I’m not sure I have ever felt so furious in my life, but what I do know is, I won’t ever be able to forget that conversation. Marduke is not on my side, and perhaps that should have been obvious.
Of course he’ll choose his own people over humans. Right and wrong doesn’t factor into it. He’s been raised to only further his own people’s agenda. Humans don’t matter to him, not really. Soon, I won’t matter to him, either.
Chapter 9
Marduke
I attempt to go after Mattie, but Lisa stands in my way. I know I could easily push her aside, but I don’t think physically shoving Lisa would help me at all in Mattie’s eyes. I easily saw her anger before she stormed away, therefore I know she needs to calm down. I also recall the disappointment. I saw her heart breaking in front of me. I hate that I’ve caused her pain, and I’m pissed at Ival for letting me walk into it.
He had to know she was there; he switched to speaking English, which should have been a huge clue for me. I was an idiot to not notice it straight away.
“Are you happy?” I yell at him, needing to vent some of my anger.
I storm straight up to him and push him against the table, causing it to slide along the ground from the force I’ve used. I lean my arm over his neck and hold him down over the table, wishing I was able to honestly kill my brother. He’s brought me more pain than anything else, yet I don’t have it in me.
“I didn’t force those words out of your mouth,” he says calmly, knowing that, if he really wanted to, he could easily overpower me and get himself out of this position.
“She hates me,” I hiss.
“And she should, just like you should feel indifferent to her. We’re not the same species, Marduke. We do not have the same priorities. You both needed to realise that.”
“She’s right, though. The humans we have on this planet have already been through too much. We’re sentencing them to death when they haven’t done anything wrong.”
“They knew, once we invaded Earth, they were dead. We might have had somewhat noble intentions when we placed them on our planets, realising that slaughtering the lot of them was going too far, however they were never promised a life after Earth.” He shrugs calmly. “I’m sure they would rather go out fighting than wait for Jeprow and his Claws to slaughter them later on.”
I consider his words, a reminder of the soldiers I fought with only a few days earlier entering my mind. They had guns on them but barely used them. They have been trained to protect Oden, and even they don’t realise what they have. The humans would be able to use the guns. They’d make better use out of them than my people would.
“If we do things this way, if we make it out of this alive, then we should give them something for their bravery and sacrifice. We should give them back Earth.”
Ival growls, not liking that idea at all. “Father’s last legacy was adding Earth to our collection. Giving it back would be to dishonour his achievement.”
“At this rate, even if we survive this war, we’re going to have enough problems fixing up Oden, let alone the other nine planets that we have that are being invaded also. Earth is useless to us now, but it would mean everything to them.”
Ival pushes me off him without arguing over whether I’m right or wrong. I know I’ve pushed him as far as I can on this matter for now, but I won’t stop pushing. Giving Earth back would make Mattie happy, and maybe it would be enough to push her to forgive me, but it’s more than that. It is the right thing to do.
“Right now, I need to alert my soldiers of our plan. You are to come with me and we will end this now.”
“I need to see Mattie first. I have to try to speak to her—”
“No, you don’t. However, I do require you go and put your argu on, that is an order. She doesn’t need it down here, but you will need it up there.”
I nod that I agree, yet I don’t have any plans on actually putting it on myself. Mattie and Riley need it more than I do.
I walk away, still feeling angry and tense. I want to hit something hard. Actually, I want to punch myself in the face. I’ve messed things up with Mattie, but I have to believe she’ll listen to reason. I have to hope that her love for me will outweigh her anger.
When I get closer to our rooms, I sense the tension in the air. I near the hidden door to where Logan and Hannah have been sleeping, already knowing that Mattie wouldn’t have gone into our room. Before I reach the door, Lisa sees me approaching and again stands in my way.
“You’re not welcome here,” she says through clenched teeth.
“I know, but I really need to see her.”
“No.”
“Please, I’m leaving, and this might be my last chance to…” I trail off, purposely sounding as though I don’t expect to come back. “I need to say goodbye. You can understand how important those words are, can’t you?” I beg, knowing I will have hit a nerve with that. She never got a chance to say goodbye to Hank.
She glares at me, but I see the sadness in her eyes.
“Hold on a second.” She holds out her hand and knocks against the wall. She can’t open it, neither can Hannah. Therefore, when it opens, I know how close Mattie is.
Lisa pokes her head in, frustratingly leaving it mostly closed so I can’t even catch a glimpse of her. After an eternity, she opens the door farther and Logan runs out, sprinting straight at me and knocking into my legs. He hugs me before I reach down and pick him up. I’m unsure why he’s looking so devastated.
“You can say your goodbye to him, but she doesn’t need to hear anything from you. Leave her alone,” Lisa hisses, giving me a fake smile when Logan looks her way. She closes the door that is now blocking my path to Mattie and goes back into her own room.
“M’dude, where are you going?” he asks me quietly, his arms gripping around my neck as though he might be able to keep me with him by sheer force.
“I’m just going to get us some more food, that’s all.” I try to sound reassuring.
“But Mattie said to say goodbye.” He crinkles his small face, and I assume he’s getting ready to cry.
“Goodbye for now, not forever. I’ll see you again,” I promise him.
He takes a moment to let my words soak in. “You promise?”
“Yes, now I just need to say a quick goodbye to Mattie, and then I’ll be on my way.”
He nods, still holding tightly to me.
I touch the door, letting it open, only to be met by Hannah’s annoyed face.
“You can leave him here and go now,” she snaps.
“I just want to speak with Mattie for a moment.”
“No!” Hannah yells, upsetting Logan in the process.
“Oh, for God’s sake. Fine, come in and say whatever you feel you need to say, and then you can hurry up and go,” Mattie says, sounding exasperated.
“Are you sure?” Hannah glances at Mattie, who is sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Yes, take Logan so he doesn’t have to hear this.”
Logan doesn’t want to let go of me, though. I end up having to pry his hands away from my neck. He goes into Hannah’s arms reluctantly, and then she walks them out of the room, giving me one last glare before she turns the corner.
“What is it?” she says, not looking at me, instead staring at her hands as they shake in her lap.
“I’m leaving with Ival now.”
“My words from earlier still stand; I don’t want to see you again.”
Her words feel like a slap.
“But I love you. I love us. Does that mean nothing to you now?”
When her head snaps up, she gives me a scathing look. “Don’t act like this is something I’ve done to us. You were willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of humans for a war we don’t deserve to be a part of.”
“But it was to protect you, to protect Riley.”
“That might be part of your sick reasoning, but it’s also so you can protect your people. Who is there to protect mine? Why do you get to decide who
lives and who dies?”
“I think I can get Ival to agree to give back Earth. It would be a penance for what you’ve all been put through.”
“Marduke, we’ve already been put through enough. We never deserved to have Earth taken from us in the first place. Do you really think giving it back now makes it all better? We had billions of people on our planet before, how many will get the chance to return? How many less after you hand them over to those creatures?”
I sigh, knowing our conversation isn’t going to get us anywhere. I don’t think there is a correct answer for what we’re meant to do, as a result I’ll never get it right.
“I need you to put the argu back on.”
“No!”
“Mattie, please.”
“I’m not going anywhere, so there is no point. If you’re leaving, then you should put it on.”
“It’s not mine anymore; it belongs to you and Riley.”
“I really can’t do this right now.” Her voice breaks, which in turn, breaks my heart. “Please, can you just leave?”
“I’m sorry,” I say sadly, moving to stand in front of her and crouching down, taking her hands that are resting on her lap and overlapping them with mine. “I never meant to hurt you. I will do whatever it takes to make this right between us.”
“What if there isn’t anything that can make this right? What if, when I look at you now, all I see is pain and suffering that humans are about to go through and have already been through?”
“I’m hoping that, perhaps, you’ll be able to look at me and see the man you once saw before.”
“I’m not sure if he even existed now. Did you always know you’d use humans this way? That we wouldn’t have any rights on Oden? Did you know that we were as good as dead when you invaded us?”
“I couldn’t have predicted Jeprow and the Claws. This wasn’t planned, and right now, this is our last resort. If we don’t have a distraction, then there is no chance of us slowing down the Claws. More people will die, and that will include humans. They’ve already taken over most of Oden. We’re losing this fight. Our hinemas are being destroyed. If we don’t act now, within days, Oden will be lost.”
She sighs, her eyes looking sad, and her shoulders sag. “I’m tired, Marduke. I don’t hate you, but I hate the choice that you have made. It forces me to make my own choice, one that neither of us likes. I guess, we are doomed to always be unhappy now.”
“I want that family I envisioned. I want our baby—our son—to have that happy family. He is ours and you are mine.”
“I can’t be with someone who thinks my race is expendable. Riley is part human, too, you know? When you sentence my people to death, you’re sentencing his, too.”
I exhale loudly, hating how lost I feel. I want to do right by Mattie and Riley, but I know that the best way to protect them is to do what Ival says, and Mattie believes that to be the wrong thing. Humans are fighters; they at least will have the instinct to use a gun against a Claw. Our own soldiers don’t even have that instinct, so how will our civilians cope? We have had only peace on Oden. Our people don’t know of wars or fighting. Humans will have a better chance of surviving this.
I stand, letting her hands slip from mine.
“Be safe out there,” she says softly, her voice clearly dismissing me now.
“Are you sure you won’t wear the argu?”
She shakes her head and then places her hands behind her and pushes herself up the bed, moving until her head is at the other end. She curls into herself then, her hands holding her stomach and her eyes closed, a tear escaping them.
“Good bye, Mattie,” I whisper, moving to stand beside her before leaning over and kissing her hair gently. She doesn’t even stir.
I reluctantly leave the room, feeling as though I’ve left part of myself behind with her. There is a good chance she’ll always have that part of me, and I’ll never be the same again.
I head back the way I came, stopping in the war room to find the tablet that Mattie threw at me. I stare at the image of Riley, of my son. As my need to protect both he and Mattie grows, I know that I might have to become someone Mattie doesn’t want to ensure their safety. I’ve promised I would do whatever it takes to keep them safe, and unfortunately for Mattie, this plan is it.
I move over to a safe and place the tablet in there, saving the image so it can’t ever be erased. If I can survive this, then I fear this might be the only piece of my son I’ll be allowed to have.
Once it is locked away, I leave the room and head towards where I know Ival is. He had already placed our soldiers on boats to get them across the river. We haven’t had a need to use them in over a hundred years, subsequently the only reason they have been kept and maintained has been for historic purposes. We’re not even sure if they are capable of making the trip, and then there is the chance they will be seen and taken down before they can get to Edael and the other islands.
If they can make it, then the women and men will divide into two groups. One half will find and destroy enough boxes to make a tamdet work. Already our soldiers are doing that here. The other half will release as many humans from the bunkers as they can. Children will be spared, but all women and men will be forced to leave their safety and transported to Jyin. From there, they will be given weapons and their survival instinct will hopefully kick in. The Claws will be there, ready to attack, and they should cause enough problems to make Jeprow take notice.
The humans will keep being sent until Jeprow figures out a tamdet is working and disables it again. Hopefully, we’ll have enough humans to keep up the distraction here when that happens. Then, when we have the signal that Jeprow is elsewhere, Ival and I will break into our home and go after the black box that is there.
Sounds fairly simple and straight forward, right?
It’s not.
***
We open the hidden entryway and fortunately find the room we enter empty. We’re in our father’s office. A place he used to spend most of his time. I’ve only been in here once, and it definitely didn’t look like this. His desk is upturned, his walls splattered with blood, and there are two dead guards on one side of the room, their eyes still open. Papers are scattered everywhere over the floor and the shelf that held editions of our planets history—many stories from my family—have been destroyed. They were clearly burned; only ashes remain.
As a voice sounds from outside the door, one that I don’t recognise, I glance at Ival, seeing that he is furious right now. He doesn’t move to hide, instead he stalks his way to the door and bunches his hands on both sides of him into fists.
“Check to see if the black box is hidden anywhere in here,” he grounds out.
I know he’s upset and furious, and it’s interesting that a messed up office has done this to him. Either it’s only hitting him now that our father was just murdered, or he’s really upset about his newly inherited office being in shambles. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was the latter.
I move about the room, searching for a black box as I hear a fight breaking out behind me. I only glance back once to make sure Ival is in control, which of course he is, before I resume my search.
We find nothing in that room, or any other room we’re able to search.
Our house is huge, and thankfully, there are many hidden doors and rooms that only we know about. It makes getting around a lot easier. At one point, I find myself in a room that has a large window overlooking the city. From the height of our home, we overlook Jyin. Smoke and flames are everywhere, a sign of the destruction and war.
I know the humans are out there, amongst the battle. The Claws have swarmed to the eastern part of the city, and our people, who are hidden underground amongst the west side, have a little more time to survive.
Guilt wells up inside of me. This was the right move for my people, but I also know it is in no way fair to humans. We’re using them as a shield for our own people. I also know how much we must look like monsters to them and to Mattie. Sh
e has a good reason to be angry with me.
Watching the war happening outside only motivates me to find this black box faster. If we can have our spaceships working, then we can get them into the air and fight the war from there, a much better advantage. We could find a way of holding the Claws, teleporting the lot of them to our ships, out of the way, then either kill them all on the spaceship, or take them into space and let them out once we’re well away from any of our planets. Their home planet, Jukh, has an atmosphere that is similar to most of our planets. It means they need oxygen to survive and dropping them out into space will kill them quickly.
Ival has already started the process of distributing monits to our soldiers, and pilots are on standby to get the ships into the air.
Ival and I split up, hoping to find and destroy the black box quickly. However, after our thorough search, we both come up empty. The longer we take to find this one, the more humans will be sacrificed as we look for our salvation.
“I have found it,” Ival’s voice hisses behind me. “Down in the basement, there are several guards watching over a cage that has Claws trapped inside. In the far corner, there is a hole in the wall where the box has been stashed.”
“How are we supposed to get to it, then?”
“We can manage it; it just won’t be done quietly. The basement is a dead end. If we get trapped there, then we’re stuck. We need to come back with more men.”
I nod, staring one last time at the warzone in front of me, and then turn around, just in time to find our room suddenly swarming with Jeprow’s people.
Without any warning, three men topple onto me, knocking me off balance. I crumple to the ground. Ival handles the men attacking him better, however I lose sight of him quickly.
While I’m punched and kicked by all of the men at once, I try to lash out, yet my limbs are weighed down by more soldiers crushing me. Although I know I’m doomed now and there won’t be any escaping this situation, I don’t feel panicked over this. I merely need to get Jeprow to take me on board his spaceship and destroy the box hidden up there. If I can manage that, and if Ival can manage the one in here, then we can save Oden. Perhaps if I sacrifice myself for my planet, for Mattie and Riley, then she will be able to forgive me.
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