by Ashley West
“And what about the Fremeri?”
“Well, they will be distracted.”
Katia’s eyes widened as she picked up on what the Empress was saying. “Distracted killing my people, you mean,” she said without thinking.
The Empress wasn’t even there in person, but just the way she cut her eyes over to Katia from the screen of Cress’ tablet made her want to shrink back and never open her mouth again. She could see why Cress had trouble talking to her. All the same, she knew she was right. The Empress was willing to sacrifice Earth and the humans in order to do this her way, and Katia couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“Are humans so inconsequential to you that you’d let them just get slaughtered as a distraction?’ she asked, figuring that she was already in for a penny. How much worse could it get?
“Who are you?” the Empress asked. “You’re a human, obviously, but why are you there.”
“This is my house,” Katia snapped.
The Empress just looked bored.
Silas finally stepped in, placing a hand on Katia’s shoulder. “Your Imperial Majesty this is Katia. She’s a human, yes, and this is her home. Without her, I might not have survived long enough for Cress to find me. She’s offered me shelter and food since I’ve been here, and was extremely helpful when I was trying to find a way to contact you.”
“I see,” the Empress remarked. “Well, then I am grateful for the assistance you’ve given my Captain. It would have been a blow to lose him. All the same, I will not be spoken to like that by a human of all things. Do you understand?”
Katia understood alright. She understood that this woman didn’t think she was worth her time or her respect. The way she said the word human like it was something dirty and foul tasting in her mouth was proof enough that she didn’t even see her as a person worth listening to. And she wasn’t going to keep sitting there, listening to them basically plan to let her home be destroyed. “Excuse me,” she said, getting to her feet and storming off.
The longer she sat in her room alone, the sillier she felt for storming off in a huff. It was a childish thing to do, when she really should have been telling the Empress where she could shove her superiority complex. But she hadn't wanted to get Silas and Cress in trouble, and she didn't want to make an enemy of the leader of another planet because that probably wouldn't do anything to convince her that humans were worth saving.
But it wasn't right.
No one should talk about another group of people, of living, working, breathing beings, like they were just lambs for slaughter. If the Fremeri were really as bad as Silas and Cress said they were, then there was no telling what they would do to the humans when they came to Earth.
Humans wouldn't know how to defend against them, especially since a good number of them probably didn't even believe they existed.
It wasn't like Katia could go around confirming the existence of life on other planets and convince them to take up arms against the lizard people. She'd be laughed out of the room. And even if she took Silas and Cress with her, as proof, they'd most likely want to study them before anything got done.
She groaned and flopped back onto her bed, pulling her pillow over her face. "Humans really are the worst," she muttered.
Seconds later, there was a knock on the door, and she pulled the pillow down from her face to glare at the white painted wood. More than likely, Silas was on the other side of the door, and she didn't know if she wanted to talk to him at the moment. He hadn't made things worse with the Empress, but he hadn't made them better, either. She knew he had to be in a hard position, but if he believed that humans were fair game for a distraction, then...
Katia sighed. "What is it?" she called.
"May I speak with you?"
She snorted, amused by his formal tone. "Come in," she said.
Silas pushed the door open and then stepped into the room, eyes solemn. "I'm sorry Her Majesty was...the way she was."
Shrugging a shoulder, Katia sat up. "From what I hear, she's always like that."
"She is. But that doesn't mean she's right."
"Of course she's not right!" Katia said firmly. "That should go without saying. She's...she wants to use humans as a diversion. Hundreds of my people could die or be turned into slaves and we have no defense against that. And she doesn't even care!"
"She's just looking out for the good of the galaxy," Silas pointed out.
"Excuse me? The good of the galaxy? What, you mean like sacrifice the few to save the many? Sure, that makes total sense. And you know, it's not like we're important anyway. No one would even miss us if we were wiped off the face of our own planet by the lizard men."
"Katia."
"No. Don't try to reason with me, Silas. Not about this. I know that's how she thinks, and maybe—maybe that's what you think, too. Maybe you're just here, having fun before you go back to your real life and everything that entails. Are you even going to remember me when you leave?"
She hadn't meant to let that come out. Her feelings and insecurities about what was going to happen when Silas had to go back to his planet were kept deep inside, bottled up because there was no point in dealing with them right now.
Neither of them had made any promises to the other, and they both clearly knew that this was going to have to come to an end eventually.
But it hurt her to think that Silas would be able to walk away and write it off. She knew that she wouldn't be able to forget him. She'd always remember the time when she was involved with an alien because honestly, that sort of thing didn't happen every day, and how many people in the world could say the same? It was something she'd always think was special, but apparently, Silas wouldn't feel the same way.
She didn't even give him a chance to respond. "I know what's going to happen," she said, and her voice was heavy with sadness. "You'll go back to Gathra, back to your life. Maybe sometimes you'll think about me. About how you had a place to stay and food to eat and a fun little diversion while you were stuck on Earth. But it won't mean anything to you, will it? It won't be something you tell your friends about. No point in bragging that you were with a human, right? There's no glory in that. You'll go back and you'll meet some beautiful alien woman, and you'll forget all about me."
"Katia, you're talking crazy," Silas said. "How could that happen? How could I forget you?"
"I don't know," she said, shrugging glumly. "Apparently humans are no better than vermin. Why would you want to think about that?"
"Because you matter to me."
"Because I took you in."
"That's part of it," Silas admitted, and Katia turned her face away from him. "But that's not all. And it's mostly because that's a part of you. Helping people, wanting them to be comfortable. That's all you, Katia, and I like that so much about you. How much you care and how much you want to help."
When she didn't reply to that, Silas sighed. "I told Ammaline I don't like her plan," he said. "She wasn't happy. I'm surprised you didn't hear her reaction from in here."
"So what are you going to do?" Katia wanted to know. "What did she decide?"
"She's...undecided at the moment. There might be a division of our forces, half sent to the Fremeri planet to do her plan, half sent here to keep you and your kind safe. I told her that most of HIMA would balk at turning their backs on the humans."
"Is that true?"
"More or less."
Oh, wonderful. She felt so much more assured now. "And if they decide they don't care? What will happen then?"
Silas sighed, and it was a heavy thing. "I don't know."
She didn’t want to put him between his people and her, she really didn’t, but she had to know. “Will you just leave?”
He didn’t look at her for a long moment, and Katia felt cold. This morning, she hadn’t known she had anything to worry about. Everything had been warm and soft, and the only thing that had been weighing on her was how much she was going to miss Silas when he left. She hadn’t known that hi
m leaving would mean that she was going to either die or be enslaved or worse. If there was anything worse.
And what was she going to do? At the moment, she was the only human on the entire planet who knew what was going to happen. It wasn’t like she could just march up to some government official and tell them that the end times were upon them. She’d be laughed out of the place and probably arrested. And even if she could get someone to listen to her, what would they do? They weren’t equipped to fight aliens. They were too busy fighting each other most of the time.
This was a disaster.
“Katia,” Silas was saying, and she realized he had been calling her name while she’d been worrying. “Breathe.”
She dragged in a heavy breath and felt her head stop spinning. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” Silas glanced away and drew in a deep breath of his own before nodding and looking back to her. “I am going to make you a promise,” he said.
“Silas, you don’t have to—”
He held up a hand to cut her off. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you. You...you mean so much to me. You—” Silas shook his head, as if lost for words. “I’m not going to let this happen. Do you believe in me?”
Katia nodded, mutely.
“Then believe me.”
Chapter Eleven: The New Plan
“We can’t let this happen.”
“Do you have any idea what you’re suggesting?” Hamara asked over the comm link. “If the Empress doesn’t back you on this, then it’s treason. She’ll have you killed.”
“She’ll have to find me first,” Silas muttered.
Hamara shot him a look. “She would. She’d find you and then she’d have you killed. Slowly. In front of the rest of us. Is that what you want to happen?”
“No,” he replied. “But I won’t abandon this planet to the Fremeri.”
He was on the small ship that Cress had arrived on. Cress was standing behind him, fidgeting nervously as they talked. This wasn’t a secure channel, so if for any reason the Empress decided to request the logs for the comms on this ship, she’d be able to see and hear this entire exchange. And that would give her all the proof she needed that Silas was a traitor to the cause or whatever she’d try to pin on him.
They'd gone to Hamara first. Cress seemed to think that she'd be the most sympathetic to what they wanted to do, and she was actually on Gathra and could speak to Ammaline in person about trying to help the humans.
Unsurprisingly, she didn't seem thrilled about this prospect.
"You go to Earth and then you come back all changed," Hamara was saying. "What happened to you out there?"
"He met a girl," Cress supplied.
"Stuff it, Cress," Silas warned. "She has nothing to do with this."
"Oh, come on, Silas. She has everything to do with this, and you know it. Before you came here, you wouldn't even have considered something like this, and now you're trying to get us all to go against Her Imperial Majesty so you can save your girl."
"Is that what's going on here?" Hamara wanted to know. "Because that's actually better than what I thought was happening."
"What did you think?" Silas asked, already sure he didn't want to know.
"That you were losing your mind. But if you're trying to protect someone then that makes more sense."
He pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers. "Will you just listen to me?" he asked. "It doesn't matter what my reasons are. I'm not abandoning this planet to the Fremeri. The Empress' plan is a bad one. So what if we cripple their home planet? They'll have this one. It won't weaken them when we have to fight them, it will just make everything take longer. We need to strike now."
All he wanted was for them to hear the wisdom in his words. It was there, Silas knew it was. "Listen," he continued. "We're HIMA, and I know that comes with heavy responsibility. We're meant to serve the Empress' interests and keep her lands safe. Our jurisdiction doesn't extend out this far, and I understand that. But please. Please think about this."
Both Cress and Hamara stared at him like he was speaking in a different language. Hamara sighed after a moment and then nodded. "As much as I really don't want to get killed, you're right. We can't just let the Fremeri have their way. I'll talk to Her Imperial Majesty."
Silas breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you, Hamara."
She saluted him and then grinned. "Nice to see you're not a prisoner, a corpse, or a traitor, Captain. Although, I guess that last one is still up for debate, isn't it?"
"Dismissed, Hamara," Silas said firmly, shaking his head.
When the screen went back to being a windshield, Silas sighed and dropped his head into his hands.
Cress came up to stand next to the seat. "You know, I..." He trailed off, sounding unsure. "You know I'm going to follow you, right?"
Silas looked at him. "What?"
"I'm going to follow you. There was never a question of that. I think provoking Ammaline is a terrible idea, but if you're doing it, then I'm doing it, too."
"Cress...you don't have to do that. You don't have to follow me if you don't agree with it. Because Hamara's right. If she doesn't agree, then Ammaline will have us all killed, starting with me. Wouldn't you much rather be on the sidelines saying 'I told you so'?"
Cress rolled his eyes at that. "No. I wouldn't. I'd rather be able to say that I stood with you and did the right thing."
He was touched, actually. Cress had always been behind him, but he'd always been his friend, too. "Thanks, Cress," Silas said, reaching over to clap him on the shoulder. "Now we just have to wait and see what she says."
It was a long wait, too. Silas didn't want to go back to Katia's without an answer. If she said no, then Hamara was under orders to try to find others in the army who would be sympathetic to the cause and not unwilling to defect if need be. They would all end up being fugitives, provided they survived the Fremeri, and Silas knew that wasn't an appealing prospect.
He so wanted to do this the right way, with the full support of the Empress and the entire might of HIMA, but he had made Katia a promise, and no matter how it had to happen, he was going to do it.
So they waited.
He filled Cress in on what had happened to him and how he'd gotten to Earth and how he'd met Katia, and listened to Cress talk about how he'd come to find him.
They went through the process of getting the spare tablet that had been on board the ship registered to Silas, and he went through his messages, touched to see that people had missed him and had sent him messages and holo vids while he'd been missing.
Katia probably had dinner cooking by now, and he sighed, wishing he was there to eat it instead of here, waiting to find out if he was going to have to become a traitor to the very people he had sworn to protect.
Almost two hours after they had made the call to Hamara, the trill of a call coming in broke the silence.
Cress and Silas exchanged looks, and Silas answered the call to see Hamara's smug face. "Well?" he asked, feeling like his heart was trying to come out of his mouth. If this hadn't worked then he'd need to make a plan for what he was going to do. How he was going to outrun the Empress once he'd killed the Fremeri. If this hadn't worked then... Well. He'd have to do some serious thinking. It seemed like it was taking forever for Hamara to start talking.
"Gentlemen," she said finally. "You'd better get prepared. Under the orders of Her Imperial Majesty, HIMA is going to war."
War. What a word. Silas had never been to war before, but he had some ideas about it. Cress looked positively green at the notion of it, and so Silas brought him home--that is, back to Katia's house--with him so he could eat and sleep and prepare.
Katia had dinner on the table and an anxious look on her face when they came in, and she barely greeted Cress before pinning Silas with her gaze. "Well?"
He smiled and opened his arms for her. "HIMA fights for you. With our Empress' permission and everything."
Her anxiety melted into delight, an
d she flung herself at him, arms wrapping around his neck as she held on tight. "Thank god for that," she murmured into the skin of his neck.
Silas smiled wider, rubbing her back and inhaling the softly floral scent of her hair. He felt a sense of triumph at getting the Empress to agree to his plan, but that was nothing compared to the joy he felt at being able to protect this woman in his arms.
It had nothing to do with being in HIMA, nothing to do with being a military leader, and everything to do with what he felt for her. If he had been anyone else, a civilian or just a bystander, he'd still want to keep her safe.
"Thank you," she murmured into his ear and then slid down to the floor, straightening her clothes. "There's food in the kitchen."
The three of them sat down for the meal (a rather excellent one, too, with some sort of tender meat smothered in sauce with mashed potatoes and bread), and Silas enjoyed watching Cress discover the wonders of human food. They laughed and talked like old friends, even Katia and Cress got along, and Silas was happy.
Later that night, Cress went to lay on the couch, making his peace with being so much bigger than the couch and thanking Katia for her hospitality. Silas and Katia went to the bedroom, closing the door behind them.
"I like Cress," she said softly. "He's nice."
"He is," Silas agreed, watching the lamplight paint pictures on Katia's skin as she stripped.
The room was silent, save the sound of them breathing, and when Katia was undressed, Silas opened his arms for her again.
She climbed into his lap and licked her lips, suddenly seeming nervous. "Do you have a plan?" she asked, voice soft. "Is...is everything going to be alright?"
Silas nodded. "Yes, Katia. I made you a promise, didn't I? I intend to keep it." He and Cress and Hamara had hashed out the finer details of the plan the Empress had outlined for them, and Silas had a good feeling that it would work. It was risky, but it was the quickest and best way to make sure that the humans were safe and the Fremeri didn't have a chance to go after anyone else.
In a low voice, Silas explained it to her. "There isn't time to deal with your government," he said. "And Earth has too many anyway, and you're all fighting with each other, which would just make things take much longer than they need to. So what we are going to do is let the Fremeri think Earth is undefended."