When we got near enough, Dinervah darted into the house. I heard her wail of despair when she found my parents, no doubt my mother’s lifeless body still cradled in my father’s arms. Araceli looked up at the sound and spotted me, standing useless at the center of things. She rose to her feet and jogged to my side, taking my hand in hers and staring up into my face.
“What did you see?” she asked. “When you ran off, what did you see?”
“Nothing,” I replied, dazed. “I saw… men. And ships.”
“Did you see men,” she pressed, “or Galateans? Were there logos on the ships? Did the men wear uniforms?” She lifted her hands to my face and forced me to look her in the eye. “Danovan,” she said, intent. “I need you to focus. I need you to remember exactly what you saw.”
I gave a slow nod of my head and allowed my eyes to come to a close. I played the image of what I’d seen on the backs of my eyelids: Men, human men, in unmarked black combat uniforms. Silver-grey shuttles, Galatean Military-grade. No logos. I told her what I saw.
“They took Ayla, the woman we met last night. The one who is pregnant with the hybrid. They shot Robert Welsh, and they took Ayla vel’Myracalf.” I stared down at Ara, whose expression was as pained and as desperate as mine must have been. “Right before she died, my mother said that they had come for the hybrid. She was right—they took the woman, the hybrid. All. And they laid waste to the village that nurtured her.”
Ara paced silently in front of me for several long moments, rubbing at her forehead with her fingertips. “It must all be connected,” she said at length. “Everything. The attacks on the Leviathan, on the GenOriens base. On this village.”
“Why would anyone—”
“Think about it, Danovan,” she said, a distinctly unhinged edge to her voice. “The thing that connects everything. The one through line: human-Galatean hybrids. That was what I came here to research. That’s what Martin Pierce was doing at the base. Someone doesn’t want my program to succeed—and they’ve been sabotaging it since before I got aboard the ship that took me out of Earth’s orbit. Someone has been trying to shut me down since day one, and when they couldn’t, they turned violent.”
“But why?” I asked, canting my head to one side, brow furrowed. “Why would anyone resort to so violent a means of ending a program?”
“I don’t know why someone would kill for it,” she said, “but I do know that it has faced staunch opposition for a long time. I’m sure there were Galateans who weren’t thrilled by the idea of a hybrid species either.”
“Sure, a vocal minority.”
“Precisely. There were people on Earth who said it was against God’s will, and all that. The same people who once thought that people from different human races shouldn’t intermarry. But they were on the wrong side of history, and that’s what we thought our opposition would be as well.”
“But now they’ve taken up arms.”
“Yes. And they think history should go the way they want it to go. Their first step? Tampering with my data so that every major scientific organization in my field had information that showed it was impossible for humans and Galateans to breed naturally.”
“How did they manage that?” I took Ara by the elbow and drew her nearer to the outer wall of the house, out of the path of rushing, confused Galateans who might see the face of an outsider and go a little rabid, given the present circumstances. I turned, shielding her at least somewhat from prying eyes and casting her face into shadow.
“It would have to have been an inside job,” she said, “someone with access to the GenOriens mainframe. And they would have had to have plants everywhere, from lab assistants to CEOs. Everywhere. God.” She leaned back against the wall and lifted her eyes to the sky. It was a clear, bright day. Why are disastrous days always so clear and bright and beautiful?
“How do we find them?” I asked. Because I had a vendetta now. Before, I had wanted to help Araceli, wanted to avenge my friends and bring the people who had attacked the Leviathan to justice. But now? Now, I didn’t want justice. They had murdered my mother; they had made it personal. Now I wanted to watch them drown in pools of their own blood.
Ara was shaking her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know.”
I ran my tongue over my lips and gripped Araceli by the shoulders. “Then we stick to the plan. We head for the crash site. We find Christian. We get ourselves access to resources and we go from there.”
“Resources?” she echoed. “What do you mean resources?”
“Well, weaponry, for starters.”
“Danovan—”
“Weapons, vehicles. Communications devices. If we’re going to levy a counterattack, we’ll need resources.”
“Levy a counterattack? Danovan, who do you think I am? I can’t… levy a counterattack. I’m just a scientist.”
“And you’ll want to help me get Ayla vel’Myracalf back, won’t you? She’s the dream, right? I mean, isn’t she? She’s what you’ve been trying for in your laboratories. But she was just out here, innocently living her life until they took her, Ara.” I looked down into her lovely face and I wished that I could think only of our future, hers and mine, as I had what felt like mere moments earlier. But I couldn’t. Not now. “Please, Ara,” I whispered. “Tell me you’ll help me.”
She swallowed hard; her pained expression made a little crease form between her eyes, and I wanted to kiss her. But I didn’t. Then, finally: “Yes. Yes, all right, I’ll help you.”
Chapter 17:
Dr. Araceli Cross
We went back into the house, such as it was, and found Olander and Dinervah sitting on the floor next to the fallen matriarch. I felt a twinge in my gut when I saw her, an echo of what I had felt when I saw the bullet go through her stomach. I knew immediately that she had lived only moments after sustaining an injury like that. I didn’t even realize that my fists were balled in rage, and I forced myself to press my hands flat against my palms.
“We’re going to the crash site of the Leviathan,” Danovan announced to his father and sister. “We’re going to find out who was responsible for today’s slaughter, and we’re going to make them answer for their crimes.”
“Please be careful,” Dinervah said. “I wish for no more blood.”
Danovan gave a quiet nod of his head and moved closer to his family. I felt like an outsider then more than ever, but I felt rooted in place and couldn’t seem to tear my eyes away from Jaelle, or my feet away from the hardwood on which I stood. “Kygliian ei roshem cah may,” I said softly in the only Galatean I knew. Let no man’s blood be wasted. Then I tore myself from where I’d been rooted and gave the family a private moment to grieve.
I was making a list in my head of the things we would need, the supplies we could gather, and how long it might take to reach the crash site based on what I knew of the terrain. Part of me was hesitant to proceed with this plan. I could be useful here. Though I wasn’t a triage specialist, my medical knowledge could be of good use in a time such as this, and it would be good for my mind to be useful. But I knew that staying here and tending to the wounded was just my way of avoiding further discovery. How much of this was my fault? How much could be hefted squarely on my shoulders?
The moment when the first missile had hit, it had rooted me in place. I had felt the tremor, and I had lifted my head, standing stock-still like I was waiting for the bullets to come for me. I remembered what it had been like in the initial blast on the Leviathan, remembered how it had hurled me bodily across the room before I had been knocked unconscious. And maybe part of me thought that if they were going to come for me a second time, I wanted to be awake for it.
But then Danovan yelled for us to get down, and some instinctive part of me dropped to the floor, the lizard brain that wanted to survive. Thinking about it, thinking about how an instant later the bullets had torn through the air where I’d been standing, sent a shudder down my spine.
N
o more standing idle, I told myself, and went back into the house and began rifling through closets and chests to find bags I could fill with supplies. When I got back inside, they had moved Jaelle outside and were standing in silent solemnity around her body, clasping hands. And I wondered where Dinervah’s new husband was, if he’d made it out of the fray, or if this was her first stop for mourning.
After a time, Danovan joined me in the kitchen as I filled one of his mother’s bags with fruit and jugs of fresh water. The light had gone out of his eyes. I could see that right away.
“We could stay,” I murmured, turning to place my hand on his arm, “if you wanted. Stay and help your family, help the people of this village—”
“We’re not staying,” he said firmly.
“I didn’t mean permanently, just for a few days, while—”
“We’re leaving now.” He snatched up the bag I’d been filling and marched with it past the shattered bits of wood that used to be his front door and out into the glare of the morning. I couldn’t do anything but climb precariously over the destruction and follow close behind him. He hadn’t even given me a chance to raid the medicine cabinets, so we would have to make do with what was left in the first aid kit he’d pilfered from the GenOriens base.
We went around to the back of the house, where our rover had been parked and recharged, and Danovan came around in front of me, staring intently down at me. I thought for a moment he might kiss me or draw me into an embrace, but instead he ran his fingers up the sides of my rib cage until they’d found where my key card was clipped to my jacket. He unclipped it without ceremony, and we both climbed into the rover. Inserting my key card brought the rover humming to life. Welcome, Dr. Araceli, said that same robotic female voice that accompanied all GenOriens computer systems.
Danovan threw the thing in gear and I struggled to get myself buckled in before we shot down side streets toward the gates of town. I slumped down under the weight of the planet’s heavy gravity and the day’s events and looked through the bulbous glass of the rover to the wreckage on the streets around us. The village had been badly hit. No structures had been toppled, but it seemed like nary a home had escaped the gunfire. Doors and windows were cracked and shattered, and walls were pockmarked with bullet holes.
We shot through the open gates that we’d entered only days before and took a sharp left, out over the flat and empty terrain. “Do you know where we’re going?” I asked. Danovan gave no immediate reply. “Danovan?” I repeated. He was staring straight ahead of him; his knuckles had gone white with the force with which he gripped the steering wheel of the rover. Tall grass whispered around us as we broke through it, and he was going too fast, too fast. “Danovan,” I said again, gripping the seat belt. “Slow down—you’re going too fast.” But it was like I wasn’t even there. It was like he was alone in that rover, with one fell purpose: to murder those who had taken his mother from him.
The body of the fallen tree came into sight all too suddenly. I shrieked his name a third time, and felt myself pressed violently forward into my restraints as he slammed on the brake. We skidded to a halt mere inches away from the trunk of a great fallen tree.
I sat panting in my seat for a few quiet moments before I turned to glare at him. “I understand that you’re upset,” I began in low, urgent tones, “but getting us killed with your recklessness isn’t going to help anyone.”
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t even look at me. He simply plucked the key card from its slot and opened the rover door, climbing out to trample through the tall grass. I heaved a long-suffering sigh and followed.
I couldn’t see him clearly through the grass, but I could hear him as he huffed and grunted, trying to make his way through it. I followed as quickly as I could, ignoring the limitations of my body: the pain in my leg, the weight in my heart, the force of the gravity.
When I broke into the clearing he’d found, I watched him pacing madly back and forth. Not looking at me, not even registering my existence. And then it hit me—he blamed me, too. He was starting to put it all together, and he saw that I was the link between all the awful things that had been happening, culminating in the brutal murder of the woman who had given him life.
“Danovan,” I said tentatively, approaching him like one might a wildcat. “Please. Please talk to me.”
“I can’t,” he said, his voice a piercing growl that emanated from the hollow of his chest.
I nodded slowly, crossing my arms under my breasts, unsure of what I could possibly say or do to make this any better. My heart hurt for him; I had done this. Somehow, this was my fault.
After a moment Danovan dipped down into a crouching position, his forearms in front of his face so that his hands were wrapped around the base of his skull, and he let out such a piercing cry, it nearly knocked the air out of me. This scream was primal and full of fury, and it shook me more than any of our enemies’ blasts.
“I’m sorry,” I said at length. “Danovan, I’m so, so sorry. I’m so sorry for the part I played in all this, for the… havoc my work has wreaked on your people.” He stopped pacing and looked at me then, his expression one of wild bewilderment. Perhaps he had expected me to assert that it wasn’t my fault, that my experiments hadn’t brought all this chaos. “If I could take it back, knowing what I know now, I would. I would take it back. I would… stay on Earth and tell them never to move forward with the funding for my project. I would just have… stayed where I was, all right? If it meant that all those lives could be saved—if it meant your mother’s life could be saved. Please, you have to believe me.” I could feel the tears welling in my eyes, hot and insistent. I sniffled, trying to choke down the lump in my throat, but it wouldn’t go down. “I wish I’d never come here, I wish I’d never—”
“Shut up,” he said, silencing me utterly. I looked up at him and he was staring at me, unreadable. “Just shut up. I don’t blame you for this. I couldn’t. Maybe it would be easier, somehow, if I could. If I could look at you and just… and just hate you. But this isn’t your fault, Araceli. You’re a scientist; you came here to do a job and someone attacked you while you were trying to do it. Someone attacked us.”
“But… your mother…”
“That’s what’s killing me, Ara,” he said, choking on his words. “The useless negotiation—would I trade your life for my mother’s?” He shook his head from side to side, the sunlight glinting off of his skin. “I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. I can’t—even in the wake of my mother’s death—I can’t make myself wish I’d never met you, never gotten mixed up in all of this. I just… I can’t.”
I breathed in bated breath and darted over to him, encircling his waist with my arms, and he hugged me tight and rocked me back and forth, back and forth.
“Sheeay riagosa du mil,” he whispered. “What my mother said to you.”
I waited, holding my breath for him to finally tell me what it meant. “‘You will be my daughter.’ That’s what it means. It means, ‘you will be my daughter.’” He lifted his hand and tucked a finger under my chin so that he could tilt my face up to look into his. “She knew, from the instant she first laid eyes on you, that I belonged to you. And I know that she would have stepped into the line of fire if it meant protecting the woman I loved. So stop blaming yourself, all right?”
I nodded my head, tears streaking down the slopes of my cheeks, embarrassed that I’d made this moment of grief about me. “Danovan,” I said finally, wiping at my face, “I’m just so very sorry for your loss.”
“Kygliian ei roshem cah may,” he replied. Let no man’s blood be wasted.
***
We drove across the countryside in silence for long stretches of time, as I was doing my best to be a present, calming support for Danovan as he only just began to process his grief. And I didn’t know what to say—I could only say that I was sorry so many times before the words began to ring hollow. But I was sorry. Jaelle had been an incredible woman, and I cou
ld see that even though I’d only spent a small collection of hours with her. A capable healer with a kind heart and an eager hand, she had saved my life when I’d nearly died; she’d drawn me out of the paralysis of the Ribomax venom and had tended my wounds. But not just the wounds of my body. She’d cleaned me up and fed me and clothed me and welcomed me into her home. She’d shared her family with me, and invited me to attend her daughter’s wedding. She’d called me ‘daughter.’ I was just as eager to avenge her now as Danovan was. Her, and all of my lost friends and colleagues.
By the time the sun began to set, we could see the smoke rising from the crash site of the Leviathan; we were close. We pulled to a stop in a clearing by the river and climbed out, marching awkwardly in a circle to stretch our legs.
“What do you think we’ll find there?” I asked, staring at the coiled black smoke rising in the distance.
“I don’t know,” he said, his gaze searching the horizon line. “I’m hoping they will have set up camp near the crash site. I’m hoping there’s someone we can speak to. But…”
I turned to look at him then, canting my head to the side as I examined his expression of hesitance. “What?”
“Ara, we can’t trust anyone.”
I blinked, owlish, and he took my hands in his, giving them a squeeze. “When we find Christian, which we will, we need to keep a level head. All right?”
“What do you mean?”
“Christian, Cat, anyone we find. We need to just—”
“They wouldn’t be involved in this.”
“We don’t know that.”
“I know that!” I jerked my hands away, but he gripped me by the shoulders, staring down into my face and forcing me to meet his gaze.
Alien Survivor: (Stranded on Galatea) An Alien SciFi Romance Page 15