Plus, Ann had started new thoughts in his head. Perhaps their system was unfair. That didn’t mean that he thought the revolutionaries were right to stage an insurrection, it just meant that he might see matters from their point of view more than he’d realized. He sighed as he stepped heavily in the direction of the command center. This hadn’t been easy, none of it, and now, the social structure they had created had proven to be a path for discontent in the sectors. Not a good thing.
He’d come to Earth with the idea in his mind that there had to be a hierarchy. People had to be in charge. Humans, even when they craved anarchy, always, always looked for a leader. That was the information they had about the planet. He’d given them what they needed, and still, they’d found a reason to be unhappy. Or some of them had.
He’d have to find a new way, then. That was a problem for later, though. Right now, he needed to focus on getting Ann back.
“Pull up the file on shifter number 02197.”
The computer dinged to let him know it had acknowledged his command before it spoke again.
“I have the file, Overlord, what would you like to know?” The voice had not changed inflection, it was only relaying information, as it always did.
“Where is he taking Ann, Raya? Find them for me, now.” He walked through the automatic door and onto the deck of the command center.
People rushed around him, terrified of his wrath, and eager to find his mate before any other of his people did. They didn’t understand though, not what his true thoughts were, anyway.
He wasn’t furious because they’d taken his child, he was furious because his mate had been taken. That’s what truly mattered. He hadn’t wanted to feel like this about her, had hated the idea of being mated, but his match had been found, well before he met her, and he’d had time to adjust to the idea. He wanted her in his life by the time she’d actually been brought to him. Now, he didn’t want to live without her.
It was the child that should have mattered, repopulation of the planet with children of their lineage was vital to the plans set in place for this planet. That child didn’t seem real to him, not yet, anyway. It was also the one thing his mind rebelled against.
He hadn’t wanted a child, had never planned to have children. He’d known when he came to this planet that he would have to reproduce, it would be expected, then demanded, but he’d wanted to wait. He couldn’t help it that his mate was the most attractive woman he’d ever encountered, and he’d bedded her far more times than was probably decent. He’d still… hoped that they would have more time together before a child came along.
Everyone on this ship thought it was the child that he was keen to retrieve, but in actuality, he really only cared about his mate. Though he’d never admit it out loud, he didn’t want that baby, not yet. He knew it had disappointed Ann that he hadn’t reacted with more enthusiasm than he had, but he couldn’t pretend to be happy when they’d both been forced to create that baby.
The humans of this planet thought that the aliens of his people were emotionless, cruel even, to demand children from their mates. They didn’t know that there were those amongst his people that hated the demand as much as the humans did. Not everyone felt the same way he and Ann did about their mate, after all. Not all of them wanted to breed, either. But it was not a choice given to any of them, and he’d have to face up to facts sooner or later.
Ann carried his child, and whether he liked it or not, that baby would come soon enough. Whether she liked it or not, too, he thought after a moment’s contemplation.
“Overlord,” the computer system prompted as Rager headed for the armory at the other side of the command station. “I have located your mate and have locked onto their signal.”
“Thank you, Raya. Please have a transporter ready for me and a few soldiers.”
“Overlord, we need you, now!” A call from his generals came through and he turned back to face a screen that appeared on the wall.
“I’ve given Raya my instructions. What else do you need to know?”
“There are fires all over your sector, Overlord, and injured everywhere. Should we bring medical teams down here or just send the injured up to the ship? What about the fires? The fire crews are working all out, but the fires keep popping up.”
“Damn!” Rager cursed and turned away from the screen. He wanted to go after his mate, to throttle that arrogant little prick, Rex, and bring her back to safety, but his people needed him.
Earthling and alien alike. With a growl of frustration and a swipe across his tired face, Rager turned back to the screen. “Get some soldiers and use the water from the reservoir nearby, don’t use the seawater, it will only contaminate the ground. Get the injured up here, but set up a medical unit down there. I think there’s a woman with a clinic down there now? Take the minor injuries to her.”
Another call came in, the families that had been displaced by the bombs needed to be housed, where were they to put these now homeless people? Again and again, Rager’s attention was dragged away to deal with some problem faced by the people below. He knew it was his duty, and he did it with care, but Ann needed him, their baby needed him. He owed it to his people, though, and to those back home that depended on him to lay the groundwork for those that would soon join his people on Earth.
It took hours to get all of the questions answered, and then he had to go back down and gather intel from his team questioning the prisoners that were taken. The head of the team met him in a small room inside a local jail that had been recommissioned after their arrival but hadn’t been used yet.
“Tell me what you’ve learned, Elugon,” Rager demanded as he sat down in a chair in one of the meeting rooms in the facility. He’d barely slept before the attack and he’d been on his feet for hours. He started to feel those hours now, as he sat down and looked across the table at the other man.
“Not a lot, Overlord. Most are tight-lipped still, but one has cracked. He speaks of a man out in the desert, but won’t say his name or where in the desert this man is.”
“I see.” Rager studied Elugon, a very tall, intimidating man with shaggy black hair chopped into a short wreath around his head. The man’s cold purple eyes didn’t help to ease the ferocity of his gaze, rather, it added to it.
“I wish I did, Overlord. This is all utter nonsense. We could have taken their planet, filled it with our kind, and used them all as slaves, yet they protest? I would think they’d thank us.”
“Thank us for turning them into slaves, Elugon? Oh, we haven’t made them all slaves, not all of them, but most of them, yes. And we don’t give them a single choice on breeding new children for the planet, either. No, we’d be wise to listen to their complaints, if we want to stay here and have them on our side. Otherwise, we will have to decimate the population, hunt them all down, and kill every last one of them. Call me crazy, but I think that would be impossible on this planet. Besides, our mandate is to repopulate and breed with the natives. Not destroy the entire population.”
Normally, Rager would not have given such a long speech to someone under his command, but he had a feeling it was an argument he’d have to repeat many times, so if he practiced it on this leader, then he might have it perfect by the time he said it for the last time.
“Yes, Overlord. You are correct and far wiser than me, as always.” Elugon bowed his head respectfully, and Rager frowned. He hadn’t wanted to berate the man, but that’s what it had turned into.
“It’s not an easy thing to do, after all, is it, Elugon?” He put his hand on the other man’s shoulder and squeezed. “This idea of renewing a planet and remaking it in an image we can admire.”
“No, it’s not, Overlord. Your burden is heavy. Especially with your mate and child missing.” Elugon looked off beyond Rager’s shoulder, his narrowed purple eyes dark. “We will bring them back to you.”
“We will.” He sighed and tried to remember what he’d been about to do before he’d come down to question Elugon. He couldn�
�t keep track of what he’d done and hadn’t done so far. “Thanks, Elugon. Keep at them and keep me informed.”
“Yes, Overlord.” Elugon stood up to open the door for Rager, but he’d already opened the door himself.
Rager nodded at the man and left the room. He headed back up to the ship, only to find people in chaos. Their supreme overlord had been attacked, his mate taken, and the sector was now in a contained chaos. The fighters would soon be dealt with, all of them, and order could be restored. But for now, soldiers ran back and forth with information, papers, maps, and instructions that needed to be relayed to dozens of other people.
“Selaira, what’s the status on my mate’s parents?” Rager asked a female soldier.
“They are in their home, as are the Wolfson servants. Do you want us to question them now about the fugitive?”
“No, once dawn has broken you can question them. For now, we know which direction the fugitive who has my mate is headed and there’s a squad on the way out there to track them. He has one of our weapons, so I don’t want any heroic attempts made at saving her. It might put her, or the team, in danger.” Rager spoke softly, his voice an indication of his present turmoil. He still had a lot of work to do and not a lot of patience to get it all done.
He wanted to commandeer a transporter of his own, tell his people to solve the problems that continued to crop up on their own, and go after Rex and Ann. But he knew his people needed him to be their leader right now, just like the humans on this planet needed him to be their leader too.
He thought over the way he’d handled things in the last few hours as Selaira walked away and knew his mate had already influenced him. A few months ago, he’d have likely just had the fighters executed, and dealt with the flack from his home planet. Now, he understood the plight of the people on this world a little more, and knew he had to approach matters differently.
“Right, what’s next on the list?” he called out to nobody in particular and a man stepped forward. He needed Rager to approve the use of their alien equipment to remove debris from a building that collapsed. People were trapped inside. Rager approved and moved on to the next task at hand.
Normally, his days were filled with activity, training, and a standard agenda of things that needed to be done. His people were edging out into countries all over the world now, and he had plans for each new place as his people discovered them. Today, however, would be about dealing with the mess in his own sector. He’d thought the humans would buckle under and go about the business of rebuilding. He hadn’t dreamed they’d want to join forces with the shifters of the planet.
The shifters had killed a lot of people, long before the cold came. As temperatures dropped, a lot more people died, and that left the planet with a very small population. Wouldn’t they want to work together to rebuild? It seemed most were willing to do that, and the shifters were contained now. They were tracked carefully to a precise moment when their shift was about to happen, and then they would be locked away from anyone they could harm. Still, there were those that thought they could overthrow the alien race that had invaded, resurrected, their planet and wanted to be some kind of post-apocalypse king.
He wouldn’t be so complacent in the future. He wouldn’t let humans destroy what should be a planet big enough for them all. Not on his watch.
3
“I need to pee,” Rex complained, his voice wheedling and childish.
“Use the toilet then,” Ann blurted out, her nerves frayed and her mind exhausted.
“No, that thing’s disgusting!” He recoiled in his seat, as if she’d told him to drop himself down into an open-air sewer.
“It’s just a hose, silly. And my back is turned.” Not like she wanted to catch a glimpse of him anyway, she thought to herself. She’d used the thing before, with a cup adaptor, and no, it wasn’t ideal, but it did the job when you needed to go and had no tree to hide behind.
“Just set the transporter down, stupid.” Rex barked the order and she turned to look at him.
Her left eyebrow lifted but she didn’t respond. It was pointless to argue with him; she knew that now. Rex lived in his own little make-believe world where he was the smartest living being on the planet, and he’d outfoxed everyone. Let him have his petty little snipes, she’d prove him wrong before long.
Ann looked around the area beneath them but there was only a giant lake for as far as she could see. Probably from the snow and ice that melted when the aliens came to save them all, she thought. They flew on for another couple of miles and then the horizon began to glow.
“What’s that?” Rex barked out, like she was supposed to have an answer.
“I have no idea.” She frowned, confused by the light. “A forest fire maybe?”
She could remember news reports about huge wildfires spread around California in the years before the end came. They’d terrified her, given her nightmares, but she’d never come close to the fires, thankfully. Now, she wondered if they were about to fly over one. Would it damage the transporter?
“It’s getting brighter,” Rex mumbled and went back to his seat. “Maybe you should lift the transporter a little higher.”
Ann didn’t argue, she just brought the transporter up and waited, her breath held, until they came nearer to the glow.
“Higher!” Rex called urgently, fear in his voice. Ann couldn’t blame him, her own heart thudded with terror as she began to see the cause of that demonic-looking light.
A giant rift had opened in the ground below, and somehow, unbelievably, the rift sucked down massive lava flows. It looked like a nightmare landscape, even from their higher altitude. Everywhere lava glowed, white, orange, a darkening black where some of the lava had cooled on top.
“Get us out of here, now!” Rex ordered with a sound very close to a whimper.
“I can’t go any faster, the transporter just won’t do it. I might be able to go around it.” Ann headed for what she hoped was an edge as they passed miles and miles of lava flow.
“A volcano must have opened up, or maybe a caldera that was hidden became active again, or something.” Ann tried to remember her lessons with Amanda, Rex’s mother, about geology and what might have happened to the planet to cause the cataclysm.
“I don’t know anything about volcanoes, or calderas, but I do know it looks like the entire continent has split in that rift down there.” Rex’s voice started to calm as they edged closer to darkness, the black edge of cool lava or no lava at all.
“I can’t believe that’s in our country. Sure, Hawaii has volcanoes, even super-volcanoes, if I remember correctly, but I didn’t think we had anything like this.” She vaguely remembered something about Yellowstone National Park, but couldn’t remember exactly what she’d read in the textbook. Maybe it had all been Yellowstone, she didn’t know, but she did know there was a terrifying amount of lava down there.
It must have been terrible in this area when the rift opened, the fear people must have felt. She wondered if they’d had time to feel fear, though. If the rift had opened quickly enough, or if the lava had come first, out of somewhere, then maybe they’d died instantly. Hopefully, that had been the case she decided.
She’d like to know the full extent of the rift and the lava, but she had no idea if the transporter could withstand the kind of heat coming up off the ground down there. If there was actually ground left.
“I wonder if Hawaii is still there.” Rex drew her attention back to him and she glanced at him.
“I doubt it. Between the volcanoes there, the earthquakes, tsunamis, and all the rest that must have happened, I doubt there’s much that wasn’t scoured away by something.”
“I bet it made the place bigger, all of that stuff. Maybe sea levels have fallen, and the islands are more visible. I wonder…” Rex’s voice trailed off for a moment, and she could all but see the wheel turning in his head. “I bet the entire geography of our world is different now. It would be interesting to see how it’s changed.”
“I bet there’s new land all over the place and lands that have disappeared. I wonder what global water levels are at now.”
For a minute it almost sounded like he knew what he was talking about. Ann knew he’d been an average student, so he wasn’t exactly stupid. Just a dick.
“You could be right,” she replied and shifted around in her seat.
She’d been driving a very long time and her back, neck, and bottom were sore. The transporter would only respond to her or Rager, though, so it was impossible to let Rex drive. Not that she would anyway. That little bit of control kept her from totally losing her mind, right now. She wouldn’t complain too much.
“I don’t think it’s safe to land anywhere near that lava. The black parts might still be hot, and the air is probably poisoned by gases.” She ventured, remembering videos in long-ago science classes with volcanologists covered head to toe in protective gear as they walked on the black crust. “It might be safe, but I wouldn’t want to take that chance.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I don’t want to go down anywhere near that stuff. I’ll hold it for a while longer.” Rex settled back into his chair, crossed his legs, and went quiet.
Ann did what she’d done for what felt like hours now; she guided the transporter eastward. It wasn’t hard to do, a gentle nudge on the joystick, a press of a button here and there. The hardest part was watching for objects she might crash into. A tree taller than the rest, a hill that came up of out nowhere suddenly. There’d been no buildings tall enough around here to cause a problem, but she doubted there would be many.
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