by Alyx X
When Qui had said he’d take me with him, I hadn’t imagined I’d be ditched at the next available opportunity. My charms didn’t usually work that way.
“What are you thinking about?” Roe asked. “You’re smiling, but you still look sad.”
“Oh, nothing.”
Roe was the first female I’d spent a lot of time with. Maybe I should have been scared of her—her size and power made me fragile and weak in comparison, but she’d become a dear friend instead.
The first female friend I’d had. Whatever Qui chose to do, I’d gained something from space. Something that he planned to rip away at his earliest convenience.
I just didn’t want to leave. Roe’s room was feminine and comfortable, the furnishings reminding me of those I might find on Earth. Although the textures were much softer, I liked the way her clothes felt against my skin. All of Roe’s clothing was far too big, but with a little bit of customization and imagination, we both agreed I could pull them off.
I didn’t know what Qui thought of my new attire because if we happened to be in the same space, he wouldn’t look at me. He avoided me as much as he could, anyway. Or he seemed to avoid me. Either he hated me, or he liked me so much he couldn’t stand to be near me.
Roe called him a bad host, but reminded me of how busy he was. I knew the truth, though. From the moment she told me she’d come to the cargo hold to take care of me, Qui was done.
I’d served whatever purpose he had for me. In hindsight, that purpose was a quick fuck with a human. Nothing more. I sighed and looked at the moon again. At some point, it would fill the whole window. It was already all I could see, though.
“Come on. Stop staring out the window like a lost Eborashk. Let’s do something to take your mind off things.” While I had no idea what a ‘Eborashk’ was, Roe seemed pretty happy to have someone to spend time with, too. We didn’t exactly gossip—we had little to gossip about—and for the first time in my life, I valued a degree of privacy. I didn’t want to share things with her about her brother.
Roe huffed and rolled to the side of the bed before getting off with surprising agility and grace. She came back with an opened box of candies. I didn’t like them much, but they gave my mouth something to do while we played ceskel, a card game Roe was trying to teach me.
“I think you’ve had long enough to pretend to ponder your next move while you stare longingly at the moon instead.” She held out the box and rattled the candies under my nose.
I popped a lurid green diamond in my mouth and braced myself. It tasted like vomit at first, but then it mellowed into something I could bear to suck on. “I don’t think I’ve got anything I can play this time around.” I fanned my cards in my hand, but they were awkward to hold because none of them had a regular—or even similar—shape.
I drew my brows down in concentration as I studied the various animals in the pictures. The lack of familiarity wasn’t helping me at all. I couldn’t compare them to anything I knew back home, not when they all had three heads of five legs or seven eyes.
“Are these really animals on Euquaniar?” I nodded my head at the cards in my hand. “They look like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
“Some of them,” she said as she inspected her cards, then moved their placements in her hand. Shit, she was lining herself up for about her eleventy-millionth win. Just when I thought I was getting the hang of it—getting ahead even—and the strategy was falling into place, she did that tell-tale quick rearranging thing and seemed to be able to dispose of all of her cards on her next turn.
“Are you sure you’ve taught me the right rules?” I smiled as I spoke so she’d know I was teasing her.
“It’s not in my nature to let you win just because you’re new to the game.” Roe shrugged. “Euquanians do everything competitively. We like to be the best.”
My cheeks heated as I thought of all the things I knew Qui was best at, but then I coughed and patted my chest like I’d mis-swallowed my candy to conceal my awkwardness. “You know, by the time I finally get good enough at this to beat you, you’ll be ready to leave me on the moon.” I sighed and looked out of the window.
I’d looked at the moon for years and years, and always wondered what it would be like to be there. Now I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to be left at the moon settlement because that meant I’d be able to see right back to Earth and know Dad was still down there. Such a tiny distance would actually make the absence from my home more difficult I realized.
Roe nudged me. “Those humans won’t know what hit them when you get there.” She grinned widely as my heart sank that, even after spending so much time together, Roe still intended to abide by Qui’s decision to toss me like last week’s leftovers.
I’d hoped I meant more to her by now, that maybe she’d miss me, but perhaps whatever instinct drove them to be the best also robbed them of sentimentality and connection to others.
I shoved the thoughts aside and looked at her. “You think so?” I’d worked out plenty of ways…well, really just one way to be pretty popular with humans over the years. It was tried and tested on many men. I could probably even hitch a lift back to Earth without too much trouble, but that would bring other issues. Like actually returning home.
“For sure.” She nudged me again. “Once people find out you’ve been travelling with Euquanians, you’ll be a real bad-ass.”
I laughed. “I’ve been told I have a hot ass, even a sweet one, but never been called a bad-ass.”
“That’s all about to change. Believe me.” She lifted her eyebrows and nodded.
I shrugged. “I’m not even sure enough of them will have heard of you. You’ve only connected with the TerraLink Program recently, right? I mean, your language wasn’t even in their database.”
Roe looked beyond me, her eyes unfocused and she idly scratched the back of her neck. “Oh, they’ll hear of us,” she said. Then she blinked and looked at me, grinning suddenly, like it was more practiced than genuine. “So, what do you know about the moon?”
“It’s been settled for a while. As soon as they worked out how to dome large areas safely and farm up there, they started transferring people from Earth to colonize it.”
“Your people sure like their domes.” Roe rolled her eyes, and I laughed.
“No one would survive on the moon without one. No gravity, no oxygen, no life.”
“So why do you have a dome on Earth? You have gravity, and you can all breathe, so what’s the purpose?”
I laughed. Roe knew a lot of shit about space, but she didn’t know shit about Earth. “No, that dome’s there to keep the water on the planet. The sun’s so out of control it would all evaporate away.”
“But people live under the dome?” She sounded curious.
I nodded. “Sure. Rich people mostly. Or people with connections to TerraLink.”
She popped a candy into her mouth. “But you have connections to TerraLink. Why aren’t you living under the dome?”
I’d long ago stopped wishing for that lifestyle. The only part I wanted was the ability to escape, to explore. “Because we’re farmers. We sort of coexist alongside TerraLink.”
“Doing their bidding?” Roe raised an eyebrow. “Being subservient?”
I hesitated, unsure how to explain to someone so clearly from a warrior race what Dad and I did on the farm. “We produce for TerraLink, but we also get opportunities because of that connection.”
“Oh, really?” Clearly, Roe didn’t believe me at all.
I smoothed my hand over her bedsheets, still luxuriating in the texture. “You asked about farming on the moon. Well, Dad and I sent all of those supplies up there. We sent instructions and men to do the work. We helped make it what it is, which is why we were allowed to have such a nice house and all the water we needed. The challenge is in growing something where nothing should be able to grow. We do that…” I leaned forward and grasped her forearm. “Dad and I farm where nothing should be able to survive, and we feed peo
ple”
Roe laughed and held her hands up. “Looks like you’re a little conqueror after all.”
“Huh. Yeah. Growing life. I guess I am.” I held out my hand for a high five, but she just wrinkled her brow. “Never mind.”
She nodded and started scooping the ceskel cards into a loose pile. “You’re pretty proud about this farming thing. For a girl who claims she didn’t want to be stuck on a farm on Earth, you sure do love it.”
I hesitated. I hadn’t said I didn’t like my life. I’d never even said I wasn’t coming back. What if Dad thought the same? No, I’d told him I’d return in my letter. I couldn’t dwell on the what-ifs. I had too many conflicting thoughts.
I pushed the sadness away and dragged the back of my hand across my eyes before I grinned at Roe. “So, enough about me. Tell me about your life out here in space.” I passed Roe some of the cards she was collecting into her hands to shuffle.
It felt kind of good to get information even TerraLink didn’t have access to about Euquanians. Or at least, they hadn’t seemed to know much about the warrior race at the farm.
“What do you want to know?”
The quiet shushing noise of the cards as they slid past each other was almost hypnotic. “Uh… What do you guys do on your planet?”
She laughed like I’d said something really funny. “Qui overthrew the government. So, I guess we rule it.”
“Then what are you doing out here?” If they both had a planet to rule, it made no sense for them to be simply travelling around space, getting tours of simple farms.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Exploring, I guess.”
Disappointment coursed through me. They were doing the very thing I’d spent my whole life wanting to do, seeing sights so many humans never had. The urge to beg her to take me with them flickered in my mind, but I quashed it. It wasn’t that I didn’t plan on begging eventually. Just not now.
Besides, something else was wrong. A conquering alien race had just happened to land on Earth for a trade deal with TerraLink? That math didn’t add up at all—even I could see that. And we still hadn’t left Earth’s orbit. Somehow, I didn’t think Roe’s sudden love for cattle was really Qui’s reason for lingering here so long.
Maybe I could find out a little more with the right questions.
“Where else have you been?” I put another candy in my mouth and grimaced.
She spread her hands expansively. “All over. To the end, back. We usually travel much faster than this.”
Ding, ding, ding. I thought so. “What planets have you seen? Have you seen lots? Would I know them? Are you really travelling this slow because of the cows?”
She chuckled, but something darker glinted in the depths of her gaze. “One at a time. Okay, let me see. You might know some, but TerraLink doesn’t know every planet out there.” Then she smiled, and it was a smile I hadn’t seen since the cargo hold. It held a dark edge. “Some of these, they won’t get the chance to know.”
“Why?” I couldn’t keep the curiosity from my tone. And she’d conveniently ignored the cow question.
Because Qui is a strong ruler, a man who knows his own mind. Take, for example the Elphrens. They had a planet. They had a people. Now Qui owns their planet.”
“He owns their planet?” Curiosity became confusion.
“Yes.” Her smile was proud this time. “Qui recognized a mineral resource on their planet, and now we have the planet. The remaining Elphrens mine for us.”
A thread of anxiety wound its way into my chest. “Do you own any other planets?”
“Some.” She began to deal the cards between the two of us, slapping them softly into two piles. “The others—the ones without resources—we’re able to...use in different ways. Some have value in the core, so we can generate energy—” She stopped abruptly. “That is, Qui chooses planets and determines the value to our race. We conquer what we can and take what we need.”
“You destroy things?”
“Only to further Euquaniar. Qui is a man of honor and great judgment. He is very good at what he does. He does all of this for our people, to keep us safe and to provide the things we need to live.” She picked up her cards and fanned them in her hand, biting her lips as she started to rearrange them. “Look, it’s like this. Qui overthrew the government, but he did it because their rule was tyrannical. He provides for the people when the last government wouldn’t.” She smiled. “You might call him a conqueror with a heart.”
Conqueror with a heart? Yeah, right. My anxiety twisted to horror that I had to force down my throat so I could still breathe. If Qui had an entire planet of people dependent on him, that made him dangerous. He wouldn’t make an unnecessary side trip to a planet he had no use for.
But Earth had next to no resources. How could he not see that? Nothing at all of any value to anyone but the humans still inhabiting the planet and clinging to our lives there. “Roe?” I reached out and pressed my hand over hers.
“Yeah?” She flicked her gaze to mine before she glanced back at her cards.
“Why were you and Qui on Earth?” I couldn’t keep the stark suspicion from my tone.
Her gaze shot back to mine, and her eyes widened. Then she gestured so emphatically, I could’ve taken the opportunity to peek at her cards if I hadn’t been so focused on her reply. “We wanted to collect some of your cow things. You came in with them, remember?”
I nodded, but I was still watching her as a shadow of something unspoken flitted through her eyes. She laughed, but it was brittle. “Turns out they’re just a pain in the ass. And, yes, they are the reason we’re flying so slowly.” But she wouldn’t look at me, like there was still something I might see in her gaze. Something she hadn’t said and didn’t want me to know.
“So I grow life, and you destroy life?” Those were words I never thought I’d say.
Roe flipped her hair out of her face. “Sounds about right.”
“Have you ever… Well, ever done what I do instead?” I couldn’t imagine leaving a wake of death and destruction in my path, even if it was eventually for the better. A sudden flicker of fear passed through me for the fate of the human race if they got involved with the Euquanians, but it passed quickly. We were traveling away, no matter how slowly, and Qui hadn’t even turned the ship around to take me back. Earth clearly held nothing for him.
“Farming?” Her eyes lit with humor.
“No.” I couldn’t help smiling back at her. “I meant… well, saving things, or creating something from what looks like nothing. Conquering like you said I do.”
She tilted her head and looked at me like she’d only just seen me. For a moment I thought she might be considering options, as if I’d intrigued her.
Then she shook her head and looked away again. “No. I have to be loyal to Qui.”
15
Qui
I was a busy guy. Really busy. Too busy to entertain guests or stowaways, anyway—that shit was Roe’s duty. It pretty much fell under the heading of diplomacy. And after a few more days I wouldn’t need to actively avoid Emma. She’d be gone. No longer a problem. Every day the moon drew closer, the answer to my problems did as well.
Except I needed it to all be over now. Damn those cows. They were the reason we couldn’t just hyper speed to the moon, and I’d toss them all out into space if I could, Roe’s preference or no. But I hadn’t been lying about not having an ejection lock. I’d never seen the need for one before now.
I rubbed my face and leaned against my window, staring out at the pale rock in front of us. Earth’s moon. Day by day more features came into view, and day by day my resolve weakened and tightened again.
Maybe I wasn’t doing the right thing. Self-doubt annoyed me. It suggested I didn’t know my own mind, and I didn’t know what I was doing. Those two things were wrong. I always did what I wanted, took what I wanted, and had no time for doubt, nor regret.
So why was I verging on regret? All to save one weak alien species? How had the
human Emma made me doubt myself? I looked at the moon again. Even with the rest of the journey, my decision weighed on me, the pressure to get it right an uncomfortable new sensation.
I twisted the clay mug I held in my hand. We’d mined the clay from some alien planet we’d recently conquered. Without being sure of myself, without making the hard decisions I’d already made, I wouldn’t have these things. It was no time to start believing I was wrong now.
I sipped the drink, choking down the bitter root grinds designed to wake me up and give me a burst of energy. Perhaps the next planet I conquered would have a better drink alternative. This swill was Emma’s fault, too. I was still forcing myself to avoid the dining hall in case she and Roe were there, so I had to make do with what I could make for myself in my room when I first woke up.
“Fucking idiot,” I grumbled to myself as I bounced between glancing at the moon and studying my memories of Emma—the feel of her skin, the scent of her pussy, the noises she made when I pushed my cock deep inside her.
I shook my head. There were reasons to leave her—so many reasons—but also reasons why I shouldn’t. She was fragile and weak; she might not be able to get back to Earth. I’d be leaving her homeless either way, but in which scenario was she better off? I was taking the Earth out. That much I knew. But in my experience, satellites such as moons...they didn’t stick around once they lost their planet.
Not for the first time in my life, I was contemplating actual genocide. Usually the safety and wellbeing of my people triumphed over any and every eventuality—including wiping out entire species.
This time wasn’t usually. This time, I was hesitating.
Shit. I needed to get over myself and get on with my job.
I took another swig of the drink and flinched as I forced myself to swallow it. My fingers curled around the mug as I fought against my frustration. All this introspection was doing me no good at all. I had a plan, and I needed to follow it.