United

by Melissa Landers

  But then she would have to replace two slots in sanitation instead of one. No, I’ll put Mary back in her old job. She wasn’t looking forward to that conversation. Mary would be crushed. Besides, reversing the decision so quickly would make Cara look every bit as incompetent as Jake already thought she was.

  “Don’t tell anyone what you overheard,” she said to Jake. “There’s been a change of plan. Mary’s going back to sanitation.”

  “What?” he cried. Despite his former objection, clearly he’d hoped to use Mary’s transfer as a springboard for his own.

  “This should make you happy,” Cara told him. “Now you know I’m not playing favorites.” While he sputtered in shock, she swept a hand toward the door. “Next time you want to talk to me, make an appointment like everyone else.”

  Jake stormed out in a rage. Aelyx dropped a supportive kiss on her head and followed, leaving her alone to clean up the mess she’d made.

  Eight hours and several awkward conversations later, Cara sank onto her futon in hopes of decompressing from the stressful day. But her backside had barely met the seat cushion when a series of rapid-fire knocks clattered on her apartment door, hard enough to rattle the keypad. There was a special kind of anger behind those knuckles that told her exactly whose hand they were attached to. When she answered the door, she saw that she was right.

  “Jake,” she forced through her teeth while smiling tightly. She took notice of the half dozen others lingering behind him in the hall, immigrants from Earth whose names she hadn’t learned yet. “And friends. What’s the emergency?”

  “We’re tired of—”

  “This is an emergency, right?” Cara interrupted. “Because we talked about setting boundaries. Evenings are for family and—”

  “Oh, please.” He slipped around her into the apartment. “Your boyfriend’s not even here. I saw him in the lounge with a bunch of other L’eihrs.”

  As the group followed him inside, Cara counted backward from ten to one, determined not to pop off and say something she would regret later. She’d already exceeded her daily allotment of unprofessionalism, and the last thing she wanted to do was give Jake more ammunition to use against her.

  “Don’t just stand there,” he said to the others. “Speak up.”

  There was a beat of hesitation, followed by shuffling feet. Then six pairs of eyes turned to the floor and the complaints began flying.

  “I hate my job.”

  “There’s nothing to do here.”

  “I want an apartment on the first floor.”

  “The food’s disgusting.”

  “There’s no privacy in the bathroom.”

  “These uniforms are tacky. Why can’t we wear jeans?”

  Despite her best efforts, Cara couldn’t stop her upper lip from hitching. If whiners grew on trees, this place would be an orchard.

  “Back home,” Jake said, puffing his chest, “I was the leader of a multimillion dollar corporation. So explain to me why I’m stuck on the maintenance crew while you call all the shots.” He glared at her and added, “What’re you, like, twelve?”

  There was a collective intake of breath, and the room went uncomfortably silent. Everyone seemed to know Jake had crossed a line … with the exception of Jake himself, whose chin lifted another inch. All eyes shifted to Cara as if waiting to see what she’d do next.

  Her face heated, mostly with fury, but with hurt, too. These people had no idea how hard she’d fought for the freedoms they took for granted, or how much she’d sacrificed for this colony. As the group continued watching her, she knew her next move was pivotal. If she let Jake talk down to her, it would undermine her power. She had to make an example out of him.

  “Starting tomorrow,” she said, “you will report to the guard station at the end of your regular shift. I’m assigning you a week of nighttime work detail.” She took a step toward him, raising her face to his. “If you have a problem with that, you can choose a Reckoning instead. But I’ll warn you: That lash stings like a bitch.”

  She made a show of glancing around at the others. “Anyone else want to disrespect me or challenge my authority tonight?”

  None of them argued or spoke up for Jake, who stood there frozen and white-faced. But as his friends ducked their heads and strode into the hallway, Cara noticed more fear in their eyes than respect. She felt a pinch in her stomach. This wasn’t how she wanted to lead.

  Once they left, she spoke to Jake in a calmer voice. “The L’eihrs made me one of their leaders because of my actions, not my age. You don’t have to like it, but if you want to live here, you have to accept it.”

  “What if I don’t want to live here?”

  They stared each other down for a few moments. She was about to offer him a ticket to the next Earthbound transport when the door slid into the wall with a hiss, and someone new walked inside, a L’eihr girl with a beautiful heart-shaped face.

  Cara did a double take. It was Syrine. “You’re back!” she called with a smile. She hadn’t spoken to Syrine since their last day on the transport. The therapy seemed to have worked. Syrine looked more peaceful—still softened by grief but not ruled by it.

  Syrine glanced back and forth between Cara and Jake. “And just in time, I see.”

  Cara huffed a dry laugh. No matter how powerful Syrine’s gift, her skills were no match for Jake’s assholery.

  “Are you a guard?” he asked. “Because I didn’t break any rules.”

  Syrine shook her head and approached him. “I’m a special kind of healer. I can remove negative emotions and clear your mind to help you see the root of a problem.”

  “Like mind control?”

  “Not at all. I provide clarity and comfort. The rest is up to you.”

  Jake didn’t seem convinced, but he allowed Syrine into his personal space and held her gaze as she peered up at him with wide, silvery eyes.

  “Now relax,” she said, and in response, his shoulders eased down.

  A minute later she broke contact, and Cara noticed the slight shift in her mannerisms that said she’d absorbed Jake’s anger and was working to process it out of her system. Once the tension had left her jaw, she faced Jake with her usual calm.

  “You’re frustrated because you want to make a difference here, and you fear you’re not needed. But you’re wrong. You have an agile mind, good for problem solving. That’s why you tested into the maintenance department.” Syrine paused, wrinkling her forehead. “And there’s a L’eihr girl you like, but she won’t talk to you, no matter how hard you try to impress her. You think L’eihrs are cold, and you’re wrong about that, too.”

  His cheeks turned pink.

  “Human mating rituals won’t work on her,” Syrine said. “They didn’t work on me, either. My l’ihan was human. His pursuits annoyed me at first, until he risked his life to save me. That was the first time I saw him for who he was—selfless and brave. He died before I had a chance to say that I loved him, but I did. Even in death, he has my heart.” She touched Jake’s arm, a rare move, as L’eihrs weren’t accustomed to casual contact. “My people aren’t cold. Show this girl who you are, and she’ll respond.”

  Jake’s face flushed crimson. Instead of thanking Syrine, he shook off her hand and backed toward door. “Stay out of my head,” he muttered, and then charged out of the room without a backward glance.

  Cara made a noise of disgust. “What a jerk.”

  “Not really,” Syrine said. “You judge him too harshly.” She fingered the pendant at her neck, a pear seed floating inside a tiny glass sphere. Cara didn’t know the specifics, but the seed was a treasured reminder of David.

  Sympathy plucked at Cara’s heart. “I did what you asked and waited to plan David’s memorial. Now that you’re here, maybe we can—”

  “No!” Syrine snapped. Her eyes went round and wild in a way that prompted Cara to take a step back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you. I just don’t want to talk about that right now.”

&n
bsp; “It’s okay,” Cara said. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  She didn’t stand in the way as Syrine mumbled apologies and made excuses to leave. Cara tried convincing herself the outburst was related to Jake’s anger, but she couldn’t help wondering if Syrine had left the continent too soon.

  When Aelyx came home, he looked almost as rough as she felt.

  Cara tapped a finger against her cheek in mock reflection. “Be a representative for your people, they said. It’ll be fun, they said.”

  His expression melted into a warm smile, and she knew what he was thinking because she felt the same way. No matter what they had to put up with during the day, the nights together were worth it. “Representatives?” he asked, making a show of looking around. “I don’t see any of those in here.”

  It was a hint to leave her work outside, one she willingly took. She rose to join him at the doorway, where he gathered her in an embrace that dissolved all her worries faster than sugar melting on the tip of her tongue. She squeezed him while emotion rose up inside her. Every time she thought she couldn’t love him any more intensely, her heart grew and demanded to be filled. It was the very best kind of hunger, which resulted in neither of them getting much sleep. But that was all right. She could sleep when she was dead.

  An hour later, they were tangled up on the futon, too exhausted to move.

  Or so she thought.

  Aelyx tightened his arms around her and nuzzled the side of her neck in a hint that he’d found an extra pocket of energy and wasn’t ready for the night to end.

  “Again?” she whispered. “Don’t you ever get tired?”

  “Not of you.”

  “It’s unnatural. No one has that much stamina.”

  He flashed a wicked grin, and all of a sudden she wasn’t so tired anymore. “Is that a challenge?”

  Just as she hooked a leg around his hip, her com-sphere buzzed an alert. Its frequency told her The Way was calling, which struck her as odd, because they’d never summoned her this late before. As Aelyx retreated to the bedroom, she pulled on her pants and tunic, then spoke her passkey while finger-combing her hair. She hoped the lighting in the room was dim enough that the Elders wouldn’t know what she’d been up to.

  But one look at their waxen faces, and she knew they wouldn’t care.

  Something was wrong.

  “We need to convene at once,” Alona said. “There’s no time to send a shuttle, so you and Devinder will participate from your quarters.” Her gaze shifted to the stretch of futon on either side of Cara. “Are you alone?”

  Cara nodded. Aelyx was close enough to overhear from the other room, but she would tell him everything anyway.

  Devinder’s hologram appeared, and Alona repeated to him what she’d told Cara. Then she called the meeting to order by abruptly dropping a bomb on them. “The Aribol have made contact. They requested a remote meeting that will begin momentarily.”

  “We’re having a conference call with the Aribol?” Cara blurted.

  “Essentially, yes.”

  “But how? The probes they launched didn’t speak any of our languages.”

  “It seems the probes were intended to collect our speech patterns, among other data, for this very purpose,” Alona said. “The fact that the request was recorded in a variety of human languages indicates probes were sent to Earth as well as L’eihr.”

  That was news to Cara. She hadn’t heard of any probes landing on her home world. The governments of Earth must’ve covered it up. They were good at that.

  “Do we know what they want?” asked Devinder.

  “No,” Alona told him. “But their request was more of a demand.”

  Cara had a bad feeling about this. If the Aribol wanted to make contact, why hadn’t they sent a representative to visit Earth and L’eihr? That would’ve been the friendlier thing to do.

  Maybe they weren’t friendly.

  A high-pitched whine rang out in the background, and all eight Elders stiffened visibly in their seats. “The transmission is about to begin,” Alona said. “Remember: We fed false information regarding our weaponry systems and our population size to their mechanical probes, so choose your words carefully.”

  She spoke her passkey, and the image of a man’s head and shoulders flickered to life, floating like a specter in front of the Elders.

  Cara leaned closer to the hologram, drinking in every detail. Until now, no one had known what the Aribol looked like. There was even some argument as to whether they existed. This creature was undeniably real, but Cara doubted she was seeing his true form. His face resembled a ceramic mask, oval and unnaturally smooth, and his shoulders lacked the contours of muscle or bone.

  “Greetings, children,” he said without moving his lips. His voice sounded computerized, as if filtered through translation software. Maybe the Aribol didn’t communicate with words. That would make sense, considering their rumored psychic abilities.

  “I am the head Elder,” Alona said. “Those of us gathered here compose The Way, our governing body. With whom are we speaking?”

  “My name and face are beyond the comprehension of your Noven brains. For the sake of simplicity, you may call me Zane.”

  “Noven?” asked Alona.

  “The collective name we give the children we’ve seeded throughout the universe. All of you are descended from a single race.”

  Cara’s brows jumped at the revelation. She’d suspected this, but had never had any proof. She wanted so badly to ask where the Noven race originated. Her bet was on Earth, where the remains of ancient primates indicated mankind had evolved slowly over time. Unless the ancient primates themselves had been seeded on Earth …

  “So the legends are true,” Alona mused. “Humans and L’eihrs share a common ancestor.”

  “Yes. Your kind is a quaint species.”

  “My kind?” Alona said. “Is that to say you and I are unrelated?”

  “Correct.”

  “Why refer to us as your children, then?”

  “Ah.” His voice raised a pitch as if in amusement. “An understandably confusing term, meant in a figurative way. My people have grown fond of your race; we’ve come to view you as progeny. But we are a singular species. We share no lineage with any of the beings we’ve discovered.” As Zane spoke, he turned to take in all ten members of The Way. When his shadowy eyes passed over Cara, they caught and held for a moment before moving on, almost as though he recognized her. Maybe she’d imagined it. “We rarely intervene in our children’s lives, but for the protection of all, we must make an exception in this case.”

  “How so?”

  “We cannot allow an alliance to exist between Earth and L’eihr.”

  Cara’s stomach dipped.

  “Over the millennia,” Zane continued, “your civilizations have developed more aggressive tendencies than other Noven. The merging of your planets poses a threat to delicate races we’ve seeded in nearby galaxies. Through exploration, you may discover these races and decide to overtake them.”

  Alona said what Cara was thinking. “We are a threat to no one.”

  “That is not for you to decide.”

  “But we haven’t done anything wrong,” Cara told him, unable to stay quiet any longer. “There’s no evidence to back up what you’re saying.”

  “This is a proactive measure to maintain peace,” Zane said. “We will allow humans and L’eihrs one month to return to your respective planets and then surrender all interstellar travel technology. If you refuse to comply, both civilizations will have to be neutralized.”

  Cara sputtered, too stunned to speak. The Aribol weren’t simply demanding the end of the alliance—they wanted a permanent separation of humans and L’eihrs. Not only would she lose her home and never see Aelyx again, but both societies would suffer. L’eihrs needed humans to breathe new life into their gene pool, and L’eihr technology had saved Earth on more than one occasion. Agreeing to Zane’s terms might save them in the short term, but it could als
o lead to their extinction.

  “Please reconsider,” she begged. “At least make an exception for humans on the colony who want to stay. Some of us have found l’ihans—life partners. None of us are violent. You don’t know what you’re asking.”

  Zane stared blankly at her for a moment. “I am sorry, young human, but there can be no exception. It is better to leave your mate than to bring about the destruction of your kind. We don’t enjoy punishing our children, but we do, when necessary.”

  “How do we know you have the means to destroy us?” Alona asked.

  His façade swiveled toward her. “Here is a demonstration to eliminate any doubt.”

  There was a beat of silence, followed by a clamorous roar from the sky. Cara rushed to the window and peered up. She didn’t see anything at first, but then debris began to enter the atmosphere in great balls of fire that streaked through the darkness and landed in distant ocean waters.

  “That was your spaceport and your Voyager fleet,” Zane told them casually, as if discussing what he should order for dinner. “One transport craft remains intact for use in complying with our demands. I urge you to obey. We’ve neutralized entire worlds for less than this.”

  And with that, his image vanished.

  Cara couldn’t blink, and her lungs seemed to have stopped working. Her mind kept jumping the tracks from one train of thought to another: Was anyone on board those ships when they exploded? Was the spaceport empty? Why didn’t the Aribol just kill us all and be done with it? What are Aelyx and I going to do? Maybe we can live in hiding. But wait. We’re famous on Earth. If we both disappear, people will know we ran away together. What if someone tells? What if the Aribol make an example out of us, like I did to Jake?

  “Miss Sweeney.”

  At the sound of her name, Cara jerked to attention. “Sorry,” she told Alona. “I’m still in shock.”

  “I’d like to hear your initial thoughts. Your instincts have proven useful to me in the past.”

  Cara blew out a long breath and tried to calm down. As she processed the news, her first reaction was that something didn’t add up. There was no reason to believe humans and L’eihrs would attack other worlds. And Zane had said the Aribol didn’t like to interfere. So why would they sit back for thousands of years of war and genocide on Earth and then step in now? There had to be a different reason, an ulterior motive for banning the alliance. “Maybe they’re the ones planning a takeover. Maybe they’re trying to weaken us for an invasion.”