Gamma Rift

by Kalli Lanford

  “Yeah, it’s pretty far, but that’s not a problem. Just don’t drop me off in the middle of the Sierra Desert or the top of Mount Everest.” She laughed. “I’d die before I could find someone to help me.”

  “I’m sorry. I wish I could get you closer to your home, but it’s too risky. The location of your abduction was selected by the research team based on the cruiser’s ability to arrive and depart undetected. Taking that exact route is the only way we can reach your home city without being seen by your planet. Any deviations could trigger an attack or interception by your country’s armed forces.”

  “Not a problem,” she said.

  But to leave her alone to seek help under her own devices was something I didn’t want to do. I couldn’t risk leaving the ship, but I needed to be sure she found a way to her home.

  “No communication device, no monetary means, and no transportation other than your own two legs. I fear for your safety and your ability to find sufficient aid.”

  “I’ll find a phone and call Attie. And after that everything will fall into place. I’m not worried about making it back to San Diego. There are plenty of camping grounds in the Lagunas, and many people live there as well. I’ll easily find someone to help me, and I’ll be home in no time.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked, filling my chest with a lungful of air in order to relax my tightened plates.

  “Positive.” She smiled. “I am a little hungry, though.”

  “I’ll get us something to eat.”

  The ship’s stores were stocked with enough nutritional food replacements and non-perishable goods for two people for three, maybe four, days. I might need more, depending on how welcome I would be on Verla. My mother had probably already been informed of my disloyalty to Enestia and its king, and depending on the story my father tells our people when it comes to my disappearance, I may or may not have any clout on Verla Three as the prince of Enestia. Good thing I had decided to arrive and live there using the name Yarlen Trink.

  Using the set of plates and utensils reserved for the royals, I arranged a selection of food replacements, a cup of hot water, container of tarla beans, and dried fruit on a tray and presented it to America. She sat across from me at the captain’s table, sipping quip wine and eyeing the plate of unappetizing cubes.

  “I’m sorry. This is all we have. The cold unit isn’t stocked until an hour before lift-off, so we missed getting any non-perishables. But we do have this. I think it’s something you’d like to see.”

  I scooped a palm full of tarla from their container and dropped them into the glass of steaming water. Each bean descended slowly, releasing a trail of tiny bubbles from a pinhole in its seed coat.

  “You’ve told me about this,” said America, her eyes fixed upon the glass.

  “Yes,” I said as each bean casing wrinkled.

  Within seconds, a tiny tendril of white root poked from one end of the seed while a green splinter of curled leaf pushed through the casing. The leaf unrolled, its tiny weave of fibers taking shape in the form of an ellipse, and as it did so, the essence of each bean released, turning the water amber.

  “Hold out your hand,” I told America.

  She held out her cupped palm, and using a spoon, I fished out the beans and their sprouts, then deposited the tiny shoots in her hand.

  “So beautiful,” she said as a bud sprang from each bean and opened, exposing a tiny pink blossom the size of America’s thumbnail.

  “But not as beautiful as you,” I said, and gave her a small kiss that made her smile even wider.

  “We don’t have anything like this on Earth. Nothing can bud and bloom this quickly.”

  “And taste,” I said, raising the glass to her lips.

  “Delicious,” she said. “Like a sweetened herbal tea. But what do I do with…?” She looked down at the tiny bouquet in her palm. “They need to be planted, but—”

  “But they only grow within a blanket of jessom moss, which only grows in one place, Enestia. Jessom can’t be transplanted or transported.”

  “So they will die?”

  “Eventually, but that means you can also take the rest with you, and there is no worry of the beans taking root and upsetting the balance of your planet’s indigenous species.”

  She gently placed the handful of miniature flowers in the center of the table, and I handed her the half-full container of tarla. She slipped it into a pocket on her tunic and patted the outside of the fabric once the beans had settled.

  “And every time I enjoy a cup of tarla, I will think about you,” she said and took a deep breath, her eyes becoming teary. “This looks good. What is it?” she asked, holding up a wrinkled slice of quip.

  “It’s a quip, but all the moisture has been taken from it.”

  “Oh, it’s dehydrated.” She took a bite and smiled. “It’s delicious.”

  The way she held the piece of quip delicately to her lips and took a nibble, the way she stared at the cubes of food and her lips curved downward before taking a bite, the way she held her cup of quip wine, her fingertips so light upon the glass— Everything about America made me smile, and my body pleasantly stirred under my shell.

  Could an Enestian girl have this same effect on me? Would I find a mate on Verla Three? I had my doubts.

  “I’m not a fan of this one,” said America. She set a half-eaten cube back onto her plate, and I watched the soft flesh of her throat move as she swallowed a mouthful of wine.

  No, I didn’t want to meet anyone else. The only girl I wanted was America, but being shell-less, she wouldn’t survive beyond Earth, and on Earth, I’d be discovered, captured, and treated like one of my father’s specimens.

  Besides, I had to dethrone my father as soon as I had the resources to do so. His abductions and experiments needed to end, and I was the only one with the drive and ability to make that happen.

  I couldn’t count on Murelle to challenge the king, even with her newly softened heart for humans. How long would her sympathy last, let alone stretch beyond the intellectual shell-less and extend to the lesser shelled creatures that continued to die in my father’s lab? If she took the throne before I could overthrow my father, would she be any different than him? I didn’t know, but I couldn’t take the chance that she’d change things.

  America yawned against her palm and rotated her shoulders in a sexy stretch that amplified her breasts.

  “Tired? Quip wine always makes me sleepy,” I said.

  “Yeah.” She stood, came up behind me, draped her arms over my shoulders, and kissed my cheek. My heart leaped with her touch, the sensation descending to my lower plate.

  Minutes later we were nuzzled next to each other on the captain’s bench, and when her breathing became soft and her eyes closed, I knew she was asleep.

  No, I didn’t want anyone else, but we could never make this work.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  America

  I screamed and gripped the table, my fingers curling against what I thought would be metal, but instead was soft and billowy against my palms.

  “America!” said Garran. I blinked against the bright lights above me. “Are you okay?” He leaned over me and ran the back of his hand across my cheek.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, and sat up from the captain’s bench, my heart still beating rapidly. “It’s just that for a minute, I, I thought I was back in the lab on an examination table. Your father was there. I couldn’t move, and…” I sighed. “Thank God it was only a dream.”

  “Yes, only a dream. Eating a quip before bedtime is supposed to bring pleasant dreams.” He smiled. “At least, on Enestia, that’s what mothers tell their children.”

  “Then it’s either an old wives’ tale, a sort of superstition, or it doesn’t work on humans. Although the first dream I had was rather pleasant.” And it was. It was a dream that flooded my heart with the ultimate satisfaction. Unfortunately, it was also a dream that could never come true.

  “Tell it to me,” said Ga
rran as he sat down next to me.

  “Well, you took me back to Earth. I said a final good-bye to my family and friends, and then you and I traveled the galaxy together in this ship, avoiding the areas with high radiation levels until it was time for you to take your father’s place on the throne.” Retelling my dream left a warm spot in my chest, and I had to stop and take a quick breath.

  “If only that were possible,” said Garran. “But this ship— We’d run out of supplies, and once I returned to Enestia, you’d become sick again.”

  “I know, but it was nice to experience it, even if it was just in a dream,” I said. The sad emptiness in my gut returned. “So how long was I asleep?” I asked and patted my bedhead hair back into place.

  “About six hours. I slept for a while, too, and then I re-checked our coordinates, and…”

  “And were they okay? Are we headed in the right direction?”

  But Garran only smiled, stood, and offered his hand to me.

  “What?” I asked as he pulled me up next to him.

  “There’s something I want to show you.” He leaned toward me, the yellow specs in his eyes dancing under the light above.

  “A star?” I asked when he led me to the window. It was larger and brighter than the others, though it didn’t twinkle.

  Garran ran his index finger across a blue button on the control panel, and what once appeared a star became a planet as it magnified—my planet.

  “Earth,” I gasped.

  There it was, the big, blue marble we call Earth, its spin of land, ocean, and cloud like the swirl of a blue and white lollipop. “It’s so beautiful,” I said, my breath hot against the window. “From here it looks just like Enestia.”

  Placing his hand against the window, Garran leaned forward until his forehead pressed lightly against the glass. But he wasn’t looking at my Earth. His gaze was beyond, to the right, and through the abyss of twinkling stars.

  “You miss Enestia already, don’t you?”

  “I’ll miss the planet, but not its people.”

  I didn’t say more. What words could comfort his alien soul? Instead, I placed my hand on the center of his back and tipped my head until my cheek was against his shoulder. The shell under his tunic flexed.

  “We’re in your territory now,” he announced and kissed the top of my head as he turned to take the helm and readjust the magnified screen. Earth shrunk to the size of an orange and then grew as we continued to come closer.

  He ran his fingertips across the lighted panel, and I sat behind him, waiting for the safety restraints to snake over my body.

  “Are you ready to pierce Earth’s exosphere?” he asked over his shoulder. “This is where it gets tricky.” I straightened my back, and as I clutched the armrests, the seat belts locked against me. “I have to follow the flight path manually in order to avoid your country’s radar and satellite systems. One mistake and the cruiser will be detected.”

  “I’m scared,” I said. “I’m not sure what our defense systems will do if it picks up your ship.” Hopefully automatic missiles wouldn’t be triggered.

  “Don’t be scared. Nothing will happen, I promise.”

  The light swishing sound of the cruiser heightened as the ship rumbled into a vibration similar to the one we had when we left Enestia. I flattened my back against the cushion of the chair, but Garran was unaffected, continuing to work the controls, which now included several levers and a virtual screen that was projected from above.

  My fingers sank into the arm of the chair, and my muscles tensed until they hurt. Home! I was coming home! Hell, yeah!

  The ship rotated, the bow closing on the Earth until my planet was dead center with the helm. A fuzzy ring of blue, the Earth’s atmosphere, rimmed the Earth’s crust. My nerves started to settle.

  “Space: the final frontier,” I said to ease my anxiety. My words were barely audible, but Garran caught them and responded with a laugh.

  “Yes, I’m familiar with your Captain Kirk.” How cool was that? Not that I was a Trekkie, but I was a huge fan nonetheless.

  “Oh my God. There’s Africa, Asia, South America, North America!” I exclaimed.

  My jaw tightened, and my fingernails continued to bite into the chair. Garran’s fingers feverishly worked the controls, unaffected by the ship’s erratic tremble.

  “It’s dark,” I said when the shaking ceased, and I expected to see Earth’s blue sky.

  “Yes, when I plotted our course, I regulated our speed, so we’d arrive at night,” said Garran, as he powered down the virtual monitor.

  “So no one can see us?” I said, noting the flashing lights of a jet from the right-side window.

  “Yes, no one. I engaged our defense screens some time ago. Right now we’re invisible to human eyes and artificial ones—telescopes, radars, heat-sensing technology.”

  “Then why was I able to see the ship that abducted me?”

  “In order to enter or exit the cruiser, we must drop our screens. We’re vulnerable, but only for a short time. That’s why leaving and boarding the ship must take place quickly,” said Garran, his eyes fixed on the windshield as he tapped the controls.

  Millions of tiny lights dotted the landscape below, none of which were recognizable at this point, but it didn’t matter. This was Earth. My home! But how would I explain my disappearance?

  “Ready to see where we are, America?”

  I nodded, and the surface below ignited with gentle colors.

  “Night vision and still nobody can see us?”

  “No, they cannot.”

  “But can they hear us? I heard the ship take me.”

  The memory of the mysterious hum sent chills into my arms. My head spun, adrenaline eaten up by my anxiety. From the window, I saw trees—lots of them—great pines splintering the airspace, mountains, some jagged and some smooth with exposed speckled boulders of granite. Yes! The Laguna Mountains.

  “That was the propulsion system and the gravity capture beam that brought you aboard. Once the engines are set to neutral and you’ve met the ground, the ship will become silent.”

  The cruiser bobbed several yards from the ground until it became still, floating effortlessly, and I knew that within minutes, I’d never see Garran again.

  He stepped from the helm and took my hand. He was so human in so many ways except for one; no human guy would have ever sacrificed this much for me. How could I bear leaving this amazing being, this alien covered in shell, his knight’s eyes batting with tears as he kissed my hand tenderly?

  But I had to. We had no other choice.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Garran

  The pressure behind my eyes was almost unbearable, and locking every face plate didn’t help. A tear fell from my eye, and I rubbed it away with the back of my hand.

  America’s delicate lips trembled, crumpling like the bud of a pink waysum flower, and a barrage of sweet tears dripped from her lashes and pooled under her eyes and against the side of her nose.

  “What did you say earlier to me in Enestian?” she asked.

  “Nes tesilin avor,” I answered and rubbed away her tears with the pads of my thumbs as I took her head in my hands.

  “Nes tesilin avor,” she said, her lips continuing to tremble, and her eyes fixed on mine.

  She fell against me, holding me tightly and crying on my shoulder, and I held her, savoring my last moments with this amazing human female.

  “You gave up so much for me, and I haven’t done the same for you,” she sobbed.

  “Just having you in my life, even for a short time, is enough,” I told her.

  “Thank you for saving me. I would have died without your help,” she choked out. She released me, sniffled, kissed my wet cheeks, and I turned my head, so our lips would meet.

  Our last kiss was explosive, our hands touching with such hard, feverish passion it was as if we were trying to imprint the memory of each other’s bodies on our fingertips before we let go.

  A soft
buzz sounded at my touch, and the door opened, followed by a ray of light with suspended particles ready to grab America’s body and take her to the ground.

  “I’m back. I can’t believe it.” She beamed as she stood in the doorframe.

  “This is it—the place where you were taken from?”

  “Yeah, this is it. There’s the clearing where we had our campfire,” she said, her words strung together so closely I had trouble understanding her. “Isn’t it beautiful?” she said, looking up on the full moon. “I was over there when the ship… What the hell?”

  Her shoulders slumped, and she pointed below at a piece of thin, yellow band wrapped around one of the trees.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “That’s crime tape. This was a crime scene. My crime scene,” she whimpered. Caught by a gentle wind, the fragment of tape fluttered, flapped, and snapped against the tree trunks.

  America drew me in for a hug so tight I thought my neck would split, and when she studied the thick, cylindrical ray of the gravity capture beam, the skin on her forehead wrinkled.

  “I’m so sorry you can’t go back to Enestia,” she sobbed, and a new set of tears fell to her cheeks. “I’m so sorry, Garran.”

  “There’s no reason to be sorry. This was my choice.”

  “I’ll never forget you, Garran.”

  “And no matter where I am in the Millennius, my memories of you will be with me for the rest of my life.”

  I squeezed her hand, and a whip of panic rose through my chest. “Are you sure you will be safe? That you’ll find someone to help you? Just in case, you can take some supplies from the ship, some food, some water, some…”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said confidently and with a gentle laugh. “I don’t need any supplies. I’ll be home within the next couple of hours.”

  She returned the squeeze, let go of me, and stepped through the doorway with one foot, but didn’t step with the other until her first leg was caught and stationary within the beam. Suspended momentarily above the forest floor, she smiled and waved until the particles shifted downward. The natural satellite humans refer to as the moon reflected just enough light to see where she landed.