Alien Conquest

by Sophie Stern

  “What are you doing?” I whisper the words.

  “I’m sorry about your father,” she says. “Losing a parent is hard, Lana. I won’t tell you it gets easier, but you do learn how to deal with the pain.”

  “I want to go back,” I tell her. Why am I being honest? I don’t know. There’s nothing left for me on my home planet. Nothing. The rebels are quickly destroying the entire thing. There might not even be a planet left to go home to. We were on the verge of war for a very long time, but I still wasn’t expecting it. I still wasn’t expecting my world to end.

  “Lana,” she says, and I hear a bit of hesitation in her voice. That’s the moment when I realize the worst really has come to pass. It’s when I realize that Alipoiaen is lost. We may have tried our best to save ourselves, but our best wasn’t good enough.

  “It’s gone,” I whisper. “Isn’t it?”

  I don’t open my eyes.

  I can’t.

  I squeeze them shut instead and try not to cry at the news that everything I’ve ever known has been destroyed.

  “We managed to save the seven of you,” Sarah tells me gently. “Six citizens plus the senator himself. To be honest, even that was a surprise because the rest of your planet was in such disrepair already. There have been several planets that have performed rescue missions to Alipoiaen. Most of them were only able to save small handfuls of citizens due to the tumultuous status of the planet when they landed.”

  “Sarah,” I whisper. I just need to hear it. I need to get the final confirmation of what I think she’s telling me. My eyes are closed, and although I feel anxious, the blanket tightens once more and I begin to relax. “Just say it. Please. Just tell me the truth.”

  I have to hear her say the words.

  “Alipoiaen is no more,” she whispers.

  Then the tears begin to fall.

  Chapter Two

  Cody

  “I want to know the second they land,” I snap at Axel. He shoots me a sideways glance, but doesn’t say anything else. He knows better, at this point. He knows what my mood is like these days. When it comes to my father, I don’t mess around.

  Seriously, what the fuck was my father thinking?

  Gerald shouldn’t have been anywhere near Alipoiaen. He was visiting several planets on goodwill missions, but he promised me he wouldn’t head to Alipoiaen. We had gotten enough intel to know it was a bad idea. He agreed to steer clear of the planet, yet as soon as I wasn’t looking, he went anyway. He always does this, and it’s why I never should have let him go without me. I should have known that something would go wrong, and it did.

  Most of the planet is dead.

  There was a coordinated rebel attack while my father was on the planet. He couldn’t get back to his little ship. As far as I know, the men were killed by the rebels because once the attack started, all contact was lost. It was just a small ship. The people in the group weren’t supposed to do anything but kind works and good acts on different planets. They weren’t fighters. They didn’t have to be. The entire trip was a goodwill mission: my father’s idea. He wanted to do what he could to improve the world’s view of Sapphira.

  There’s a lot to be done on Sapphira when it comes to handling future political events, which is why I didn’t accompany my father. Despite being the head of his security team, I permitted my most senior team member, Parker, to take him.

  That was a mistake.

  If Parker wasn’t dead, he’d be getting fired.

  That’s how completely, utterly mad I am. His call to allow my father to not only land on Sapphira, but to leave the men on the ship and go off to some remote village was completely irresponsible. Parker should have known better and it cost him his life. It very nearly cost my father his, as well.

  “You need to calm down,” Axel says quietly. He’s staring at the holographic screen where my father’s chart is listed. The ship should be here soon, which is a terrible thing because I’m livid.

  I’m absolutely, positively livid.

  How dare he?

  How dare he change course?

  We knew Alipoiaen was about to blow. We knew the rebels were going to strike and we knew they were going to cause serious, irreversible damage to their planet. We knew it and that’s why I demanded my father avoid stopping there. He should have listened to me and then everything would be okay. If he had just set his pride aside for a little while, our lives would be very different than they are today.

  I wouldn’t be about to have a fucking heart attack, for one thing.

  Seriously, what the hell was he thinking?

  I don’t even have to ask because I know. I know exactly what that old man was thinking. He was thinking he’s still young. He was thinking he’s invincible. He was thinking everything he accuses me and my generation of being: stupid. He was being stupid.

  And it’s going to get him fucking killed.

  My father is a brave man. He’s a hero: no doubt about it. During his years as a senator, he has led the people of Sapphira in the city of Diamond. He has guided them. He has cared for them. He has fought for them when it comes to laws and he has fought for them when it comes to interplanetary relations. He has been a warrior, and for that, I am proud of him.

  I just wish he would be careful. I wish he would think before he acted. I wish, more than anything else, that my mother was still around to help keep him grounded.

  I wish she was here to give him something to live for.

  Sometimes I think that when she died, a part of him died, too. He’s more brash now. He makes poor decisions and he makes them on a whim. Once upon a time, my father wasn’t so quick to jump into the center of the action. Now it’s his default reaction.

  I take a deep breath and look up at Axel. “You’re right,” I say, and his head jolts up. He wasn’t expecting that. Not from me. Like my father, I’m also brash and quick to make decisions. Rarely do I admit when I’m wrong or when I need to relax. “I do need to calm down.”

  “Very good,” he says slowly, but I’m not finished.

  “But I can’t, Axel. I can’t calm down until my father realizes he’s old and he’s going to die if he keeps this up.”

  “Keeps this up?”

  “This,” I motion around the room. “The exploring, the traveling, the venturing into dangerous areas. Why would he go to Alipoiaen, Axel? We knew it was dangerous.”It just doesn’t make any sense. Was he trying to teach me a lesson? Was he trying to toy with death? What?

  “Didn’t he want to see the planet before it was destroyed?” Axel asks carefully. “Perhaps he thought it would be his last chance.” Axel is a good man: a wise man. I trust him with my life, but he doesn’t know my father the way I do. Axel might think my father had a reasonable purpose for being on that planet, but I think he just wanted to spite me because I asked him not to go. “Your father likes to travel. It’s not that unusual for him.”

  “He wanted to do some sort of goodwill mission,” I sigh. “I don’t know. Maybe he was campaigning or maybe he really does just have a good heart. I don’t know anymore.”

  Axel fidgets for a minute with several items on his screen, and then he turns back to me.

  “I’ve known you for a long time, sir.”

  “Cody, please. You’ve known me far too long to be calling me ‘sir,’ Axel.”

  “Cody,” he repeats. “I know it’s not my place to point this out to you, but your father is an adult. He can make his own choices. You might want him to be safe and to stay around, but that’s not what he wants.” Axel shrugs, as if it’s the simplest observation in the world, and in some ways, it is.

  He’s right.

  My father is a grown man. That’s why this pisses me off so much. He should have known better than to wander off. He should have known better than to leave me hanging, than to leave me worrying. Anything could have happened on that forsaken planet. Then where would we be? Where would Diamond be? The city has other senators, but none who could ever replace my father. H
e really has wormed his way into everyone’s hearts and the people of this planet truly depend on him.

  “Sometimes it’s not about what we want,” I point out the obvious, and I realize I sound like a parent myself. Despite not having children, I seem to have the overbearing-father role down perfectly. “Sometimes we don’t know what’s best for ourselves.”

  “And sometimes,” Axel says gently. “We just need the people who love us to be a little patient while we sort things out.” He looks at me for a long moment and then he says, “Sometimes we don’t know everything about a situation. Give your father a chance to explain before you judge him. He might surprise you.”

  Before I have a chance to respond, there’s a beep, and then a hologram appears in front of Axel.

  “Good afternoon, sir.”

  “Doctor, it’s a pleasure to hear from you. What can I do for you?” Axel looks at the hologram. It’s a woman from Extrinsic. Sarah. She’s the doctor on board who makes sure that all of the men and women who go parading around the galaxy, saving lives and rescuing puppies, make it back in one piece. I’ve never met her, but she’s a legend. I’ve read about her many times, and I’d recognize her anywhere.

  “It’s about the refugees,” she says slowly. She turns to me, but I don’t say anything. “Is it acceptable to speak freely?” She’s asking if I’m trustworthy, if I’m allowed to hear what she’s going to say. This makes me more nervous than I already was.

  “That’s fine,” Axel says. “This is the senator’s son, so anything you have to say about the rescued citizens can be said in front of him. Is someone injured?”

  “No,” Sarah says slowly. “No one is injured, but the senator has made a unique request regarding one of the citizens.” She pauses for a moment after she says this.

  My ears perk up immediately. My dad has made a request? That is unlike him. My father likes to go places and save people, but when he comes home, he likes to return to the mansion alone. Although I live with him, we have separate wings in the house, and it’s only the two of us who live there. We have people who work on the grounds, but they don’t stay the night. At the end of the day, they go home, and my father and I are left alone.

  My father? He doesn’t often take visitors unless he can get something out of them. Money, usually. My father’s entire world revolves around money. He definitely does a lot for the people of Sapphira. He’s done so much to help the people around him. Still, I consider him to be greedy. We all are, to a certain extent, but I consider him worse than others.

  “And what is the senator’s request, Doctor Sarah?”

  She hesitates and once again, she glances at me. Then she seems to calm herself and speak to Axel. “Senator Gabriel would like one of the refugees to reside at his home.”

  “What?!?!” I shriek, standing up and moving to stand beside Axel. He sighs. I ignore him and speak to Sarah. “Explain yourself,” I demand. There’s no way this is an innocent request on the part of my father. No way. He wants something, or he’s already gotten it. I don’t know which it is, but there’s no chance he suddenly decided to be nice to someone random.

  Her thin, pretty eyebrows narrow at me. “Look, I don’t know who you think you are,” she says.

  “I-”

  “I’m not finished,” Sarah says. Her hologram looks angry. “But I’m a medical doctor: one of the top in the universe. So if you’d like to act like you’ve talked to a person before, now would be the time to do so. Right now, you’re behaving like a spoiled little dipshit and I don’t have time for that.”

  My jaw drops, but she’s not finished.

  “You’re treating me and my position as a professional physician like it is unimportant and not valuable, and I won’t tolerate that type of disrespect, nor with the Extrinsic team. While I didn’t expect a thank you for the work I did getting your father back to his normal self after the attack on Alipoiaen, I also didn’t expect you to treat me like shit. Knock that off. Now.”

  My jaw hits the floor, but before I can respond, she turns back to Axel. Her holographic form flickers just a little bit: a slight reminder that she’s not actually here.

  She might as well be, though, with the way she put me in my damn place.

  Who does she think she is?

  Really?

  Why would she speak to me this way?

  Doesn’t she know who I am?

  Who my father is?

  “Look,” Sarah lowers her voice as she speaks directly to Axel. “I know it’s unusual, but he’s very certain he wants to care for her. She’s lost everything,” Sarah continues. “And we both know exactly how painful that can be.” Sarah sounds sad, and for just a moment, I wonder what sort of hell she’s gone through.

  “Yes,” Axel sighs, rubbing his temple. “I’ll see what I can do,” he says. “Policy dictates she needs to be in approved immigration housing. She’s new to the planet and doesn’t understand our customs or rules yet. To release her, even to the care of the senator, could be dangerous.”

  “I agree,” Sarah says carefully. “But she and Gerald have formed an unconventional bond. She’s very sweet, and between us, I think she’s good for him.”

  So is that it?

  Is my father dating this woman?

  This refugee?

  If I’m not careful, I’m going to have a damn heart attack because this is just too much. It’s too much to deal with. First my father freaks out and runs around the universe, and now he’s bringing back strumpets. What’s next? Do they have a pet together, too? Did my father bring back a herd of punkaoeap’s from Alipoiaen?

  “If you don’t mind,” Sarah says harshly, suddenly, and I look up at her. “Perhaps you could use some manners, asshole.”

  Then I realize that I spoke out loud and that both she and Axel heard every word I said.

  “For dragon’s sake, man,” Axel growls, and for the first time, he seems to start to lose his temper with me, even just a little. I realize I’ve overstepped my bounds, even just a little bit, and I at least have the good sense to look chastised.

  “My apologies,” I murmur. Then I take a deep breath and look at Sarah once more. She and Axel are both quiet, just waiting to see what I’ll do. “I was out of line and I was rude. I meant no disrespect, and I apologize profusely to you. My father and I have a tumultuous relationship at best, and it was not my intention to transfer that frustration to you. Please forgive me.”

  Sarah seems surprised by my apology, but she simply nods.

  “Axel,” I say, turning to him. “I apologize for my rudeness.”

  “It is forgiven,” he says.

  “Please excuse me,” I tell both of them, and then I step out of the room while they finish discussing the future of my father and his new “friend.” I shouldn’t have yelled. I shouldn’t have gotten so upset. I’m a grown fucking man: not a child. I need to stop acting like one.

  Still, my father doesn’t make being near him very easy for me. It’s no excuse. Really, it’s not. I can do better. Be better. Once he’s here, we’ll sit down and have a real discussion about his future as a senator and how his choices on Alipoiaen will affect his term in office.

  With a sigh, I start walking down the hallway toward the area where the ship will land. The hallway at the docking station is large and bustling. It always is when there’s a new, big ship arriving, and Yongqi is one of the biggest of them all. The name means courage, or so I’ve been told, and it’s fitting for the Extrinsic team. They’re rough and tumble and strong.

  And brave.

  They’re all brave.

  These guys are from all over the universe: Mirroean, Orchid, Dreagle. Hell, there are even a few stray Earthlings on the ship. Men and women alike, they’re people who will go to the ends of the world if it means accomplishing their mission. No matter what they’re doing, whether it’s rescuing a person or a stolen artifact, they give it their best. They go all out every time they’re on a mission, and that’s how it should be.

 
I shake my head.

  I understand Extrinsic, so why can’t I accept that my father feels this same way? He has a mission, or so he thinks. Perhaps he really did just think going to Alipoiaen was a good idea. Maybe he really did just think he needed to be there for those people.

  Why can’t I just be a good son who takes his father’s word as it is?

  Deep down, I know I shouldn’t be so hard on my father. I should be patient with him, and kind. I should be cautious and gentle because he really is getting old, but he’s just behaving so erratically. He’s behaving in a way that isn’t normal, and he needs to calm down or he’s going to get hurt.

  I’ve already lost my mother. I don’t want to lose him, too.

  After a minute, I head back toward the room where Axel and Sarah were talking. I wait outside the door, pacing back and forth. It’s not long before Axel steps out of the room and looks at me.

  “It’s time,” he says.

  “I’m sorry,” I murmur, shaking my head. “I was so out of line. Please,” I ask him. “Please forgive me and do not think less of me for my poor behavior.”

  “Friend,” he steps forward and places a hand on my shoulder. “Let me give you a word of advice.”

  “Of course,” I agree, swallowing hard. Axel and I are not particularly close. Calling me “friend” is a sign of trust: one we’ve never used before, but it means he’s going to say something to me that’s difficult to hear. I nod, waiting to see what he’s going to tell me.

  “Your father has been through a lot. It’s not about who was right and who was wrong. It’s not about whether he listened to your opinions or not. It’s not about any of that. What matters now is that your father has returned safely, and that he’s going to be okay. He was in a dangerous situation, yes, but he’s fine now. You’re fine now. You’re both fine.”

  “You’re right,” I say. “It’s just that-”