by Kylie Gold
Dracon looked over as he cooked the meat, “Lucky bastard,” he mumbled jokingly, making me roll my eyes. What a typical guy thing to say. The unlucky one was me, my breasts were huge and stayed swollen and achy; Con was of course worth it.
The baby ate happily, his little hands resting on my skin as he did. Dracon walked over with our plates, sitting right next to me as he began to eat. Holding Con with one arm, I ate with the other. Dracon’s arm was around my shoulders as we all ate, occasionally leaning over to give me kisses on the face and neck. The whole year we were together, we had actually gotten along really well and had just been very in love. I had my moments while pregnant I would get a little too hormonal and go off on him and cry my eyes out, but he was supportive even in those moments. And now that Con was there, it seemed like our little family was perfect.
There was a knock on the door. Dracon glanced up to the door before looking back down to his food, “You may enter.”
The door opened and Shan walked in. It was almost always Shan, he seemed to be the messenger for everyone. Shan looked over all of us eating and then his eyes fell to Dracon, “I don’t mean to disturb your meal. Something’s come up,” he spoke to Dracon cautiously.
“What is it?” he asked, raising his cup to his lips and taking a sip of juice between bites of his food.
“Two scouts were found dead about a half hour ago… They were hung from trees.”
I froze and looked to Dracon, who was still himself. The war between the Navani and humans still raged on. While the attacks on the Navani had lessened, they were still there and the humans were still mining away. The few times I had offered to go talk to them about a treaty, Dracon had refused to let me go. With me being pregnant for most of the time I had been there, he feared the humans would find out and have me executed or something. Having Con had complicated my plans for helping them find peace with the humans, but that didn’t mean we wouldn’t find peace.
Lynching was a new tactic though… I had never heard of them doing it before. It made it seem like it was no longer a war over material goods; if it was, they would have just shot the scouts. But hanging them, that took time, effort, and hatred. Was it a sign of them wanting to exterminate the Navani? Terror shocked through my body, looking down at Con as he ate. I was a part of the tribe more than ever, I had a son to protect. “What are your thoughts on this, Amelia?” Dracon asked, placing a hand over mine which was resting on Con. He was asking for counsel on the possible motives of the lynching, and I didn’t want to tell him what I was thinking.
I bit the inside of my cheek as I tried to think of any other reason the humans would have hung the scouts. I couldn’t think of any. “I’m not sure why they would do that… The only time lynching has been used in human history is to give an example.”
“Give an example? Of what?” Shan asked.
I let out a shaky breath, “Of what’s to come. Lynching is a hate crime. Meaning, they aren’t focused on the materials or land anymore… they are focusing on the tribe.” I looked to Dracon with pained eyes. “But that doesn’t mean that’s the direction the entire colony is steering. It could just be a few humans that took it too far…” Dracon’s face fell into an expression of deep distress, his hand moving from mine and stroking Con’s hair. “Maybe it’s time for me to go speak to them,” I suggested.
“No, absolutely not,” Dracon immediately shot back to me. “We have Con now. I don’t want you to be in danger like that.”
“Well he’s in danger if they actually are starting to use lynching as a scare tactic, Dracon. They won’t care he’s half human. They’ll just see pink skin and kill him.” Dracon was silent, staring away from me then. “I’ve sat by long enough. This is my tribe too now, remember? I’ll just have to go alone, without Con.”
“Alone?” Dracon scoffed. “You can’t be serious. Just because you’re human doesn’t mean they won’t kill you or imprison you.”
“He’s right, Amelia,” Shan sighed.
“Well taking any Navani with me will get all of us killed,” I snapped; part of me wanted to point out he was being a hypocrite because he still went off to help fight which was endangering his own life despite our son. I loved Dracon so much, and I knew he meant well, but he had to let me help. I grabbed his hand and gave it a squeeze. “You’ve got to trust me. They’ll listen to me better than they would ever listen to you guys. They are racists and bigots, so they wouldn’t flinch to shoot. At least I would be able to find their leader, Lyle, and try to talk to him. I’m the best shot you’ve got when it comes to making peace with them and getting all of this senseless killing to end.” I stared at Dracon even though he still wasn’t looking up to me, “You don’t want our son to grow up in a warzone, but that’s what is going to happen if something isn’t done soon.”
A thick, painful silence filled the room then. Dracon still stared off into the distance, lost in his thoughts. He knew I was right, but he was just letting his worries talk him out of it. If the humans were on their way to trying to wipe out the Navani, we needed to act and needed to act quickly. Dracon’s eyes finally fell back to Con and me. His eyes were pained as he took in the sight of both of us. “I know… You’re right. I just don’t want to lose you,” he looked me in the eyes, his holding sorrow that didn’t even have a reasoning yet.
“And neither of us want to lose Con,” I pushed further.
Dracon looked to Shan then, and stood up. “Okay, we will arrange it. I do want a few guards to go with you, just for your travel in the jungle so you don’t get lost. And they will be nearby just in case something does happen.” He sounded defeated and stressed, picking up our plates and moving them to the sink. Dracon looked back to Shan, “Round up four men to go with her. We’ll send them this evening.”
I let out a heavy sigh, glad he was finally listening to me. Of course I was worried something would happen, especially when I looked down to the little boy in my arms. The thought of never seeing him again destroyed me, but I would have to risk it if it meant him actually being able to grow up rather than being murdered in a war that had been going on long before he was born. Shan exited to find the men. I stood with Con, putting my breast away once he was done eating. Dracon stood at the sink, his fists clutching the rims of it. Walking over, I placed a hand on his back. “Everything’s going to be fine,” I breathed to him, kissing his arm.
Dracon glanced over his shoulder at me, tears in his eyes, “Don’t tell me that,” he let out in a broken whisper, “You don’t know what will happen. Just promise me, swear to me, you’ll be as safe as you can. If things start to get heated, you run and you run as fast as you can to the guards—and then to me.”
I nodded at him, “I swear.”
He peeled away from the sink and pulled me in a tight hug; Con nestled between us. “You two are my entire world, Amelia,” he whispered into my hair.
“And you’re ours,” I replied, laying my forehead against his shoulder.
I wanted nothing more than to bring peace to the land, to raise our family without the fear of annihilation. Soon the men would gather, Dracon would take Con, and I would be off to seek out a solution for the war between the humans and Navani. I prayed for the sake of our family that it worked.
Epilogue
Chomy Jamith
When would they ever let us go home from that freakin’ job? The edge of the habitable zone was no place for man with drastic temperature changes. Shaviro had a severe tilt, making anything that wasn’t along the equator completely frigid. However, being at the edge of the habitable zone made the days ridiculously hot and the nights freeze-your-balls-off cold. It was a miserable job, but it was the highest paying job on Shaviro—well, other than the swanky position of being a council member.
The region we were mining then was a chasm along one of the tectonic plates of the planet. I had no idea why we were even still there trying to mine, all of the ores we had found in the earth of that planet so far were common and worth next to nothing
on the market. But, we didn’t really have a choice in the matter. We were being paid to mine, so that’s what we were doing.
I walked along the long steel bridge we had installed connecting the two sides of the chasm. As I passed the center, an alarm began to sound from down below. Buzzers and lights began to go off. Oh great, what did someone do now? I hurried across the bridge and then down the stairs. I rushed down several flights until I reached the massive drill. Red lights were flashing all around it. “What going on Denny?” I yelled across the sound of the machine.
“Ah, nothin’ too bad. The drill is just stuck again. We’ll get it loose in a few minutes and the alarms will shut off,” Denny called back to me as he hoisted himself up onto the machine.
“They better shut off, it’s gonna give me a freakin’ headache,” I griped, heading back towards the stairs being a little ticked off I rushed all the way down there just to find out the drill was stuck. That was something Denny and the guys could fix by themselves.
I went to walk back up the stairs when Denny yelled from behind, “Actually, Chomy, I think we gotta problem!” he yelled in a panic. I groaned and went to round the corner to go back to the machine. When I walked around, at the exact moment, the drill began to shake violently and suddenly the hole which it was drilling erupted with thick, black liquid ore. Liquid ores weren’t uncommon on Shaviro, that extreme axis tilt causing it to basically cook the inside of the earth. However, it erupting wasn’t good.
“Shut it off for Pete’s sake!” I screamed, walking towards the drill to do it myself if he couldn’t get to it before I did. Ore shot out and poured onto the walkway and began to flood it. It seeped over to where I was standing, I tried to back up quickly, knowing that the liquid ore would melt the flesh from my bones. As I backed up, I hit a railing and it gave way. My arms flailed out to my sides, trying to catch myself, but it was too late.
Suddenly I was free falling down a chasm, screaming at the top of my lungs. I was going to die, there was no way I wasn’t going to die. The temperature rapidly grew hotter and hotter as I fell in. I felt like I screamed for hours, but had been just mere seconds before I collided with a hot, stone surface. My body rolled from the impact, causing me to fall once again into a crevice in the side of the chasm. I groaned loudly from the pain of the fall, my entire body screaming from the soreness. How in the hell wasn’t I dead?
I sat up and immediately looked up. Through the crevice I could see sunlight. I hadn’t fallen very far—I had gotten lucky and landed on that ledge instead of the bottom of the chasm. I scrambled to my feet and dusted myself off. “Chomy! Chomy!” Denny screamed down into the chasm, his voice echoing. “Chomy! Are you okay!?”
I groaned and then yelled back as loud as I could, “I’m alright Denny. Get me the hell out of here! Send down a crane hook!” My head was freaking killing me. I looked around the stupid crevice to try and find something to move in order to climb up the steep incline to get back to the ledge. As I looked around, I noticed something reflective catch my eye. Narrowing my eyes at it, I walked to it. It was covered in black soot, but had a sort of luster behind it. What was that? Taking the hem of my shirt, I wiped the face of the stone off, trying to get the soot cleared off it.
It took some elbow grease, but eventually the black soot rubbed off of the massive stone. My eyes marveled in disbelief at the glowing opal-colored stone. Dremalite?! Shaviro had dremalite?! My heart felt as though it was about to burst from excitement. Dremalite was the most expensive ore in the colonies since it was used for engines that could go faster than the speed of light.
Shaviro just became one of the most important planets in the galaxy.