by Rae Knightly
He didn’t think anyone ever could. And he didn’t think Laura could, either.
Before driving to Ryan Archer’s house, he had checked in with NASA for the hundredth time. He had asked the US space program to point their satellites at Saturn, but the search hadn’t turned up anything unusual. A search of the Solar System hadn’t revealed any sign of alien life.
He feared the worst for the boy, who, he realized, had become victim to a war no-one knew anything about.
Reaching a curb, he slowed down to read a sign that said FOR SALE. The house depicted on the sign was Victor Hayward’s. The bankruptcy of the billionaire’s Airliner was forcing him to sell all his properties.
Hao pressed on the gas pedal, but his motor sputtered. He pushed it again, and the car lurched a few feet, before dying. Turning the key in the ignition several times only strained the motor.
Drat!
Hao hit the wheel in exasperation. Shielding his eyes from the bright sun, he skimmed the area, hoping to find someone who could help, but the hillside was empty of life.
He stepped out of the car, lifted the hood, and checked the motor. At first glance, there was nothing wrong with it. Squinting back the way he had come, he wondered how long it would take him to walk back to the Archer house.
Hao sighed and returned to the driver’s seat, then grabbed his mobile phone. The line was dead.
What the heck? he thought as he tugged angrily at his sweaty collar, the sun illuminating his dashboard brightly.
He froze. Wait a minute, that’s not the sun!
He tensed in his seat, then leaned forward to squint through the front windshield. The fake sun dropped from the sky and glided smoothly towards him in a dazzling light.
His jaw dropped as the radiant object dimmed and turned into a black craft that floated soundlessly over his car.
***
Laura sat on the steps leading to the kitchen. She watched Buddy sniffing at the ground in the back yard, then uprooting some yellow dandelions with his paws.
The dog straightened suddenly, his dirty snout sniffing the air, and remained poised like a statue with one paw lifted.
“What is it, Buddy? Did you smell a rabbit?” Laura said, twirling a dandelion between her fingers without much interest.
She heard the dog bark once from far away.
Laura blinked and stood slowly. “Buddy?” she called, suddenly realizing he had dashed off without her noticing.
There was no sign of him.
She left the stairs and glanced at the driveway to check if James had come back, but it was empty of cars.
“Buddy!” she shouted at the fields, stretching her neck.
The dog appeared at the end of the path that cut through the cornfields, running wildly towards her. She cocked her head and then shook it, wondering whether she had made a mistake in accepting a dog that she would have to chase all day.
She was about to turn back when a form appeared behind the dog. The person was walking up toward the house, and it was a boy.
Laura clutched her stomach.
It can’t be…
She watched, expecting the illusion to disappear in the time of a blink.
But the boy continued to walk down the path. He saw her and waved. “Mom!” he shouted.
Laura lifted her hand to her mouth, afraid to acknowledge the feeling of extreme happiness surging through her body. She took a step forward, then another, and before she knew it she had broken into a run, crying “Ben!”
They met in the middle of the path and landed in each other’s arms so hard that they fell over, laughing. They hugged tightly, giggling and crying at the same time. Buddy sprang around them, barking. Laura wiped a tear off of Ben’s cheek, leaving a trail of dust.
He grinned at her. “You’ll never guess where I was!”
A shadow fell over them and Laura raised her hand to shield her eyes. Mesmo glanced down at them in amusement.
She took Ben by the hand and pulled him to a standing position, then faced the alien. “You came back!” she said breathlessly.
Mesmo smiled. “I had to,” he said.
She tilted her head, not understanding.
“You see, you didn’t answer my question,” he continued.
“What question?”
He bit his inner lip, then said, “Now that you know the truth, knowing what you know, could you still love me, Laura Archer?”
Laura opened her mouth, her bulging heart making her giddy. “Yes,” she replied. “Yes, I can!”
They stared at each other, bewildered at seeing each other in flesh and blood again. Then they both grinned, and he pulled her into his arms tightly.
Before long, Ben latched on to them as well, and the three of them hung onto each other like a single pillar rooted to the earth.
***
The giant Maple tree spread its branches. Its leaves danced to an afternoon breeze, while the cornfields reflected a setting sun.
Mesmo crouched by his daughter’s grave and made delicate flowers of ice flow out of a clay jug. When he was done, he sat on a thick, protruding root, leant his elbows on his knees and placed his head in his hands.
Ben and Laura bowed their head in silent respect.
Crickets chirped and the first star appeared.
Laura placed her arm around Ben’s shoulders, and he intertwined his fingers with hers.
“Mesmo sent Bordock’s body, as well as that of his companions through the wormhole,” Ben whispered. “But he wanted Kaia to return to Earth with him.”
Laura remained silent beside him, then said, “He can never go back, can he?”
Ben shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he whispered. “It was him or me.” He bit his lip. “He chose me.”
Laura shut her eyes as she squeezed his shoulders.
They stood together for a long moment, until Laura tugged at his arm, indicating they should head home.
Ben knew she wanted to give Mesmo some space, but he wasn’t quite ready to go. “I’ll come in a minute,” he whispered.
She nodded in understanding and headed back to the house with Buddy in the lead.
Ben stared at Kaia’s grave for several minutes, thinking about the past events and about the girl he would have liked to know better. How much could she have taught him about the skill? Now that knowledge was lost.
His hands glowed, and Beetrix landed in his palm. She fluttered her wings.
I will begin a new hive here. It is a good place. You can count on me for help, Benjamin Archer. You will need it.
She buzzed off and disappeared into the branches of the tree.
Ben sighed and went to sit beside Mesmo without saying a word.
The alien lifted his head from his hands.
“Thank you for bringing me home,” Ben said softly, struggling under the weight of knowing what that meant for the alien.
Mesmo remained silent for a minute, then replied, “There is nothing left for me, back there. This is where I belong now.”
Ben pursed his lips. “But what did you tell the Toreq? What was on the seven keys?”
“More bad than good,” he said. “But I didn’t transfer the data contained in the keys. Without the data, the Toreq Arch Council couldn’t draw conclusions.” He clasped his hands together. “Thus making it impossible for them to decide whether or not to send their best military ships through the wormhole before it closed.”
Ben blew air out of his puffed cheeks.
“Plus, I told them something you told me,” Mesmo continued.
Ben tensed. “R-really?”
Mesmo nodded. “An Observer is not chosen at random. He or she is elected by the Arch Council after much debate and from a large pool of candidates. The one considered the most apt for the mission carries a lot of weight in the decision for or against the human race.”
He paused. “You said you forgave your father because at least he had tried to make things right, even if he made bad choices.”
Ben r
aised his eyebrow, trying to get his point.
“So I, as the appointed Observer, recommended to the Toreq that they should apply the same thought to humans. Humans make bad choices sometimes, but at least they’re trying.”
Ben stared at the ground.
“Not to mention,” Mesmo continued, “that you chose the life of a bee colony over your own…” he broke off, and his voice dropped. “That gives me hope.”
Ben blushed and smiled shyly, considering his words as he drew a shape in the dirt with his shoe. How could humans ever come to understand the minds of the Toreq? If ever the A’hmun and the Toreq had once been like brothers, that time had long evaporated from human memory, lost in a blurry prehistory that stated the human race originated on Earth.
“So, what’s going to happen now?”
“Well, I finished analyzing the data contained in the seven keys. I will seek advice from the Wise Ones–some are favourable to the survival of your species, even if their data isn’t. Then I will have to convince your leaders that they must act before it is too late. Humans will have to learn to change the way they live, to respect the land and other animal species and to create and nurture instead of take and destroy. Only then will the Toreq truly consider pardoning the descendants of the A’hmun.” He paused, then added, “It’s going to take many years of convincing and a lot of travelling. Two centuries is not as long as you might think.”
Ben bit his lower lip and stared at his feet. “That sounds like an awful lot of work,” he said.
“It is. But it can be done. I have to try.”
Ben pouted and studied a particularly interesting blade of grass.
Mesmo nudged him.
The boy lifted his head and found the alien smiling at him.
“Will you help me?” Mesmo asked.
Ben broke into a grin. “I thought you’d never ask,” he said.
EPILOGUE
Day turned into night. Shadows chased each other across the land. City lights came on, mirroring the stars. Coyotes scavenged for prey, hawks settled into their nests, and whales sank deep into the ocean.
The Earth drifted in space, oblivious to the sounds of laughter, conversations and bustling cities that dwelled on it.
Its faithful companion, the Moon, spread its white blanket over the sleeping souls, while beyond, all was silent.
The planets of the Solar System danced around their radiant king, as they had done for billions of years, and all was well in the Universe.
Or was it?
A low humming reverberated in a corner of space. Upon closer inspection, one could pinpoint the origin of the sound to a ghostly moon that belonged to the ringed planet, Saturn. Its unusual proximity to its massive ringed neighbour caused friction deep within its icy surface, resulting in giant geysers of water vapour that ejected into the vacuum of space, feeding Saturn’s rings with its material.
It was somewhere in between these two celestial companions, in a blind spot from prying human eyes, that the friction was at its strongest, and water vapour from Enceladus swirled into a pinpoint of nothingness.
This hole, the size of a needle in terms of space measurements, collapsed in on itself, yet not before spewing out five dark spacecraft at the last unit.
The impressive ships came to a complete standstill, only visible because their shapes hid the stars behind them.
Crackling sounds like static bounced between them, while sophisticated equipment would have caught the sound of low, metallic voices.
Within the largest spaceship, a tall man with white hair combed to the back and attached in a thin, waist-length braid surveyed the progress of the fleet. His small, honey-coloured eyes were hard and his cheekbones, pronounced.
Word spread that the suicidal wormhole crossing had been successfully completed in the nick of time.
But all in all, this minuscule event represented a mere ripple in the fabric of the cosmos.
THE
GREAT WAR
OF THE
KINS
A SCIENCE-FICTION NOVELLA
Rae Knightly
Jenna’s world ended on a crisp summer morning.
She didn’t know it then, of course. She lay on her stomach in the grass, her chin resting on her crossed arms, watching an ant climb a blade of grass with painstaking patience. Up and up it crawled. When it reached the top, it extended its front legs, only to find it had reached the end of the road. There was nowhere else to go except down again.
Without taking her eyes off it, Jenna cut another blade of grass and balanced it between two others to make a bridge for the ant.
The insect cleaned its antennae, then scampered across, only to find itself in a myriad of grassy and leafy tunnels and bridges that Jenna had built for it.
Whoosh!
Just as it was about to enter the green castle, a sharp gust of air shoved the ant off its ledge and it disappeared into a mingle of grass roots below. Tunnels and bridges collapsed on top of it.
“Hey!” Jenna looked up angrily.
Mila placed a hand before her mouth and giggled.
“What did you do that for?” Jenna complained.
Mila shrugged and plopped down in the grass in front of her sister.
“M-o-o-m-m-y!” Jenna yelled, knowing full well that her mother couldn’t hear her from this distance.
Mommy’s silhouette moved inside the cabin as she finished opening the windows in a vain attempt to freshen the inside, though not much could be done to fight off the combined heat emanating from both of Taranis’ suns.
A Double Summer–as it was commonly called–only occurred once every twenty-five years, when both Taranis’ stars were aligned in such a way that they were visible almost as a single sun, only appearing as two separate entities once they set on the horizon in a blaze of red and orange.
Jenna’s threat to involve Mommy worked.
Mila pouted at Jenna. “We can build it again. Look.” She grabbed a large leaf and placed it as a base on top of the turf, then snapped a long, thin twig into four pieces and created a makeshift wall on top of the leaf.
Jenna thought that looked really cool and concentrated on the task of rebuilding. Clanging sounds from the kitchen told her Mommy was preparing lunch, while the usual voice of a man spoke over the radio set on the windowsill. Jenna missed the time when the radio used to play music, but that had been a long time ago.
From somewhere behind the cabin perched on a lonely hill, Jenna heard the regular thudding of Daddy cutting wood. She still wondered why Daddy went to all the trouble of hacking up so much wood. With the Double Summer well under way, it wasn’t like they needed to heat anything. And anyway, couldn’t they just switch on the heater when it got cold again? Daddy had said maybe there would be no heating by the time winter came, and it was best to be prepared. Jenna wondered why there would be no heating. In her five years of life, there had always been heating when needed.
Her thoughts evaporated when the ant appeared at the base of a blade of grass again. She squealed happily.
Mila came closer and the girls’ hats knocked into each other. Mila swiped hers off with a flick of the hand while Jenna pushed hers so it rested on her back, a string holding it loosely around her neck.
The girls closed in again, their bald heads touching. They watched expectantly as the ant began its ascension.
Bolo let out a short bark, unhappy at being left out of the game.
“Quiet, Bolo,” Mila ordered the hairy pet.
Bolo approached them, his tongue lolling thirstily, but the leash that attached him to the tree only allowed him to reach the tip of Jenna’s feet. He licked her toes, making her shriek, but at the same time she was too absorbed by the miniature grass-castle to take her eyes off it.
The twins giggled and continued to play in the shadow of the tree planted next to the single dirt road, until natural light dimmed slightly.
Jenna lifted her head, wondering if she had played for so long that night was already falling,
then remembered they hadn’t had lunch yet. She shielded her eyes as she lifted her head and gazed through the leafy branches above her. Only by squinting, did she realize that one sun shone brightly, while something had moved in front of the second sun. And that something was not a cloud…
B-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-p!
A shrill sound cut through the air. Plates crashed to the ground in the kitchen.
Jenna thrust her hands to her ears. Mila jumped to her feet.
The man’s voice on the radio broke through the sound, which receded into the background, and even the five-year-old captured the urgency of his message: something was going to happen. Something imminent.
Something terrible.
Only available on www.raeknightly.com
The Alien Skill Series
Free Prequel
The Great War of the Kins
http://www.raeknightly.com
Book 1
Ben Archer and the Cosmic Fall
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079QWKFNL
Book 2
Ben Archer and the Alien Skill
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FS4TK3K
Book 3
Ben Archer and the Moon Paradox
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KRN9Y5P
2019-2020:
Book 4
Ben Archer and the World Beyond
Book 5
Ben Archer and the Star Rider
Book 6
Ben Archer and the Toreq Son
About the Author
Rae Knightly is an indie author who invites the young reader to go on a journey into the imagination, where science-fiction and fantasy blend into the real world. Young heroes are taken on gripping adventures full of discovery and story twists.
Rae Knightly lives in Vancouver with her husband and two children. The breathtaking landscapes of British Columbia have inspired her to write The Alien Skill Series.
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