by Calista Skye
She saunters up to me and rests the tip of the sword at my thigh, and it immediately pierces the skin so a thin stream of blood runs down my leg.
“Ow! You bitch!”
“It takes nothing at all, does it?” not-Alesya says. “I forget how incredibly delicate you organics are. Try again?”
She puts the tip onto my other thigh, looks at my face with mild interest and pushes gently.
The pain is intense. “Oow! You’re fucking insane!”
A stronger stream of blood runs down my other leg. Shit. This could get really bad.
Then I see something behind Alesya, and I focus on her. “You’ve lost. There will never be a force of warriors from this planet. Your plan failed!”
Not-Alesya looks at the red tip of the sword, ignoring me. “How much of this fluid do you contain? I think we might as well find out. I just lost my general. And it appears to be because of you.”
“Yeah?” I say, playing for time. There is definitely something happening behind her. “It was my pleasure to completely ruin your plan. When you die, your final thought will be that you failed. There will be no revenge!”
Not-Alesya gives a ghoulish smile. “I’ve grown accustomed to this body. It is pleasant to wear. Can I tell you a secret? When the time for harvest is here, I thought I would just get the warriors and be done with it. But now, I think I can have some fun with them first. I can be The Woman! Yes? Enjoying this body to the fullest in ways that are impossible alone. Through the pad, I have been able to witness the mating processes of your friends in your cave. The warriors are good, aren’t they? I want to try it, too. And now I can.”
“You will never try any such thing, you insane alien weirdo. You’ll be too busy being dead.”
She places the tip of the sword at my arm held by the robot. Her dead eyes look at me from close up. “Here.”
She applies a little bit of pressure, and the sharp steel tip goes through the skin like butter.
“Fuuuck!” I scream, partly to disguise any noises from what’s happening behind her. “You fucking insane loser alien bitch! I’m glad you will never get your revenge on your enemies!”
Not-Alesya puts the tip on my other arm. “Here? A little deeper this time.”
Damn. That’s going to cut into muscle.
But before she can apply the pressure, two strong arms grab her head and twist it hard, and with a sickening sound of dry bones being crushed, the whole body drops to the ground like a sack of cement.
Brax’tan stands there and looks at me. The golden light is back in his eyes. It’s steady, but it’s weak. “Delyah.”
“Hi.”
“You’re alive.”
“You could never kill me. Get me loose, please?”
He easily breaks open the robot hands so I can move again. Then he flings both of the heavy objects at the wall, reducing them to a shapeless heap of alien tech.
I go in to embrace him. “Thank you. How do you feel?”
He embraces me gently. “Like I died and came back to life. It’s been dark for days. What has happened here?”
“You don’t remember?”
“I remember… we were in the cave, you were making nice sounds… then darkness. And now we’re here.”
“Do you know where this is?”
“It’s the upper room in Bune. And that—” he points to Alesya’s body, “— is a woman.”
“Was a woman,” I correct him. “That was Alesya. She was abducted by the Plood at the same time as the rest of us, but the Plood murdered her before we got here. The evil spirit used her body.”
“Still using it, I think.”
Alesya’s fingers move a little, and she seems to be trying to move her head.
“Brax’tan,” I say. “I don’t want that thing to defile my friend’s body anymore.”
He picks up his sword.
Alesya’s mouth is moving. “You will never leave this planet,” she croaks. “They are coming.”
Brax’tan splits the head neatly in two with an accurate stroke. There’s no blood or fluids at all, just some gleaming metallic pieces that must be the computer or neural net the alien used to control the body.
He quickly takes the lab coat off the dead body and drapes it over Alesya’s head and face.
“I’m sorry for her death.”
“Me too. But you didn’t kill her. She’s been dead a long time. Okay, we have things to do.”
“Just a moment.” Brax’tan embraces me again, then bends down to kiss me. “This will strike you as weird and probably completely inappropriate. But you seem a little out of balance, so I can think of no better time to corner you with this. Delyah, I love you. Will you marry me?”
I wipe off some of the blood from his nose, then kiss my caveman passionately. “Yes, I will. Of course I will. Out of balance or not. I love you, too. See, this was the thing I meant we had to do. Well, one of the things.”
“Ah. What else is there?”
“Your tribe and an army of other tribes are about to attack my tribe. And I want to help them.”
He’s completely confused. “My tribe? Attack yours?”
“Yeah. You arranged it when you were under her control. But I think we can help them.” I reluctantly disengage from my fiancé and walk over to the spaceship’s control panel.
Brax’tan looks over my shoulder. “Do you know how these things work?”
I laugh. “You know, I think I just might?”
He frowns. “How is that possible?”
I tell him.
39
- Sophia -
“It’s likely that they’ll attack after dark. They have no reason to wait for light.” Dar’ax’s voice is tight and his face is grim. “I count one thousand two hundred men. Most come from the front, some have walked around us and will attack from the sides. One or two contingents may attack from the rear. The dragons have turned and are also coming this way.”
The other men are silent, clearly not leaving us many chances to win against the onslaught.
We’ve finally found a suitable hill to fight from. The men have been busy chopping down trees and making fortifications, but even I can see that it won’t help much. After the influx of friendly cavemen unselfishly coming to our aid, we have maybe fifty men to fight with. And seventeen women, all of them with crossbows, but two of them with small babies and three in various stages of pregnancy. The preparations the men have made were mostly meant for the area around the cave, digging trenches and traps and so on. They’ve done that here too, but it’s not enough.
It’s not an impressive fighting force.
The two dactyls we have are more impressive, maybe, but they’ll be less useful at night.
Definitely useful, whether in the day or at night, is the giant Tyrannosaurus Rex I’m told we have on our side. That creature is keeping off to the side, but Heidi and Dar’ax went all the way up to it and even climbed on top of it. Heidi calls it ‘Gerk’, and apparently it’s the one they knew before. So that should be a psychological shock to the enemy, at least.
But probably not a decisive shock. We’ll still have to fight. And we have little hope of surviving the night.
I glance over towards Bune. The light show has ended, apparently. Now that part of the jungle is as dark as everywhere else.
“Good luck, Delyah, wherever you are,” I whisper, just to say something.
I sit down on a tree stump and rock little Jaxia in my arms.
What the hell do I do? If we’re overrun, and most of our men are dead, and we can see the dragons approaching in the distance?
Do I surrender? Do I give up my infant daughter to an enemy? Do I kill her myself? What kind of choice can I make here?
“Anything you do is the right thing,” Caroline says and places a hand on my shoulder, as if she knows what I’m thinking. “There is no wrong here. Nobody should be in this position in the first place.”
“But we are in this position,” I say with a voice that bar
ely carries. “Shit, Jaxia. I’m so sorry.”
“Give yourself up,” Aurora says decisively, arranging the armor plate on her chest. “When that’s the only option. You don’t have to die here. You’ll be taken by a tribe, fine. You can still care for the baby. After two hours you will have talked the chief around and you’ll be running the whole village.”
“Is that your plan, Aurora?”
She smiles tightly. She’s smeared soot all over her face and arms, like an elite soldier. She doesn’t look like Xena anymore. She just looks dangerous. “Hell no. I’ll die on this hill. But that’s just me. I don’t have kids. Yet. It’s a much easier decision for me. But I’ll fight anyone who comes close to the kids of our tribe. Including Heidi.”
“Works for me,” Eleanor says and inspects her crossbow. “We’ll take down everyone who comes for the kids. Until we’re all dead.”
The other girls mumble agreement, and I give them a grateful smile.
Heidi comes waddling, and I let her sit on the stump. “I’m not going with the attackers. They kill my husband, I’ll take as many as possible with me before I slit my throat.” The blade of her knife flashes in the sunset.
Emilia squats by my side, her face gray. “The tribes know how to deal with babies. They’re good at it. They will not do anything mean to our daughters, and I’m sure they will honor their mothers. I’m not giving up little Ariana. I’ll go with them. I discussed it with Ar’ox. I don’t think they’ll hurt me.”
Of course, in my inner being I know that’s the way it has to be. I can’t give up my baby. The tribes want both of us. They won’t separate a mother and her child. Jax’zan will die, I’m sure of it. None of our men will survive this. And most of the girls will want to go the same way. But for a mother…
“Fuck,” I seethe. “I thought we were on the way to conquering this fucking planet.”
“We’re not dead yet,” Caroline says and pats my shoulder before she goes forward to the defensive line, armor plates clanking around her torso.
“You mothers stay here,” Aurora commands. “That includes you, Heidi. We’ll make sure these fuckers pay dearly for all of you. Stay down.” Then she’s gone.
The last sliver of the sun passes under the horizon.
At the same moment, there’s a cry of “They’re coming!” and I hear the first metallic sounds of sword on sword. Then the terrible sound of a thousand warriors yelling their war cries as loud as they can.
I get to my feet and climb up on the defensive structure built from logs here on the top of the hill. That will be the last obstacle for the attackers.
In front of us, there’s a plain with grass and bushes, but no trees. It’s very large and has to be a bog or quagmire of some kind. To the sides there’s jungle.
In the middle of the plain, there’s a dark wave of movement. It’s the enemy coming towards us. They’re running and yelling and screaming in triumph. I can see our T. Rex, running to meet them with its lower jaw close to the ground. Dar’ax on his dactyl sweeps down and returns to the air with a man caught in the monster’s mouth.
Aurora is in the first line, firing her crossbow and taking down at least two attackers.
Spears rain over the enemy army, and some of the warriors stumble, fall and stay down.
And yet, even I can see that this will be short. There are just too many enemies.
I turn around. There’s a column of smoke against the darkening sky. The dragons are on their way, and they’re closer than I had feared.
Jax’zan comes running. “My loves,” he says calmly and kisses me. “My loves, my miracles, my life. We’ll see each other in the next world. Whatever it may be. Go with them, my love. They won’t kill you. Care for our babies. I love you.” He embraces me, hard.
“I love you, too,” I sob. “I love you. I will always love you.”
He kisses me on the mouth, then Jaxia on the forehead, and then he gives me his trademark confident grin before he’s gone in the darkness.
And I’m weeping like a child.
‘Babies,’ he said. Because I’m pregnant again.
Then I frown. There’s a noise on the air. A distant thunder, except composed of millions of smaller sounds. Like an immense avalanche of boulders or water or dirt. Or all three.
It’s not coming from the battle. That’s a different noise altogether.
It’s coming closer, too. Fast. Soon, the noise is so bad that I have to place my hands over Jaxia’s little ears. I still can’t tell where it’s coming from.
The battle has ground to a halt. Everyone is looking around, puzzled. Some of our enemies are running wildly away from us.
Still, it doesn’t feel like a victory. This is what doomsday feels like. The end of the world.
I kiss Jaxia’s little forehead and smile at her. I think her mother smiling at her will be the last thing she sees.
I look up. There’s a gigantic cloud up there, pitch black and hovering right above us.
I want to say something, to give voice to my shock and horror, but the noise makes my chest tremble, and even I won’t be able to hear anything I say now.
Then the lights come on. Thousands of lights in every color of the rainbow, shooting out from the cloud in rays of blinding brilliance. The jungle is bathed in crazy lights and looks nothing like a jungle anymore, just an alien nightmare flashing in white and red and green and blue.
The gods themselves have arrived, that much is plain to see.
I kneel down with Jaxia in my arms, bending my torso over her scrunched-up little face to shield her from this horrific onslaught on the senses, realizing that she’s crying, although I can’t hear her.
I stay down for a long time. When I look up again, the cloud has descended on the plain in front of the hill and the noise has softened to a distant hum as from a million air conditioners.
I get up and, still holding my baby girl in my arms, and walk towards the new arrival as if in a trance. The battle has ended as soon as it began, and all I can see of the enemy forces is the last handful of them, fleeing wildly from the newly arrived mountain.
I reach the plain and take in the immense object. It’s clearly Bune, except with endlessly more lights and now without the jungle growing on it. It’s a sleek, gray cone-shaped disk, gleaming with dull metal and sparkling with ten thousand points of light.
I crane my neck to look up at the thing. It’s Bune, but it’s smaller. Maybe the upper third of that whole mountain. It’s still gigantic.
The noise slowly abates, like an old washing machine winding down from the spin cycle. The lights turn off, or at least most of them, only leaving maybe fifty powerful white ones that illuminate the plain and the surrounding jungle like day.
I walk towards the ship. It’s extremely beautiful and still has an air of intense menace. Still it draws me to it. The menace isn’t meant for me.
A shadow emerges on the sloping sides of the ship, walking down towards me.
I stop at the edge of the UFO. The bright lights in my eyes make it hard to see who it is.
She walks all the way down to me. I shade my eyes with one hand, squinting at the light.
Then my heart jumps in my chest and I think I’ll explode with joy.
“Hi, Sophia,” Delyah says with an uncertain smile and a nervous wave. “Um… everything okay here? Sorry I’m so late!”
40
- Delyah -
“Where the hell have you been?”
“Is that Bune?”
“How did you know we needed help?”
“Can you fly that thing?”
“Can it take us home?”
Everyone is standing around us. First they were stunned to silence, and then they all came in to hug me, crying and sobbing and happy. I did some sobbing myself, too.
But now they’re asking all kinds of questions. I hurriedly introduce Brax’tan as my fiancé, and my friends spontaneously break into applause.
“Yeah! You go, girl!”
“That’s a pretty amazing-looking dude. See the eyes? Like searchlights.”
“So that’s what you’ve been doing!”
“It is just me, or do we all get engaged the moment we leave the cave?”
“Guys,” I say, trying to be heard. “Girls. Guys.”
“I think she wants to say something,” Heidi says. “Am I right, Delyah?”
“Yes. You’re right. Yes.”
“Pipe down!” Aurora roars, and the group goes silent.
“Thank you. So,” I say into the silence. “There are still the dragons.”
“Oh fuck. The dragons!”
“Sure they didn’t turn around, same as the tribes?”
“Can we go inside the ship to get away from them?”
“Wait,” I urge. “We don’t need to run from them. The guys can kill them. Right, Brax’tan?”
Brax’tan easily jumps up onto the edge of the spaceship.
“Warriors,” he calls, and his natural authority makes me tingle.
The other men look up at him and come closer.
“I am Brax’tan of the Verensi tribe. We have a job to do. Two small dragons are on the way here. They are terrifying, I know. I have seen them up close. But they are small. Not adult specimens. You have all cut irox out of the sky! These dragons are no more difficult. They are easier, because they don’t fly. Their fire is dangerous, it is true. But one warrior with one good sword is ten times more dangerous. And we will attack them with more than one sword. We have our blades and our wit. That is all that is needed. I’d estimate one warrior to take down these two hatchling dragons. But we will all go. Come with me.”
He jumps down from the edge of the spaceship and walks towards the dragons, and after a short pause of shrugging and exchanging strange looks, the other cavemen walk after him.
“That’s a… commanding presence,” Aurora says with clear admiration in her voice. “Almost made me want to come with them.”
“He’s supposed to be their general,” I explain with pride. “The alien that ran Bune had him designated for that. He’s the chief of his tribe. Best village on Xren. Except ours. Girls, come up here.”