“That’s cute,” Char said with a sad smile. Yelia reached into the pocket of her pants and pulled the rock out.
“I still carry it. Everywhere I go.”
Char didn’t know what to say, so he took another drink of the alcohol and watched as the young woman stared down sadly at the rock in the center of her palm. Eventually she cupped her fingers around the rock and slid it carefully back into her pocket. Then she looked at Char.
“I have to get her back,” she said.
“We will,” Char promised.
Silence overtook them, and a howling wind blew through the night, making them both shiver, but neither wanted to leave the roof and go back inside the cramped living quarters. Char looked over to Yelia and was surprised to find she was staring at him. She leaned over then and pressed her lips to his, and he returned the kiss.
As they kissed, their lips parting and their tongues dancing, Yelia reached over and took the bottle from him, setting it off to the side and climbing onto his lap, her knees on either side of his thighs, so that she was facing him.
He was the one who broke the kiss, and then his lips were at her sensitive throat. She tilted her head back and moaned as he nibbled her heated skin, planting wet kisses after each bite.
The heat their bodies made was enough to stave off the howling wind, and when Yelia lowered herself closer to his body, she could feel that he was hard. His thick erection pressing against her crotch, where a warmth had begun and radiated out. If she went all the way, he would go with her. She could tell.
She broke the kiss off, pulling his hair so his lips left her neck, and she climbed off his lap. It was too much. What was she doing? She really did like Char, but she didn’t want to fuck him on a roof. If they did that, she wanted it to mean something more than both of them just coming.
“I’m sorry,” she said, looking over to the man, worried that he was mad.
“It’s fine,” Char said with a smile, then reached for the bottle and took a large drink. Yelia couldn’t help but laugh.
Chapter Five
It was really hard to tell how many days passed for Sarah. She slept sure, but in fits and starts, an hour or two here, and hour or two there. She had no way of knowing when nighttime was, and really, for as long as she had been in space, on this planet and her internal clock, the one set to Earth time, was bugged. What time was it back on Earth? Morning? Night? Was her father eating dinner? Was he asleep? Was he at work?
Did he even work anymore? Sarah was sure she had been gone for at least five months, maybe more. Gone. Vanished without a trace in her father’s eyes. She had been heading to the mother of her dead friend’s house when the Aeon’s had taken her. Her car would have been there, right in the middle of the road, the door hanging open, but she wouldn't be gone. Did her father think she was dead?
How could he not? She had vanished without a trace. No one on Earth would think aliens. Instead their theories would center on... What exactly? A killer? A rapist? Surely her father would fear the worst. He would think she was dead, as each day went on with no news, not a single clue, the idea of finding her alive would become more and more unrealistic.
But she was alive! Oh, how she wanted to let her father know, that for the whole time she had been alive and she was fine. Maybe not fine, but in the grand scheme of things, fine. She had fallen in love with a gray-skinned alien. She had been captured by a blue-skinned psychic alien more than once. She had saved the galaxy and had planned on going home, but there she was once more.
Henry. He had ruined everything. She had been so close to returning to her family, her friends, her life, but he had plucked her from the side of the volcano, and off they had gone, to wherever they were heading.
If Henry hadn’t come, Sarah would be dead. She tried to force herself to remember that. Her and Fib had given up. The lava was closing in, there was nowhere to run, and then the ship had swooped down and there had been no other choice. Fib and Sarah had leapt on board without a second thought.
And Henry had been there.
Just thinking of the name made Sarah’s blood boil. Picturing his face made her feel queasy. He had captured her, and whatever he was planning, it wasn’t good.
It was then, sitting in her small room on Henry’s ship, thinking about how sick he made her feel, how invasive it was when he spoke within her mind, that she made up her own mind. She would escape, and she would kill him. She was going to end the nightmare he had brought into her life, once and for all.
Chapter Six
The morning after their rooftop make out session, Char, Yelia, and the two other Zaytarian’s left their planet aboard Bo’s ship. The ship had a low profile and ended in tapered wings, the better for air to slide around the ship without stunning its speed. As raggedy as it looked, it was a finely-tuned and crafted machine, hobbled together from many other crafts. Bo clearly knew his stuff.
Bo and Gar took up the two seats in the cockpit, leaving Yelia and Char to the bench-like seats near the rear of the ship, where they buckled in for take-off.
“I’m sorry about last night,” Yelia said, feeling a warmth spread on her cheeks. Char smiled.
“I’m not,” he said.
“I just, I got you all going, but then stopped it.”
“It was fun while it lasted. I’m not interested in you because I want to have an orgasm,” Char said. Yelia smiled.
“So you’re interested in me?” she asked.
“Of course, I am,” Char said, and he looked as though he wanted to say more but he thought better of it and just smiled instead. Yelia reached over and took his hand.
“Should be good to unbuckle,” Bo’s voice said over the ships communication system, and Yelia pulled her hand away to undo her harness, while Char did the same. They walked together to the cockpit, peering into the doorway, the view through the thick glass windshield one of black space and twinkling stars.
“How long you thinking it will take to get us there, Bo?” Char asked.
“Well, if we jumped right to the citadel, a few days. I’m wondering if it might be best to jump to the edge of Destune space and go from there. If we appear right next to the citadel, we might set off… something. They’re pretty techno-advanced, as far as a race of dead things go. If we take our time, we might be able to avoid detection and get in and out without them really noticing.”
“And how long will that take?”
“Well, a day to get to the edge of their space, and then a week or so to fly there without jumping.”
“Absolutely not,” Yelia said. “My sister could be dying. Who knows that those assholes are doing to her. We need to hurry.”
“Us dying won’t help anyone,” Gar said, and his face was pained, and Yelia had to remember that he was trying to save someone he loved, the same as her. “I hate it as much as you do, but we need to do this the safe way. Even if that’s the slow way.”
Yelia didn’t like it, but she knew Gar was right.
“Damn,” Yelia said. “Fine. We play it safe.”
Bo nodded and set in the jump coordinates.
“Here we go,” the large Zaytarian said, and then he pressed a button and the stars outside disappeared, everything turning blue and then purple, as the ship began to move faster than light.
It was less than twenty-four hours from take-off when Bo’s auto pilot pulled them out of jump-space. They had slept and bathed and were eating in the small galley when an alarm sounded for three long beeps.
“Everything alright?” Gar asked.
“Just coming out of jump,” Bo said, pushing himself up from the table and taking his bottle of water with him to the cockpit. Gar followed along.
“What’s it looking like?” Gar asked, lowering himself into the co-pilot's chair. They had come out right at the edge of documented Destune territory, but all Gar could see was the black and white of space and stars.
“Quiet, but I’m getting a reading,” Bo said with a frown, looking at a computer monitor th
at was affixed to the dash before him, right behind and above the flight controls. There were words and numbers there, but Gar had never been the strongest pilot, and he didn’t know much beyond pointing the front where you wanted to go and hold on.
“A ship?” Gar asked.
“I can’t tell. Seems a bit small for a ship. It’s coming closer.”
Gar squint his eyes and leaned forward, trying to see. Bo’s ship; playfully named the Patchwork Lady, hung in space, the engines having been killed, not moving.
“Is that…” Gar asked, pointing, and Bo followed his finger.
“Looks like a… something.”
“Destune?”
It was humanoid in appearance, but Bo shook his head. “No space-suit, but I don’t think so.
Destune could survive in space without suits, unlike most other species Gar had ever heard of.
“It’s a body,” Gar said as the shape drifted closer to them. He was right. It was a Grogloid, a rock-based being with tough skin that had resisted the immense pressure of space. Tough as a Grogloid was, it still needed to breathe, and this poor being had been lost in space somehow.
“There’s his ship,” Bo said, pointing past the body as it came to bump against the viewport of the Patchwork Lady and then drifted up and over the ship.
The Grogloid ship was easy to miss, as it looked more like a comet than a spacecraft, made out of a gray rocky material. But a hole had been blown into the side of the ship, and the Zaytarian’s could see inside it, the machinery sparking.
“Something took them out, and did it fast.” Gar said.
“Right on the edge of their territory,” Bo added. With that, both of the Zaytarian’s leaned forward, their faces inches from the viewport as they scanned the dark space before them, trying to see anything.
“I don’t see them,” Gar said.
“Me neither.”
Gar sighed and looked over to his pilot. “What do we do? Should we jump for it after all? Get in and out before they have a chance to even get to us? If they’re patrolling this heavily….” he let his voice trail off.
Bo sat back in his chair. “I don’t know. I don’t like jumping, there’s so many alarms we can set off doing that, if they have the citadel guarded the way I’m thinking they do. These poor bastards,” Bo said, motioning out towards the floating, half destroyed ship, “we don’t know why they got taken down. They could have been chased back toward the edge here. I say we go dark, and I can go pretty dark in the Patchwork, and I say we make for the citadel.”
Gar thought for a moment, and then shrugged his shoulders.
“You’re the pilot,” Gar said, sitting back in his chair.
Bo nodded, and he reached forward and flicked various switches the other way, and typed a command into a keyboard. The lights in the ship went out, the comms went off, and it sent Char scurrying ahead, poking his head into the cockpit.
“Lights went out. No answer when we tried to call you.”
“We’re going dark. Only essentials on from here, the less things we have for them to see us by, the better,” Bo told him.
“Okay,” Char said, turning away from Bo to go and fill Yelia in.
With the ship running on only essentials, basically engine power, artificial gravity, and oxygen, Bo took the flight controls once more and pushed the ship forward. Gar found he was holding his breath as they crossed into Destune space, and he let it out in a long whistling exhale. Bo grinned.
“Nervous?” he asked, his voice low, as if enemies could hear them in space.
“Yes,” Gar said, unable to take his eyes from the ruined ship as they passed it. Closer, they could see other unfortunate Grogloid’s floating near the ship, suffocated in the cold unforgiving grip of space.
“So far so good,” Bo said after ten minutes of cruising. “We’re going to take shift flying, you and I. It’s too many days for me to stay awake, and I trust you. I’ll take first shift, ten standard hours, and then you got six. Just long enough for me to sleep and eat something. You should go sleep.”
Gar nodded and unbuckled from the co-pilot’s chair. He went to the back of the ship. He found Char and Yelia in the galley, sitting at the small circular table.
“We’re in?” Yelia asked, looking at Gar.
“We’re in. I’m going to try to sleep, Bo wants me to fly in shifts with him.”
Char nodded. “I could fly, too,” he said.
“Bo doesn’t want this thing scratched up,” Gar said, making a joke in an attempt to keep a light mood. The ship was a wreck, covered in scratches. Char grinned, a favor to Gar’s weak attempt at lightness, and waved his hand. Gar continued on, into one of two bunk areas, small rooms with two beds, one atop the other, and a shower stall in the corner. He lay on the top bed, having left the lower one to Bo when they had first entered the ship, and closed his eyes.
He tried to sleep, but Sarah kept coming to the forefront of his mind and he was finding it impossible.
“I’m coming,” he said aloud, but just so. “Please be okay.”
Sarah had been on his mind for a week and a half, since he had woken up in the hospital. He had been unable to think of anything else. Sarah, and that was it. He wondered what Henry had planned. Somehow, without really knowing, Gar knew it had been Henry who had taken her. Anyone else would have killed Sarah and Fib outright, but a passing Zaytarian ship had seen an Aeon ship land and the women board. It was Henry.
Gar hadn’t thought about any other possibility. Henry had fallen for Sarah, even as he forced the girl from Earth to love him artificially. If Henry had taken her, it was because he wanted Sarah alive. He couldn’t kill her. He wouldn’t. Now Fib that was another matter. Gar doubted the brave Zaytarian female was alive still. He hoped she was, for Yelia’s sake, but he didn’t believe it. But Sarah, she was alive.
He only worried about the things Henry had been making her do for a week and a half. Mind control. Rape. Maybe it would have been better if he had just killed her outright. Gar lay in bed and tried to sleep, but his mind could only focus on the black thoughts he was coming up with.
Chapter Seven
The same moment Gar lay in bed and tried to keep his mind from dwelling on the sexual assault of the woman he loved, Sarah was putting the finishing touches in to her plan. She had worried that Henry was going to stop her as soon as she had begun even contemplating escaping, but it appeared as though he hadn’t been scanning her mind, or he was trying to lure her into a false sense of safety.
She wondered why he wouldn’t be reading her mind every chance he got. Was he trying to prove something to her? Did he want her to believe that he had never influenced her at all, that she had simply fallen for an alien within days of meeting him? That wasn’t who she was, it wasn't possible.
And then Gar entered her mind’s eye, and she had to ask herself if that was true. Wasn’t she that type of girl? She had fallen for Gar quickly and hard. But that was different, wasn’t it? Gar looked like her, just with gray skin. Henry had antennae. He was proportioned wrong. He was psychic.
Thinking about it made Sarah queasy, and for no other reason than it made her feel… what? Racist? That wasn't quite it, but almost. She saw no problem in the fact that she had fallen for Gar so quickly. He was a hunk. He looked like he could be on the cover of a trashy romance book. Alien Love. Ugh.
Sarah had to focus. She was going to escape, and she was going to do it soon. She had to hurry, she had to act before Henry decided to scan her mind and the plan was ruined. She had to be ready the next time he brought food. She lay on the ground. She prepared.
*****
Henry had taken to spending a lot of time in the cockpit, sitting in the lone chair, though letting the AI handle the actual flying. He had never been much of a flier, and he didn’t want to risk bouncing them off the side of an asteroid and heading into a star. But he found the view of space soothing. It kept his mind centered. It reminded him that to the universe, he and his problems were insignifica
nt.
Henry had been hailed upon his ship’s communications equipment regularly for the last week and a half. His people, what remained of them, everyone who had been off world when the weapon had been destroyed, or had managed to get off world in the ensuing chaos, were panicked and without leadership. But someone knew he had taken the two responsible for Aeon’s destruction. They had instructed him to meet up with them at coordinates they passed through messages. Henry had ignored them. He figured the ship he had stolen could be tracked, and was actively being tracked, but as long as he didn’t stop, he could stay one step ahead.
Changing course every hour or so was helping. No one could predict where he was going if he himself didn’t know. The problem with that was he couldn’t stay in space forever. Ship’s with their fusion cores, could stay in space for months without refueling, using energy from around the ship that existed naturally. But food stock would run out before that. Drinkable water would need to be brought on board. Henry had a week left before he had to stop somewhere. He had no money, no way of buying what he needed.
In short, he didn’t know what he was going to do. But he had to do something.
He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. His mind was always going, and it could be tiring for a species, which heard and saw so much in their mind. He had been shut off lately, keeping from reading Sarah or the Zaytarian’s mind. Something within him had changed. He hadn’t wanted to violate anyone, not even his enemy. She would talk. The bot would see to that. His mind somewhat blank, it let him focus on his problem. How could he resupply?
Aeon Ending Page 3
