KALITH, VANTOR, & CYRO #2
The ship felt emptier somehow, as if the delivery pod had taken with it some essential part of our vessel’s soul.
But emptiness could be filled with new purpose.
My tentacles moved across the navigation console with renewed determination as Kalith input the coordinates—not the unfathomable distance to our ocean home, but the ones that would bring us back to Kansas.
Back to Sunflower Hills Ranch. Back to Tammy.
“Course plotted and locked,” Kalith announced. He sounded like his old self: eager, almost boyish in his excitement. “Estimated arrival time: seventeen minutes.”
Cyro passed, as if he did not know what to do with himself. His entire existence had been devoted to studying lifeforms and then, to endless ways to save our world. His life’s mission was currently on a journey without him. I wondered if he would regret choosing this path.
But I could not focus on Cyro, not now that my mind was filled with thoughts of her.
Seventeen minutes. Less than one-twentieth of an Earth day separated us from the woman who had somehow become the center of our shared existence.
My skin rippled with deep burgundy waves that betrayed my emotions.
I was bursting with anticipation, hope, and a sharp twist of fear that kept me grounded.
Not fear of danger—my security training had prepared me for physical threats—but fear of rejection.
What if Tammy hadn’t wanted us to stay after all?
What if our return was a complication instead of a joyful event?
No, she wanted us. I knew that by her expressions, her body language, her Omega smell.
Our vessel cut back through the atmosphere quickly, seeming as eager as we were to get back to Kansas.
“I am abandoning my duty,” I said aloud. The words should carry shame, but instead I felt lighter than air. I turned to face my brothers. “Everything I was trained for. Everything I swore to uphold. Why do I feel no remorse?”
Kalith’s tentacles had paused, hovering above the main command station, and Cyro’s silvery eyes quickly found mine across the bridge. Neither spoke immediately, understanding the weight of what I was acknowledging.
“I also feel content with our choice,” Cyro finally said, his colors pulsing with soft blues of compassion. “I believe, as Tammy once said, the heart wants what the heart wants. It is often impossible to understand.”
“And we have three of them,” Kalith added, a glint in his eyes as his shorter tentacle curled against his chest. “So, we’re triple confused.”
I nodded slowly, a smile lifting the corners of my mostly formed human mouth. “In the G.E.F. security forces, we are taught that duty is absolute. That personal desires must always be sacrificed for the greater good.”
“And yet,” Cyro ventured, “what greater good is there than love? Our people study science to improve lives, to create connection, to find meaning. We’ve found those things with Tammy.”
His words resonated through my central cavity with unexpected force.
Throughout my career, I had defined myself by my service—protector, guardian, security specialist. I had never questioned what I was protecting or why.
Now, as a familiar landmass grew larger in our view screens, I understood with sudden clarity that my duty had not been abandoned but transformed.
I was still a protector, but now of a precious creation beyond calculation.
The ship dropped lower, cutting through clouds that parted around our hull like white foam on ocean waves.
Below us, the patchwork landscape of Kansas farmland came into view, with its geometric fields in varying shades of green and gold, bisected by narrow roads that stretched toward distant horizons.
Somewhere in that human landscape was the small patch of land that had become more home to me than the breathtaking, jeweled ocean cities of my old planet.
“We’re almost there,” I announced, my voice steadier than I’d expected. “We’re almost back to her.”
I took command of the vessel, steering us now instead of letting it auto-pilot. I wanted to get there faster. As soon as possible. My need for her vibrated outward from my core to shake every part of my body, every tentacle, every finger, every toe as my hybrid human and alien bodies mixed.
The ship responded to my commands, descending in a controlled spiral that would bring us directly over Sunflower Hills Ranch.
Through the forward view screen, I caught glimpses of familiar landmarks—the winding creek that marked the property’s northern boundary, the rolling hills that gave the ranch its name, the cluster of buildings that constituted Tammy’s world.
“I will embrace her for as long as she will allow,” Cyro flashed.
“As will I,” Kalith blinked.
“You both may embrace her after I have had my turn,” I countered.
Before they could complain, the navigation console beneath my tentacles flashed red. Warning signals pulsed across multiple systems as the ship’s stabilizers failed, sending us into a slight but alarming drift to the left.
“We’re experiencing system failures across multiple subsystems,” Kalith reported, his tentacles flying across his engineering station. “Propulsion efficiency dropping to seventy-three percent. Stabilizers offline. This makes no sense. I have repaired these systems!”
“This is identical to our original system failure pattern,” Cyro observed, a note of fascination creeping into his voice despite the situation. “The exact same cascade effect that caused our first crash.”
“But we experienced no cosmic event or impact since leaving the ranch,” Kalith said in disbelief.
A strange sensation swept through me—what humans called déjà vu.
The same alarms, the same failures, the same struggle to control a vessel determined to crash itself onto Tammy Tucker’s property.
Only this time, instead of panic, I felt amusement.
As if the universe itself had a sense of humor, bringing our journey full circle.
“Kalith, reroute auxiliary power to the stabilizers. Cyro, recalibrate the gravitational compensators to account for drift,” I called out, my security training allowing me to remain outwardly calm even as my skin flashed with emergency patterns of orange and red.
I didn’t think it would do any good. Perhaps it would be easier to simply mimic our crash positions from before.
The ship bucked and shuddered beneath us, but working together, we held it steady—more or less—as we approached the final coordinates.
“Twenty miles to target,” Kalith called out, his voice steady despite the chaos around us. “Eighteen... fifteen...”
The ship lurched violently to one side, nearly throwing me from my station. Only the quick extension of two tentacles to anchor myself to adjacent structures kept me in position.
“We’re going to crash,” Kalith announced, his voice carrying not fear but a strange resignation. Almost anticipation.
“Target that supply barn,” I ordered, seeing its shape form on the view screen. “If we’re going to crash, let’s at least crash someplace familiar.”
Cyro actually laughed—a burbling sound that carried through the command center despite the blaring alarms and shuddering hull.
“The currents are carrying us home in a most ridiculous way,” he managed between chuckles.
The barn grew larger in our view screen as we approached, the distance closing rapidly as our damaged systems struggled to maintain even minimal control.
I poured every ounce of my training into guiding our descent, ensuring we hit the barn directly rather than the main house or, worse, the stables where the horses—including Sassafras with her precious twin foals—would be housed.
“Impact in three...” Kalith called out, his tentacles securing the remaining loose equipment. “Two... one...”
The crash was both more and less violent than our first arrival. More, because we hit with greater velocity, smashing through the barn’s newly repaired roof with a splintering of wood and shrieking of metal. Less, because this time we were mentally prepared.
Kalith’s expanding impact foam filled the space like whipped cream; that sugary concoction Tammy always coated her ice cream with.
Our vessel came to rest precisely where it had been stored for the past months.
It was a cosmic coincidence that seemed too perfect to be random.
The power flickered, then died. The expanding foam began to melt away.
The command center filled with the acrid scent of burned circuitry and the sweet, distinctive odor of our alien Alpha scents pluming in happiness.
Because we may have crashed again, but we were home. And that’s all that mattered.
For a long moment, none of us moved. Then Kalith’s smallest tentacle reached up to brush lingering impact foam from his human nose, and he made a sound that might have been a sigh or might have been a chuckle.
“I’ll fix it all tomorrow,” he said, gesturing around at the once-again busted ship.
We spilled out of the vessel, nearly falling over one another in our rush to be outside breathing Earth air. I glanced up, examining the shattered roof above us, starlight now visible through the jagged opening we’d created.
“We’ll have to fix that tomorrow too,” I said, still glancing upward.
“Piece of Earth cake,” Kalith quipped.
Cyro gave another strange, uncharacteristic bubble of laughter. “Easy as Earth pie,” he agreed.
Our ridiculous words broke the tension. We stood in a half circle, forming our bodies into our human costumes—muscles and bones taking shape where tentacles had been moments before, hair sprouting from smoothed scalps, tri-hearts converging into one organ.
Before we had finished, the oversized barn door flew open with such force that it bounced against the outside wall. Framed in the doorway, silhouetted against the night sky, stood Tammy Tucker.