Aspirant 2: A Sci-Fi Harem Adventure

by Maxx Whittaker

  Syl follows my gaze. “I see nothing.”

  “No magic light off in the distance?”

  She growls like not being able to see it is a personal offence. “No.”

  “Huh. Wick said something about passing partial ownership of the contract to me. I guess he meant me me and not us me.” He’d actually said something about knowing what we’d be looking for when we got there if I wasn’t busy staring at alien girl’s ass, but I didn’t know he meant it literally.

  Syl dips a foot into the slowly flowing water. “Lead on, then.”

  “Think it’s safe?”

  She lifts her leg and wiggles scaled toes still dripping with clear water. “The water? Yes. What may lie below it?” There’s mischief in her eyes when she gives me her half smile. “We will find out.”

  “Yeah, great,” I say, stepping off the shore. “Welp, let’s get after it, then.”

  The water feels as good as it looks and immediately takes the edge off the heat. It smells vaguely like rotten plant matter, but not enough that it ruins how deliciously cool it is.

  Syl shivers as she follows me in. “That’s better.”

  “Right?” I say as I start toward the pillar of light. The water keeps getting deeper until it levels off at about chest height. I push through it, ducking even lower so that only my head clears the surface. “Anyway, you were saying…”

  “Yes.” Syl flows through the water behind me as effortlessly as she does everything else. “It’s just… I dislike this place.”

  A chunk of something bumps my arm as it flows past. I tense for a moment before realizing it’s just wood. “Any particular reason? I mean, aside from the obvious.”

  Syl pauses, face unreadable. “Yes.”

  There’s something so guarded, so hurt in her eyes. A tightness at the corners hinting that she both does and doesn’t want to talk about this. “Hey, if you don’t want to tell me…”

  She deflates. “I will tell you, Sam. You know what I am, and what I’ve been a part of, and you still fight with me. Still call me clan. Perhaps… I can discuss this with you.”

  We start off again as she thinks, tongue flicking out occasionally. It’s a move I associate with deep thought and distraction now that I know her. Finally, she looks up from the flowing water. “I was installed in a place like this, once.”

  “What do you mean, installed?”

  “Stationed by my command. You humans called the area Florida, though I called it hell.” She doesn’t actually say the word hell… My brain just supplies it because the sound that comes out of her mouth isn’t pronounceable by any human alive. At least, unless there are some with three tongues.

  “That’s exactly what this zone reminds me of.” The ground under the water starts to raise as we approach shore.

  “I hated my time there,” she spits. “The heat, the insects, how pointless our mission was.”

  “I get the feeling that mission had to do with your distaste.” I clear the water, but my heart sinks when I see that the other side of the thin island is only about a dozen feet away. Then, more water. I trudge toward it, waiting for Syl’s response.

  Her answers come slow like she’s weighing every word before she speaks. “Yes. My unit was ordered to watch for rebel attacks and deter them if they arose.” She sloshes into the next channel with me, eyes darting to mine. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was nervous. “None did. We spent most of the time fighting crocodiles.”

  “Crocs?” I say, taken aback. “There were enough of them that they became a problem to… Anyone? Crikey.”

  She pauses at the last word, but instead of asking, plows on. “Yes. Many animal species flourished after… After…”

  Realization hits me like a brick to the face. “After the purge.”

  “Yes,” she says, misery writ across her face. “There were no human hunters. Human habitation was mostly abandoned. Cities were… Depopulated.” She stares out across the unending islands. “We had a human liaison where I spent most of my time. He called it “mother nature reasserting itself.”

  For long moments, I don’t speak. I’m not sure what to say. It’s a topic I’ve been avoiding for a lot of reasons… Thinking about all the dead… It’s too hard. Overwhelming. But more than that, Syl’s involvement… I haven’t asked because I don’t want to know.

  But clearly, she wants to talk about it, even if it fucks her up to do so.

  And I love her. So I ask, even if I don’t know if I can handle it. “Why was that so miserable?”

  She looks to me and I stop cold. It’s the second time I’ve seen her cry. “Because of why we were there. Fighting those… Those fucking beasts was symbolic. Of my failure, and the failure of those who thought like me. I hated what we did. What my people did to yours. It was wrong. And yet, I was still there, helping my people turn the Earth into a place we could use.”

  “Many soldiers question their superiors. What matters is what they do when they’re given orders that they can’t stomach.” I swallow the lump in my throat before wiping one of her tears away. “What did you do?”

  She laughs bitterly. “I was never given the chance to defect. Never given the opportunity to disagree.” She pushes onward, savagely slashing a floating piece of driftwood to shreds, her rage bleeding into her words. “Soldiers like me are not used until the damage is already done.”

  “What do you mean? Tell me, Syl.” I leave out that I need to know. If she actively exterminated humans… I don’t know how I’d react. I care for her, more than anyone in the world aside from Mika. But I don’t know her, not entirely. I don’t know her past.

  “When my people came to Earth, it was routine. We made first contact and negotiated with your leaders.” Her mouth twists with scorn. “Your presidents and congresses and sheiks and all the rest. They were invited.”

  “Oh God,” I groan. All the political divides, racism, conflicts with other countries… It runs through my head in a quick flash. “That probably went horribly.”

  “That is putting it mildly. Your leaders spent more time disagreeing and fighting with each other than they did us. The meetings were fruitless. Pointless.”

  We mount another island, and I peer into the distance. At the rate we’re going, we’re maybe a half mile from the light. “What happened?”

  “My people made it clear to yours that we would be taking certain resources. We were willing to compensate you, to gift you new technologies and give you access to the varied cultures we brought on the world ship.” Nearby, some sort of fat snake raises from the water, teeth bared. Syl spears it through the face without even looking and it seizes before falling back to the water. “The response was… Hostile.”

  “I’m not surprised.” I can see it in my mind. The leaders of Earth telling a technologically superior alien species to go screw itself. I wish it was harder to imagine.

  “We landed troops. They were instructed not to fight unless attacked.” She sighs. “They were attacked. By local militias, rebel groups, and armies. We responded in kind, and many died. But it was mostly small conflicts in localized areas. The drug cartels of Colombus, for example.”

  “Colombia?”

  Syl nods. “Yes. We were prepared for those battles and won them easily.”

  “Not everyone fought, I assume?”

  “No. Many humans welcomed us. Others offered us shelter and resources.” She shudders. “They were branded traitors by the more militant groups of humans, and many of those attacked and killed the ones who helped us. It was… Horrifying.”

  Another thing way too easy for me to imagine. “Where were you during all this?”

  “Stationed in your nation’s capital. There was no conflict at that location yet. For the most part, our presence kept the peace. I saw no fighting and killed no humans.” She looks straight into my eyes as she says this, as if its vitally important to her.

  “What would you have done if you’d been ordered to… To fight us? Kill us?”

&
nbsp; “I do not know,” she says simply. “It is easy for me, now, to say that I would have thrown down my weapon. Let my people exile me for disobedience. But I do not know that for sure.” She stops cold in the middle of the channel. Dead leaves and twigs float around her as she stares into the distance. “I am… Sorry. That I cannot reassure you.”

  So, she might have slaughtered us if she’d been ordered is what she’s saying. But something doesn’t sit right with me. “You said, back when Astra told us about this, that you disagreed with your people’s actions.”

  “Yes. Many of us hated what… What happened after.”

  “Then I believe in you,” I say, resting hands to her shoulders. I lean forward, touching my forehead to hers. “I know you, Syl. I know your heart. And I think you would have done right.”

  Her smile is thin and heartbreakingly beautiful. My words buoy her, somehow, and she leans forward to kiss me. It’s a soft, quick press of her lips, and when she pulls away her tongue lingers a moment. “Thank you, Sam.”

  We move on. Syl is quiet, thoughtful, but my mind bounces in a thousand directions. Hearing details, as vague as they’ve been so far, leaves me yearning for more. I still don’t want to know how we went from “a few warring factions” to “ten percent of the population is all that’s left,” but I need to. “What happened next? How did… How did it get so bad?”

  Once again, Syl ponders. We’re close to the light, now. It’s maybe an island away. I stop, waiting for her answer.

  She takes a few more steps before slumping and turning back to me. “On your date of 21 March, rogue elements within your government and Russia’s launched a series of nuclear weapons at our suborbital ships. All of these ships were over areas with massive human populations. Thousands of Threvians were also present.” She looks up at me, as angry as I’ve ever seen her. “The ships were at low elevation. The explosions and nuclear fallout from the missiles we were unable to intercept…” She exhales slowly, mastering her anger. “Millions died. Your people were willing to sacrifice them, and for what? To bloody our nose? The suborbital ships were a fraction of our forces. We lost a handful of our people, but human losses were… Unimaginable.”

  “Jesus Christ,” I whisper. “I can’t… Can’t believe…”

  “No other species we had ever contacted were as fractious, as combative, as hateful as yours. No species had ever attempted anything remotely close to what yours had done.” She reaches for me, holds my hand like she’s afraid I’ll bolt at her next words. “My leaders… Decided that you could not be left in power. That you needed to be purged for the good of the universe. They thought that when we left, the anger among your people would be too great. That in a hundred or so years when you developed faster than light travel, you would be a plague that would not be stemmed.” Her grip tightens. “And so, we initiated the purge.”

  I feel sick. “I don’t know if I want to know the details.”

  “I do not blame you. Just know that… That it was done with no maliciousness. There was no suffering. The armies were called home, and it was done from space.” She says this intently, watching my face. “When the population remaining was determined to be… Pacified… Only they did we relent.”

  I can read between the lines. She didn’t take part. “And you disagreed.”

  “Yes. Many of us did. My people’s history is not so different than yours. We were a fractious, divided race before… Before the plague that threw us into the stars. If not for that…” She shrugs. “Perhaps it would have been no different than yours. It was not our place to judge you.”

  “God,” I say, at a loss for words. “What did they do to you for disagreeing? Is that how you died?”

  “Yes. I was killed in an accident,” she says, mouth twisting. “But I was not the first. Many of my people were killed in mysterious ways after we voiced our discontent.”

  “So, you disagreed with the purge and were murdered by your own,” I say. “Sounds like you’re in the right place trying to save the rest of the world with me.”

  Her smile is thin. “I wish I believed that.”

  I don’t know what else to say. I don’t have words to process what I’ve been told. It’s staggering, like hearing about a far-off disaster that leaves you horrified. My heart feels dead, burned out in my chest.

  I didn’t have many friends. No family. But Earth is still my home. These are still my people. And as easy as it was for me to believe in the horrible things they did when the Threvians arrived, it’s equally easy for me to believe in the goodness of people. Not everyone is bad, and not everyone is good.

  They didn’t deserve this, and the ones that are left deserve to be saved.

  “Come,” Syl says sadly, watching me. “Let us finish this and… And then decide what to do next.”

  I don’t like the sound of that, but Syl marches off before giving me a chance to respond.

  I have no choice but to follow.

  ***

  “Well, we’re definitely in the right place.”

  Syl hisses as she surveys our destination. “If this were not a manufactured world, there would be no way I would walk into so obvious a trap.”

  Trap looks like a good word for it. The area ahead of us is a huge circle of water and rock, slightly depressed like the finger of a god’s reached down to dimple the earth. It looks like the worst possible place to fight something; open and unprotected with no visible cover. The swirling mist has even made an unwelcome and ominous return.

  But this is definitely the place. The pillar of light we’ve followed up to this point still lances from the cloud cover, stopping just above us in a dome shape that’s like a reverse of the landscape. “Yeah. In real life, I would walk the hell away from this and never look back. But this sure looks like a boss arena to me.”

  “Boss arena?”

  “Heh. I keep forgetting that you’re not familiar with pointless Earth shit. It doesn’t matter. Like I said, this is the right place.” I rub the stubble at my chin, then realize I have stubble. It didn’t grow on the Citadel, but it’s growing here in Lifestream.

  Interesting.

  Syl reaches out and runs a finger along my face. It scratches a path that mirrors mine. “I must admit that on most males of your species that I’ve encountered, I found facial hair duplicitous. It felt like a person who wore it was hiding something.” She reaches up with both hands, running them up my face. The friction of her rough hands against my rougher stubble sends a shiver through both of us. “But I am rapidly changing my view.”

  “You keep talking like that and we’re never gonna make it into that crater to fight the Corroc.”

  Her face falls. “Yes. You are right. We must finish this.” There’s a finality to her words.

  Like she’s saying goodbye.

  We’ll see about that.

  We start down the soft slope. This looked like a shitty place for a scrap from above, and the fact that the stones are so slippery I fall flat on my ass within twenty steps doesn’t improve my opinion. I land with a splash in slowly churning, fetid liquid that’s closer to mucous than water. I raise a hand and trailers stretch from the surface. “Ugh. What the hell is this stuff?”

  “I do not know,” Syl says, flowing back along the rocks to help me up. As always, she’s like poetry in goddamned motion and doesn’t seem to have any issues staying upright.

  I take her hand and she hoists me up. Bizarrely, when I stand up the liquid beads and flows off my clothes instead of sticking like slime should. Where it wicks away from my hands, it stings. “Weird.”

  “Not much about this place makes sense.” Syl rolls a bead of the material between two fingers. “This is poisonous.”

  “Great. Sure hope Bombor’s skewer lasts awhile longer.” Though my skin tingles, it’s not much worse than that. I get the impression that normally this would be incapacitating.

  “It is fortunate that we met him,” Syl says wistfully. “He did not seem bothered by… Me.”

&n
bsp; “Yeah. I hope we see him again. As for the skewer? I think that’s called a deus ex machina? Maybe? I’m probably using that wrong.”

  “I do not know what that means, but I understand the meaning.” Syl flicks away the poison. “As I said, fortuitous.”

  “Even so, I’ll try to avoid going for another swim.”

  We press deeper into the crater. There’s no sound save the gently flowing liquid and our feet sloshing through it. Everything has a strangely rotten briny scent, like the sea if it were filled with corpses. The sun barely filters through the mist and the world is an eerie grey that jacks our visibility. “I don’t like this.”

  “Nor I,” Syl rumbles. “Be on your guard.”

  “Don’t have to tell me twice.” I stay close behind her, holding my power in a death grip. There’s no sign of the Corroc, but in this soup he could be ten feet away and we wouldn’t be able to see him.

  Though I bet he can see us.

  We press deeper and deeper, step by agonizing step. “I hate this.”

  Syl’s only reaction is a slight tightening of her shoulders. “Yes, as we said. This place is not ideal for a–”

  “Not that.” I lay a palm on her back as I watch the ground to be sure of my foot placement. I do not want to trip just as this asshole attacks. “It’s the anticipation. It kills me. I wasn’t much of a fighter before the Citadel, but I like to think I learned fast. See something coming and you kill or are killed. Easy.”

  “Yes…”

  “But this. Not knowing where this thing is. When it will attack.” I exhale, sending a thick tendril of mist swirling. “I wish he’d get on with it.”

  “Anticipation, yes. I know what you mean.” Syl’s head never stops moving, swaying from side to side as she surveys the area and watches for threat. “All battle is like that. Once it is joined, it is as simple as you said. Kill or be killed. But before?” She huffs a low laugh. “The waiting is terrible. Your own mind is a worse enemy than what you face. Doubt and fear threaten to consume you. The excitement overwhelms.” She turns back a split second. “It is the same with mating.”