Alien Conquest

by Tracy St. John

  Tra­nis and Li­don were al­ready run­ning out of the brig, the cap­tain shout­ing des­per­ately into his com in Kalquo­rian.

  * * * *

  Li­don was right be­hind Tra­nis as the Dramok reached the bridge. The cap­tain yelled into his com, “I re­peat, if breached by our ships, the por­tal’s exit is rigged to trig­ger nu­clear blasts on Earth’s ma­jor cities!”

  Ad­mi­ral Pi­ras’ voice was grave. “We are send­ing re­treat mes­sages on all fre­quen­cies to the in­va­sion force. Dis­tor­tion in the mag­netic waves is block­ing our ef­forts.”

  Li­don was at his sta­tion, grimly scan­ning read­outs. “Only the last dozen de­stroy­ers to en­ter the por­tal are ac­knowl­edg­ing re­ceiv­ing the mes­sage. No re­sponse from the rest.”

  De­gorsk and Cas­sidy ar­rived on the bridge as Sim­dow said, “ETA to por­tal exit on Earth’s side, thirty sec­onds.”

  “Maybe it’s a bluff,” De­gorsk said hope­fully. “There might not be any ex­plo­sives.”

  Look­ing at the vid of self-de­struc­t­ing Earther ships, Tra­nis knew bet­ter. The fa­nat­i­cal rulers of Earth had cho­sen a path he couldn’t imag­ine.

  They had been speak­ing in Kalquo­rian, but Tra­nis knew Cas­sidy could read their wor­ried tones and faces. “Please Tra­nis,” she begged. “Don’t let this hap­pen.”

  Tra­nis could only lis­ten to the des­per­ate com­mu­ni­ca­tions from Ad­mi­ral Pi­ras as he tried to call the fleet back. De­gorsk hugged Cas­sidy close.

  “An­other sev­en­teen de­stroy­ers have re­ceived the mes­sage and are re­turn­ing,” Li­don re­ported to the silent crew. “The first into the por­tal have not re­sponded yet. There is sim­ply too much mag­netic in­ter­fer­ence.”

  “Twenty sec­onds.”

  Pi­ras’ voice was strained. “We’re con­tin­u­ing to broad­cast re­treat mes­sages, Cap­tain Tra­nis. How cer­tain are you of this threat?”

  Tra­nis glanced at Cas­sidy’s ter­ri­fied face. “I have no doubt what­so­ever that our in­va­sion will re­sult in se­vere de­struc­tion and mas­sive loss of Earther life.”

  “Ten sec­onds to por­tal exit.” Sim­dow looked gray with worry.

  Tra­nis glanced at Li­don. The Nobek shook his head. “No fur­ther re­sponse from the in­va­sion force. They may have got­ten the mes­sage but in­ter­fer­ence keeps us from re­ceiv­ing their ac­knowl­edg­ment.”

  Sim­dow’s voice was so quiet Tra­nis had to strain to hear. “If they didn’t, they’ll be break­ing through any mo­ment now.”

  Silent sec­onds passed, bro­ken only by the fran­tic re­treat mes­sages. As the time passed, Tra­nis al­lowed hope to creep in. The in­va­sion fleet had heard them. They’d turned back, and Earth was saved. It had to be. It could not end like this.

  “Oh no.” Li­don’s groan came a mo­ment be­fore com­mu­ni­ca­tions ex­ploded with hor­ri­fied re­ports from the in­va­sion force. They’d bro­ken through to Earth, never hav­ing re­ceived the new or­ders.

  “NO!” Cas­sidy screamed. She col­lapsed, De­gorsk catch­ing her be­fore she could hit the floor.

  Sim­dow’s ex­pres­sion went blank, stunned be­yond com­pre­hen­sion. His voice was al­most ro­botic as he said, “First im­ages are be­ing trans­mit­ted from the in­va­sion fleet. Shall I bring them up, Cap­tain?”

  “No.” Tra­nis did not want to see hun­dreds of cities blow­ing to pieces. How many dead? Mil­lions? Bil­lions?

  “No. No,” he re­peated, as if by deny­ing it over and over it could be un­done.

  Yet Tra­nis knew bet­ter. Right now, Earth was be­ing dec­i­mated. He knew who had set it in mo­tion.

  The Dramok stum­bled to­wards Cas­sidy on legs that seemed made of rub­ber. His Matara, the woman who had some­how learned to care enough for him to be his life­mate, who had found some small trust in him, sobbed piteously as De­gorsk held her.

  The two men’s gazes locked over her head. “I did this,” Tra­nis told his Imdiko. His lungs squeezed so tight he could barely breathe.

  “You didn’t know how in­sane their rulers truly were,” De­gorsk said. His chest hitched with emo­tion as he stared at the main vid where more Earther ships self-de­struc­ted. “How could any­one have ever an­tic­i­pated this?”

  Look­ing at his heart­bro­ken Matara, Tra­nis felt the weight of guilt smoth­er­ing him. How could he pos­si­bly make amends for this trav­esty?

  The an­swer was sim­ple: he couldn’t. If Tra­nis lived for­ever, he would never be able to atone for the dam­age his mis­sion had wrought.

  Feel­ing as if he was drown­ing, Tra­nis clutched De­gorsk and Cas­sidy as if for dear life. Help­less to do any­thing else, he guided them off the bridge and away from the im­ages of un­bear­able de­struc­tion.

  Chap­ter 19

  The week that fol­lowed was filled with tears and pain for Earth­ers and Kalquo­ri­ans alike. The loss of life on Earth had been stag­ger­ing, be­yond any­one’s abil­ity to com­pre­hend. All mem­ber plan­ets of the Ga­lac­tic Coun­cil were send­ing aid to the stricken world with Kalquor at the fore­front of the res­cue mis­sion. The in­va­sion fleet was now faced with con­tain­ing the nu­clear fall­out as best it could un­til evac­u­a­tion ships ar­rived.

  Cas­sidy thought of old school friends and the peo­ple she’d known back on Earth. Her home had not been near a ma­jor city, so she had rea­son to hope most had sur­vived the ini­tial blasts. But Earth’s in­fra­struc­ture had col­lapsed, and the Kalquo­ri­ans’ best at­tempts to feed and shel­ter the rem­nants of hu­man­ity couldn’t be­gin to ad­dress the cri­sis that con­tin­ued. For­tu­nately the sta­ble Dragon’s Tri­an­gle por­tal would get about half of the res­cuers to Earth in a mat­ter of days in­stead of weeks.

  As the first dev­as­tat­ing shock gave way to aching grief for her home planet, Cas­sidy found small mo­ments of joy peek­ing in from time to time. She felt guilty about those pock­ets of hap­pi­ness, but she also un­der­stood she couldn’t mourn for­ever. Her life con­tin­ued on, and she lived it in the com­pany of men who loved her. She even had in­stances dur­ing which out­right laugh­ter man­aged to as­sert it­self.

  She was en­joy­ing one such light­hearted mo­ment in the clan’s quar­ters aboard the Earther trans­port when Tra­nis and Li­don en­tered. The two men stopped short when they saw De­gorsk hang­ing the mold of his but­tocks on the wall over the din­ing room ta­ble. It was di­rectly over the chair where Li­don usu­ally sat. Cas­sidy gig­gled, un­self­con­scious of her nu­dity as she stood in the mid­dle of the room. What was par­tic­u­larly funny was that for once it wasn’t the Imdiko in charge of the joke. Hav­ing the ass hang over where Li­don’s head would be as he ate had been Cas­sidy’s idea. The Nobek’s brows rose slowly as he saw her di­rect­ing De­gorsk.

  “A lit­tle more to the left. Not so high or I can’t grab it when I want to.”

  “At least you aren’t hang­ing it over my al­tar,” Li­don sighed. He ap­par­ently didn’t re­al­ize who was be­hind the prank, be­cause he winked at Cas­sidy when De­gorsk wasn’t look­ing.

  “Are we go­ing?” she asked. It had been a long week, and she was im­pa­tient to get away from Earth space, away from the re­minders of what had once been a thriv­ing planet. Sor­row, never too far away, crept over her once more.

  Tra­nis nod­ded. “We’re un­der way for Kalquor. My pro­mo­tion to ad­mi­ral is now of­fi­cial and Li­don starts his new as­sign­ment with Global Se­cu­rity as soon as we get home.”

  De­gorsk made one last ad­just­ment to the mold and stepped back to ad­mire it. “Mean­while, I have nine months to fig­ure out what I’ll do on Kalquor. I’m con­sid­er­ing tak­ing up Earther Matara psy­cho­log­i­cal stud­ies. This mis­sion has given me a taste for it. Some­one has to set that bunch straight.”

  Cas­sidy wel�
�comed a wave of con­tent­ment that pushed heartache back as she con­sid­ered the fu­ture. She looked for­ward to pur­su­ing her own stud­ies. De­gorsk’s ap­ti­tude tests had put her in­tel­li­gence scores in the ninety-sixth per­centile. The re­sults had sent the clan scram­bling to find the best pos­si­ble in­struc­tion on Kalquor to con­tinue her ed­u­ca­tion. That they took her needs so se­ri­ously only added to the al­lure of her new life.

  “We’ll help each other cram for ex­ams,” Cas­sidy told De­gorsk.

  “Cram?” De­gorsk looked at her in con­fu­sion.

  “Nev­er­mind. It’s an Earther thing. It in­volves no sleep, lots of cof­fee, and in my case, eat­ing pizza all night. You’ll prob­a­bly want to skip it.”

  He tweaked her nose. “In that case, you’ll be skip­ping it too.” He pulled a face and shud­dered. “Pizza.”

  Li­don gri­maced, but it wasn’t be­cause of Cas­sidy’s love af­fair with grease and cheese. “Nine months of bor­ing travel. Just think­ing about it makes me want to hit some­one.”

  “We’ll make a few stops along the way.” Tra­nis smiled at Cas­sidy. “It’s dan­ger­ous to keep Nobeks cooped up in a ship for too long. They get what I think you call cabin fever and start beat­ing up each other for en­ter­tain­ment.”

  Li­don seemed cheered a lit­tle. “Is Ki­w­bris along our flight path? I’d love a hunt in the jun­gle.”

  “It’s our first stop. I also want to set up a game of kur­ble on the Man­rus Plain while we’re there, so start think­ing about our team’s strat­egy. I’ll ac­cept noth­ing less than dec­i­ma­tion of Osopa’s squad this time.” Tra­nis’ smile faded as if he’d been re­minded of some­thing. “You know, there was an­other con­tain­ment breach just be­fore we left. It sent heavy ra­dioac­tive fall­out onto the Asian con­ti­nent.”

  De­gorsk frowned at him. Cas­sidy felt her own anx­i­ety rise at Tra­nis’ con­tin­ued self blame for Earth’s fate.

  Li­don’s tone was mild. “Those fields aren’t meant for such large ar­eas. Breaches are go­ing to hap­pen.” In a move con­trary to his Nobek na­ture, he reached over to squeeze Tra­nis’ shoul­der. “We came to in­vade and oc­cupy, not res­cue. It’s go­ing to take some time to get the proper equip­ment here. Con­tin­ued loss of life is only to be ex­pected.”

  De­gorsk added, “You have to stop tak­ing this so per­son­ally, my Dramok.”

  Tra­nis al­most howled in his an­guish. “The en­tire planet will be un­in­hab­it­able in a few years, all be­cause I couldn’t get Hamil­ton to tell us what Ar­maged­don was!”

  “You did your best.”

  Cas­sidy went to Tra­nis and slipped her arms around his waist. “De­gorsk is right. You couldn’t have known what my peo­ple were ca­pa­ble of. I’d met some of those men in charge. I knew how fa­nat­i­cal they were and how much they loved the idea of the apoc­a­lypse. Yet even I couldn’t imag­ine them go­ing to such ex­tremes.” She tight­ened her grip around him, will­ing him to stop ac­cus­ing him­self.

  He brushed her hair back from her face. “I don’t de­serve your for­give­ness.”

  “Tra­nis, the one liv­ing man most di­rectly re­spon­si­ble for this will stand trial be­fore the Ga­lac­tic Coun­cil.” Cas­sidy had granted her grand­fa­ther a stay of ex­e­cu­tion at Li­don’s hands, but only be­cause Earth needed to ex­act greater jus­tice. Some­one had to an­swer for the planet’s dev­as­ta­tion.

  “But—”

  Cas­sidy stilled the Dramok’s ag­o­nized protest with a fin­ger to his mouth. She quoted from the Bible, the older one of Chris­tian­ity that pre­ceded the gov­ern­ment’s of­fi­cial text. “As Je­sus hung dy­ing on the cross, he called out to God, ‘Fa­ther, for­give them, for they do not know what they are do­ing.’ If Je­sus could for­give the will­ful bru­tal­ity he suf­fered, I can for­give men who did all they could to re­lieve my mis­ery.”

  “I can’t be­lieve you don’t hate us.”

  The an­guish in Tra­nis’ eyes tore at Cas­sidy’s heart. It de­cided her. She’d held off telling him – telling all of them – the truth long enough. They needed to hear her say it, es­pe­cially now that most of Earth was a shat­tered ruin.

  Look­ing her tor­mented clan­mate steadily in the eye, Cas­sidy said, “I can’t hate those I love with all my be­ing, Tra­nis.”

  Li­don smiled with real plea­sure, trans­form­ing his feral face. De­gorsk beamed, his grin as bril­liant as the sun.

  There was a long beat of si­lence as Tra­nis gazed at Cas­sidy. “You don’t mean that. Not af­ter the way we forced you,” he said at last.

  She’d thought he would be happy with her ad­mis­sion. Tra­nis sim­ply looked at her, as mis­ery-filled as he’d been for the last week.

  Cas­sidy’s heart broke for her Dramok. He blamed him­self alone for Ar­maged­don. He sim­ply wouldn’t ac­cept it hadn’t been his fault.

  She stared up at him, will­ing him to shed the agony he car­ried like a sec­ond skin. “I do love you.”

  “What if I said you could leave us? What if I gave you the choice to not be our Matara?”

  The joy com­ing from the other two men dropped away. Li­don’s face turned to stone at Tra­nis’ words. De­gorsk sucked in a shocked breath be­fore blurt­ing, “Clan­ning is for life!”

  For her part, Cas­sidy could only stand ut­terly still in shock. She couldn’t be­lieve what Tra­nis was say­ing.

  De­spite the tor­ment war­ring freely on the Dramok’s face, his voice was wooden. Life­less. “I gave the other women we took pris­oner the choice, didn’t I? Why would I do less for the woman I love?”

  De­gorsk was be­side him­self with dis­be­lief. His arms waved in jerk­ing mo­tions, like they were try­ing to es­cape him. He al­most looked like he was hav­ing con­vul­sions.

  The Imdiko tried to speak, yet all he could get out was, “But … but … but…”

  Li­don’s jaw was tight. “Tra­nis, I could throt­tle you for tear­ing my soul from me like this. I know you are right, how­ever. Damn you.”

  Cas­sidy fi­nally found her voice. Look­ing into Tra­nis’ eyes, she said, “You don’t want me?”

  Fresh pain ripped across his face. “Cas­sidy,” he groaned, wrap­ping his arms around her and press­ing her to his chest. “You are my heart. You and my Nobek and my Imdiko are the only good things left to me. But if you don’t want us, we have no right to you. Enough dam­age has been done in this war. You’d en­dured more than your share even be­fore you met us.”

  Li­don jerked a nod so vi­o­lent that Cas­sidy thought his head should have snapped off his neck. “You must love us as much as we love you. There is no other way.”

  De­gorsk had fi­nally stopped ges­tic­u­lat­ing wildly. Now he stood to one side, slump-shoul­dered and mis­er­able. “You fuck­ing ass­holes. Why did you have to pick now to be no­ble? We had the per­fect woman in our grasp, damn you!”

  Tra­nis seemed not to hear his de­spair­ing Imdiko. His sad gaze never wa­vered from Cas­sidy’s face. “You know we love you. You know we want you. But you be­long with us only if your heart says so. I give you ev­ery­thing in my power to give … in­clud­ing the right to choose your own path.”

  Cas­sidy’s mind tried to wrap around that. Her choice? Her life was hers to de­cide? Did Tra­nis have the slight­est inkling of what he of­fered?

  For the first time ever, she had the right to forge her own trail, to com­mand her own fu­ture. No one had ever thought to give her that op­tion be­fore. Yet de­spite ev­ery­thing, Tra­nis was let­ting her have that now. He was giv­ing up what his Em­pire de­manded, what his clan­mates craved … and what he wanted as well. Just so Cas­sidy could make her own de­ci­sions.

  For the briefest in­stant, the myr­iad pos­si­bil­i­ties danced be­fore her. End­less op­por­tu­ni­ties to ex­plore called to Cas­sidy. An en­tire uni­verse
beck­oned, filled with ex­cit­ing ad­ven­ture.

  And yet that uni­verse teem­ing with prospects yawned with an empti­ness as well. Empty, be­cause all those op­tions were noth­ing com­pared to the choice her heart had al­ready made.

  Cas­sidy had no doubt when she said, “I choose my clan. I don’t want any­thing else, not ever.”

  The ten­sion in Li­don’s jaw re­laxed, and a hint of plea­sure re­turned to the stoic Nobek’s ex­pres­sion. The set of his shoul­ders eased.

  De­gorsk wa­vered, as if his knees had nearly buck­led. His eyes closed as he mut­tered, “Thank you, an­ces­tors. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  And for the first time in days, the bleak look in Tra­nis’ eyes lifted. His voice was soft with won­der as he gazed down at Cas­sidy. “Tell me what to do, my Matara.”

  “Love me.” She tugged him to­wards the bed­room.

  “For­ever,” Tra­nis vowed, scoop­ing her up in his arms and kiss­ing her soundly be­fore car­ry­ing her to the bed and lay­ing her down.

  His touch was softer than De­gorsk at his gen­tlest. Cas­sidy cried a lit­tle to be ca­ressed so ten­derly, with such ob­vi­ous emo­tion. How had she ever thought this man was a brute?

  Tra­nis’ lips trav­eled over her skin, his kisses like the flut­ter­ing of but­ter­flies’ wings. Cas­sidy stroked his silky black hair as he moved down her body. Li­don and De­gorsk sur­rounded her, their cloth­ing cast aside. They copied Tra­nis’ light kisses on her lips and breasts as the Dramok ze­roed in on her soft­est flesh.

  Tra­nis’ tongue danced over her pink petals, mak­ing her sigh with bliss. Cas­sidy gave her­self over to sen­sa­tion. It was sev­eral mo­ments be­fore she re­al­ized the damn­ing voices of her warped con­science re­mained silent. None of her lovers had bit­ten her to erase the feel­ings of guilt and shame ei­ther. She dove into the hap­pi­ness of her new­found free­dom, free­dom from fear, free­dom to love with­out bound­aries.