Alien Survivor: (Stranded on Galatea) An Alien SciFi Romance

by Juniper Leigh

  Araceli handed little Shae back to her mother, and the five of us sat close to the dancing flames of the campfire. I watched the mother feed her baby from her breast and marveled at the simple beauty of it. I watched the father rise to his feet, bend at the waist to press a kiss to the top of his mate’s head, and sweep his fingertips with loving reverence over his daughter’s crown.

  Would I ever have that? Would we? Was it possible for us to carve out such a future for ourselves? And did she even want one?

  The baby slept in Cleoh’s arms, and she and Ara murmured to one another as Mason and I set about preparing meat to cook over the open fire.

  “How did you meet Cleoh?” I asked, both of us turning Caromay meat over the fire.

  “She was a healer assigned to my regiment,” he explained, his voice hushed enough so that the women could not hear him above the crackle of the fire. “I fell in love with her the first instant I saw her,” he went on. “The light glinted off her skin, and she looked like she was made of Lover’s Gold, the very thing we had been stationed to protect.”

  I smiled as I glanced up at the Galatean beauty, and my own human beauty next to her, but then something that Mason had said gave me pause: his regiment had been stationed to protect Quaridium Drolide. Lover’s Gold. “Humans were protecting—what, exactly? A vein? In Pyrathas?”

  “No,” Mason went on, withdrawing his meat and examining it closely. “No, we were overseeing safe shipment of the material, from the mines in the hills, through Pyrathas, and to the military vessels that would take it off-planet.”

  “I didn’t think humans could get it anywhere but here,” I mused quietly.

  “They couldn’t, until recently.” Mason put his hunk of cooked meat onto a tray before he took my roasting spit from my hand and added my meat to the tray as well. He took a knife from his pocket and began to slice the meat, which sent steam rising into the air between us, with a delicious smell that was nearly enough to make me forget what had given me pause. “But they recently opened up a line of trade,” Mason went on, “so I was just one of the men who was sent to guard it.”

  “The Galatean government kept the stuff tightly gripped,” I mused quietly. “Why the change of heart?”

  “Couldn’t say.” Mason smiled thinly up at me then and turned to the women to announce: “Food!”

  We chatted companionably while we ate the meat, as well as some raw vegetables and fresh fruits, and a tart that Cleoh had made the last time she’d had access to a real kitchen. And perhaps, under more fortuitous circumstances, it would’ve been pleasant to be amongst a couple like ourselves. Maybe I could have just focused on envisioning what our future might look like, what our children might look like.

  But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off, and that Mason’s presence on this planet at all had something to do with the bigger picture. Quaridium Drolide was rare, but Galateans used it in much of their technology; it surprised me to hear that they’d opened up a line of trade with the humans. What precious metal could they possibly possess that would compare in value with Lover’s Gold?

  We left the fire to burn out when we turned in for the night, and Ara and I curled up on some of the borrowed pillows in one of the borrowed tents.

  We lay together in silence for a long while; I could hear the baby fussing in the adjacent tent.

  “Ara,” I said, my tone low and searching.

  “Hm?”

  “Do you know anything about what the humans might want with Lover’s Gold?”

  She turned over to face me, her head resting on the bend of her arm. Her eyes were dark blue pools in the dim light, and they searched my face for meaning. “Well, it’s valuable,” she said, and her whole tone was a shrug.

  “So you think they want it for just… jewelry? Or…?”

  “I’m not sure,” she mused. “I suppose they could be interested in developing its use in technology, but I haven’t heard anything about that. And a research organization like GenOriens publishes its project findings, its upcoming projects, things like that. What we do is pretty aboveboard, you know—we have a board of directors we have to answer to.”

  “Yeah…”

  “Why do you ask?”

  I turned onto my side and propped my head up on my hand. “Mason was telling me that his regiment was positioned to oversee a shipment of it. They were loading it onto a military vessel when it came through Pyrathas.”

  Ara paused, chewing contemplatively at her lower lip. “I do remember seeing one thing,” she said, that little crease appearing between her eyebrows. “GenOriens commissioned a study of the chemical compounds that made up Quaridium Drolide, but it was pretty standard stuff—breaking it down to its base molecular level, just so that we could better understand it. I remember Dr. Pierce commenting on a report he’d read about it, but he didn’t say anything that would’ve caused any alarm, or anything like that. He didn’t even say what the findings had been, only that a team of GenOriens biochemists were looking into it.”

  “Maybe it’s nothing,” I remarked, turning over onto my back with my hands behind my head, my elbows winging out to the side. “Maybe I’m just overthinking everything.”

  Araceli was quiet for a long time, but I could feel those discerning eyes on me, even though I wasn’t looking at her. She took in a slow, deep breath and asked, “How are you? Really?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Danovan,” she said, reaching out to splay her fingers across my chest. “Your mother was just killed. There’s no way you’re fine.”

  “I am,” I said, forcing myself to look at her. “Of course, I… I’m… I grieve the loss of my mother, but we have a job to do.”

  “Actually, we don’t,” she said, sitting up so that she was leaning on one hand and gesturing emphatically with the other. “It’s not on us to fix everything. I’m just a scientist, you’re just a soldier. We’re just two people, against what’s looking like an entire cross-planetary conspiracy. We don’t have to save the world, Danovan. We can decide to do something else.”

  Then it was my turn to sit up. I don’t know what it was about her little speech that made me see red—she was right, really. But nevertheless, the very notion of complacency infuriated me. “So, what, we’re just supposed to… to let them get away with this?”

  “I’m just saying—”

  “They’re murdering innocent people, Araceli,” I balked. “Babies. Infant babies. They’re murdering them. We don’t have any choice at all—not if we want to be able to look at ourselves in the mirror every morning.”

  She was nodding her head, but part of me wondered if she actually didn’t want to take this on. If, perhaps, she was more interested in preserving her own life than the lives of countless others. It was the first moment I had ever doubted her.

  “Danovan, I didn’t mean—”

  “It doesn’t matter what you meant,” I spat, my anger a derailed train. “We’re helping these people, Ara. We’re not just going to let them die.”

  She crossed her arms under her breasts and eyed me levelly. “I want to know exactly what you propose we do, Danovan tel’Darian. Because if we’re an army, then we’re a very small one, and I have to tell you, I’m not a very good shot.”

  I ran my tongue over my lips and got to my feet, pacing the length of the tent. I wondered, briefly, if Mason and Cleoh could hear us and decided it was probably best that I keep my voice as calm as possible. “It’s not about taking them down,” I said. “We don’t even really know who they are. And even if we did—I’m not stupid. I know we’re not an army.”

  “So,” she began, canting her head gently to the side, “what, then?”

  “So, we expose them. We find out who they are, and we tell the worlds what they’re doing. We broadcast on the newsfeed to your world, and to mine.”

  She nodded her head and lifted her hand to brush a few errant auburn curls out of her eyes. “And then what?”
/>
  The question hung in the heavy air between us, and it took all the fight out of me. “I’m not saying I won’t do it,” she continued, “I just want to know what we do after we expose this great conspiracy. I mean, do you expect that we’ll actually live through it? Do you think that we’ll be able to settle down, you and me, and live out a nice, normal life? Have little pink hybrid babies of our own? Because I just don’t think that’s in the cards for us.” I sank down, sitting near to her, and she grabbed my hand in hers. “I just think we need to be realistic here.”

  “If I tell you, yes, we’ll die for this—does it change what you want to do?”

  She was quiet for a moment, her eyes locked on mine. But eventually, she shook her head, loosing a few more curls to fall into her eyes. “No,” she said. “It doesn’t change anything.”

  Chapter 19:

  Dr. Araceli Cross

  The night grew cold, colder than any of the other nights I’d spent on Galatea, but Danovan and I did not sleep tangled in each other as we used to. We were shivering underneath our own blankets, no part of our bodies touching, but I took comfort in the gentle rise and fall of his chest, the gentle, oceanic sound of his breathing.

  He was tense and radiated the sadness of the loss of his mother, and I wanted to draw him out of himself, but I didn’t know. Stress and grief mixed in him to make him hard, and he turned inward to find his comforts.

  In the small hours of the morning, just before the sunlight began to peek up above the horizon, he found me in the nest of pillows I’d made for myself and tugged the blankets away. He said nothing as he pulled down my pants and underwear, touching the most sensitive spot between my thighs only to warm me enough to grant him entrance. He turned me over onto my stomach and parted my legs with one knee, then two, and thrust himself home. I cried out, and he clamped a hand over my mouth, no doubt not wanting to disturb Mason and Cleoh and the baby. And while I reveled in the feel of him filling me up, it was not my pleasure he was after. Not that morning before our small army of two went to war.

  He used me roughly, his breath hot against my ear, and there was a part of me that loved being used, that loved being his to possess whenever he pleased. The thought of belonging to him in that way made every nerve in my body come alive, until the coils of my release were wound tight. He rocked his hips, pushing himself into me as deep as my body would allow until he grunted and spilled his seed into me, his form heavy on my back for the span of several heartbeats.

  He pulled out and rolled over onto his back, draping an arm across his eyes before drifting back to sleep. Me, I turned over as well and looked at him, my hands running lightly over the curves of my form until my fingertip settled between the sensitive folds of my sex. When I touched myself, I could feel the emissions he had left behind, and I was slick with the evidence of his desire, and my own. I brought myself to climax, my body shivering next to his, before I, too, drifted off to sleep.

  ***

  The morning came on fast and harsh; the day was hot, and none of us had slept well or long enough. The baby had woken the camp several times in the middle of the night, and while I did not begrudge them that, it certainly made for a rather tense set of farewells.

  We broke our fast together before helping Mason and Cleoh pack up the tents. I pressed a kiss to little Shea’s warm pink forehead and we gathered by the rovers to say our goodbyes.

  “Remember,” I said to them, looking pointedly at them both, one then the other, “stay out of sight. And don’t let anyone else know about that baby.”

  “And you’ll come find us again?” Cleoh asked, obviously nervous. “When it’s all over?”

  “When it’s safe, we’ll send for you,” Danovan said, but I shook my head.

  “Stay in this area, and when it’s safe, we’ll come for you ourselves.”

  Danovan and Mason shook hands, and I drew Cleoh into a warm embrace. “You and your beautiful baby are miracles, both,” I said.

  She squeezed me affectionately and proffered a sad little smile when she let me go. “I hope to see you again, Araceli Cross.”

  Danovan and I got into the rover, and I turned around to wave at them through the glass as we began our journey, heading ever closer to the origin of the smoke rising in the air. The remnants of the Leviathan were still burning, and we had to look for answers in its smoldering remains.

  We were both quiet as we made our way across the Galatean wilderness. Storm clouds roiled in Danovan’s eyes, and I realized how much he had his mother’s beating heart in his chest. It moved me, but I didn’t know how to tell him.

  As we drove, I simply called the tiny hybrid baby’s face to mind. Shae. What a glorious creature she was, and so perfect, existing in bubbling contentedness without so much as a scrap of scientific intervention. It was humbling to be rendered so unnecessary. Humbling, and wonderful, because, look: look what beautiful creatures could exist naturally in this universe.

  When I could no longer stand the silence, I turned to look at Danovan’s strong profile. “How much longer will we be driving, do you think?”

  Silence, stony silence. I shifted in my seat, turning where I sat so that I could fully face him a little more. “Maybe we could stop in a bit? Have a stretch, maybe take a bathroom break? Or have something to—”

  “We aren’t stopping,” came his terse reply.

  I furrowed my brow, eyeing him closely. “What is your problem?” I asked, before I could stop myself. I knew what his problem was. He was grieving. I took in a slow, deep breath, and tried to calm myself. But before I could apologize, his voice filled the rover’s compartment.

  “My problem is our conversation from last night, Araceli,” he said. “This mission of ours is hard enough without having to drag you along.”

  “How dare you,” I shot back. “You aren’t dragging me anywhere. I just thought—”

  “Because someone has to do something. And we seem to be the only people who have put any of this together. And we’re certainly the only ones who have access to people like Christian Ward, so don’t you think we’re obligated to help? I just don’t like feeling like I’m in this by myself.”

  “You aren’t,” I insisted. “I never meant—look. I don’t know what you heard, but all I meant was… that you’re grieving, Danovan.”

  “I’m fine,” he shot back.

  “You’re not! You’re not, how could you be? Your mother was killed. Your home was destroyed. Your village is in a state of total chaos, to say nothing of the interplanetary politics with which we’re contending, and you’ve turned mean.” I took in a deep breath. “So, all I meant was that we didn’t have to do this now. All I meant was, if you need time to grieve, we can do that first. We can take care of you and everyone else.”

  “No, Ara, we can’t.” He slammed on the brakes, and we went skidding to a halt in the warm dirt we were zipping across. He put it in park, letting it idle where it was while he rubbed his face with his hands. “You said it last night,” he went on, a resignation in his tone. “We’ll go in, find out what we can, expose what we know, and…” He bounced his broad shoulders in a shrug, a totally bizarre gesture for such a hulking man. “And that’s it for us.” He lifted his eyes to me then and locked his gaze on mine. “We’ll never see each other again.”

  His words knocked the air out of me, and I began to understand. It wasn’t just what he’d lost that he was mourning; he was already mourning what he still had left to lose. “We don’t know that, Danovan.”

  “Yes, we do.”

  “We don’t. We—” But before I could finish, he threw open the door of the rover and climbed out, leaving me stunned in his wake. But his pigheaded obstinacy just fueled my anger and I unbuckled my restraints, threw open my own door, and joined him in the mud.

  “Don’t you walk away from me like that,” I yelled, following him as he paced back and forth and back and forth behind the rear bumper of the rover.

  “I don’t
want to do this, Ara,” he shouted, gesturing wildly. “I don’t want to spend our final calm moments together shouting at one another!”

  “Then stop shouting!” And I did all I could think of to do to get this all to stop. I put myself bodily in front of him so that he had to stop, or literally bowl me over. I grabbed him by the front of his shirt, balling the fabric up in my fists, and stared up at him. His eyes were a pleading reflection of my own, and I did not let him go.

  “Don’t shut me out,” I begged. “Not now.”

  “I have to, Ara,” he protested. “I have to get used to the idea of losing you. I thought, for a moment…”

  “What?” I urged him, my tone softening.

  “I thought we might have what Mason and Cleoh have. I thought we…” He shook his head as though to disabuse himself of the notion. “I didn’t even let myself think that this would end any other way. But it’s a fairy tale. It’s… it’s one of my gods-damned movies.”

  All the air went out of him and he leaned the bulk of his form against the back of the rover. I let go of his shirt, staring at him. “Why can’t we have it, Danovan?”

  “Because,” he said, his tone tremulous and tender, “the only way we’re going to find out what we need to know is if you go back to Christian, as though nothing has happened between us. We have to go in like we were trying desperately to get back to him. That’s our only way in, Ara. That’s all we have.”

  I nodded slowly. He was right. “But… then, after…”

  “You’ll give me what you know, and I’ll go on the newsfeed and leak it, and they’ll either throw me in the brig or shoot me on sight before I’ve even finished the broadcast.”

  “Not if I help you,” I protested, “not if we—”

  “Ara, seriously. Just stop.” He came forward and lifted a hand to my face, gently cupping my cheek in the hollow of his hand. “I won’t go through with it if it means putting you in danger. I thought about it all night, and I just… the only way I can risk anything is if I know you’re safe.”