However, my survival instincts kick in and I dive toward the edge, dropping the gun and managing to get my hands over the edge as the glass gives way under me. I almost lose my grip, dangling over precipice.
I risk a peek down, watching Jeprow fall. He doesn’t ever hit the ground. Before he can, a claw swings out and catches him between the sharp blades, only taking one swipe to cut him in half.
I look away from the blood, not caring one bit that he has just been killed. Instead, I focus on the smashed remains of the black box.
I feel a moment of relief that this might all be over until one of the creatures leaps into the air and almost catches me. I pull myself up, my arms shaking from the effort and my back aching. I still manage it. However, as I look back over at the creatures, I notice they all are jumping towards me. They want out of their cage, and I’ve basically just given them an exit.
Alone in this room, I race outside and am bombarded by empty hallways. I search for a room, any room to hide in, but I realise too late that I don’t have a control to open any of them. Even if I did, I don’t have Riley to make it work for me.
I’m useless in here.
I still run, feeling the chase even if I can’t see the creatures yet. They will have surely gotten out by now and will be moving about this spacecraft. Once they are out, they will be looking for blood, and no doubt, revenge against being trapped in that glass cage.
I sprint forwards, never once seeing any of Jeprow’s men. I wonder if I am the only one left on here. Well, me and the coward who ran away earlier.
Nothing appears familiar, but as I round one final corner, I see a room that is open. The door that is meant to be invisible isn’t because it’s been smashed in. The whole room appears to be in disarray. I notice the hatch that is open, revealing the underneath of the ship.
This is where Marduke, Ival, and I came through the last time. I bet this damage was caused by Jeprow when he realised we had escaped.
I don’t think too hard about this, I just dive in and begin crawling forward. I pray to whoever is listening that we’re not in the air, but just as I think it, I realise we’re very much in the air. Either that, or the world just decided to turn on its axis.
My stomach rolls as well as my body when the ship suddenly takes a sharp dive. I assume, with the creatures loose, they aren’t exactly being careful with what controls they crush and destroy.
I attempt to grab hold of anything as I slide forward, and my hands finally manage to grasp the handle over the hatch that we escaped through. Due only to the force of me flying forwards, I actually manage to get it open, but then the door makes contact against the ground and my fingers are crushed under it. I let go of it to ease the pain, and then I’m flying through the air farther down the spaceship.
This feels much the same as when I jumped out of here with that jumpsuit on, except then I had a small chance of survival. This time, I have none. This spaceship is going to crash, and I’m going to be crushed. There is no other way this can happen, not now. Therefore, I give up trying to stop moving, give up hoping for anything other than a quick and painless death. I think, after everything I’ve been through, I deserve at least that.
Time moves fast, I have only seconds to think about my parents, who I will hopefully be with very soon. I hope Hannah can forgive me for not surviving this. I hope she takes good care of Logan, and that he gets the chance to grow up to be the good man I know he can be.
I think about Marduke and the fact that he will forever carry my heart with him. I love him so much, and to know he hates me, that he most likely blames me for losing Riley, cuts me deeply. He couldn’t even muster up enough forgiveness and love to speak to me; Ival had to do it. I’ll never be able to express to him how sorry I am, and now I won’t ever get the chance to.
I lastly think of Riley, the baby I never got to meet. He still feels like such a huge part of my life. I won’t ever find out what type of person he would have grown to be. All those first times a mother should have with her child have been robbed from me. I feel incomplete without him. Lost.
I close my eyes, knowing the impact must be coming soon. And I’m not wrong. The walls shake and groan as we hit the ground, except we don’t actually hit ground.
As we sink lower, I feel water filling the area I’m in. We’ve hit the ocean, as a result apparently, I’m going to drown instead of being crushed.
Maybe I will get my peaceful death after all. Perhaps I can fall asleep as the water fills my lungs, and I can slip into unawareness as I’m sucked deep into the ocean’s depth.
Soon, this can all be over.
Chapter 13
Marduke
Anger, frustration, and rage are burning through me as I am held back with my mouth covered while Ival speaks to Mattie. He’s basically telling her to sacrifice her life for us. He’s making promises I know he doesn’t plan on honouring.
I see the fight return to her eyes as she believes he will give Earth back to her people. I watch her composure change as her decision is made. Ival mutters about the connection being dropped, and we’re back to only being able to watch her. She can’t hear us now.
I wonder what she thought when she heard Ival’s voice and not mine. With how angry she was at me after she overheard Ival and me discussing using the humans as bait, I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t give me a second thought. Not now that I’ve let her down and broken my promise to protect her and Riley.
I hold my breath as she dives towards the gun. I can’t see what is happening to the side of her, but there must be someone there because she fires in that direction.
Jeprow is quick to duck and shuffle to the side, avoiding Mattie’s gaze. I fear she hasn’t seen him move. He leaves the view we’re able to see and Mattie aims and shoots at someone else out of range of us. I hope it was Jeprow. She shoots twice more before I get a glimpse of Jeprow, however.
He tackles her down to the ground and we lose view of her again. Long, tense minutes pass, but it feels like hours. I begin to feel dizzy as I still hold my breath, afraid we won’t see Mattie get up. There is no chance of me being able to help her out of this situation. She’s in the air and unreachable to us.
My heartbeat slows, my vision falters, but then her blonde hair comes into view again, and I take a deep breath.
She’s alive and appears as determined as ever. She runs out of view and then several long moments pass before I see her enter it again. She’s pushing along a huge, black box.
“Is that…?” I gape.
“She’s got it!” Ival gasps.
We watch her move out of view of the camera again, a loud thump sounding soon after.
“Do you think it’s the right thing she’s destroying?” I ask.
“Check our systems,” Ival orders, but the responding shake of the soldier’s head says our fleet of ships still have no power.
Mattie isn’t in our view, but then Jeprow stands up, his muscles tensing, and a look so furious written over his face that it sends shivers down my back.
Mattie didn’t kill him, and he’s going after her.
“Ival!” I growl, needing to help her in some way.
“Are you sure there is no way to communicate with them?” he snaps.
“Sorry, Drym, no.”
Ival appears just as stressed as I am, although I know his worry is that this plan won’t work, not if Mattie is killed.
Again, I have no idea how much time passes. I pace the area, my eyes never leaving the screen. As we hear a gunshot go off, and then the smashing of glass, I don’t know what is going on, and hearing our men calling out that we have power only gives me a small amount of relief. We still don’t know if Mattie is alive.
When Claws pounce into the room, Mattie was last seen in, crawling over the controls and damaging everything in sight, I fear it won’t matter if Mattie is alive now, she won’t be if they get to her.
“We’re ready. We’ll go after his spaceship and make sure he’s dead. We�
��ll take the human with us if she’s alive,” Ival says, already leaving and storming towards a spaceship that finally has lights working. He assesses the outside for a moment, ensuring that it appears in order and then takes out a monit and points it at me.
I blink and before my eyes, I materialize into the holding area. Ival follows, using the communicator to direct everyone else to take out every Claw they see. Taking out the Claws and enemy spaceships should be relatively easy. It’s obvious what they are. Distinguishing Jeprow’s soldiers from our own will be harder. We are from the same species and our only clue right now is the dishevelled appearance of his women and men.
We fly quickly to the last reported sighting of Jeprow’s vessel, which was supposedly close to Edael. It takes us no longer than twenty minutes to be over Edael, but there is no sighting of Jeprow.
“Ival?” I question, unsure what this means.
“What happened after we left?” he barks into a screen.
“I’m not sure, Drym; we lost communication once the Claws damaged the controls,” the man replies hesitantly.
“If they damaged the panels, then they might have damaged the ship. It could have crashed,” I say, my voice shaking from the possibility.
“We would easily see the wreckage if that happened.”
“Not if it sunk under the water,” I point out, wincing.
We both look over the water now, looking for a clue of a disturbance. The water here is clear, yet like all water, it loses its transparency in large amounts. The deep and dark ocean floor is hiding any possible sunken spaceship.
“Scanning the ocean is going to take time,” Ival states, but he still begins setting up the process by the controls. He’s eager to find Jeprow’s body to not only confirm with his own eyes that he is dead, but I bet he’s also keen to display his remains to assure our people of this, too. It also doesn’t hurt Ival to appear ruthless and strong in front of our people, the humans, and Jeprow’s people.
It takes a further half an hour to find the wreckage underwater. By this time, I’m a wreck. I’m not sure what is worse, fearing the spaceship has crashed and is underwater, or that Mattie is still trapped with those Claws and Jeprow, where she is possibly still being terrorized by them. Then Ival confirms that the ship has sunk, and with his news, my hope leaves me.
Is there a chance she’s still alive? Could she have survived the crash? Is there still a place in that spaceship that isn’t full of water, where she is still breathing?
It’s futile having these hopes. I know, deep down, there isn’t any chance Mattie could have survived this. I saw her on that spaceship, Jeprow attacking her, and then I saw the Claws were loose. Even if she survived Jeprow— a man even Ival lost to— then she would have had to contend with the Claws next.
I place on my diving gear in a daze while Ival drops bulbs of light deep into the water so that, when we and three other men are transported to the surface, we can see what lies beneath us. Our suits react with the water so that we glow enough to give us a radius where we can see as though it is daylight.
Using our packs that are imbedded within the suit, we shoot down into the deep ocean.
Random debris from the spaceship floats by us, some still sinking slowing. The deeper we go down, the more we find. Pieces of clothing, parts of dead Claws, and finally, detached body parts. My heart beats painfully and quickly in my chest, panic building at every torn limb I see. Is this part of Mattie? Is this all that is left of her?
When we reach the bottom of the ocean, I’m sure hours have passed by. We find the spaceship destroyed along the ocean floor. It appears to have been snapped in half, and there isn’t a place on there that isn’t damaged in some way.
Seeing the broken craft tears me up inside. I know hoping for a miracle is stupid and wistful. I have failed Mattie again, just as I’ve failed our child. I have lost the woman I love, and the future we could have had. Everything is gone.
I stop moving, floating slowly towards the wreckage, losing time as I slip into my grief. The others swim towards the spaceship, however I stay where I am, blinded by sadness.
It isn’t until Ival comes back into my view that I realise he has found something. He is smiling behind his mask as he drags with him the remains of Jeprow. It is only his top half, and even then, he is missing both arms. Ival is holding him by his hair and my hands fist as a white hot rage begins to consume me. Even though I’m relieved to see Jeprow is dead, I wanted to kill him myself. He has taken everything from me, and now I am left with nothing.
As Ival swims by me, he taps on my arm and signals for us to return to the surface. The three other men follow behind, and I rise with them. Every second I get closer to the air, my anger grows inside me.
When we make it back to the surface, Ival taps his chest and a light hits us all, transporting us back onto the ship.
Dripping water and exhausted from the long hours swimming, my legs shake as I get my bearings.
“This is a good day. Today this war ends,” Ival declares, dropping Jeprow’s remains onto the ground and kicking his head for good measure. There is happiness in Ival’s voice, mirth in his eyes, and lightness to the way he is moving.
“This is a good day?” I hiss at him. “She gave up her life for this,” I huff, finding it harder to reign in my anger. I just stop trying, screaming at him now. “She is gone, and it is your fault!” I charge at him, shoving him roughly, ignoring the three men that come at me, ready to defend their leader.
Ival holds his hands up, halting them from restraining me. For some reason, that just makes me even angrier at him.
“No. She’s dead because you couldn’t stay out of her life. You pursued her; you grew attached to her and impregnated her. She was always going to be a target because of your connection to each other. Even if Jeprow hadn’t attacked us, she would have been targeted by our father or her own people. She was dead the moment you decided to befriend her. This is your own fault, brother, and I hope you learned a valuable lesson here. Feelings have no place amongst our people. We do things right, thoroughly, and with dignity and respect. We are honourable and strong. Other human emotions only cause problems. You are not human, so stop acting like you are. You were raised to be better than this.”
His words are like a knife through my chest. He’s right when he says Mattie is dead because of me. I did this to her, and I’m somehow supposed to live with this.
“So if we’re so honourable, then I assume you are going to stick to your word and give the humans back their planet?” I snap, my anger still strong, but it’s shifting. It’s turning inwards, hatred at myself growing quickly.
Ival glares at me, finally pushing me away from him. He stalks past me, not answering. He instead speaks softly with one of the men that are manning the controls. I hear him asking for a report on our fleet of spaceships.
My mind is distracted, my eyes finding images of Mattie in front of me. I almost think she is with me. I reach out my hand, needing to touch her, but it’s only my mind torturing me. She is not with me. She is gone.
“I’m going to drop you off with your humans. We have already taken out a majority of Jeprow’s ships, the air is almost ours. Now we need to take our fight to the ground. We’re transporting soldiers and hinemas where we need them to be. If everything goes according to plan, we should have Oden back under our control within days. Then we will take back our other planets.”
I try to take in his words, try to understand how he isn’t as torn up inside as I am. He’s acting like he is talking about a training drill, speaking of something simple and assured. How can he not care even a small amount that Mattie just gave up her life for a war that had nothing to do with her? How can he not acknowledge that a beautiful and selfless soul was stolen today? How can today ever be considered a good day?
My shoulders drop, my chest tightens, and I swear I’ve just been punched hard in the gut. I’m suddenly tired. Ival’s mention of leaving me with my humans just reminds me that I
am not the only one who is going to be torn up over this. Ival might not care, but they will. How am I supposed to tell Hannah, Logan, and Lisa about Mattie’s death? I don’t want to see their hopes crushed. I don’t want to say the words that mean this is all true, that this is all final, and there won’t be a miracle.
“Ival, humans have no place here on Oden,” I state sadly, finding a small amount of strength in remembering what Mattie would want. She would want her sister off Oden, Logan to be free, and humans to be back on Earth. I can ensure her sister and Logan are removed from Oden. I’ll take them back to Earth myself if I have to, but only Ival now can return the humans back to Earth. Only he can stop the fight for owning that planet for ourselves.
“I will send out medics to heal whomever they can, whether it is our people or there’s.”
“That is not enough. You promised Mattie you would give them back Earth. She died believing that promise.”
Ival glares at me. “You are to get some rest. You are of no use to me like you are now. Eat something, drink, and sleep. I expect you to be back helping our people by tomorrow.”
“Ival, I’m not just going to—”
“You do not talk back to me!” he yells, his face furious. “I am your leader, and I deserve respect. You will do as I say, and I won’t hear another word about it. Otherwise, perhaps the humans on Oden need to be all rounded up and taken to the same prisons we’ll set up for Jeprow’s women and men while I decide what is best for my people!”
I glare at him, a retort on the tip of my tongue, yet I hold it back. I know Ival is angry and his temper is keeping him from having any patience. Pushing him right now will be a mistake; he’s stubborn enough to follow through on his threat. He’ll send every human into a prison just to prove that, as leader, he does not go back on his word. Not when he’s giving his word to one of his own people. However, when he gives his word to a human, that isn’t necessarily a guarantee he will keep his promise.
I remain silent, seething inside, wanting to lash out and hurt him. I wouldn’t be against hurting myself, either. I would deserve it.
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