So they knew about our mission. Of course they did. It seemed they’d been part of it from the very beginning. Possibly even before Finley offered to send me to the competition. I could see at least part of the picture; the mechanisms that had been in place prior to Luka and his father meeting me at Marshall that day. It certainly hadn’t been coincidence.
This chamber was so weirdly normal within the alien environment. Even a bowl of bright red and green apples sat on the table. Six doors with high, rounded arches lined the back wall.
“Feel free to eat if you are hungry. You may take off your helmets if you wish; the atmosphere is adjusted to human physiology,” Luka said.
I shared a look with the others.
No. We’d keep our helmets on, thank you very much.
The other aliens stood together in the far corner. Two females and three males, standing like statues. No, I corrected myself. Like guards.
The ambassador said they didn’t have weapons. Not that they weren’t armed. How would we recognize weapons even if we saw them?
My crewmates didn’t hesitate in sliding into the chairs. The effects of the hibernation were still heavy with them. I had some strength left in my legs, so I stood. I thought one of us should.
The ambassador waited until we were settled. He smiled. “We are very glad you have come. My name is Otor. And you know that this is my son, Luka.”
“I must confess, I don’t understand why this meeting could not have been accomplished on Earth,” Bolshakov said. “Seeing as we were all apparently there, together, at the same time.” His voice held a hard edge.
I felt the same touch of annoyance. We’d risked our lives to come here, and why? It felt like we were puppets being pulled along by invisible strings.
“I will let my son explain. He has better command of your languages.” Otor nodded to Luka, and he stepped forward.
Seeing him again like this, in such bizarre surroundings, was surreal. We’d been friends once. We’d left each other with the lingering possibility of being something more, though I hadn’t spent much time thinking about what.
But things were different now. He was different. Even the way he carried himself had changed. He moved like Bolshakov, with the confidence of command, an ease that spoke of being in intimately familiar surroundings. His eyes looked prematurely aged, like he’d seen things he didn’t want to have seen.
Had I ever really known him at all?
“So what are you?” Copeland leaned forward onto one elbow. “Because you’re obviously not human.”
Luka seemed to flinch for a second, but all too soon the mask was back. “No, this is true. We are refugees who came to Earth looking for a new home. You may call us megobari. It’s a word we adopted when we took on human physiology.” Then, at our confused faces, he explained further: “We could not, of course, continue to speak our own languages with human mouths and human ears.”
His words—speaking about us like we were the aliens while he looked just like us—were disconcerting.
Luka addressed Bolshakov. “Commander, you asked why we could not have had this meeting on Earth. That is a fair point. The answer is that we did our homework. When we first arrived on Earth, we studied media with great interest, as you can imagine. Throughout your recent history, fictional aliens were, invariably, the enemy. Not to mention the centuries of actual history of mindless violence against your own people. It would have been foolish to believe we would be welcomed with open arms. We had seen time and again how you treat refugees of even your own kind,” he said, this time meeting my eyes with a gaze that smoldered. The truth of it made my skin hot with shame. “We are few in number, and we had to protect ourselves. We decided to make first contact in a neutral place.”
“This is a neutral place?” Copeland asked. “Seems like your people have the upper hand here.”
He quickly directed his laser gaze onto her. “Who is it, do you think, that designed the ship that brought you here? We have made every effort to help you, to advance your technology, to guide you in the right direction. You are safe.”
“So your people sent the message to NASA twenty years ago? You gave us the technology to get here?” Jeong said with a touch of incredulity.
Luka nodded.
“And you were the ones who gave us the blueprints for Odysseus? Why would you just hand over such powerful technology?” Jeong asked. “Our scientists have been studying those schematics for twenty years. As we speak, they could be advancing human civilization centuries ahead of schedule. I hate to say this, but we could have even used your own technology against you.”
“An unlikely but calculated risk that we had to take,” Luka replied. “What we gave you was merely a primitive design. Orville and Wilbur’s flying machines compared to a supersonic jet. You were surprised, I assume, to have arrived here within only six Earth months. In a ship of our fleet, with a practiced pilot, that journey takes only days.”
We stared.
His father broke in. “My son simply means that we gave you the first page of a very long book. We know humans learn and adapt quickly. We have seen—and admired—your ingenuity. It was our hope that we could learn and adapt together, as friends, and not as enemies.”
There was a beat of silence as the humans in the room tried to discern whether this was true.
For my part, I believed him. Their actions gave proof to their words. But maybe that was just something inside me unwilling to think Luka could be lying to me.
“How could you know that we would build the ship correctly?” Copeland asked.
“Or that we would build it at all?” Bolshakov added.
Otor and Luka shared a look between them.
“We . . .” Luka’s eyes flashed on me, as if trying to gauge my reaction before he spoke. “We had insurance. We placed a few of our own among the ranks at NASA, to keep an eye on progress and ensure that our plan was coming along as it should.”
“But what were you doing in NASA?” I asked, hating how thready and weak my voice sounded on the external speaker. It was one of the first times I’d actually spoken out loud, and my voice sounded too small for the room. “You, personally. Why were you sent home? Why were you in the selection process at all?”
“I was only involved to get to know the potential crew of Project Adastra. We wanted to discern who would be the most receptive to our meeting. Once I knew you were going to make it, Cassie, I dropped out. My job was finished.”
Bolshakov stood up suddenly, his face red and angry. “Every step of the way. Every step, you manipulated us.”
He could have taken the words out of my own mouth. I could read between the lines. If they had placed some of their own people in positions of power, perhaps they were not simply observing the selection process, but influencing it.
As if he sensed what was going on in my head, Luka’s cool mask melted away to show the boy I had known on Earth. He addressed me directly, his voice softer. “Cassie, I’m sorry for all the deception and the manipulation. We believed we had little choice but to stack the odds in our favor. Yours was the first planet we discovered where we could breathe freely. We adapted as best we could to living as humans. We studied and learned your ways for years before making contact. The plan was always to reach out to you, once we were ready.”
His mouth opened like he was going to keep on, but I shook my head to shut him up. I didn’t want to hear any more. At least not here, surrounded by all these people. “So, your plan was? You brought us all this way to ask for permission to, what, live on Earth? When you already have been? For years?”
He didn’t have an answer to that.
“You say you are refugees,” Bolshakov said. “Was there . . . some sort of war?”
The way Luka’s face became blank of emotion was almost chilling. He was betraying the amount of emotion beneath the surface by just how much he was attempting to hide it. “Yes.”
Otor took over, a bit quickly. “My friends, my guests. This can a
ll wait. I know your internal clocks need some time to adjust, but it is nearly midnight by ours. How about we rest for now, and reconvene in the morning?”
We looked at each other.
“Thoughts?” Bolshakov asked gruffly over internal comm.
“They’re trying to be hospitable, commander,” I said. “And their quarters are more spacious than ours on board Odysseus.”
“We’re no less at their mercy here than on the ship,” Copeland said in a sideways sort of agreement with me.
“Sir, I think accepting their invitation would be polite, considering this is a mission of diplomacy,” Jeong said.
“All agreed? Okay. Gupta, radio Shaw and tell him to come out and join us. We’re spending the night under the roof of our new hosts.”
We followed an escort into our sleeping quarters, each containing double bunks cut into the walls. There was enough space for each of us to get our own, including Shaw.
The megobari guide didn’t speak, but gestured to the bunk—very clearly a bed, though the surface appeared to be something akin to soft silicone and there were no blankets or pillows. She then showed me a shallow, tubelike depression in the opposite wall. When she touched it, water rained from the top into a fine grate on the floor, in what was either a shower or a toilet. Or possibly both.
When I thanked her, she only smiled. Perhaps the rest of the megobari did not speak English well, but she appeared to understand me.
And then I was alone.
Well, except for Sunny.
I suddenly felt small, weak, and very young. “I’m glad you’re here, Sunny.”
Thank you, Cassie, came her warm chirp in my mind.
I knew she was without emotion—that she was a series of code with programmed responses—but it didn’t matter. Her presence helped.
I settled best I could onto the bunk, keeping my helmet on so I could maintain connection with Sunny and the others. The surface of the bunk was white and solid, and I’d expected something more familiar, like a mattress. But instead it was more like the surface of a yoga mat: dense and malleable, denting around my body shape only slightly, bouncing back when pressed.
Just as I’d gotten as comfortable as I was likely to get, my internal comm clicked on, startling me awake. “Everyone settling in okay?”
“Yes, commander,” I said, my voice joining with the rest.
“Try to catch some sleep. Set your suitboard computers to wake you in six point five hours. Good night, everyone. And good work.”
I closed my eyes, taking a long, deep breath. I made a mental note to wake in six hours, and to my surprise Sunny chirped a Yes, Cassie in my head.
My heartbeat gradually slowed. My limbs relaxed. We were safe, for the time being. Everything had gone as well as we could have possibly hoped so far. Ninety-five percent of my body was relaxed and relieved. My body was worn down and ready to sleep.
But my brain was absolutely wired.
How could I sleep? I was on an alien planet. With actual aliens outside my door. I’d spent six months asleep. Now I wanted to learn all I could about this place we’d finally reached.
Luka had slipped away without saying anything to me. I assumed he and the other megobari were off sleeping somewhere else. We weren’t prisoners; I should be able to look around a little bit on my own. Not far, just enough to sate my curiosity.
I eased out of the bed, wondering if sound traveled far in these cavernlike spaces. Outside in the antechamber, the lights had dimmed—the ceiling was now dark, and the only light was a ring just above the floor, enough to illuminate the circumference of the room. There were still apples on the table, but my stomach wasn’t ready to handle solids.
The room was empty. I crept across the floor to the exit; the door slid open silently at my touch. No megobari in the darkened passage, either. Nobody standing guard. That was reassuring.
I walked with measured steps down the hall, wondering at what this place was. Who had lived here and why did they live underground? It seemed an infinite maze of passages, like the underground tunnels of an ant colony. Except it was neat and orderly and calming, with the soft white walls dimmed for simulated night.
Every so often I’d pass a door with nothing marking it but a softly glowing rectangle of color. I couldn’t see any sort of writing—not that I’d understand the language, but it only made me more curious. Were the rooms color coded for certain purposes? What did they mean? I wasn’t about to start walking into random chambers—that was both foolish and rude, like snooping around your friend’s house at a sleepover but with a degree more risk involved.
“Looking for something?”
I whirled, heart racing.
Luka stood some feet behind me, just outside a door I’d passed. “I’m sorry,” I said automatically, even though I wasn’t breaking any established rules. “I couldn’t sleep.” His face was unreadable. “What about you?”
“I heard you.”
“How? I couldn’t hear you.”
“You are still wearing your helmet.”
I resisted a smile. “I can go back to my room. If you don’t want me wandering.”
He shrugged a shoulder. “I’d probably be doing the same thing, if our positions were reversed. There’s just not much here to look at.”
“Oh,” I said, dejected.
“But I could walk with you, if you’d like. Show you what there is to see.”
I took a slow inhale. There was a small part of me that didn’t trust him. Didn’t want to trust him, at least. The memory of waking on the ship, weak and disoriented, seeing his face—it had come back to me in watery images. The surprise of him being here, being alien, had almost worn off. He still looked so normal, so human.
But now there was a part of him that was closed off. A whole world of him that I didn’t know.
What else was there that I didn’t know?
“Thanks,” I said, and we fell into step uneasily. Whatever or whoever he was, he was offering knowledge, and that’s what I wanted most. “So what is this place?”
“It was a research base. Scientists lived and worked here.”
Past tense. “What were they studying?”
He shrugged again. “Sorry. I’m not actually sure. There were a few research outposts on this moon.”
“Are there more megobari here, then?”
He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye and rubbed briefly at his chin. “No. It’s just us.”
“What happened to the scientists?”
“All the outposts were abandoned in the war,” he said vaguely.
His tone and posture had gone stiff. I guessed this was a forbidden topic.
“Why did you guys bring us to this place, then?”
“It was safe. Hidden. There are still some resources and working technology here to maintain the atmosphere. We thought it’d be a good place to talk.”
Talk. We were talking now, but not really saying anything. There was still a lot of talk hanging over our heads, a lot that had to wait until tomorrow.
He turned down a corridor on the left, and I followed him. “Are we going anywhere in particular?”
“Not really. Not much to see here beyond old labs. There’s a small hangar with a fleet of research vessels. Tomorrow, my father wants to take everyone down to see our home planet.”
“Luka, why didn’t we land on your home planet?”
This time he didn’t even answer me.
Maybe I shouldn’t have asked. There was a reason they had come to Earth and lived in hiding, after all. But I was tired of being kept in the dark. We’d been drawn light-years from home and they still were holding things back from us.
Luka seemed tense, not himself—even annoyed, which annoyed me. An annoyance that kept building. All that time we’d spent together on Earth: studying together in the café, jogging on the track in the middle of the night, hiking through mud and mosquitoes, sleeping side by side under a tarp draped across tree branches. Using all my strength to wre
nch him out of a rain-swollen creek. Hearing his steady voice over the radio feed me instructions while my oxygen-starved brain struggled to focus, to save us all. And that memory I had done well to block, of his warm embrace in a dark courtyard, of him telling me to remember why I’d come here in the first place.
All that time, he’d never, ever told me who he really was.
All the wrong words were tumbling around my head. Frustration escaped me in a small growling sound.
He stopped. “Cassie, are you all right?”
I didn’t answer.
He tried again, his voice melting into something so familiar it made me ache. “Cassie.” His voice reached out to me, like a hand on a shoulder, but he didn’t try to touch me.
I turned my eyes to him. And then, impulsively, I pulled off my helmet. I didn’t want this recorded or remembered, and I didn’t want to be accidentally overheard. The air of the chamber touched my skin for the first time, fresh and damp and cool. “You just left.”
His eyebrows furrowed.
I let my emotions spew out in a thoughtless rush. “In Houston. You dropped out, you knew what you were doing, and you . . . didn’t even say a word to me. You could have said something. You . . . kissed me. You used me. And then you just left.” I gripped the edge of my helmet with gloved fingers, hard, until it hurt. I didn’t know what point I was trying to make. What had hurt me more? That we had been friends and he’d deceived me? That I’d gone outside my comfort zone and kissed him back and he’d used me? Or that after all of that, he’d left without even saying good-bye. “Everything we went through and I never knew who you really were.”
He watched me steadily, unsurprised and weary. He might’ve guessed I’d respond this way. Maybe even expected it. “I couldn’t tell you, Cassie.”
“You could have tried.”
His eyes had never looked so sad. “I am sorry. I never meant to hurt you, Cassie.”
“Stop saying my name like that. And stop apologizing, it isn’t helping.” An unexpected well of emotion rose in my throat, and I swallowed it down. Get ahold of yourself. “Okay, so, I understand you couldn’t tell me you were an alien. God. I get that, okay? But then, if you knew you were dropping out, if you knew . . . then why did you . . . ?”
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