, a scarf, a hat with ear flaps, and the thickest mittens she could find. Alaskan winters were not very forgiving when it came to temperatures, and she hadn’t wanted to take any chances.
Rachel shook her head again when her thoughts diverted back to the weather. Snow was falling with a fury, coating the landscape with endless layers of white. She gripped the plush-covered steering wheel tighter and squinted before herself to see the road.
Seriously, she couldn’t remember why she had ever accepted this job. After growing up in California, she just hadn’t realized exactly how cold temperatures below freezing felt like. And if she’d considered the fact that Alaskan winters lasted over half the year, no amount of money would have tempted her to sign on. Getting this cold just to handle somebody else’s light work wasn’t worth it.
She hadn’t gone to school for four years, learning all about things like intergalactic trade and diplomatic relations with aliens just so she could turn on and off the computer for somebody who was clearly lacking in the intellectual department.
Rachel sighed heavily. She hated her job, and she hated Alaska. But most of all, she hated the fact that her contract ensured that she wasn’t going anywhere else for quite some time. She consoled herself with the fact that once she’d completed her internship, at least this whole fiasco was going to look really good on her resume.
The truth was, she knew exactly what had prompted her to take her post.
When Earth had joined the Intergalactic Union, the membership had brought the planet a lot of good – trade flourished, along with intergalactic travel – but the connection had brought plenty of trouble with it too.
Some of the people who came to Earth these days had their own agendas, more often illegal than not, and that spelled danger for everyone who hoped to stay on the right side of the law.
Especially with the recent discovery of human women being compatible with several alien species in the universe and able to carry their offspring… Well, Earth was at war. At war with every lowlife pirate, outlaw, and other degenerate out there who believed themselves to be above the Union laws and wanted to take advantage of the discovery.
Rachel had studied hard to become top of her class because she didn’t want them to succeed. She wanted to help in the fight to stop them if she could. And this crappy job was just the first stepping stone on her way to doing so.
If she just didn’t freeze to death before that happened.
A deep breath escaped her lips as she took a turn off the main road toward her house, leaving a frosty cloud in its wake. As a child, she’d actually been foolish enough to long for a white winter, with snow raining down onto her head and shoulders like powdered sugar. She had wished she and her siblings could build a snowman – or maybe even an entire castle – from the stuff.
But now, at the age of twenty-two, she understood that all the storybooks, cartoons, and newsreels had failed to drive home one important truth. Alaskan snow, in the dead of winter, was much too cold to have fun with. There would be no skiing, no sledding, and no snow creatures for her, just an endless chill in her bones.
Still, she could sit by her fire and gaze out the window at the glistening snow, and that prospect at least was a little bit cheering. She’d even gone to the store and bought a fake tree just so her living room would look festive, since Barrow certainly didn’t have any trees of its own. It was nothing but a barren tundra, currently blanketed in cold. A far cry from the daydreams of her youth.
Magical? She used to think so, but now she saw snow as nothing more than a nuisance. Especially when it fell with such fury, making the road so difficult to see that she was forced to lean forward in her seat and stare, her high beams barely piercing the onslaught and making her worried about her chances of making it home at all.
Only the idea of freezing to death inside her SUV was even less appealing than any other thoughts she’d been having up until now, so she continued on, picking her way carefully over the road.
The windshield wipers flipped back and forth on overdrive, but it hardly helped. A storm was on its way, according to the weather forecast, with an expected ten feet of snowfall over night. Rachel could imagine the horror she’d encounter in the morning, once the nightmarish event had passed. All she could see in the back of her mind was the huge mountain of snow she’d be forced to shovel off of her driveway.
“What I wouldn’t give to be in sunny San Diego,” she complained, throwing caution to the wind and stepping on the gas. She wanted to get home before the storm got any worse.
What was her family doing right now? Had her siblings made their way home? Had their mother already baked her beloved peppermint cookies? Was the tree up? Were the stockings hung?
Her thoughts came to a sudden halt when a dark shadow caught her eye. Her tires screeched in protest as her foot slammed down on the brakes, but the SUV continued to slide forward toward the large mass in the middle of the road.
“Shit!” she screamed, her heart pounding as her hands clamped down into a death grip on the steering wheel. With only inches to spare, the vehicle finally came to a stop just shy of hitting – well, whatever the thing was. She rubbed at her neck, pretty sure she’d just given herself a whiplash.
“That was close,” she said, sighing with relief. She squinted out the windshield at the object, which at first had seemed to be moving from a distance, but now stood before her, tall and immovable.
Was it a moose? No way, it was much too big for that. Unless it was a frozen polar bear, it couldn’t be an animal at all.
Rachel got out of the car to check the thing out. As she reached out to brush aside the snow, she realized with shock that the object was made of metal. Her first thought was that it must be a piece of some satellite or telescope from space that had finally come to ground, but as she continued to brush at the snow, she realized it was neither.
It was a spaceship.
Her eyes widened in disbelief as she started to search for the cockpit. Was someone still inside? And what was a spaceship doing in the middle of a road in Alaska anyway? Her searching hands finally discovered a window, and she peered inside the ship. She could easily see a dark figure lying next to the controls, and it wasn’t moving.
Crap…
Quickly pulling on what she hoped was a latch of some kind, she yanked open the hatch. The lone occupant still wore a black helmet and spacesuit, and wasn’t moving. Rachel couldn’t see any visible injuries on the body, but that didn’t mean the person wasn’t hurt.
“Hello?” she called out, nudging the pilot with her hand.
No movement.
Her heart began to pound wildly as she thought back to her college classes,
trying to think of what to do. She didn’t think any of them had really prepared her for a situation like this.
She reached for the black helmet and carefully pulled it off, dropping it onto the snowy ground. The face behind it was male, and at first glance, she almost thought the guy was human. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting – blue scales, strange horny ridges? But no, this guy had two eyes, one nose, and pair of thin, slightly parted lips. His chin was sharp and his jawline was pronounced. His hair was long and blond, and fell well below his shoulders.
Actually, he seemed quite beautiful. As odd as that was to say about a male. Yet, there was simply no other way to describe him. His features were, for lack of a better word, perfect.
Too perfect.
The more she gazed at the man, the less human he seemed. What at first had seemed like tanned skin was actually golden, and seemed to emanate with a slight glow from within. His lips were tinted blue, and Rachel realized with concern that the shade might actually be due to the cold weather.
“Please, don’t be dead,” she whispered, giving him yet another little shake.
Thankfully, as if reacting to her words, this time the man began to stir. His eyes fluttered, and he sucked in a deep breath, obviously gasping for air. Rachel moved back quickly, but when he didn’t do anything but continue to breathe, his chest falling and rising steadily, she moved closer again. She gave him another nudge, hoping he might wake up at last.
He didn’t.
“Well, at least you’re not dead,” she muttered, frowning. “That’s a good thing.”
Rachel whipped out her cell phone and looked up the number for her work. She tried to call the Observatory, but with the wind and snow whirling around her, no matter how high she lifted up her phone, she couldn’t get a signal. Wasn’t that just great…
With a sinking feeling in her gut, she looked around the ship. Electrical wires inside the cockpit had been severed, and some of the metal on the sides of the ship had been torn away. Bright blue sparks sizzled here and there, alerting her to the fact that the ship could blow up at any moment.
Shit… She needed to get the pilot out of there.
Grabbing him by the shoulders, she started to tug. The man was large, much bigger than she was, and the bulky pilot’s suit and his weight didn’t make her efforts any easier. Huffing, with sweat dripping down her back, she continued to pull, and suddenly, it was no longer so cold in the snowy weather.
It seemed to take forever for her to get him out of the ship, but finally, she managed to pull him to the snow covered ground, and then into the cargo area of her SUV. Since the vehicle was nearly as old as she was, it creaked in protest at the added weight.
The alien visitor remained still through it all, his breathing even. Rachel stared at him as she leaned on one of the open doors, trying to catch her breath.
Who was he? And more importantly, what the hell was she supposed to do with an unconscious alien?
CHAPTER 3
ERRO
Cold…
Consciousness returned slowly to Erro, and his whole body was shivering with cold. The tips of his fingers were icy and numb, but it seemed like he was warming up little by little. He tried wiggling his fingers and toes, and to his surprise, they moved. Only a little at first, but as his body grew warmer and his awareness grew along with it, he found that he could move more.
His eyes flickered open after a moment, and he found himself in an unfamiliar room filled with warm light. Sitting up, he wrapped his arms around his body as he felt a chill. He frowned at the strange surroundings, feeling thorougly confused.
Maybe that crash had addled his brains?
Crash?
Memories flooded his mind, disjointed and intense. He immediately reached up to feel his head. He no longer wore his helmet, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Had he lost it somewhere? Or had somebody taken it off?
Doing a quick assessment, he found no apparent injuries. He wiggled his toes again just for good measure. No pain anywhere. So maybe the crash had been a dream?
No. Erro immediately scrapped that thought. He was still wearing his pilot’s suit, and it was ripped and burned in some places. Besides, if he hadn’t crashed, he would still be inside his ship, drifting through space or resting at a station. And it didn’t seem like he was in either of those places. So where was he, then?
He seemed to be laid out on a long, cushioned platform in the middle of a room. To one side, he spotted a table with two chairs, and to another, a shelf propped up against the wall. At the center of the room he saw a large, brick hole in the wall that smelled of smoke. A primitive kitchen?
“Great,” he mumbled. “I’ll bet civilization is nowhere close.”
A dull pain slowly made its presence known at the back of his head, and Erro realized he didn’t even know which planet he was on. He lifted his hand to rub at the pain, trying to ease it as he looked around some more. To his misfortune, he realized that the place didn’t resemble anything he’d seen before. He spotted two blocky entrances, and his eyes widened in surprise as he saw a green tree next to one of them.
A tree inside of a house? Erro frowned at it. Especially since this tree looked like it was dying – if it wasn’t already dead. And yet, a few shiny bulbs had been placed on its branches.
Erro’s brow furrowed even more as he continued to stare at it. Was the tree the representation of a soul that had passed away and it had been decorated in homage to and remembrance of that person? He had heard of a ritual like that before, though he could not remember which planet it was from. Then again, cultural studies had never been his favorite subject in the Academy.
Pulling his eyes away from the tree, he continued to look around the room, searching for a clue to which planet he was on. He noticed a wooden shelf with blocky items in it that he figured were paper books – something nearly as primitive as the smoke-filled kitchen hole. But perhaps they could provide him with a clue as to where he was.
While Erro knew that he was no expert at languages – another slight in his education –he did speak the Union standard language fluently on top of his own native language, and could recognize a word here and there of at least half a dozen other alien languages. Placing this one should come relatively easily.
And yet, as he examined the books on the shelf, his spirits immediately deflated. The symbols that covered them were nothing like he had ever seen before. He couldn’t be sure if he simply didn’t recognize them due to his head injury, or if his lack of knowledge was to blame, but either way, further study of the books wouldn’t be helpful.
Erro let out a frustrated breath. He continued to study the items on the shelf and noticed a small, cuddly creature with round ears that looked alive but wasn’t. He frowned at the thing, unable to understand its significance. Did the people on this world fancy things that seemed to be alive but were actually dead? He shook his head in disbelief. The notion seemed absurd.
On his native planet, his people valued living things. Life was scarce and because of that, it was celebrated. Trees, flowers, shrubs, they were all cultivated and nurtured, almost like a mother would nurture her children. That was something Erro missed when he’d first become a soldier. He was proud of his job, proud of his achievements, but he couldn’t deny that he did sometimes miss his family and the life he’d had on his planet.
As it was, right now, he was alone. He couldn’t remember what he’d been doing that would have brought him to a strange world all alone, without a team of other men. It must have been something of importance, he was sure of that, but the ache in his head thundered too loudly for him to think of what it was.
Set on a small table nearby, Erro noticed a jar filled with round, red and white pills. He stared at them, wondering about the odd choice of colors. Were they medicine? He hoped so. He could definitely use something for the low thud in the back of his head.
Picking up one of the pills, he put it into his mouth – only to spit it out immediatel
y after. The little round thing left an odd chill in its wake that exploded inside his mouth, and he gagged, wiping his tongue clean of the substance. That stuff was definitely no medicine. The taste was horrible, and it did nothing for his headache.
Looking around was getting Erro nowhere, so he started to pick his brain for where he’d been before the crash. The ache in the back of his head intensified, and he wondered if he might have a concussion. That would explain why he felt so disoriented and didn’t even know where he was. Crap!
Erro hunched forward on the cushioned platform, feeling hopeless until suddenly he saw something beside the weird medicine on the table. A shiny, bright orb. His eyes widened as he took it in. The device looked like a part of an eqazi transmission orb, but not quite. Could he use this to communicate with the nearest base?
Hopeful, he reached for it, only to frown as nothing happened upon his touch. Picking the orb up from it’s place, his brows drew closer together as he realized that it had something stuck to its bottom. He studied it carefully, noticing odd characters inside it. Not only that, but when he shook the device, tiny white and sparkling things inside of it swirled and fell to the bottom again. The thing seemed completely pointless. What sort of a contraption was it, anyway?
Frustrated, Erro set the orb down a little rougher than necessary, but as he did so, something on the other side of the room caught his eye. Over by the brick hole that smelled of smoke.
A picture of five aliens, all with fair skin and dark brown hair. They were all smiling as they stood before the backdrop of a large wooden structure that he assumed was a civilian home. Two of the aliens were male, one old and one young, while the others were female. One wore odd, circular frames on her face, another looked like she may be with young, and the youngest female looked like her exact duplicate – probably her daughter.