Chapter 10
Felicia
Seeing the Shaman Elders on Levant’s communication device was a bit like a kick in the nuts.
They were aliens, real, honest-to-God aliens.
I’d already gotten so used to Levant’s presence that he didn’t seem nearly as strange to me as these three men did.
Hell, seeing those savage Naga on the ice hadn’t even made me go, yup, these are truly alien creatures.
Staring into the ancient, strange faces of these three Elders did, though.
Perhaps it was because some of the ways in which they’d aged were so human, and that reminded me of my father—how I’d seen he was getting old just before I boarded the Future and, unbeknownst to me, had sailed into the future with its experimental FTL drive.
In other ways, these aging males were so very different, and it was that uncanny valley between the two that made them stand out.
No wrinkles, yet their scales had gotten thinner, paler.
Their hair had grown pale as well, like they’d turned gray, just like my dad.
The bone structure of their faces seemed more exposed, and the proportions were slightly different: sharper, more angled.
If I looked at Levant’s face, I could see the same, except his was still more padded out with muscle and flesh.
When Levant ended the call, I drew in a relieved breath, even though I knew it hadn’t all been the news I wanted.
For starters, they seemed very happy that Levant had found his fated mate, and they meant me.
That felt very final, very… like I’d just woken up after a trip to Vegas and discovered myself married.
I’d never done that, but I knew a friend or two who had.
It felt weird, and final in a way a Vegas marriage wouldn’t.
Like still wanting to leave was letting Levant down in the worst way.
I tried to picture what it would be like to take him home with me and couldn’t do that either.
I might have hopelessly dreamed of discovering alien life out in space for as long as I could remember, but I also knew Earth wasn’t ready for that kind of thing.
Taking Levant home with me was impossible.
My dad would like him, though, very much.
Levant was so caring and sweet, but clever and protective at the same time.
A man with a rebellious streak but a sense of honor, exactly the kind of man my father admired.
And that brought me to another of the conversation points that made me ache.
My dad was dead, gone; his bones turned to dust. That knowledge made my chest ache so badly that I struggled to breathe.
In a way, I’d been prepared for it, and had known as soon as I’d opened my eyes and realized the sorry state my stasis pod was in.
Did I even want to go home knowing all that?
What would I achieve? Nothing would be familiar to me after a thousand years, and they might not even care about my return.
I’d just be a footnote in history. Very bleak.
They’d probably perfected the FTL drive without me, and my dad would have died lonely and disappointed.
Staying with my ship gave me purpose, but now it appeared we’d been ordered to stay on for the ride aboard this machine.
To study, observe, learn. Every passing moment took me further away from the Future and all the obligations it entailed.
I sighed, trying to shake that final thought.
Where had it come from? Obligations? It made it seem like it was a duty I no longer passionately supported.
Levant still held me in his coils, not holding me in a way that kept me pinned, but supporting me like he was my personal bean bag.
Very comfy, warm, and safe. He moved around the control room as if he needed to keep himself busy, and also as if he could not contain the curiosity bursting through his veins.
He liked this task the Shaman Elders had given him.
He liked being asked to study the Revenant we’d boarded by a sheer fluke of luck.
“Hey, Auby,” I said. The little robot cow was clomping after Levant everywhere he went and offering insights and explanations as far as his knowledge appeared to go.
At the sound of his name, the companion bot flicked his tail, and his ears went back.
He trotted over with a little skip in his six-legged gait, like he was a child having fun.
Auby wasn’t the only one who had instantly turned all his attention on me.
I felt the golden stare of Levant’s eyes, and it made my nipples perk inside my snug sports bra.
“How did you end up outside the Burrower, I mean, Digmaster? And if your previous companion was supposed to be on it to control it and search for my ship, where did he go?” I asked.
I didn’t really like the idea of a body possibly rotting somewhere in here with us.
Of course, a thousand years was a very long time; it wouldn’t be rotting at this point, but just a pile of bones, perhaps even dust.
“She,” Auby said. “My previous companion was also female. She was a very gifted technician, and she volunteered to go on the Digmaster even though it might be a one-way trip.” Auby hesitated, and then his eyes flickered and light spilled out, blue and bright at first, but quickly resolving into an image.
I gasped, caught by surprise, and so did Levant.
He curled closer, and his arms came around me as we watched the scene unfold that Auby was now projecting.
It felt very comfortable and familiar to have him shelter me against his wide chest the way he was.
Like we were a couple already—so familiar with one another that casual touch was a given.
It was fast to feel that way; I’d never moved that fast with a man before.
Heck, my longest relationship had lasted three months.
Being with Levant felt different, very different.
A bit, dare I think it, like it was meant to be.
It could just be the high-pressure situation, but I didn’t think so.
I’d never felt the urge to jump the bones of any of my combat buddies, and I’d been in plenty of high-pressure situations with them.
The image Auby showed was a bit confusing at first, but that was because he was showing us the control room of the Digmaster.
Since we were in it, it seemed for a moment like everything was doubling up, and it made my vision dance.
Then a voice—female and light—came through, as if Auby were speaking himself.
“Are you recording, Calf?” she said. Her voice was not at all what I expected.
It was so normal when Levant’s weird translator device translated for me.
She sounded like she was speaking English, and could have been my neighbor or something.
“I am recording,” Auby responded in his own voice.
That’s when she moved into view, a long, sinuous body with glittering golden scales.
They were streaked with cobalt blue along her back, and that matched the vibrant color of her blue hair.
She wore a simple black tunic that looked like it could be a military uniform.
There were three curvy red lines on each shoulder that could have denoted her rank.
Her hair was braided back neatly, the way I would if I were on duty.
Her face was like Levant’s in bone structure, but different too—delicate, with much more subtle nubs on her brows, and she had no horn on her chin either.
She did have a pair of very dainty little ones rising from her forehead, which caught me by surprise.
“She must be a very distant ancestor of the Serqethos Clan; they are golden with black horns,” Levant murmured, his eyes huge and fascinated.
He had horns himself, also black and twisted like those of an antelope, and I wondered if that meant he was related to these Serqethos Naga too.
Were we looking at an ancestor of his as well?
“Good,” the woman said, and she crouched lower on her tail, filling up most of Auby’s projection and appearing to look us straight in the eye.
“My name is Sisha Avrishalz, a second-class engineer in the Royal Navy’s command.
My mission was to locate the impact site and disable the energy source that is affecting our planet’s EM field and caused the catastrophic axis shift.
I have failed.” She drew in a deep breath as if considering what to say next, or perhaps because she was choked up with emotion.
Auby’s projection trembled, or perhaps it was the Auby from the past trembling as he recorded this.
We were all silent as we watched, and a wave of guilt so thick and heavy I nearly choked on it began to swallow me.
This was my fault. My ship had done this.
I didn’t know how or why yet, but there was no denying that it was true.
My arrival on this planet a thousand years ago had had devastating results.
“An enemy fighter has damaged the Digmaster, preventing the machine from fulfilling its purpose. I am going outside to fix it, and have programmed the Digmaster to continue searching for the energy source. If I do not make it back, the Digmaster will send out a beacon once it has completed its task.” In Sisha’s eyes, I saw the certainty that what she was about to do was death, and she was prepared to face it anyway. To save her world.
“Oh God,” I moaned, nauseous to my core, my hand going up to muffle the sounds that wanted to escape.
This was supposed to be a simple test flight, a trip around Mars and back.
I didn’t need to hear her last, heartfelt goodbye to her friends and family.
Didn’t need to know what happened next, because I could guess.
She and Auby had gone outside, into those icy temperatures.
She’d fixed the machine, and then the two of them had frozen in the ice until Levant had found Auby.
The Digmaster Sisha had pinned her hopes on had done as programmed; it had kept endlessly searching for my ship, somehow only finding it now, a thousand years too late to fix anything.
I wanted to cry. I wanted to rage with anger at myself, at the universe, at something.
Except what could I do? It was an accident; I’d never meant to harm anyone.
I just needed to make sure I fixed what I could now, even if that meant destroying my one chance at going home.
“That’s enough, Auby. Thank you,” Levant said.
He turned me in his arms, hugging me close, and said nothing.
There were no words for a moment like this anyway, but he offered me something much better: silent, unconditional support.
I burrowed my nose against his chest, closed my eyes, and wished very hard that I could forget what we’d just learned.