by Ashley West
But no, looking at him, at the muscles and his sheer size was proof enough that he had to be some kind of warrior, and he carried himself with the kind of confidence that people who knew they could defend themselves had.
"Understandable, but you still want me to do it."
He nodded, a smile tugging at his lips. "Yes. But I won't force you to."
Why did he have to be so reasonable? It just made it harder to refuse him, and before she could think better of it, she was nodding her head. "Alright. But..."
"I'll keep you safe," Malachi said firmly. "I promise." Before she could say anything to that, he was continuing on. "Priya has food ready for you, and if you're agreeable, we'll leave within the hour."
Emma nodded and swallowed hard. She didn't know if she could actually eat with her stomach all in knots as it was, but she knew she should.
"Emma," she said suddenly, as Malachi had turned to head back out the door.
"Pardon?" He turned back around.
"My name. It's Emma. I don't think I ever said."
A smile flickered to life on his face, and he inclined his head to her. "You've already had my name, I'm sure, but well met, Emma. And thank you for your help."
With that, he withdrew from the room, leaving her sitting there feeling dazed.
Over an hour later, she was fed and sitting next to Malachi again in the vehicle that had taken them back to the ship from the Alvan compound the night before.
Now that she was a little less confused about what was happening, she was able to take in the strange car/truck/thing. It looked a bit like an ATV in that it didn't have a roof and had huge tires that looked like they could go over any kind of terrain it was steered towards.
It didn't have a steering wheel, and instead Malachi had his hands on a screen that stretched across the dash of the vehicle. It seemed to work well enough, and the ride was smooth as they moved down the street.
Emma gave directions, but was otherwise quiet, keeping her eyes peeled for signs of danger.
"Is it really so bad here?" Malachi asked, glancing at her for a second. "You seem nervous."
"Of course I'm nervous," she snapped. "People get snatched up every day here. The Alva lurk and then they pounce, and it's hard to know where they are. For things that're so big, they're awfully hard to spot most of the time."
Malachi nodded. "Why do they take your kind?" he wanted to know. "What are they doing with you all?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. They kept me and the others in cages. All the ones on the floor I was on just...sat there. We were prisoners. But that couldn't have been all the people they took, though. I dunno what happened on the other floors."
"Hm." His forehead wrinkled in a frown. "That probably doesn't bode well."
"You think something's happened to them? The other people they took?"
"I don't know. I suppose we'll find out."
She supposed they would.
As they moved through the city towards the exact place where the Alva had shown up, it became apparent that the closer they got, the worse things looked. While the area they'd left had been bad, this was worse. The Alva had landed their ships wherever they pleased, knocking down buildings and people in the process. One of them was still there, smack dab in the middle of the park.
No one ever went near it, even if they were foolish enough to be in the park in the first place. No one knew where the other ships had gone, but the one was enough of a reminder that they weren't safe.
She pointed it out to Malachi as they passed it.
His eyes went dark with anger, and he let out a low breath, muttering in that language she didn't understand.
Up ahead was the club she had been meant to sing at that night, the coffee shop she used to work at, the bookstore she'd frequented often, the grocery store, the florist, and she sighed. "We're here."
Malachi glanced at her and then brought the vehicle to a stop on the side of the road. He got out and then came around to offer her a hand down. Emma tried to pretend like hers didn't shake when she placed it in his.
"It's so quiet," he murmured, seeming like he didn't want to break the stillness with his own voice.
"It never used to be," Emma murmured back, glancing around with wide eyes. She hadn't been back here since she'd been taken. "This was like the heart of the city. The main campus of the university is about fifteen miles up that way," she said, pointing. "So there were always students here and business people. It was always lively."
"What happened?" Malachi asked her, voice soft. "Will you tell me?"
Emma hesitated and then took a few steps forward, remembering that day vividly. She'd been walking, since her apartment was less than a mile away. From the coffee shop to the club, her music in a folder tucked under her arm. She'd felt good that day. Lighter than usual.
"I was here," she murmured finally, walking a few steps further away. "Heading there." Emma pointed to the club, Carmen's. "I was going to sing there that night. I'd just left there." She pointed to the cafe, just visible over the crest of the hill.
She kept walking forward, turning her head as she had back then, and for a moment, she could see them, the ships that had come. "And then all of a sudden there were shadows. It was a bright day, and I remember it had rained all the week before, so the sun was so welcome. So warm. Shadows fell over the street, and I turned, and there they were."
Malachi stepped up beside her and turned his head as well, as if he could see them, too. "How many?" he murmured.
"One at first. Big and close. And then more in the distance. Two, one on either side, and then another, bringing up the rear. I don't remember if there were more than that, because I ran. We all ran, screaming." She stared for a moment more and then shook herself. "I ran all the way back home and got in my car and then drove to my parents' house to warn them that something was coming."
"At least four, then," Malachi sighed, tugging on one of the braids that was left loose by his face. "Did all the ships look like the one in the park?"
Emma nodded. "Yeah. Like big weird airplanes."
"The war vessels, then. But what does that mean?"
"That they wanted to declare war on us?"
Malachi shook his head and looked down at her. "No, they wouldn't want that. No offense meant, but they wouldn't have considered you a threat. In fact, I'm surprised they knew about your planet at all."
“Because humans are so unimportant.” Her voice was bitter when she said it. It was clear that the Randoran and the Alva didn’t think much of her kind at all, and it was surprisingly hurtful. “We may not be giant warriors like you, but we’re still living things. We were just here, trying to live our lives. We didn’t ask for this.”
He looked at her for a long moment, and Emma blushed at her boldness and looked away. When his large hand rested on her shoulder, she jerked her head up, looking right into his eyes.
“I know you didn’t,” he said. “And I’m sorry it happened. You have my word that we will do whatever we can to fix it. You and your kind aren’t unimportant. Not to me.”
There was something about the look in his eyes that made her lower her head again, still blushing. Malachi was so intense sometimes, and she didn’t know what to do about how her cheeks heated when he looked at her like that.
Before she could say or do anything, he was pulling away and leading her back to the vehicle. “Come,” he said. “I want to take a look at the ship.”
She didn’t even bother to argue.
When they finally made it back to the Randoran ship, Emma felt exhausted. Being jumpy and constantly looking over her shoulder, expecting someone to be there ready to try and take her or kill her was a lot of work, and she was relieved when they got back inside the ship and closed the door behind them. She wanted to go straight back to her room (Malachi’s room...whatever) and lay down, but he put his hand on her arm again and asked her in a soft voice to accompany him.
“Everyone knows you’re here by now,” he murmur
ed as they walked towards the front of the ship where the sounds of dinner being prepared could be heard. “But I want to make sure they understand what that means.”
Emma just nodded and followed him, keeping her eyes on her feet.
They walked into the large dining room and Malachi cleared his throat. Everyone instantly fell silent.
It was more gathered Randoran than Emma had seen the night before when she’d been eating, and she couldn’t help but look at them as they looked at her. They came in all shapes but mostly one size: large. All of them had tanned skin, and most of them had smatterings of freckles all over their faces. The women were as buff as the men, and they all watched her like she was some kind of oddity.
“This is Emma,” Malachi said, his voice carrying throughout the long room. “The Alva were keeping her prisoner.”
That got a loud response from the gathered group, scowls and jeers being flung from every corner of the room. It took her a second to realize they weren’t directed at her.
Malachi raised a hand for silence again. “She’s going to help us. She was there when the Alva came, and she has offered us whatever knowledge she has about what’s been happening here since then. She will be staying on the ship. I expect you all to treat her as an honored guest, the same as you would treat anyone displaced by the Alva.”
No one seemed to have any arguments with that, and Malachi smiled and bid them to return to their meals as he swept out of the room, Emma trailing behind him.
“Do they just...do whatever you say?” Emma asked, hurrying to catch up.
Malachi glanced at her. “Not always. I encourage them to challenge me if they think I’ve given a bad order or something.”
“But you’re in charge?”
He nodded. “I’m the Champion.”
“I don’t really know what that means.”
“Hm. It’s...I’ll have to explain a bit about my people and our culture for you to understand it properly.”
Emma chewed on her lip. When she was younger, she had always entertained the idea that there was life on other planets. She and Daniel would watch shows about aliens and read the tabloids in the grocery store while they waited for their mom, pouring over the stories from farmers and celebrities who claimed to have been abducted.
It hadn’t turned into anything like fanaticism, not like some people out there, and as she’d gotten older, she’d mostly forgotten about it.
But the chance to learn about an alien race seemed too good to pass up, and she needed a distraction anyway.
“Tell me,” she said, looking up at him with open interest on her face.
He looked back for a moment and then smiled. “Very well. Come with me.”
Chapter Seven: Converge
It was a curious thing, how much Malachi enjoyed spending time with the human woman. He hadn’t even wanted her at all, but now that she was there, he found her seemingly endless curiosity and occasional moments of bright happiness to be wonderful additions to the atmosphere of the ship.
A plan of attack had been sketched out, and Malachi had gone over it with the General twice over to make sure they were on the same page. Back up was on its way, and in the meantime, they were to find out what the Alva were doing with the humans.
Malachi had told the General everything that Emma had told him. In fact, the only thing he’d neglected to tell the General was that Emma existed at all. He couldn’t say why he was keeping it to himself, not really. Maybe part of him worried that the General wouldn’t approve and would order him to send Emma away.
Aside from whatever selfish reasons he had for not wanting to do that, he didn’t want to break his promise to Emma that he wouldn’t make her leave.
So he kept it to himself.
Most of the rest of the crew seemed content to treat Emma like she was just a guest, mostly ignoring her as they went about their duties. Malachi sent them out in twos and threes to investigate more, to find human populated areas and see if the Alva were up to no good. If they were, then they were to take the Alva out as discreetly as possible.
Killing Alva was something they were always up for, so it wasn’t a problem.
Malachi himself stuck close to the ship. He didn’t blend in as well as some of the others, and even though sitting around doing nothing had him bored out of his mind, he didn’t want to put the whole mission in jeopardy because he couldn’t sit still.
At least he had Emma to keep him company.
When she’d asked him about being Champion, he hadn’t actually expected her to care all that much about it. Not enough to ask questions and listen with rapt attention. Malachi found that he liked talking to her about his people, watching her absorb the information like a sponge.
In return, she answered his questions about human life, telling him how things had been before the Alva had shown up. She didn’t speak of many happy memories, and Malachi gathered that something had happened to her even before the Alva, but he didn’t push her to tell him about it.
He found her company soothing, and the two of them could often be found sitting in his room chatting over lunch or dinner. When he managed to make her laugh or bring a smile to her lovely face, Malachi counted it as a victory, and when she made him laugh and triumph lit her eyes, he liked it, too.
He wasn’t really close to anyone who had come on this trip with him, so having Emma to talk to was like a breath of fresh air, and it made time that would have ordinarily been spent being bored and longing for his brother or Thyrra seem much less tedious.
“You’ve never had a cheeseburger?” Emma asked incredulously. It was mid-afternoon and she was stretched across his bed while he sat on the floor, leaning back on his hands.
“I’ve never even heard of a cheeseburger,” Malachi pointed out. “It’s food?”
“Yes, it’s food,” she said like it was the most obvious thing it the world, which it clearly was to her. “One of the most delicious things ever invented, actually.”
Malachi smiled at the conviction in her tone. “Describe it to me.”
“What?”
“Describe it to me. If it’s so good.”
She blinked at him and then smiled her pretty smile, nodding eagerly. “Okay, so it’s like...it’s meat, right? But it’s got cheese on it, and the cheese is all melted and gooey if you do it right. And then there’s ketchup and mustard and mayo. But just a thin layer of mayo; you don’t want it spilling out all over the place. And pickles! You have to have pickles.”
He only understood about half of what she was talking about, but he was content to listen and watch the way her eyes were so bright and the way she moved her hands so expressively as she talked.
“It sounds good,” he said. “Maybe I’ll get one before I go back to Dorn.”
“Mm, you should. There should still be some places open that sell them. Or we could get the ingredients, and I’ll make one for you.”
“You can cook?”
She nodded. “My mom taught me. When I was a kid. I remember standing on a chair next to her and helping her make cookies every Wednesday.” Her smile flickered at the corners of her mouth, and she dropped her head a little. “I miss that.”
Malachi sat up straighter and looked at her. “Was she…” It wasn’t any of his business, but he felt compelled to ask all the same. “You said the Alva didn’t kill your family.”
Emma blinked and rubbed at her face. “They weren’t.”
“But they’re dead?”
“Why does it matter?”
“It...doesn’t, I suppose. I was just curious.”
“They aren’t here,” she said firmly. “And thank goodness for that.”
She didn’t want to talk about it. That much was obvious, and Malachi wasn’t going to try to force her to. It wasn’t any of his business and knowing wouldn’t help them in their current situation, so he dropped it, casting around for something else to say to her to chase away the sad, haunted look on her face. He much preferred it when she smiled.<
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Usually there were at least a few of the others on the ship with them, but it came to pass one day that everyone else had something to do.
Many of them were training, off making sure they didn't get rusty in their time sitting around waiting for something to happen, and the rest were off on a hunt for one of the Alva. They'd hatched a plan involving getting one of the creatures by itself and then dragging it back to the ship for interrogation.
"Seems like the easiest way to find out what they're up to," Oro, the one who had come up with the idea, had said, grin splitting his face. He was young, one of the newer members of the ranks, and this was his first real mission. It was a big one, so Malachi could understand his excitement.
There was no real reason why they shouldn't do it, so he'd given the okay, and most of them had set off, leaving Malachi and Emma alone on the ship together.
When she'd wandered out into the main area that morning and asked where everyone was, still sleep rumpled and rubbing at her eyes, he'd explained, and she'd looked at him like he was crazy.
"It's too early to be hunting Alva," she'd muttered to him, shaking her head.
"We've all been up for hours," he said back. "It's only you who insists on sleeping so late."
"Nine in the morning is not late."
"It is where we're from. We have two suns. By the time this hour comes around, it's much too bright and too warm to sleep anymore."
Emma had looked like that information was boggling her mind, so Malachi steered her into the dining room so she could eat breakfast. While she did that, he put through a call to the General to keep him up to date on what was going on.
“It’s risky,” the General said, sitting back in his seat and stroking his bearded face.
“We know, sir,” Malachi assured him. “But we think that anything involving the Alva and these humans is going to be risky. We’re still not any closer to figuring out what they want with the humans. If they just wanted to kill them, they would have done it in mass when they got here. Keeping them in cages and doing nothing with them doesn’t make any sense, even for the Alva.”