by Ashley West
Because she cared about him, she wanted him to be happy. Even if that meant she would be losing something she wanted so much.
They hadn't discussed that part of it yet, and honestly, Katia didn't want to talk about it. She didn't trust herself not to get overly emotional about things and end up making a mess of everything.
"You'll find your way back home," she said finally. "You'll do what you need to do. I believe that."
He smiled at her again, and this time it was warmer and he let her draw him into the house and back into bed.
"What are your plans for the day?" Silas wanted to know once they were wrapped up in each other again. He was so much bigger than her, and when he was big spoon, it was the most comfortable she'd ever been.
"Mm, errands, I think. There's a bunch of stuff I need if I'm going to keep feeding you."
"I see," Silas replied, pressing a kiss to the back of her neck. "I wish I could come with you."
"That would be interesting, to say the least," she murmured. "Maybe one day."
They stayed in bed for another couple of hours before Silas needed to get back to work on his comm device, so Katia pried herself out of bed, made breakfast and then went to shower. She’d make a to do list of all the things she needed to accomplish on her day off and get a running start on the day.
Katia went over her mental list as she browsed the aisles, picking up potatoes and cream and cheese and everything else she'd needed.
Honestly, she'd expected to feel worse after the conversation she and Silas had had that morning and especially after taking a day off. She'd expected to feel guilty and bad, like she'd let her business down and like people were disappointed in her, but when she mentioned that to Henry, her stand in, on Friday when she’d gone back in, he'd just laughed and patted her on the shoulder.
"Sweetheart, you deserve a break. Any one of us would have covered for you so you could take the day off. And any one of us would do it again. One day is probably not enough."
Katia felt warm when she thought about it. Being cared about enough that people didn't nag her to take better care of herself, but instead were just there when she needed them felt amazing. She caught herself smiling as she moved through the store, and was having a hard time telling if it was because of her friends and coworkers or because of the sex.
Dear god, the sex.
Silas looked like he was good at sex, of course. He was built for it with those rock hard abs and his muscular arms and legs. When he was naked, Katia had to remind herself to breathe often because, silvery blue skin and all, he was gorgeous. And he certainly knew what he was doing in the bedroom. His enormous dick aside, he had the skills to go with it and the sensitivity to make her want to keep coming back for more. Those blue eyes looked at her, and she felt seen. She'd expected it to be embarrassing, but it wasn't. She was just happy. Which was definitely one of the reasons why she didn’t want to dwell so much on the fact that he was going to have to leave eventually. It was much easier to focus on the good stuff.
So she was definitely humming to herself as she went about her shopping, taking the time to get groceries for the next week as well. Between work and trying to help Silas get his communicator thing working as much as she could, she hadn't had much time for errands.
Maybe when she got home she could convince Silas to take a break and they could relax together. Or 'relax' together. Either way, she wasn't picky.
Katia made her way to the front of the store, smiling at the cashier as she rang up the purchases. They made idle chit chat about the weather and the impending holiday season, and then Katia paid and was making her way back to her car, when something caught her eye. It was a tall man with silvery blue skin, coming around the corner towards the front of the shop.
"Silas?" she said, just loud enough for him to hear her. She had thought they'd agreed that him coming out in public was dangerous, but there he was.
Or at least...she'd thought it was him because she didn't know any other people with silvery blue skin, but when he turned around, she saw it wasn't Silas at all. This man had the same build and the same eyes, but the face was different as well as the hair.
Katia gaped.
"What did you say?" the man asked, and he hurried towards her. "Did you say Silas?"
"I..." she trailed off, unsure of if she should be telling this man she knew who Silas was. Just because they looked similar and were presumably the same kind of...alien didn't mean they were friends or that Silas wanted him to know where he was.
"You did," the man said, taking a firm step towards her. "Tell me where he is. Tell me now."
There was a wild look in his eyes, and Katia leaned all the way back, fighting the instinct to run. He could probably catch her easily, and the last thing she wanted was for this behemoth to hurt her. "Who are you?" she asked suspicion clear in her tone. "What do you want?" She glanced around, but luckily no one seemed to have taken notice of the fact that she was being threatened by a giant. Too busy with their own lives, which...actually was alright with her at the moment.
"I want to know where my captain is!" the man hissed. "I have been everywhere looking for him, with no sign of his whereabouts, and then I finally lock onto a signal coming from this area, and I know he's here."
He sounded like he was on the verge of tears, and Katia's eyes widened. "Wait, he's your captain?" she asked. "You're in HIMA?"
He nodded eagerly, looking like some kind of alien bobble head doll. "Yes, yes! I am. You know where he is?"
"I do," she said, making a decision. Silas wanted to talk to someone in HIMA about what was happening, and now someone from HIMA was right there. He'd be pleased. She hoped.
"Can you take me to him?"
Katia nodded. "I can."
Fitting him into her car was different from fitting Silas into her car, mostly because he wouldn't stop moving. He twisted this way and that, looking at everything as they drove. She'd given him an apple to eat when he'd told her that he hadn't eaten since he'd arrived on Earth three days before.
She was glad she'd done all that extra shopping. More than likely, she'd have two guests for dinner tonight.
Thinking about the logistics of that was better than thinking about the other things that were running through her mind. Mostly that now Silas could leave.
His ship had been completely destroyed, but here was Cress, as the man had introduced himself as, with a ship and a team, and they could go back to Gathra together. There would be no need for him to come back here, and Katia would never see him again.
Which was fine. It was expected. There was no way some intergalactic relationship could work anyway. And they weren't even really in a relationship to begin with. They were...friends. Right. Friends who kissed and had sex and spent time curled up together talking about their hopes and dreams and insecurities. But that didn't make them a couple.
She'd miss him, of course she would, but he had a life to go back to. And a planet to save.
So really. It was for the best.
"Wait here," she said to Cress when they got to the house.
He climbed out of the car, hitting his head on the roof as he did. "Why?"
"Because I need to check something first. Just...wait here."
She let herself in and found Silas in the kitchen, doing the dishes. Something about a seven foot tall man handling her dainty tea cups with the utmost care made her laugh until her stomach hurt.
When she wiped her eyes and looked at him again, he was watching her with a raised eyebrow. "Something funny?"
"What are you doing?" Katia asked.
"Taking a break. I wasn't getting anywhere with the comm, and I needed something else to focus on."
Katia took a deep breath. This was it. She had to tell him. "You can probably stop working on the comm thing, actually."
Silas frowned. "What do you mean?"
"I...ran into someone I think maybe you know? At the grocery store just now."
"Someone I..." he traile
d off, a look of shock flitting over his features. "Cress?"
Katia turned, and sure enough, there was Cress in the doorway. She heaved a sigh. "Didn't I tell you to wait outside?"
"You were taking too long," Cress said. "Captain. You're alive."
"I am. And it seems you're still terrible at following instructions."
For a long moment, neither of them moved. They didn't change their stunned expressions, and Katia looked back and forth between them, unsure of what she was supposed to do here, if anything.
But then Silas' face split into a grin, and he stepped forward and pulled Cress into a tight hug. Cress hugged him back, and Katia was amused to see that the whole manly back slapping thing was just as prevalent with aliens as it was with human men.
"What are you doing here?" Cress asked when they pulled away from each other.
"I crashed here," Silas replied. "I could ask you the same question."
"I've been looking for you! Ammaline put me in charge of finding you. If you were still alive. She thought..." He sighed.
"What did she say, Cress?"
"She thought maybe you had been taken by the Fremeri."
“Nothing so dramatic,” Silas said. “They just managed to send me flying into a warp path that spat me out here. And then my ship crashed.”
Cress stared incredulously for a second and then burst out laughing. He laughed until tears streamed from his eyes and then wiped them away, gasping for breath. “Only you would say that isn’t dramatic,” he said. “I’ve missed you, Captain. Silas. Things are...not good. The Empress is gunning for a war, and the Fremeri aren’t acting the way she thought they would, so she’s upset. Without you there to talk her down, I think something bad might happen. She keeps talking about a war.”
Silas’ expression darkened. “She’s sure the Fremeri are a bigger threat than we thought they were to begin with,” he told Cress. “And she’s right. There’s something you need to know.”
He waved Cress over to the couch and sat down with him, filling him in on everything he’d seen when he had been chasing the Fremeri before he’d ended up stranded on Earth.
Katia had already heard the story, so she went about her business, bringing groceries into the house from the car and putting them away. This sounded serious, and she knew there wasn’t anything she could do to help them with this anyway. Maybe she’d get dinner started. Feeding them was probably the only things she’d be able to do that would be useful in the moment.
Neither of them paid any attention to her as she closed the front door and walked back into the kitchen. She could hear their conversation, could hear Silas describing the fleet of ships he’d encountered and how they’d fired on him.
“The Fremeri shouldn’t have had ships like that,” he said. “Not if they were on the verge of becoming extinct before any of us were born.”
“That’s just it,” Cress said, and his voice was heavy with each word he spoke. “They were never on the verge of it. Ammaline sent people to their planet. Those underground caves and tunnels that they have? They’re much more extensive than anyone was expecting. They go down a long way, and they’re stuffed full of tech. Turns out when people stopped paying attention to them, they started sneaking away and managed to steal things from other planets and other races. They’re armed and they’re dangerous, Silas. More and more people are turning up with their blood drained from their bodies. Children, men, women, the elderly. And not just on Gathra, either. Other planets in the Quadrant have reported the same kinds of things happening to them, and everyone agrees that something big is about to happen.”
“And they have their eyes set on Gathra?”
Cress shook his head. “They did, but now it’s worse than that.”
“How could it be worse?” Silas wanted to know.
“They have their eyes set on Earth.”
Katia dropped the mug she’d had in her hands.
“How do you know that?” Silas demanded.
“We got a confession out of them,” Cress explained, but Katia barely heard it. “Well, the Empress did, and then they told me about it while I was coming here. The one we caught was all too happy to tell her that they were heading for Earth, though no one is really sure why. It was less than forthcoming about that part.”
Katia and Silas just stared at him.
Twenty minutes later Katia found herself seated between the two men on her couch, sandwiched in and thinking...well. Thinking impure thoughts. It was better than focusing on the fact that she was terrified of the news Cress had brought.
Having there be alien life out there was one thing. She was fine with that. Of the two aliens she’d met, she liked both of them well enough (and one of them she liked more than well enough) but a hostile race of lizard people who wanted to…
“What do they want here again?” she asked, just wanting to make sure she had this straight.
Cress and Silas exchanged glances over her head. “Well,” Cress said, seemingly unwilling to tell her the grisly details.
Katia bristled. “I’m not a child. Even if I do seem like I’m made in miniature next to the two of you.”
Silas chuckled and reached for her hand, threading their fingers together and stroking her skin with his thumb. Katia could feel Cress staring, and she felt pleased all the way down to her bones that Silas wasn’t trying to pretend like there wasn’t something going on with them. He wasn’t ashamed of her, and that made her feel like she had won something.
“They want...well, we aren’t actually sure,” Silas said. “On Gathra, they were draining people.”
“On Simula it was the same thing,” Cress added. “But there haven’t been any reports of that for a couple of weeks.”
“So you think they’ve moved on to something else?”
“It’s entirely possible.”
“But why are they coming here? There’s nothing here. I thought aliens didn’t even like humans,” Katia interjected.
Silas held her hand tighter. “As a general rule, they don’t,” he agreed. “But I don’t think they’re coming for the humans. Your planet is rich with resources and even if the Fremeri were just pretending to be wiped out, their planet is still dead. There’s only so much they can do with stolen and bartered resources.”
“Colonization,” Cress said, sounding grave. “It would make sense, and it matches the cryptic confession we got out of the one we held prisoner. Take over the planet, keep a few million humans around to dig tunnels or as a snack.”
Katia paled and swallowed hard, and Silas reached over and cuffed Cress in the back of the head. “Stop that,” he snapped. “It’s going to be fine.”
“How do you figure?” Katia wanted to know.
“Because you’re not fighting them alone. The might of HIMA will stand behind you.”
“How do you figure?” That was from Cress, and when Katia turned her head to look at him, he looked confused.
“Because she wants a war. You said yourself that she’s been waiting for the Fremeri to come back to Gathra so she can start something with them. Well, if the Fremeri are coming here, then she can start something here.”
Cress looked apprehensive. “You’re going to tell the Empress that she needs to bring HIMA to Earth? Just because of—” He glanced at Katia and then broke off.
“No,” Silas said firmly. “It’s not just because of Katia. It’s for all the humans. Do you think they would stand a chance at defending themselves against the Fremeri? Those things would destroy them.”
“Maybe it would keep them off of our backs?” Cress suggested.
Katia shot him a dirty look. “Thanks so much for that.”
“That isn’t...I don’t mean it to sound like I don’t care.”
“Oh. Really? Then how do you mean it to sound?” Katia snapped. “Because I’m getting a whole lot of apathy and not much else.”
Cress shot Silas a helpless look over her head, and Silas just laughed. “Cress is afraid of the Empress,” he sa
id. “He doesn’t want to have to call her and talk about this.”
“I’m not afraid of her!” He protested. “She’s just...she’s hard to read.”
“She’s nearly transparent, Cress. That’s why you’re afraid of her. It’s going to be a hard sell, telling her that we need to protect Earth. I know that. But we have to try.”
She listened to them as they spoke, but something was bothering her. “Wait, wait, wait,” Katia said. “Cress, you just said the Empress was gunning for a war, right? But you don’t think she’s going to want to come here to fight it. What’s her plan, then? Just wait for them to come back to Gathra? That doesn’t seem very...efficient.”
The two of them exchanged looks again.
“Captain,” Empress Ammaline said. “It is good to see that you are neither dead, nor a prisoner.”
“It’s good to be neither dead, nor a prisoner, Majesty,” Silas replied, inclining his head in a little bow. “I would have tried to speak with you sooner, but I didn’t have a way to communicate off planet.”
She waved a hand at that, and Katia was struck by how graceful she looked, even while seeming impressively strong and powerful. Yeah, she could understand why Cress was afraid of her. “I understand. Cress has told you of what is happening, has he not?”
Silas nodded. “He has. And I think I have an idea, Majesty, but I wanted to hear yours first.”
She gave him an arch look. “How gracious of you, Captain. My plan is this. The Fremeri have deceived us and everyone else for a very long time. They hid in their tunnels and they used their power to sneak around. We will cut them off at the source.”
“What does that mean?” Silas wanted to know.
“It means that their planet was once thought to be dead, and now we will make sure it is. Anything they have hidden there, anything they have been stockpiling for later we will destroy.”
