by Calista Skye
“So it seems. Is that what you wanted to do?”
“Yes,” I lie, studying the speed controls again. “Hovering is underrated.”
“Are you sure that's true?”
“Absolutely. Where would we be without hovering?” I adjust the controls in a way that seems to make sense, but again we start falling backwards.
“Not right here, certainly,” Xan'tor replies.
I glance over. He's leaning back against a console and ripping some loose threads out of his former pants.
I stop the ship and have it hover again. “I don't really get these thrusters. They should push the other way when I… see, there it goes again.” Once more we're falling back toward Titan, and once more I stop the fall with an unpleasant jerk.
Xan'tor holds a long thread out between two fingers and drops it to the deck. “They're not thrusters, as such. More the other way around. The engines actually pull the ship through space, they don't push. I should have told you. Just didn't cross my mind how someone would think they worked in any other way.”
I try once more, and again the ship falls backwards. “Stupid alien nonsense…”
The blue alien crosses his arms over his massive chest. “As your flight instructor, I would deem that you have now fully mastered the uncontrolled fall and the unnecessary hover. How about moving forwards? Aim for that funny planet there.”
“I am trying, but these silly controls are working against me,” I hiss, pulling and pushing at them in frustration, making the ship shake.
“That can certainly be our backup theory,” Xan'tor says, holding on to the back of my seat. “But for our main theory, I would suggest that the controls are actually doing their best to understand what you mean so they can adjust to your preferences and style, but you're making so many contradictory moves that you confuse them.”
“Oh.” I take my hands off the alien levers and sticks, then grab them again and pretend to be flying just like in the computer games, without second-guessing myself. Immediately, the ship moves forwards, towards Saturn, which must be a million miles away but still looks pretty big.
Gaining confidence, I experiment with the controls, treating them the same way I would the joystick back in the old days when I played video games with Evan.
“You seem to be getting the hang of it,” Xan'tor says, stifling a yawn.
It's true. The moment I start ignoring which way I think the engines are pointing and how they work, and just focus on where I want to go, things come together in my mind and the ship starts to obey my every move. “How fast can this thing go?”
“It can go fast,” he assures me. “I'm actually not sure how fast. This could be a good time to see.”
“Okay.” I push the speed stick all the way forwards, and even though I know the ship is dampening the movements we can feel, the sense of acceleration is still pretty good. “Is there a way to tell how fast we're going?”
“Yes,” Xan'tor says and points to an alien script that flows across the dashboard. “We're now doing sixty-four.”
“Sixty-four what?”
“Sixty-four speeds. Now its seventy-nine.”
“Speeds? Is that a unit? I mean, seventy-nine what? Miles an hour? Furlongs per fortnight?”
“I am unfamiliar with your alien words, but I get the gist. I actually don't know what those numbers mean except that more equals faster and less equals slower. Aliens built this ship. I have no idea how they measure speed. Or time, or distance. We just call it 'speeds'. Does it matter?”
“I guess not,” I sigh. “But it would be useful for bragging. Like, 'hey, I once flew a spaceship out by Saturn, going seventy-nine million miles a second!' But just saying seventy-nine isn't going to impress anyone.”
“It's absolutely heartbreaking that flying an alien spaceship from Titan to Saturn will forever remain an unbraggable event for you.” His voice is dry as a summer day in Nevada.
The spaceship keeps accelerating, and I grin. No, I will never brag about this whole experience on Titan. I will keep the memory as a treasure just for myself, to bring me secret joy during tough times. The mini-Earth, the mind-shattering sex with the huge alien, and the cool spaceship he allowed me to fly. Which man I've ever met would be this freaking calm while a chick like me was abusing his ride the way I just did?
This is not something to brag about. This is something to enjoy and savor for as long as I live. Which probably won't be that long, anyway.
I glance over at Xan'tor again. He's not even looking at what I'm doing, just gazing up through the dome at the myriad of stars out there. I hope this is an okay experience for him, too. But I'm sure he has done all kinds of exciting things with much more interesting and exotic girls. He would not have any trouble attracting them.
“Six hundred and thirty speeds,” he says, checking the readout. “I don't remember having gone that fast in this ship. Apart from light speed, but that's another thing altogether. Getting pretty close to that planet with the rings. Such a strange thing.”
“They're mostly ice,” I tell him. “Small particles of ice and dirt, as well as some pretty big ones. Let's thread the needle!”
“Yes,” he agrees with determination. “Let's do that. Yes, indeed. We shall. Hmm. What does it mean?”
“To 'thread the needle'? It means flying at high speed and aiming between Saturn and its rings. See? From this angle, you can barely see any path between them. The rings are pretty close to the planet. There is actually a wide area of empty space there, so it should be safe to go through. But at this speed, it's going to be a challenge, and that's the whole point. How fast now?”
“Eight hundred and thirty. This is one of those things that either gets you killed or leads to everlasting glory, yes?”
I think about it while also lining the ship up perfectly to pass between Saturn and its rings. We're not going nearly fast enough for it to be that hard, but the gas giant is rapidly getting closer, and I want it to go perfectly. “Yes. Except the glory part.”
“Ah. We only have a chance to get killed, and there's no upside if we survive.”
“That's right!” I say with exaggerated enthusiasm. I can already see that it's going to go perfectly fine. There's a huge amount of empty space between Saturn and its rings, and we won't get anywhere close to either. But it's still fun.
Xan'tor leans forward and pushes a lever beside me.
The ship bucks like a bronco and speeds up so hard I almost lose my grip on the controls. “What the hell—”
He grins with perfect teeth in his blue face. “If it's supposed to be a challenge, let's make it a real one. The lightspeed drive can give us some extra boost. Don't want to make it too easy for you. Two thousand two hundred speeds now. Three hundred. Five hundred. Three thousand.”
The planet and its rings zoom towards me with immense speed, and I can feel the blood draining from my face. If I move the controls a fraction of an inch wrong now, we'll hit Saturn or be smashed to pieces in the dense rings. And now I can feel the intense gravity of Saturn pulling at the ship, ruining my aim... “Um. You want to take the controls?”
Xan'tor taps his lips thoughtfully. “No.”
My hands clench around the levers, suddenly sweaty. “Oh my Gooooooooood!”
Then we're through, and in front of us is only black space.
Xan'tor pulls back on the lever again, and the extra boost slowly peters out. “That was fun. Never heard about this challenge, but I will certainly brag about it. Where did you learn it?”
I pull back on the speed and turn the ship around to face Saturn, going much slower now. I wipe my moist palms on the side of the seat and breathe out. “Elite Dangerous.”
“Dangerous is true,” Xan'tor agrees. “Deadly, even.”
“It's an old video game that my older brother liked to play. And because he liked it, I liked it, too. He taught me how to fly a spaceship.”
“Was he a pilot? It was my understanding that Earth was a pre-space society.”
>
“Just a game on a computer. I don't know if you have video games? I'm never going to play it again, because without him it would feel wrong, and I won't enjoy it. But this was the real thing, and it wasn't as different as I thought it might be. You want to take the controls now?” I stand up, suddenly tired.
Xan'tor leans over, pushes on the controls, engages the autopilot, and leans back. “You don't want to be reminded of your brother?”
“Oh, I think about him a lot. It's just, playing that game would mostly remind me how much he enjoyed it and the good times we had together playing it. And that I will never see him again. It was ours, and I only want to play it with him. Anything else would be… wrong. Painful.”
Xan'tor scratches his cheek. “You might see him again. Anything is possible, although going back to Earth soon is probably not advisable for you. Even if the Bululg think that you belong to me now. Give it some time.”
I look out at Saturn, now becoming smaller behind us. “Going back to Earth wouldn't help. He died during the invasion. He was in the first wave.”
I can still see those television images of the massed forces sent against the first aliens that landed and clearly didn't have anything good in mind for us. The fighter planes just exploded in the air, and the tanks were burned to charred wrecks within seconds. Only the soldiers on foot were able to give the aliens a fight, but they were badly outmatched and died in droves. The aliens were fresks and girku and many others, but the only alien everyone talked about afterwards was the huge, dark blue monster that was at the center of it all and obviously commanded the invaders. It radiated such terror that it seemed to seep through the screen, making us all genuinely horrified of the invaders. If they had monsters like that among them, even as generals of their military, then Earth had no chance. The shock was immense.
So was the chaos. I still don't know how Evan died, just that he was in the first wave of Marines that ran straight for the enemy because there was nothing else to do. There were only ever two waves in the US part of the defense. Other countries fared worse. Most never had time to fight at all.
“I'm sorry to hear it,” Xan'tor says. “The defenders in the first wave were extremely brave. Your brother was a warrior. You come from a warrior clan.”
“Not really,” I say, wiping some moisture off my face. “Evan was the first soldier in our family since World War II. But after the funeral, Emma and I decided to follow in his footsteps, even if Earth had no real armies anymore. It was actually Emma's idea. And now, she too might...”
It's too much. Finally the horror of the whole thing becomes an avalanche in my mind.
Xan'tor sees the breakdown before it's there. He takes two steps, and embraces me tightly just when I lose control.
I sob against his broad, warm chest and he lets me do it, as calm and solid as a mountain while I weakly pound one fist on him for no reason that I know. Except that he's an alien and aliens invaded Earth.
“Warrior clans go through a lot of grief,” he rumbles when I stop shaking. “It is the price we pay for the honor and the glory when the battles are won.”
“I don't really care about the honor or glory,” I say when I've calmed down a little more. “I just want my home world back and the abductions to stop.”
21
- Xan'tor -
“I see,” I respond lamely. “You have a mission.”
Mila steps away from me and gingerly wipes tears from her red-rimmed eyes. “I don't know. I'm just one person, I can't make much difference. But I will do what I can. After I find out about Emma.”
I lean over and push the lightspeed lever to take us back to base. “One person can make a surprisingly big difference. It depends on how determined you are and what tools you have.”
“Maybe,” she says. “I'd be happy to just see my sister again. If there's anything to be seen. Sorry, it all became too much. Anyway. How do you prepare food here?” She opens a locker, and has to quickly step back as an ion grenade falls out.
“That's the armory locker,” I explain and show her the nutrition console instead. She gets busy with it.
Sitting back down at the controls, I take her in and admire her female form, as usual. But now I also admire something else. She has real purpose.
As a mercenary, I don't usually care much about the outcome of the wars and invasions I'm in, except that I prefer to win them. If it ends with the enslavement of an entire species, it doesn't matter a lot. I may find it distasteful, but it's such a common thing to happen that nobody bats an eyelid. Mostly, the invaders leave the conquered alone and don't harass them too much.
But to Mila, this is deadly serious. It gives her purpose. And that gives her a determination that I now realize shines through everything she does. She came to the Bululg mothership, not because she didn't understand the danger, but because she had a good reason for going there. She was willing to take that risk. The way someone would if they really wanted something important.
It's not just female fancy and a fleeting desire. No, she's deadly serious. And her being female has nothing to do with it. She can be effective anyway.
The realization shakes me. I never thought I'd see anything like that outside of my own warrior clan.
Is Earth special? she asked me. I now wonder if it might be. Because how many others like her are there on that planet?
- - -
We dock at my base and I make sure to lock the hatch behind us so Mila can't sneak aboard again without my knowledge.
She stops and takes in the hangar bay, and for the first time I notice how messy it is.
“We really have to clean up this place,” I state. “It's ridiculous.”
“I didn't notice all the stuff in here before,” Mila says, hands on her hips. “What's that thing that looks like a ball of copper filings?”
I squint into the half-darkness. “That would be the internal gyro cluster of a proton cannon. I keep meaning to fix it, but there's never time.”
She points to another heap of junk, bright yellow. “That's a missile, right?”
“We think it's mining equipment. We know it could be fixed, but the parts are hard to come by. We don't really do much mining.”
“Oh. And that smooth cylinder next to it must be a container of some kind?”
“That is actually a bundle of wires. It looks smooth because they're single-crystal microfilament and strong enough to pull a moon out of its orbit. Would be worth a fortune if we could ever untangle it. Prash claims that he can, but so far it hasn't happened.”
Mila sighs. “So that thing over there that looks like a spaceship must actually be a flower pot or a bedsheet or something completely different?”
“That is actually a spaceship. Very primitive and not too fast. I forget why we got it.”
She walks towards it, and I follow, the fluid jiggle of her behind making my shorts feel tight.
“But it doesn't work, of course?” She runs her hand over the smooth composite metal of the hull. The ship is small and ancient, its appearance not unlike the small aircraft the Earth defenders sent against us when we invaded.
I walk behind it and knock on the old-fashioned reaction engines with nozzles and everything. “I'm not sure. Even if it does, it's not very useful. Only room for two people, and it's quite slow. It has a lightspeed drive, though. Aftermarket stuff. Not worth the effort to upgrade. Should be donated to some kind of museum. But I doubt any museum would accept it.”
“Can you check if it works?” Her tone is too casual, too innocent.
I walk back to her and give her a smile. “Already working on your next escape attempt?”
She has the decency to blush, just a little. “It's just that it looks like what spaceships are supposed to look like. Your own is like a flying saucer with an upside-down glass bowl on top. So boring and round and blah. This one is all sleek and cool. It has little wings, even. But fine, I was just asking.”
I slap the hull of the old ship, and it gives a metalli
c echo. “I'm pretty sure it can still fly. We'll try it later, if you want. Now, I have to see the guys.”
We walk back to the Pyramid.
“Still alive?” Frox asks, directing one eyestalk at each of us. “I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry. I don't mean you, Mila. Just His Blueness over there.”
“Still alive,” I confirm. “The Brood Lord was very grateful that I had taken Mila off the baron's hands. She's much too attractive for slime like that.”
Two more eyestalks whip around and focus on me. “He was grateful?”
“Well, he was something,” I say airily. “Who can tell with the Bululg? I picked grateful.”
“But you're off the hook? He's fine with it?”
“Sure. I don't think he likes me, though. But like I always say, join the club. Nobody else here?”
Three eyestalks retract. “I've actually never heard you say that. No, everyone is busy doing productive things and not turning the best client we ever had into an enemy.”
“Good, good,” I say, distracted. Mila is bending over to study an exotic piece of weaponry, and her behind is only clad in one thin layer of almost sheer fabric.
“You sure have a lot of weapons here”, she says when she straightens. “Never knew there would be so much war in space.”
“It's a tough universe,” I explain, leaning back on a shipping crate that contains ammunition. “Those who can't wage war at a high level are bound to be targeted. That goes for planets and people.”
She walks over to a beverage dispenser and operates it like she owns the place. “No laws in space?”
I hide a smile. She's taking to life off her own planet pretty well. “Who would enforce them? Lots of species try to enforce their laws, even in space. It just means more wars when they collide with another law. The most successful factions are those that realize that lawlessness can be profitable.”
Mila hands me a mug of something steaming, then jumps up onto a crate and sits there, dangling her legs and cradling a mug of her own. “And you guys are among them? I mean, as shipping experts? Or are you in fact smugglers?”
