Chapter 8
She is waiting for us.
She expected us. Of course she did.
Ayla is even more intimidating in person than she was on the huge television screens set up in the city centers. She is imposing, threatening—in attitude and demeanor, not height or size. I am shocked to see she is smaller than Yves. In fact, she’s barely taller than me, and that’s with the large platform heels. Power crazy, fueled by a childhood and adolescence of being pushed down and patronized by family members, she is the little sister, determined to get her own back. Hell hath no fury like an Axylan female scorned.
Her expression can only be described as “petty”. She pouts at us; sticks her bottom lip out so it protrudes like a spoiled child. Her arms are crossed over a fairly generous chest, and although her talons are indeed drawn back, they barely stretch the length of my index finger.
“Yves,” she says, in a voice so high-pitched that it takes me by surprise. “You’ve turned up just in time for your execution, I see. And with a little human friend in tow, how nice!”
“This needs to stop,” Yves says bravely, “You’ve gone mad.”
Ayla merely giggles. She gestures to two huge Axylan guards on either side of her to seize us, but we’re too quick with the flamethrowers and take aim just before they can follow through.
“Last chance, Ayla. I tried to make things right with you, I really did. This killing spree has gone too far. You’re delirious with the power, you’ve alienated everyone who ever loved or cared about you and you’ve become a…monster.” Yves sucks in a sharp breath after this admission, then gazes down at his bare, blistering feet while he continues, “I can’t blame myself anymore. I’ve given everything I can to get you back on track, I honestly have. I can’t live with the guilt of thinking I’ve failed you.”
“Oh, but you did fail me, dear Yves. Just like mother and father failed me, by going and dying without leaving me an ounce of their kingdom. Just like the rest of our brothers failed me, by taking and taking and always looking down on me! And you did, too, Yves. You might think you’re high and mighty for turning over a new leaf, but I see what you are deep down: a coward. Someone who was so desperate for his own power that he’d risk the people he loved!”
“He’s changed,” I say, courageously, stepping forward, “He risked everything for me. Your brother is a good man; he’s given up the power to start a life with me. To fight to take back Human rights and freedom.” Seeing that Yves would have given his life for the Human efforts changed everything. And if we survive this, if there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, I’m just as certain that we’ll spend the rest of our lives together.
“You’re…pathetic, Yves,” there’s a waver in her voice now. She recovers her composure and screams, “Guards, seize them!”
We tighten our grips on the flamethrowers and the guards refuse to move—they fear death by fire more than Ayla’s wrath. They stay frozen in place, prompting Ayla’s cheeks to flame.
“She isn’t going to relent, Yves,” I tell him, dropping my voice so only he can hear me. “We have to do this, now.”
Yves nods, then clears his throat to say, “I’ve forgiven myself, Ayla.”
And then he pulls the trigger, and flames erupt into the air.
Epilogue
I know now, a year later, that I’ll never be able to forget the scent of burning flesh, nor the screams of the Axylans as they died, as they wailed in mourning for loved ones. I’ll never erase the scorch marks seared into my flesh, never be able to erase the ticking sound of the bomb. But I know now I did what I had to do. Each small act of Human rebellion led to this moment—this moment in which I have everything.
Ayla was easy to take down, although for someone so small she put up one hell of a fight. The swipe of one of her talons caught Yves across the cheek; thankfully, Axylan poison is only lethal to Humans, so although his marbled skin is permanently marred by a scar that tears from just under his left eye, across his nose and down to his right jawline, he’s alive. That’s the one injury I couldn’t heal. I tell him it adds character.
The rest we’re getting around to, one day at a time. Emotional scars are more difficult to eliminate than physical ones, but we come closer to doing so every day we spend together. In spite of what Yves says, I doubt he’ll ever fully forgive himself for what happened with his sister, and that’s okay. We all have baggage, Human and Axylan. It just helps that we have someone to share it with, to spread the weight of it around.
Ayla’s empire collapsed after her death just as Yves had predicted. The others were much less intent on destroying and ruling the Earth without a crazy dictator driving them on. Gorges IV and V were slightly more difficult to tackle, but with the right number of reinforcements and, in V’s case, a large feast as compensation, we managed to settle things with a minimal amount of battle cries and weapon wielding. We feel a lot safer now.
Releasing the Humans from the bunkers was by far my favorite task. We travelled to my own present to witness the fruits of our labor and found most of the bunkers had been subjected to escape efforts already. We threw open the ones that hadn’t. I managed to make contact with Taylor and Briana, who begrudgingly forgave me for deserting the rebels in favor of saving the Earth, all over a nice hot cup of coffee. I haven’t seen Keith or Roxy yet, but maybe one day we’ll come across each other at a crowded intersection or at a job interview, and we’ll remember. Maybe we’ll share a smile, only briefly, a reminder of what’s passed between us, before moving on, back into our own lives. I’m not sure I could maintain regular contact with any of the other rebels—it’s too hard to think of the past.
We’ve destroyed the last of the time machines. Maybe the movies were right—meddling with time is too dangerous to consider in the long-term. We can’t risk someone traveling back to a time before the Human Revolution to uproot our efforts. We have an uneasy peace treaty with the Axylans, who remain in their now clean and beautiful settlements under the watchful supervision of Human police. That’ll get easier, too, as we learn to trust all over again.
And now society is building itself up from the charred remains. I always said Humans are resilient. We’ll build ourselves back up, and soon the city centers will bear no likeness to the state-controlled nightmares that existed under Ayla’s rule. Soon there’ll be busy coffee shops and Chinese restaurants and electronic billboards and book stores. There’ll be memorials, too, for the fallen, in place of the gallows.
As for right now, I’m happy. Something I never thought would be possible in this lifetime, and least of all with a member of the Axylan Tribe. Now Yves calls to me, slides a cool arm around my waist to edge me closer to him. He brings out a rosy color in my cheeks after nine years of being imprisoned without sunlight. He relaxes what used to be tense muscles, he comforts me through nightmares and panic attacks. When I wake screaming, he’s there, a soothing hand on my clammy forehead and soft kisses pressed to my collarbone. When he first noticed that I’d startle each time he entered a room behind me, a throwback to all the times an Axylan would approach from behind to jam the barrel of a gun into my neck, he apologized profusely, with kisses and the promise that from then on, he’d always make a noise to announce his presence, and that he’d never, ever hurt me.
And I believe him.
Our souls have a connection. I can feel that this is right, all the way down to my core, feel a part of him with every beat of my own heart. If I ever had any doubts, they were smoothed away that first time we made love, the gentleness of his caresses, the spark of that first connection as a part of him reached within me to fill me up to the brim with love and tenderness. He is everything I’ve ever wanted.
It doesn’t matter how long it took to get here; how much suffering and fear came before. Now I am happy. I am loved. Finally, I am free.
THE END
Gravity
Sci-fi Romance
By: Linda Mathers
Chapter 1
“Incomin
g holo-message.”
“About damn time,” Tessa muttered. With a flick of her wrist she signaled the computer to open and display the message. The image of a starfish-like creature, with a round body and eight appendages, coalesced in the middle of her office.
“Just as we suspected…” Tessa said to the empty room. “This suggests that the Callistian’s tendrils originally evolved as appendages for locomotion.”
Tessa had been waiting for three long days for the Callistians to send her their latest fossil findings. She would have loved to examine them in person, but her body could not withstand the high gravity on Callistos for more than a few minutes. So here she sat as patiently as she could aboard an orbiting station, waiting for the parties on the planet to send their findings via holo-transmitter.
The experience was made even more frustrating by the fact that the Callistians had very little regard for the work she was doing. All they cared about was that the Humans paid them well in precious minerals for the high-resolution holo-images of the fossils uncovered on their world.
As a xeno-paleontologist, Tessa had mixed feelings about working with the Callistians. On the one hand, she understood that different species viewed the universe in different ways; she accepted that the Callistians were not interested in deep time or the origins of life the way that Humans were. On the other hand, she was a scientist. She craved discovery and she wanted others to appreciate these findings the way she did. When the Xeno-Bio Institute had assigned her to this position she had been surprised—she remembered thinking a more senior scientist would normally have been gifted with the spot. Once she’d arrived, it had not taken her long to realize why she had been chosen—it was exhaustingly frustrating to work with the Callistians.
It isn’t really their fault, she kept telling herself. Physiologically, their brains were incapable of appreciating the concepts of evolutionary history or geological time. They were built to live in the “now”. Granted, they could plan for the future and maybe even consider the state of the next generation, but the distant past held no meaning for them. While Tessa was fascinated by the fossils, to them they were nothing more than strangely shaped rocks. Still, she thought as she recalled the images of cracked or mishandled specimens, they are being paid to excavate and scan the fossils with care.
“Another holo-message has been received,” the computer abruptly announced, interrupting her musings. Again she gestured deftly to open the message. At a glance, she knew its shape wasn’t quite right. The second image was not of a Callistian ancestor: this was a different creature, a predator of the alien’s forebears. Unlike their radial bodies, this creature was bilaterally symmetric, like most Earth creatures. The Callistians on the surface had clearly scanned the fossil upside down as the animal’s underbelly was facing up. When she flipped the image right-side up she noted that the creature’s tail section appeared to have been sheared off completely. Tessa sighed. I need a vacation.
Her days seemed composed entirely of holo-images and messages. There were the usual workaday notes from her superiors at the Xeno-Bio Institute. They checked in periodically to be sure that their money was being put to good use. Then there were the messages from the planet, from the Callistians, asking a litany of questions about which rock layers they should be checking or what the schedule was for their next pay disbursement. She also received the occasional message from home. Old college friends or her family would ask how she was doing or send an e-card to commemorate a special occasion. Messages from out-of-system were more expensive though, due to the limited bandwidth the interstellar wormhole could accommodate, so the bulk of her interactions were within the Callistian System.
That was why she was surprised to one day receive a message from the Dextronin System. She had never been to that System. As far as she knew, she did not have any family or former school friends who now lived or worked there. She could not begin to imagine why she would be receiving a message from that part of the Galaxy.
The mystery deepened when the computer identified the sender as Erill Whynn, head of Whynn Technologies Corporation. She was quite certain she had never met the man before and had no idea what he could want with her. The message was a text rather than a holo-image, so she had the computer display it on her desktop.
Chapter 2
Dear Dr. Tessa Lane,
I would like to invite you on an all-expenses paid trip to the Dextronin System. I know we have never met, but I have taken a recent interest in your work and would very much like the chance to discuss it with you in person. I am a man of significant means among my people and would be happy to make the excursion financially worth your while. I would also be happy to supply a healthy grant to your present project, so that your employers would not be too inconvenienced by your being away.
During your time in our system you would be lodged in the most regal accommodations my company owns. All your needs would be met in your time with us. I’d like to get started as soon as possible. Please reply with your answer. I very much look forward to working with you.
Sincerest regards,
Erill Whynn
Whynn Technologies Corp.,
Outer Belt Industrial Cluster, Dextronin System
Tessa read the message over three times. She could not begin to imagine what interest a technology tycoon in another star system could possibly have in her work. She was sure that her employers would be more than happy to ship her off for a while in exchange for the promised grant money for her project. But, did she want to go? The prospect of earning more money for herself was not unwelcome—she received only enough from Xeno-Bio to meet her immediate needs, nothing more. In her three years in the Callistian System, she’d put away very little for her future. Yes, the money would be nice. And she was mostly just sitting around waiting for the Callistian transmissions anyway. They could certainly get by for a few weeks without her.
However, there was one problem: the Dextronin System was the one place where she wanted to be less than the Callistian System. Not that it was dangerous or anything like that. It was the Dextronin peoples’ beliefs coupled with the enigmatic nature of their existence that Tessa had no desire to explore or endure.
It had caused quite a stir in her academic community when it was discovered during first contact that the Dextronins were genetically identical to Humans. In the 10 years since, the two races had formed a working relationship, but the mystery of the Dextronin resemblance to Homo sapiens had still not been answered. Tessa, being a xeno-paleontologist, had been quite vexed by this enigma. According to everything known about astrobiology, it should have been impossible, it should and could not have happened. And the fact that the Dextronins expressed little interest in their evolutionary history was beyond her. She couldn’t understand how they could believe that their people had been created by some gods on their home world—that they didn’t believe in evolution.
No, she firmly decided, Mr. Whynn would need to find someone else to perform whatever task he had planned for her.
Chapter 3
Three days later, much to her chagrin, Tessa found herself back in her own Solar System, en route to the Dextronin System. Her employer had made it clear that she had nothing to say on the matter. Mr. Whynn had already given them a handsome grant and there was more money promised upon the completion of her stay.
They had insisted she pack up and leave immediately. Their haste made Tessa suspicious of the stability of the flow of funds to Xeno-Bio. Perhaps they could not afford to turn Whynn down?
As her launch time neared, she gathered her baggage and checked in at the transport’s terminal. The waiting area had a large viewing window and she passed the remaining time watching ships slip in and out of wormholes. There were about a dozen wormholes clustered around the port’s station, in a very high orbit around Jupiter. She still marveled at how imposing the gas giant was, its red, yellow, brown, and white clouds shifting and flowing as a backdrop to the arrivals and departures.
Finally, her
flight number was called. She boarded the ship and within half an hour they were off. Wormhole travel was pretty routine for a xeno-paleontologist, so she didn’t pay much attention as they slipped through the hole and arrived without incident in the Dextronin System. The ship efficiently docked at the destination port station and the passengers began to disembark.
As she stepped onto the station platform, she noticed a crowd of people greeting the new arrivals. They appeared to be a good mix of Humans and Dextronin. It was hard to tell, though. The only outward difference between the two races was the Dextronin’s overly developed trapezius muscle. On most of them, the large muscle caused the neck to appear to meld into the upper torso. It was a striking physical feature if you were looking for it, but it could easily go overlooked. A Dextronin could pass through a crowd of Humans without attracting any attention.
One Dextronin did, however, catch Tessa’s attention. Standing apart from the crowd, he was holding up a tablet with “Dr. Tessa Lane” written on it in elegant script. This must be the man Whynn sent to retrieve me. She walked briskly up to him and introduced herself.
“Hello, Dr. Lane,” he greeted her politely. “I am Frell. I will take you to your quarters and see that you are comfortable until Mr. Whynn can see you.”
Frell took her luggage and led her to his own ship, a small, everyday interplanetary vessel. They easily left the port, cruising deep into the Dextronin System. After only a few hours, their destination came into view on the edge of the darkness. A large space station, Tessa could tell it was fairly new in construction because it was pyramid-shaped, rather than cylindrical. This meant it did not spin to generate artificial gravity, but instead employed the synthetic gravity technology that the Dextronins had purchased from Humans within the last 10 years.
As they drew closer, she could make out individual levels. She was a little taken aback—the station was monstrous with at least a thousand floors. Unlike most commercial stations, there were no advertisements on the outer surface. The only markings she saw read “Wynn Technologies” in large loud letters. There was a second line in Dextronin text, presumably the translation of the name.
Romance: Scifi Romance: Mated by the Alien (Abduction BWWM Paranormal Romance) (Interracial First Contact Space Romance) Page 10