Alien Heart

Alex Timothy

Copyright © 2021 Alex Timothy

All rights reserved.

ebook ISBN - 979-8-9854291-0-7

paperback ISBN - 979-8-9854291-1-4

Full Volume Publishing

Dedicated to Lan.

Contents

Recruit

Cadet

First Sweeper

Farm Boy

Captive

Fighter

Ayhor

Human

Thief

Traitor

Prisoner

Squire

Hush

Hero

Suspect

Friend

Dreamer

Soldier

Sacrifice

Veteran

Grower

About the Author

Acknowledgements

Recruit

I never should have tried to impress anyone.

Especially during a dubious mission, the enemy surrounding us, our lives on the line. But, I’d wanted to prove myself, show I had ability…value. What the hell had gotten into me? In my twisted imagination, I decided that one mission, the biggest mission we’d gone on yet, would make everyone take notice of my skills, and they would think twice about me. “Landon Evans? That guy’s amazing!” And I tricked myself into believing my fantasy, as if I’d picked up some real talent by osmosis or something. Right. What a joke. If I’m honest with myself, during my six months training and year-long service on a drop ship, I had never for one moment even cared about soldiering. In truth, I’d wasted every chance I’d gotten to become a better soldier, and even in a fantasy I shouldn’t have put the blame on getting overlooked. Hah! No one ever overlooked me.

Fresh out of high school, like all able-bodied graduates, I went before the military selection board for evaluation. Mom drove me to the closest Allied Defense conscription office in Hays, over an hour away from our farm. Dread sat like a brick in my gut. Just walking into the squat yellow brick building, I knew they would choose me. I saw it in their eyes, knew those perked up looks on the bored faces of the inspection panel… what a fine specimen! My stature always impressed. The three men and two women weeding through the conscripts only needed one glance at me — my towering height, wide shoulders, expansive reach, girth of my thighs — to know. With the right training they could turn my 6’7 and bulky-with-muscles body into the perfect soldier. Little did the selection board know, neither my P.E. teachers, nor my football coaches had ever managed to bring that potential to life. “You’re a big one. We could do a lot with you. If you could get your head in the game.” Something I’d heard a lot. Their enthusiasm always ended once they got a chance to scratch beneath my formidable size and found mushy soil instead of clay. Nope, I could never bring myself to take the shape they wanted.

But not only did the military panel accept me, they also slotted me into Ground Force, the frontline fighters in the war — and kind of a misnomer — Ground Force spent the majority of their time in space, hovering just above the atmosphere over Earth until they plunged on grav beams to confront the enemy. Only the fights took place on the actual ground.

I didn’t want to go to space. I liked it just fine here on Earth. But, the panel foreman slapped me on the back. “You should be proud, son. Only the best are selected for Ground Force.” He said it loud enough that the other boys waiting in the sweltering office lobby all looked up at me as I left. They didn’t know me, so they probably thought getting labeled as “the best” happened all the time to me. People who didn’t know me always thought that.

Back home in Colby, the general consensus on my getting selected for Ground Force looked a lot like a head shake, and sounded like a question. Folks in Colby knew me, watched me grow from a roly-poly baby who hid against his mother, to an extra tall kid who’d rather stare at you than talk to you, and finally a hulking young man who spent more time at the library than doing chores or playing football — the only two acceptable activities in town for boys my age. When they found out I got selected for Ground Force, most folks who knew me said something like,”Doesn’t seem the type,” if they wanted to be nice. Or “Won’t make it through training,” if they didn’t. If I hadn’t felt numb with shock and cold with fear, then everyone’s opinion of my aptitude for soldiering might have stung. But Allied Defense only gave new selectees fifteen days until they had to report for duty. I guess they didn’t want us to dwell on it for long. And the war wasn’t exactly going in our favor. That might have factored too.

My older sister Tonia had a sour expression on her face that I would come to recognize from my drop soldier instructors. “You still got to get through training, Landon.”

She crushed a bag of ice against my blackened eye hard enough that I knew she didn’t really care about taking down the swelling. “It won’t be long before they figure out that you don’t belong fighting nobody.” The hand not driving ice into my eye slapped a dishtowel on the scratched kitchen table. A billow of flour puffed in the air like a mini space cloud full of unbreathable grit. When I coughed, she gave me another briny look. “Well, you can’t be any worse at soldiering than you are at being a farmer.”

“Heh. Probably, not.” I wished I’d just walked the extra three miles past her farm to our own. Just Mom and I lived on the scant 200 acres, but my sister Tonia had grown up there with my older brother Rhett and their dad. Tonia and Rhett had a lot of strong feelings about the farm, mostly Tonia. Rhett lived in town and had given up farming. Her strong feelings leaned in the direction of finding fault with almost everything Mom and I planted in the land where she’d grown up. So, yeah I should have gone straight home, but walking that three miles more down the two lane highway had loomed like a hell hike after getting punched. My eye had swelled up until the shiny little bits of hardened tar in the black top road turned to blinding sparks. And my nose had bled and dried and made it hard to breathe. I’d only knocked on Tonia’s back kitchen screen asking to wash my face, but I should have known she would take the chance to point out how I brought the beating on myself.

I hadn’t. Riggs and his buddies had cornered me. Although, maybe I should have seen that coming even before Mom sent me to Hotson Farm & Hardware. Riggs’ family owned the store and he worked there every day. He still blamed my lazy defense for Colby losing the state football playoffs. And Riggs had wanted to make Ground Force way more than he’d wanted to win that championship.

On the farm, mice had eaten into the water lines to the point that the sage in the back fields drowned, while the red clover near the house had dried up and died out. We needed another coil of rubber tubing to replace the chewed up one or we’d never recover either crop. I’d gotten into such a depressed funk since the conscript board, that I’d forgotten about my responsibilities to the plants, so that by the time I noticed the water coil, everything looked pretty droopy.

And Mom never noticed much around the farm, just seemed content if we could feed ourselves and make a little profit at the Farmers Market. Just happy to survive. When I told her how much the tubing cost, she told me “Just go buy it. It’s only money.” That kind of talk made Rhett and Tonia practically froth at the mouth. Rhett might not care about farming, but he did care about money. Once my brother heard I had to get more tubing, I could count on him stopping by with more arguments about us giving up the land. It seemed that every visit ended with him saying,”Mama, come live in town with me and Ella, and let Tonia add your acres to her farm.”

If Rhett had his way, I’d get conscripted, go do my service, and return home to find nothing at the end of my three year enlistment.

Riggs’ father took my order for the watering coil. “Fine condition to leave your mother’s farm before shipping out,” Mr. Hotson said letting his dry Kansas sarcasm settle into every word.

“With the war on, we weren’t going to get much for the sage and red clover anyway. The government won’t be giving more than just relief funds for it.” I hunched over the farm equipment catalog, staring at a fancy seed drill that me and Mom could never afford.

“Well, now you’ll get even less.”

Our old seed drill worked fine, but on the rare chance I willingly entered a confrontation, I had a hard time making eye contact during it. “Allied Defense lets family farms keep their incentive money for planting those crops, so…”

“Hmph.” Mr. Hotson pulled the farm equipment catalog from under my nose and threw it back into the magazine rack behind him.

With the catalog gone, I noticed Riggs dawdling near the key making machine trying to catch my eye. When he did, he tilted his head to the outside.

Stupid me thought he wanted to commiserate on what a scornful old man his dad had turned into. But Riggs had two friends waiting at the side of the store. Riggs had a lot of friends, but I’d always existed in a more solitary way, preferring my own company. Right then though, I could see how having some buddies of my own might have come in handy.

“Bet you think you’re going away to be a big war hero, someone famous, like on the holos.” Of course Riggs would have heard about me making it into the Ground Force. So much better than Air or Space if you wanted to get to the front lines and fight aliens, or like Riggs said, “be a big war hero.”

Listen, I would have stood first in line to agree that he deserved to make the selection more than me. I didn’t even want it!

Riggs poked his index finger into my chest hard enough to knock me back a step. His freckled face grew uglier as it turned tomato red in anger. “I would of thought the conscript board would at least be smart enough to see you don’t have what it takes to be a ground soldier.”

“Maybe, they think I do.”

“Are you kidding me? You?”

Ironic. Damn near to my own words when the board had finished measuring and poking me. “Is this a joke? Me?” Hand-to-hand combat with an enemy stronger and faster than any human, super-enhanced abilities because of their tech. Their drop ships that didn’t show on any of our own equipment. And don’t get me started on their weapons, the wrist lasers and lightning fast grav beams. Next to all that, we might as well be cavemen throwing rocks. All the anxiety I’d held inside burst loose.

“I didn’t apply for Ground! They just put me there.”

Wrong thing to say.

Even though Riggs only comes up to my shoulder, with two friends he had no problem tackling me and landing a few solid punches to my face.

“They’ll kick you out before training’s half over!” Riggs spat on the ground near my head.

Holding my right hand over my eye, I used my left to push myself back up.

“That’s what I’m counting on,” I mumbled. Although I had no intention of trying to get kicked out or reassigned, I also had no doubt that it would happen. I just wasn’t a fighter. Never had been.

The ice against my face had started to melt as I tried to put Riggs out of my mind. Tonia’s little boys must have caught wind of my presence because the kitchen suddenly flooded with their badgering questions and grabby little hands. Tonia stopped glaring disapproval at me to screech at them.

“How many times have I told you boys, do not let that screen door slam!” Between the twins and Little Harold constantly coming and going, the metal door frame had bent to just the perfect angle to make an eye-watering clank if you let it swing shut on its own.

“What’s wrong with your eye?” Little Harold squinted up at me. We called him Little Harold after his grandad and Tonia’s father, Harold Ward. “Did you get whacked in the face with a tree branch? I got whacked with a tree branch and both my eyes swoll shut.” He threw himself at my legs and shimmied up like a raccoon.

The original Harold belonged to only Tonia, who had ten years on me, and to my brother Rhett who had fifteen. Harold Ward died long before the Far Reach program, back when farmers still planted vegetables and grains meant for use right here on Earth. Not fields of sage and clover varieties for insatiable aliens. That first Harold slept under a somber polished black stone in Sacred Heart Cemetery with a place right beside him intended for our mom.

Behind Rhett and Tonia’s backs, my mother had me swear not to let that happen. She wanted to join my own father, scattered into the wind near the cottonwood trees on our land. My dad’s name was Marcus Evans. So, me and Mom were also Evans — not Wards.

I rubbed my hand over my little nephew’s head. His soft baby face fit right into my palm.

Tonia’s husband Buck had just come in from the fields, shaking dust and dirt off himself like a dog.

“Mind the door!”

“Sorry, Babe.” Buck gave Tonia a peck on the cheek. Then he yanked Little Harold off me by the back of the boy’s overalls. “You kids wash up before eating.”

Having not a single chance of sneaking out past him, I still tried to cover my swollen face by scratching at my hair. I’d let it grow too long that summer and the ends had begun to form ringlets that Mom liked to twist between her fingers while giving me mournful looks. I’ve never seen a holo or a flat picture of him, but I think my dad had curly hair like mine. Just that look on her face told me that much. She didn’t see me when she touched my hair, she saw him.

“I heard about that fight in town,” Buck said pointing at my injured eye with his chin. “Gene Hotson called to tell me. Maybe you shouldn’t have started braggin’ in town about gettin’ picked for Ground Force.”

“I wasn’t bragging!”

“Gene also said you let the front fields dry out.”

“It’s only been a day.”

Like I said, Tonia and Buck never missed the chance to point out when Mom and I failed at keeping our little farm running. We didn’t have much land, but it butted right up against their own and they wanted it. But Mom would never sell, would never give up her chunk of Harold Ward’s land. Tonia, Rhett, and Buck didn’t understand it, but I did. She hung on to that land because of the cottonwood trees. And the memory of my father’s ashes blowing between their branches and leaves. That land held her heart, the memory of her love for Marcus Evans.

I tossed the ice bag onto the wooden table and dodged away from the little boys racing back into the kitchen. “Don’t leave, Landon!” they said.

“I need to get back to Grandma. You little devils better sit down and eat if you plan to grow as tall as me!” I swatted at the twins, Garret and James, who circled around me laughing. Wanting me to slap at them again, but not wanting to get caught. “Missed me! Missed me!”

Only Little Harold threw himself within reach to hug my legs again. “I don’ want for you to go to space yet, Lan. Why do you have to leave?” He buried his face against my knee. The twins lost interest in me once my hands stopped reaching for them.

I crouched down, face-to-face with Little Harold. “Now don’t be like that. Okay, buddy?” I patted my nephew on his downy head. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

“Yep ‘cuz it won’t take long for you to wash out.” Buck didn’t even try to say it under his breath. Tonia laughed.

As I stood, only the boys looked up from their dinner, so I didn’t bother to scowl. I just waved goodbye and opened the screen door extra wide before I let it bang shut behind me.

Two days later, me and Mom made the drive into Sumner County so they could scan me in at the launch field. Ground training happened on Orbit 3, one of the five satellites Allied Defense operated above Earth. Even though the trip from Earth would last a full 12 hours in a barebones transport rocket, the drive through Kansas felt longer. Four hours in the car together with both me and Mom trying to talk about everything and anything besides my leaving for the war.

“Remember to stay on top of things at the farm.” I clutched my duffle on my lap like I used to clutch my stuffed elephant. “If that gets too hard, at least feed and water the animals.” The more I worried about Mom, the less I worried about myself. “And the kitchen garden—”

“Landon, the farm will still be there when you get back.” Mom dragged her hands over the steering wheel, releasing her white knuckled grip.

“Well, okay.”

…when you get back. How did she always know what I needed to hear?

We hugged right before I had to go through the hand scanner, and I filed onto the rocket with the other recruits. Outside the porthole, Mom’s face became a blurry oval in a crowd of blurry ovals. I counted fifteen of us in my row, and maybe twenty rows— one of the flight crew yelled at me to turn back around and strap in to the bench. Got it. I mentally waved goodbye to Kansas and squeezed my eyes shut against the stomach dropping lurch of the booster rockets firing. Up, up, up. It felt like a tractor had backed into my chest and planned to keep going until it got me flat enough to pave over. Then…nothing. I was weightless with only the ragged nylon straps holding me in place. Outside the window, empty black space. Pinpoint lights of stars. Enemy aliens waiting to kill me.

Cadet

A couple months passed on Orbit-3 Space Station. I found my days within its spiderweb of modules not so different from my life in Colby. Only, instead of farm work, school, and football, I spent my time doing physical conditioning, weapons instruction, and fight simulations. But by the end of the first month, the training officer gave me the weary look I’d inspired my entire life. “We’re on the fence about you, Cadet Evans,” he said. Commander Brenchley had pointed out more than once that he considered me, “a waste of raw material” as if I’d snagged all my various body parts like the best slices of a picnic ham and then just left them on my plate to gather flies. “If it was up to me, I’d shove you out an airlock just for wasting my time.”

“I’m sorry, Sir.”

None of the instructors or commanders liked me much. I braced myself to get sent home to Colby for more of those very same weary looks, or shuffled out of Ground Force and into a support position. At worst, I’d get assigned loading gravity beams into drop ships. The cartridges holding those beams weighed as much as I did, they slipped and crushed feet and hands all the time, and they were hot enough to leave wrinkled red scars where they touched human skin. I really hoped Command just gave up on me all together, and sent me back to Earth. I missed the warmth of the sun, the feel of rich dirt and spongy growth under my feet and hands, the smell of crisp wind and sweet hay during harvest. Hard to believe I shrugged off so many chores during my last days on the farm to lie in bed depressed. What a dumbass. Turns out, I underestimated the determination of Allied Defense to mold me into a functioning soldier… they moved me on with the rest of my class for the next two months of training inside a military dome on Mars. Like getting locked inside a mall, but with no stores to shop at. By the final lap of that training — armed skirmish exercises done inside the dome — I had shown a modicum of improvement. But I was still getting the occasional weary look.

And by then our enemy the Hush had allied with the only other alien race humans knew, the Sorg. Earth’s chances at victory dropped from a cautious possibility to a despondent improbability. Allied Defense needed everything, every ship and weapon, every trained soldier we had… including an oversize farm boy who had thrown his hands up and backed away from every fight he ever faced.

But I still didn’t expect a drop ship squad to want me, not with my graduating marks. Teamwork: grade average. Skill: grade poor. Courage: grade average. Initiative: grade poor. Judgment: grade poor. As reference, the guy on the bunk closest to me got a single poor rating in teamwork and made a big show of trying to throw himself off one of the dome balconies into the mess hall. If they graded dramatic gestures, he’d have gotten a poor in that too. I don’t even think he broke anything when he swan dived over the chow line and landed on an exercise mat.

Now, Yulia, my closest friend during training, she scored a grade excellent in every area. The only cadet in our group to do so. All the squads wanted her on their team. For the ground soldiers, assignments happened a lot like sports teams got picked back in high school, with the squad leaders getting stats on everyone, then choosing who they wanted from the pool of graduating cadets. At the top of everyone’s list, Yulia could make a demand or two, and she wasted that clout by insisting that the two of us came as a pair.

On the first day of hand-to-hand training, I thought she wanted to start some trouble with me. Because yeah, I had all the usual problems with the other cadets that had plagued me since childhood. Biggest in the class. Biggest on the playground. I made such a satisfying target for bullies to prove themselves against. Guys who wanted to point me out to their friends, someone bigger, probably stronger. “And I still kicked his ass.”

But when Yulia sidled up next to me, she’d only asked if I wanted to fool around later that night. I’d never had someone approach me like that, so direct. I must have looked as panicked as I felt. She could have taken offense, but she laughed off my stuttering excuses easily enough. “Okay, handsome, how about we play some VR instead? You like shooter games, gorgeous?”

My face felt on fire, no one back home had ever called me handsome or anything close to that. “Umm… yeah. Yes to the games.” Back in Colby, I’d had farm work. I’d had Mom, Tonia’s boys, and books. Football practice… but that never went well. No one ever asked me to hang out, play games, listen to music. Other cadets slapped me on the back and made all kinds of comments on how they thought Yulia must be a tiger in bed. She had almond shaped dark eyes and golden hair she kept buzzed short on her scalp. Piercings ran up the shell of both ears. Sexy, I guess. But I’d never had a friend before, and that meant more to me than how she looked. I guess we looked like a good match. Me, the tallest and biggest and Yulia with her long legs, thick with muscle and wide strong shoulders. Those muscles and the heavy Ukrainian accent made me wonder if she’d worked on a farm like me, but she’d scoffed at my questions.

“No, I am not country mouse like you. I lived in Kyiv, then Detroit, then Houston, then back to Kyiv. My parents build rockets.” But she curled her arms to emphasize their brawny strength, and stretched to show off the furrowed contour of her ab muscles. “But in all these places, I am the best, the strongest.” She winked at me, and I could maybe see what all the back-slapping cadets saw.

“I don’t know, Yulia … biggest and strongest hasn’t ever been that great for me.”

She didn’t laugh like anyone else would have. Instead, my friend set her game controller aside to give me a hug. “That’s okay, country mouse. You have good soul.” So I think she also saw something in me that meant more to her than how I looked.

*

“Welcome to Bungee drop ship.” Yulia ducked her head, as she stepped over the airlock rim. She motioned for me to follow, her wide grin made it impossible for me to stay mad at her. The Bungee, like all the drop ships, had a name reflecting the quick “in and out” nature of ground fighting. Boomerang, Mad Yoyo, Puncher… They dropped soldiers down on gravity beams to fight quick and dirty skirmishes on Earth, then sucked them back in time to dart away from enemy fire. So far, we couldn’t fight them in space because we couldn’t see them in space. Only the blue sizzle of their beams entering the mesosphere.

Hefting my duffle over one shoulder, I squeezed through the airlock hatch behind Yulia. “I could be safe on Orbit-3, just loading grav beams and chilling out. If it wasn’t for you.”

“So boring, Mysha. I saved you from dull life!” Mysha—Ukranian for mouse had become her favorite pet name for me. The irony of nicknaming me after a tiny rodent amused her I think. At first I hated it, but by then the pet name had grown on me.

“I like boring. I’m going to be terrible at this… you know it… I know it. And the squad leader gave me a look when we were going through the palm scan that pretty much expressed he knows it too.”

Mekhi, the squad leader assigned me a job that made the most of my hesitancy toward aggression. Unofficially, they refer to the position as “sweeper.” Officially, I had responsibility for “support and perimeter maintenance,”which everyone, including the commanders, saw as “just sweeping up.” Haha. Get it?

The Bungee had two sweepers, me and a girl from Guangzhou named Ding. We dropped down into the melee last and pushed all the civilians out of the way, scooped up whatever got lasered off during the battle, and let the gravity beam spoon us back to the ship. Ding already had a year of battle experience under her belt and seemed annoyed to coordinate our shared position, territorial of the sweeper tasks she wanted. “I will go in the fight.” She raked her eyes up and down the bulk of my frame. “You will be too slow. And I will wear the small beam control for retrieval. You are too big.” She pointed finger guns at my chest and legs. “Easy to shoot.”

I couldn’t hide my fear, could feel myself going pale, shaking hands fastening the seals to my stiff new drop suit. And Ding’s little upturned nose scrunched with pity. She patted my arm. “You will be okay. Remember you stay back, out of the way, and you will be okay. The fights go fast.”

None of the skirmishes lasted beyond six minutes. Because, even if the Hush didn’t mind killing us, they balked at harming even a single blade of grass. Whatever sullied the natural world, the Hush viewed as atrocity. Most enemy conflicts took place at mining or construction operations, and sometimes the roofs of factories.

On our first forty drops I would have given just about anything to have really been back in the barracks sweeping up. The stench of a latrine? Couldn’t stink worse than the chlorine burn of ozone during the drop. The fever hot incandescence loading grav beams? Couldn’t make me any sicker than the stomach emptying pressure of traveling in one. Our first fight as a squad, Ding and I dropped into a tangle of gnarled branches in a Sumatran forest. Riding a grav beam reminded me of sliding full throttle through the Twisted Madman tube at the Wichita Falls Water Park, something I’d only done once. We’d gone on a family vacation there just before my dad died. I must have been really little, because I couldn’t remember him at all. But my older siblings pushing me into that dark curling tube? Now that I remembered. The out-of-control speed, the choking water, my body getting battered as I slammed into the tube’s walls. Traveling a wormhole through five layers of atmosphere felt the same.

I landed in chaos. Cutting laser fire pierced the fog— ours green, theirs blue and white— and I only caught a flash of a reflective suit, a faceless mirrored helmet turning my way. I froze, of course. Ding’s spindly arm elbowed me out of the way. She knocked me back toward the clutch of construction workers on the scene, and I stumbled into them. Unsteady from the drop, it didn’t help that I’d landed in a half drained swamp, my boots stuck in the mud. I’m clumsy to begin with, but sloshing through mucky water and fallen branches made me hopeless.

At least my body remembered what to do. Spreading my arms in front of the construction workers ignited my safety web, while my head swam with horror. The Hush. I’d fought simulations of them during training. Their silver reflective suits moved like liquid through the pea-soup swamp fog, unburdened by the heavy guns we carried. Faceless, merciless, their deadly weapons came directly from those mirrored suits, wrists, palms, waist. Every centimeter of that featureless armor hid devastating weaponry. This little knot of Hush could fry the entire jungle to ash if they wanted. Dark spots flickered in my vision, and my panting drowned out Belle’s rapid-fire notifications as she hovered over the skirmish.

Ding, my bantam partner, kept her wits much better than me. She darted into the fray, collecting all the severed body parts of our team that would require reattachment later. Yulia's left arm and Tory’s shoulder. Adil lost a foot, and when Ding reached for it, a slice of light carved her hand off at the wrist. I managed to catch it before it hit the ground, but then a laser severed mine too. It felt so weird to see it, my hand gripping hers lying on the Sumatran forest floor. A poor performance, to say the least, even for our first drop.

The enemy demolished the half built dam, and only Belle rode back up completely intact. As the scout, she didn’t engage in the fight, just floated overhead to comm the position of the enemy. Oh, and tell Adil which direction he should point the long ray to snipe their retreat.

Back on our ship, everyone blustered over the shots they made, simultaneously admiring their shiny pink reattachment scars. I didn’t have anything to brag about, I hadn’t done much but rescue my own hand. And Ding’s. When I closed my eyes during the stinging connection procedure, she patted my hair. “You did good.” Just looking at my reattached hand made my fingers itch and tingle, but Mekhi said that would go away in a few hours. The raised connection marks had a “badge of honor” respectability in Allied Defense forces, so we all felt pretty impressed with ourselves. Not just for the scars— for surviving.

Nerdy and skinny Tory embraced burly and stoic Mekhi. Adil bowed his dark head in prayer. While the rest of us got worked on, Belle danced around the med bay, her wild hair threaded with beads and ribbons, whipped around the room and eventually smacked just about everyone in the face. Belle could be kind of annoying, but exhaustion made us loopy and we all laughed with her this time. But it wasn’t until Ding passed around the bottle of Baijiu she’d smuggled on board, that it turned into a real party.

“Drink!” When I tried to slink off to the bunk room, Yulia threw a heavy arm around my neck and stopped me. She pushed the liquor bottle toward me.

“I don’t—”

“Drink, drink, drink!” Belle clapped her hands and the others joined in, waiting for me to take a swallow and pass the bottle on. Our squad kind of sucked, but at least we all made it back alive. I took a long swig.

“Oh man.” I winced. “That’s… not good.” My coughing made everyone crack up all over again and Ding pulled me into dancing with her and Belle to some horrible bouncy Chinese pop song.

Usually liquor helped my nerves, but that Baijiu is evil stuff.

When I woke up, I had to peel my face off the sticky plastic surface of our dining table. The Bungee’s med bay also served as the ship’s galley, in a four lobed ship every room doubled up on function. “I slept here?”

Beside me, Tory picked at his rehydrated scrambled eggs. “Well, it’s not like any of us could carry you to the bunk room, Hulk.”

Across the table, Belle paused from licking frosting off a pink donut to laugh.

“Ugh, not so loud!” Standing up too fast made the room and my stomach heave. “How does tiny Ding drink that stuff without…dying?”

“Ah you missed it. After you fell asleep, Ding vomited in the steam room,” Adil said. He’d shuffled into the galley barefoot and wearing the same cobalt blue sweatpants and t-shirt we all wore. Somehow they always looked better on him than the rest of us with his skinny frame and coat hanger shoulders. Don’t stare. He snapped an aluminum cup off the dispenser. “Coffee, Landon?”

“Yeah. Thanks.” I dropped back to the bench, and Adil squeezed beside me, slid the steaming cup into my hand. As shitty as I felt from the night before, I paused to realize that these people — the members of the squad— had become my friends. The first friends I’d ever made, really. In all those years keeping to myself in Colby, I had never realized what I’d missed out on.

“What do you smile at, Mysha?” Yulia squinted at me like her head might explode if she opened her eyes any wider. She grabbed two ice packs from the med bay wall. “Ding and I maybe have brain tumor.” Yulia slapped one of the ice packs against her forehead. “No one wake us up unless—”

“Rise and shine, team Bungee,” Mekhi’s voice boomed over the ship’s comm. He had the drained monotone of someone a lot older than his twenty five years. “We got orders to drop. Get ready to launch in ten.”

We all groaned, except Belle. She screeched in laughter until Yulia threw an ice pack at her face.

*

After that first drop we all got better. Even me, no matter how much I hated it. And, like I said, by drop forty I got used to the sensation of plunging speed-of-light to Earth’s surface, defending against and dodging searing laser fire, and the grav beam scooping me up into the tornadic ride back to the ship. Not to mention, the horror of seeing friends sliced into pieces, and the smell of cauterizing flesh. Ding and I fell into a routine of me guarding civilians as she darted through the rapid combat collecting body parts. The roles she’d insisted on suited us. The civilians respected my size, and Ding’s tiny form could flit between scuffles with less body area to catch a blue laser. Seeing those mirrored suits up close still made my chest freeze. Even when they first arrived on Earth those faceless mirrored suits had unnerved me. I mean, they’d freaked out a lot of people, nearly everyone. But our ambassadors and government leaders all claimed that underneath the suits, the Hush were quite beautiful. They just preferred to stay…armed. Hindsight really is 20/20.

When we got the orders to an icy mountainside in Nepal, I’d accepted combat as a part of a normal workday… with a lot of aimless waiting surrounding it. We spent the majority of our downtime looking for ways to amuse ourselves. Holo ball. Dance contests. We’d just constructed the universe’s largest playing card tower when Mekhi ordered us to suit up.

Yulia flashed him an excited grin “Ready, baby!” She flicked her fingers and the tower collapsed. “I am bored as hell. Drop me far as you can!” As first gun and the best fighter on our squad, she got away with cussing and calling people “baby.” Mekhi would have punched my lights out if I talked like that.

Tory nudged his glasses up. Second gun under Yulia, he had to wear them on a strap inside his helmet. They were so thick they reminded me of the swim goggles I wore as a kid. “That doesn’t even make sense,” he griped. “We drop to the ground. That’s how far we always drop.” Yulia’s mixed up slang drove him crazy.

Belle’s laughter peeled through the comm. “It makes sense this time.” She’d already dropped to her position in the sky.”You won’t be going very far down, this mountain is high, high, high! Is this Everest? Why are Hush even here?”

Tory pulled his helmet off and winced. Belle’s laughter could reach octaves not meant for the standard battle comm. “It’s not Everest,” he grumbled. “It can’t be. Nothing’s up there that would piss them off.” Tory kinda knew everything, but I had a hard time taking him seriously since he started growing his shaggy hair out and using Ding’s Space Kitty headbands. “Something’s not right.” He jammed his helmet back over the fuzzy purple cat ears.

“Are you calling me stupid?”

“Calm your tits, Belle. No one say stupid.” Yulia got in position for the drop, short barrel laser in her right hand. The beam launch kind of looked like a hot tub set in the floor, a metal folding hatch covering it. When the aluminum flaps opened, we jumped into the funnel one by one.

“Stop the chatter.” Mekhi peered into the scope. I always got the impression that he accepted his duty as squad leader with a grudging reluctance. Athletic, focused, assertive, he’d have made a formidable ground soldier. “Yep. That’s Everest. And that’s definitely a Hush beam. The enemy is down there,” Mekhi said. Then quieter, “But Tory has a point too. I don’t see any construction or other activity.”

The beam started its low crackling hum. Time to go. Yulia, then Tory slid down. My eyes blinked against the flash. I fastened my helmet seal and crouched beside Ding. The safety web hugged my back. Then, Ding and I made room for Adil, who grasped the barrel of the long ray with both hands like a spear. The three of us shared a nod.

“Do our best!” Ding said. Her last words. Then she slid down behind Adil.

The moment I dropped, I could tell something had changed. No civilians to push back. No construction or mine to defend. No mirror-suited Hush firing thin blue and white lasers.

Booming thunder deafened our comm reports, and heavy impact strikes shook the ground. Snow slapped against my helmet visor, but scraping it away didn’t help, too much of the mountain’s surface flew through the air. I couldn’t see a thing.”What’s going on?”

A break in the rumbling, and Yulia's voice crackled through the comm. “Where fucking are they? I don’t see—” Yulia's panic froze my blood. “Belle, you have eyes on them?”

“No, No, No! Mekhi, scoop me up! Now!”

Chunks of ice and rock blasted apart at my feet, knocked me backward. My web ignited on its own. The slickest, most aerodynamic sled possible underneath me, I careened down the mountain. Just to the right of my head, another blast plowed into the frozen earth, leaving a six foot crater. “What the hell is that?” I flailed against the snowy incline. “What are they using?” Another blast and another. Not the steady stream of lasers we used, more like pulse bombs.

Tory screamed though the comm. “She’s— Oh my God. It shot her!”

Her? My fingers scrabbled for purchase against the ice. “Yulia! Are you—”

“Adil, go! Go in beam.” Yulia's voice. Thank God.

Then Tory again. “You got her? Yulia? You got her?”

Explosions littered the ground around me. I couldn’t stop my downward skid, but it saved me from getting hit by the pulse weapon. “What’s happening?”

“Mekhi—” Yulia's voice, louder than the roar of the mountain getting pummeled. “Pull us out!”

Snow and ice caught in the beam with me and covered my helmet window, I couldn’t see a thing. My body knocked around the grav tunnel worse than the first time I rode one.

Back onboard, I collapsed against the rim of the launch tube. Spit filled my mouth, my vision funneled. “Who…” I gagged against the rest of my words. Adil unsnapped my helmet, eased it off. “Who?” I repeated… Then I saw her.

One of the laser bombs had punched through Ding’s chest, taking out her heart, lungs, and ribs through a jagged raw hole. “No…” I had just stood on the rim of the beam well with her. “Do our best!” How long between that moment and this one? She can’t be dead. “Is there anything…” I wanted to look away, but my eyes stayed glued on the gruesome cavity in Ding’s chest as my brain tried to make sense of it. How… How… “Isn’t there something that could… that we could do?”

Finally, Adil covered Ding’s ripped body with one of the silver emergency blankets and freed me from the loop of my thoughts.

Yulia paced beside the well. Her boots smeared ice and mud across the aluminum floor. “Tory was right.” I’d never seen her so angry, teeth gritted, hands balled into fists. “They come for nothing on mountain except us. A trap.” She stopped to help Adil roll Ding’s body onto another mylar blanket. They hoisted it up on the edges like a hammock. We’d all had instructions in how to place bodies in a refrigerated locker on the med bay wall. But, even during training, I’d known I wouldn’t have the stomach for it. Yulia had laughed at me, called me a baby, a scared mouse, and patted my arm. “Don’t worry, I take care of dead bodies for you.” When the memory sprang into my head, it made my eyes burn with tears. I’d pictured faceless, unknown dead bodies, not someone I’d played holo ball against, shared my candy with, teased about her love for Space Kitty.

Tory hung his head. As soon as the beam spit him free, he’d thrown his weapon and gloves against the curved wall of the launch room. He crouched beside them, staring at the long pale fingers of his hands like he’d never seen them before.

The door to the launch room slid open. Yulia came back, without Adil, to slump down beside me. “Adil made a prayer for her, a song prayer. It sound good…” She put a fist against her mouth to keep from rambling, and I slid my arm over her shoulders.

Then Mekhi braced himself in the entry. He tapped his left ear where his link to Orbit-3 nestled. “Not a trap, Yulia. That was a diversion. The Sahara, Everest, Siberia, North Pole, South Pole…” He made that rolling hand motion that meant the list of battle sites stretched on for a while. “While they kept us busy on Earth, the Hush took Mars.” He pulled a holo disc from the pocket of his coveralls and flicked it on with his thumb. The red planet began to rotate in the middle of the launch room. When he zoomed in closer, we followed two long black capsules through the thin atmosphere and billowing red dust.

“Are those them?” I breathed, meaning the Hush. No one had ever seen their spaceships.

“No.” The display dipped lower as Mekhi shook his head.

“But—”

With his free hand, Mekhi made a chopping motion to shut me up.

The obsidian capsules landed across the gritty surface of the planet, then split open in the middle. Sorg fighters emerged, their pressure suits and helmets — black and smooth as their ships— fit like a second skin, coating the triple segments of their legs and arms, the claws in place of hands. Tory recoiled from under the projection. Then the recognizable funnel of blue static and a coterie of mirror-suited Hush appeared, elfin and graceful beside the jerky movements of the Sorg.

“Of the five domes, only the two smallest remain.” Mekhi’s face twisted. “Those two had bio domes for plant life…Damn Hush won’t kill ‘em even in a bio dome.” Sliding his finger over the disc, Mekhi amplified the scene so we could better see the three cracked eggshell domes. Debris floated in the atmosphere around them. Familiar iron balustrades. Chunks of the gray Mars glass. And something that looked like insects, dark twisting bodies contorting in the thin atmosphere. Floating to the rock and sand surface of the planet. Not insects…

“Are those people? Dead people? Oh god, Oh god, Oh god!” Belle slapped her hands over her mouth.

Adil appeared behind Mekhi, slid past him to sit against the wall. “They went against their own principles to use that weapon on us back on Earth. They have destroyed nature with it,” he said in a voice soft enough that I had to lean forward to hear him. We all did. “But, why now?”

“We don’t know.” Mekhi took a breath against the anger we heard in his voice, saw on his face. “What we do know, is that they cut us off from our main staging point for deeper space travel.”

Tory made a scoffing sound. “We can’t even—”

“When we develop that capability, Tory.” The muscles in Mekhi’s neck bulged like they did when he lifted weights. “Apparently, we were close.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I guess the Hush are done playing around. Command expects an attack on Earth to be imminent.”

First Sweeper

Ding’s body left the Bungee in a slick black capsule that looked like a miniature version of the Sorg transports. A lot of our tech resembled theirs because we only made knock-offs. For almost two years, Earth had engaged in a trade alliance with both the Sorg and Hush. And that trade deal yielded great benefits for all parties involved. The Earth made huge technological strides thanks to the Sorg and Hush. And all they wanted in return— our sage and red clover. It worked for a while until they wanted more, until they wanted everything. I guess a piece of those early transactions helped design Ding’s coffin. Our remaining squad stood at attention in the Bungee’s cramped operations lobe as hundreds of capsule coffins drifted toward Earth. Toward home. Bagpipe music played over the comm until they all turned to tiny dark specks. When Allied Defense’s official ceremony ended, Adil said a prayer for us… for Ding. I struggled to keep my poker face throughout, not wanting to crack, even a little, in fear of breaking into tears.

Command ordered all Ground Force squads to spend two weeks docked for repairs and mandatory counseling holos. They assigned the Bungee to Orbit-4 and our ship rested inside a cold hangar while we mingled with other squads. We’d all lost people, and we all feared what might come next. So, we drank and played rough, angry sports. During our training days, Yulia and I used to make obstacle races and collect bets on them, but Orbit-4 had less space for something like that. Also, Yulia had discovered the art of Japanese street fighting known as kumite, and according to her, no half-baked race course could take the place of pummeling an opponent and getting bashed up in return. “Good therapy,” she claimed and hawked out blood from a split lip that I’d have to fuse for her later.

“If you say so.” I handed her my water bottle after she drained her own. The guy from Jackrabbit Squad rolled over on his back and moaned. Man, he looked like a solid bruise from where I stood.

“Will you go out with me now?” he whined at Yulia.

She only laughed as I shoved her. “Seriously? You had to beat him up first?” That only made her cackle harder. Despite unleashing my friend’s violent side, it was good to see people outside of the Bungee crew.

Tilting her head to the side, my therapy holo reminded me of Tonia when she wanted something from me, like help cleaning out the barn or babysitting the boys. Algorithms formed a composite based on statistics from place of origin and family records, so that the therapist would look and sound relatable and familiar.

“Landon, tell me again about the drop.” Even the Kansas accent came out perfect, a balanced mix of drawl and mumble. For privacy, they made us take our counseling sessions in the Bungee’s showers. I sat next to tubes of shampoo and shaving cream on a narrow metal bench, while the holo therapist sat on a comfy padded holographic chair.

“Your records from Colby describe a sensitive and gentle boy. If not for the war, you might never have become a soldier. It must have come as a surprise that you made it through training to a combat position.”

Now the holo even sounded like Tonia. I gritted my teeth. The composite formula had screwed up. I didn’t have the slightest inclination to open up to a hologram reminding me of my bitter tongued older sister. “What’s your point?”

“It’s easy to look for blame when a death occurs. You could blame Allied Defense. You could blame your other squad members.”

“Why would I blame them? The enemy took out Ding the moment we touched down. They couldn’t have done anything.”

Tonia’s doppelgänger shook her head, sadness in the smile on her lips and in her eyes. Disappointment. The algorithm didn’t know it, but I’d had a lifetime of people looking at me and seeing failure. I was immune.

“Your records indicate someone who always sidestepped fights, and avoided confrontation,” the holo prodded. “Do you blame yourself? After all, you were the other sweeper.”

So maybe not as immune as I’d hoped. As soon as my session ended, I stomped around the ship looking for Yulia. Those clandestine fights didn’t happen until lights out, what I guess counted as nightfall on a space station. So Yulia trained during the day. She’d started doing double workouts since Everest. Double combat simulations. Double weapons training. When I found her in the station’s dojo, she lay flat on her back in a sport’s bra, pale skin lacquered with sweat, chest heaving. I almost felt I should look away.

“Bozhe moy. I am dying. Get me towel, Mysha.”

I swiped one from the dispenser and threw it to her. Waited until she dried her face, the towel breaking our eye contact.

“Do the others blame me for Ding?” I stared hard at the floor mat. Then my voice broke a little, “Do you blame me, Yulia? Was it my fault somehow—”

“No… stop with nonsense.” She leaned forward and snapped the towel at my shin. “Landon, you are being pizda. Look at me.” I could hear the smirk in her voice.

I sighed and raised my chin. “What?”

“So this is what they mean by ‘survivor’s guilt.’ Not a good look for you, little mouse.” Yulia burst to her feet, hands on hips. She reminded me of how Mom looked when I came home with bruises or another black eye. “You do counseling holos, yes? Suka. You will get whole squad benched if you don’t do holos!”

“I was the other sweeper. Maybe I should have—”

“Gah!” She waved my words away. “Me and Tory run in circles shooting at fuck-all. Adil had long ray, but he stand around crying like little tselka before we even beam out! And you expect to be hero? What were you going to do?”

“Maybe—”

“No. Idi v zhopu.” She waved her hand in my face. “Fucking Hush unload new laser at us. They kill Ding. Just focus on your job, my Mysha. Command will get someone new.” A frosty smile and a wink. “Then mouse will be first sweeper.”

“Huh? Me?”

But sweeping didn’t have first and second positions. Not like Yulia and Tory did as gunners. Ding and I had just split the “protect and collect” duties a single sweeper usually did. Not for the first time, did it occur to me that no other ship we docked with wasted two soldiers in the sweeper role. Mekhi must have wanted Yulia bad enough to let her bring me along as… dead weight. Had I really kept the civilians out of the way? During training, we learned that sweepers started the secondary beam for body part collection, they swept through the battle, hoisting the lasered hands and arms, the dropped weapons. Sweepers made sure that all the important shit was policed up. Sweepers made sure everyone got out. And of course, Sweepers always took the beam out last.

Before our first drop, when Mekhi had told us,”Make sure to keep civilians out of the way,” he’d given me an unmistakable side-eye. He might as well have said, “Stay out of the way, Landon.” I let that thought churn my stomach for the rest of the day.

Belle and Adil had found some red paint and decided to decorate the Bungee with a stripe across its bloated sides. Most drop ships ended up looking like a stack of half eaten puffy pancakes out in space, the aluminum exteriors battered by debris and wearing golden after a few weeks in unfiltered solar radiation. I didn’t see how that red stripe could do much to fix the look of our ship.

Adil spotted me and smiled. “Join us, Landon. We will make the Bungee the star of all war holos,” Adil’s accented words made it sound a lot more interesting than painting a long red sash around a boring drop ship.

“Sure,” I mumbled, and snagged a sponge from the hangar floor, dipped it in the paint bucket.

Tory and Mekhi appeared around the other side of the ship with their own sponges. Red paint splattered on their cobalt blue coveralls.

“You know, the stripe does make it look better.” Mekhi tilted his head as he surveyed the battered ship. “Not sure why…but better.”

No way could anyone talk Yulia into helping out, but I dragged a step ladder over for her to sit on. She watched us and laughed, told us where the stripe got crooked or needed a second coat.

Okay, so maybe I had come onboard as dead weight, but now the squad accepted me as one of them. Good enough for me.

Still, the more I thought about it, the more I didn’t think I had any business jumping into a melee, collecting body parts, or marking out a spot for the gravity beam like Ding had. I didn’t care what Yulia said, I wanted to stay in my made up role as second sweeper. When I crawled into my bunk that night, I had one prayer in my head. Please, let the new conscript be someone just like Ding, eager and fast. Please, let them be… small in stature, obviously preferable for collection. Please Universe, just let my burdensome size work in my favor this one time.

Command did the reshuffle the next day, what passed for a day on Orbit-4. The new guy took Ding’s berth next to Tory after I’d gone to sleep, so I’d missed his arrival. It didn’t matter—every morning the whole squad gathered in the galley for breakfast and orders, and I figured I’d see him then. I got there last, of course. It took forty drops for me to adjust to ground battle, but after two years of service I still hadn’t trained myself to wake up early.

“Eat up, handsome.” Yulia passed me a bowl of oatmeal with freeze-dried blueberries swelling to life in the steaming water.

“Yeah. Thanks.” My voice sounded croaky and I had to rub at my eyes to focus. When I got my bearings, I also got a look at the new guy.

Riggs. That Riggs. How’d he end up here?

He looked right at me, too. Same wide freckled face, but harder somehow, like the baby fat had melted away and his pale eyes had gotten more opaque and hard to read. No red flush to give away how he felt seeing me here, in the same ship he’d gotten assigned to. Did he notice changes in me too? I’d made friends on this ship. Aged two years. Been up close in battle with the enemy for months now. I wanted him to see those things in me, to wonder about me and how I’d changed from the old Landon Evans, the guy he’d beaten down back in Colby.

“Alright, listen up everyone.” Mekhi crossed his arms over his wide chest. “We got orders. Something different.”

“Different how?” Tory had lost even more weight over the past two weeks of mourning and counseling holos. He no longer wore the cat ear headband, but it stayed in his hands, clutched in one fist or worked between his palms like a stress ball.

“Maybe shut up and he’ll tell you, dum dum.”

“Belle, that’s enough.” Mekhi gave her a slit-eyed look that would have made me gulp, but Belle just tossed her mass of beaded hair over her shoulder like a jingly scarf and sniffed.

“First of all, this is Riggs.” Mekhi cocked a thumb where my old classmate sat, shoulders back, face serious in brand new blue coveralls. The clustered gold stars that made up the Allied Defense logo still glittered on his back. Ours had all fallen off and left pale shapes in the cobalt fabric. “He’ll be taking Ding’s place.”

“Korva—no way.” Yulia stood up from the bench beside me. “Landon takes Ding’s place.” I tried to pull her back down, but Yulia pushed away my hand. “This guy,” she jabbed a finger at Riggs, “He is second sweeper now.”

Mekhi had a moment of confusion. Like I said, sweeping doesn’t have a first or second. But like all of us, Mekhi must have felt off about Command just replacing Ding with someone new, like just another cog in their war machine. She’d entertained us with stories of her crazy little brother and the antics she got up to working in her family liquor store back in China. Her parents shipped her bottles of beer and rice wine in all kinds of creative ways that defied contraband rules, and Ding always shared what they sent. We missed our friend, not the job she did for Allied Defense. A beat of silence passed. “Right. Landon, you take… that spot. Riggs replaces you.”

I could have pointed out that I stood a head taller than Riggs, that my shoulders spanned almost double his, my biceps thicker than his calves. Ding’s work depended on speed and agility that I didn’t have. But I kept silent. Partly because Yulia had made a case for me. Made it my responsibility to honor Ding’s memory by not letting just anyone slide into her empty spot. But, if I’m honest, I had another reason too. Because I had something to prove. To Riggs. To that damn counseling holo. To myself. And I was a dumbass too—who wanted to impress everyone by taking on a job I couldn’t do.

“Besides rescuing any human captives, we need to reclaim Mars. If we don’t, then nothing stands between Earth and the brunt of the war.” Mekhi pulled out all the stops with graphs and charts. Drop ships darted through my chest headed for Mars, soldiers dangled down from them like baby spiders.

Adil roused from his spot on the floor, just under the glow of Saturn’s B ring. “This is the mission?”

Concern wrinkled Tory’s forehead. “How does that make sense? We don’t stand a chance against their weapons… we should—

“Is this us?” Belle wiggled her fingers between the spiders.”This looks fun, fun, fun!”

Tory’s concern smoothed back into a vacant stare, long fingers returned to stroke the purple cat ears. “It won’t work.”

Mekhi sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “We aren’t giving them time to find out we still have emergency codes to get inside the domes. We’re hoping to take them by surprise.”

“Surprise? So we go on offensive?” Yulia raised a hand to give me a high-five inside the moon Phobos. “At last!”

I slapped her palm and did my best to look confident.

*

We suited up and gathered in the launch room. Riggs and I had reached an unspoken understanding not to acknowledge we had any prior connection beyond that morning. If anyone on my squad noticed me acting quieter or weirder than usual, well, we’d all gotten apprehensive since our last drop. Yulia stretched and punched the air to loosen tense muscles. Belle annoyed everyone by singing to herself. Tory stashed Ding’s cat ears inside his shirt before sealing up his drop suit. Compared to the Hush mirrored unitards, or Sorg waxy black coverings, our pressure suits looked pretty uncool. White and padded with Kevlar and aluminized mylar, helmets just a little less bulky than the old-timey space walk helmets. Well, at least we could see each others’ faces, a terrified expression came in handy when words on a comm failed.

Command assigned the most perilous roles of the mission to ranked squads who hadn’t lost members. Those squads would beam into the top of the two remaining domes. Allied Defense’s emergency codes could open the top panels of glass to reveal plastic gel that held in atmosphere. A grav beam and anyone riding it could pass through the gel. And while Yulia and Adil had propelled Bungee’s ranking to the upper twenty squads, without Ding, we ended up relegated to perimeter support of Dome Utopia. Yulia's fist beat the air near my head, stopped just a hair’s width from my cheekbone. “I should be on team to go through fontanel!”

She got a flat look from me. “I’m glad you aren’t.”

“Quit complaining,” Mekhi’s voice echoed over the launch room comm. Our job during the mission would have us drop into a sand basin near Utopia, where dome scientists had set up a network of agro bubble tents. “And be careful what you wish for, soldier. The enemy could have troops stationed in the bubbles. Or they could have stashed prisoners there.”

Yulia pointed at me. “Mysha and I will be heroes.” First gunner fights the enemy. Sweepers protect civilians. Got it. For a quick second I wished that the laser bomb had taken me out instead of Ding. I did not thrive when given responsibility or authority.

“Riggs? You were stationed on Orbit-3 before this?”

“Yes, Sir.”

Really? So, Riggs hadn’t even made it onto a drop ship.

“I’ve completed the sixty hour drop training though, Sir.”

“I guess that will have to be good enough. Just follow Landon’s lead down there.”

Riggs gave me the same blank look he’d had in the galley. “Right. Yes, Sir.” The gravity beam whirred to life.

I had done the months-long combat marks training course at a dome called the Lighthouse, one of the military installations the Hush had destroyed. Unlike training facilities of that nature, Utopia existed primarily to house terraforming scientists. That must be something the Hush support, right? So perhaps they left the researchers alive. Maybe Yulia was right and we would get to be heroes.

We dropped a good hundred feet from Utopia, still in full glassy nipple form, thank God.

“Hello, hello, Bungee team! Nothing down there.” For once I could see Belle floating above us thanks to the thin dusty atmosphere. “Two squads made it into the dome though! Lots, lots, lots of excitement brewing.”

“Jesus, shut up, Belle.” Tory slapped his helmet in frustration. “Command should have dropped you into one of the domes. You could flush out the enemy just talking at them.”

“Hey, shut up you two,” Yulia snapped. “There. Agro bubbles.” She gestured with her gun toward a lengthy worm of white tents a short walk from us. “Move out.” We marched single file, Yulia in front and Adil taking the rear. Most frustrating walk of my life. The drop suits can fix the gravity, the pressure, and the temperature, but we still had to step over a crap ton of rocks. Riggs followed behind, maybe judging me every time I stumbled or slid. He probably thought I was the same bumbling oaf as back in Colby.

Yulia put up a raised hand, a gesture for us to halt. “Pretty dead out here. We will look inside the bubbles, yeah?”

Tory and Adil charged their lasers and kept the sights trained on the shadowed cliffs that lined the sand basin. Yulia, Riggs, and I all peered inside the darkened tents. Normally, they glowed translucent, but not these.

“Why are they not clear? I can see nothing in there,” said Yulia. “What is this govno inside them?” She put a hand agains the balloon wall and dented it inward. “Cotton?”

“No… not cotton. It’s steam. Someone cranked the bio controls too high in there.” If we could feel heat through our gloves, they’d register the sweltering temperature inside the agro bubble. “We use the same system for winter crops back in Kansas.” Crouching down, I pounded at the base of the shelter to clear the white fog. Riggs just stood by watching, the same as Yulia, like he didn’t come from exactly the same place that I did. Like Mom and I hadn’t bought our own agro bubbles from his family store. “Now look.”

“Ah, good job. Hmmm… looks empty. Either of you see something?”

“Well…” I stood on tiptoe and craned my neck. “They’re over-watering the carrots. Actually, it looks like they’re over-watering everything.”

Yulia snorted. “Okay, farm boy.”

A loud popping sound crashed both outside our helmets and over our comms. Training kicked in and we all drew together facing outward, weapons raised.

“Pizdets. Where are they?” Yulia said.

Mekhi had given both me and Riggs small pulse lasers, just in case. I’d never killed anything but holo Hush. And then only during combat simulations. Riggs probably had an advantage just coming off his sixty hours of drop training.

“Oh no, no, no, no!”

I looked up at the floating speck above us… Belle. Then Yulia elbowed me and I could see what made the pop. The fontanel had opened. The two squads that had dropped inside emerged in pieces. Arms and legs. Helmets. The red spray of blood. All shooting up into the red sky and then floating slo mo down like sparks in a fireworks fountain.

Yulia vibrated beside me. “Khuy na ne!” A laser zipped between us. “Shit—”

The Hush. Out of nowhere. Wrist lasers in our faces as they surrounded us. How did they just materialize without a beam? Empty space turning solid— those featureless mirrored suits had used a cloaking feature we didn’t know existed. Holy fuck, and five of them, when just one could decimate us.

A beat of shock and then team Bungee shot back.

Move, Landon. Move! Dropping to the ground, I put my hand to my chest and ignited the secondary gravity beam. Not powerful enough for a whole person to ride, but perfect for the lasered bits. I started tossing everything that fell to the ground inside it.

Tory’s hand.

Tory’s leg.

Adil’s hand.

Yulia's hand.

Yulia's elbow.

Staying low worked best for me. I loped through the battle, hunched, with arms dragging the ground like an ape. Throwing the sliced off limbs of my squad mates into the beam.

“Mekhi! Get. Us. Out.” Yulia scooped up her own foot with the stump of her right arm, then hopped around the battlefield firing lasers blasts with her left hand. She somehow managed to heave her severed foot into the beam. Winked at me from inside her helmet.

“Beam on! Beam on!” Belle squealed. “Hop to it! Hop, hop, hop!” Yulia and Tory both followed her into the sucking wormhole.

Adil did an impressive roll-and-shoot combo until a laser seared off both his weapon and remaining hand.

I waved him toward the grav beam.”Go, I got it!”

The hand rolled toward Riggs. He had his weapon pointed at the ground, not firing, not dodging the lasers. Hey, I get it. Drop training fails in a one very important way— it molds your body into a fighting machine, but it wipes your mind of the ability to think rationally. So when the Hush finally appear in their bright shiny suits, menacing, deadly, and real… well let’s just say holo images do not prepare you for much of anything.

With Riggs as the last guy standing, the mirrored suits all focused on him. Shit! They would dice him to bits. I managed to tackle him to the ground just as a finger of blue light sliced toward him.

“Get off me!” He started to fight underneath me, way more freaked than I first thought.

I rolled off and grabbed him by the arms, worried that if I let him go he’d try and run. “We’re evacuating. You want out don’t you?”

As I dragged him toward the beam, I snatched up Adil’s hand and tossed it on Riggs chest. Which only made things worse. He started screaming and thrashing as a blue laser sliced through his thighs just as I got him into the beam. I grabbed the legs and threw them in behind him.

The Hush closed in. No one left to grab the pieces of me left behind. If I lived, it wouldn’t be with all my limbs. But the Hush didn’t fire. Why didn’t they fire?

Maybe… Maybe, they wanted to jump the beam! Just one Hush soldier aboard a ship could kill the whole crew. One soldier could scuttle the Bungee. Could crack another dome or even dock back on Earth. I’m no hero, but I’ve got a good sense of my own lack of significance.

I ripped the ignition button off my chest and tossed it into the beam, watched it snap back into the ship. None of the Hush surrounding me lurched toward it. Had I judged wrong?

The heel of a small mirrored hand smacked me in the solar plexus, knocking the wind out of me, enhanced strength causing me to stagger back. Five mirrored palms in my face. This was it. I squeezed my eyes shut. They still didn’t fire. A fizzing noise, came over my comm, so loud I wanted to rip my helmet off. Nothing back on board our ship made that noise. The sound had to be something the Hush used. The cracking in my ears, in my entire head continued unabated. Baking soda and vinegar. Water touching hot oil. Acid eating into metal. I could feel myself screaming, throat and lungs raw with the effort, but could only hear the sizzling meat sound of the fizz. Underneath it, the voice of the Hush, hissing with satisfaction, “Faaaarmmm Boyyyyy.”

Farm Boy

The Hush wanted me alive. Or, at least, decided they’d rather kill me inside the dome. With a flick of its wrist, one of the mirrored suits covered me in something similar to the ion web I used to push back civilians. It slipped like silk over my drop suit, yet within microseconds, it adhered to my armor swallowing the upper half of my body in a cocoon, a restraint. No…something more like a leash. The squad leader of the Hush controlled the ion web with movements of his hands. If he motioned forward, my body felt compelled to walk that direction. Their plans for me definitely included entering the dome.

Even though they’d pulled the fizzing effect back, I could still hear it, just a threat now instead of the all encompassing waves of pain. I didn’t know how it worked, but my brain and guts now felt raw from whatever that fizz had done to me. Do not throw up in your drop suit. When my trembling legs buckled, I flattened onto the rocks and sand. Nevertheless, the leash continued to pull my prone body over the landscape. As it dragged me, I somehow managed to get my feet back under me.

The five Hush communicated to each other in their strange language. Whistles and hisses like tree branches scraping together, glass beads rolling across a floor. After the Far Reach probe led the aliens to Earth’s doorstep, they’d introduced themselves with sounds no human could hope to imitate. Except for that shushing noise you might hear from someone during a holo-story, in a church, or if you had an older sister like Tonia. Shhh, shhh, shhh. I thought it was part of the reason humans called them Hush. And they’d accepted the name easily enough. As their captive, hearing those airy scraping noises unnerved me. Underneath my nausea and lightheadedness from the fizz, the bizarre vocalizations added a layer of nightmare. I kept waiting and wishing to pass out, but I stayed awake for the entire long trek to the science dome.

Inside, Utopia looked trashed. The basic layout reminded me of Lighthouse. They both had a polished rock base with balconies set up around a central court. I knew that behind the mezzanine, lay cramped hallways that opened to offices, barracks, operations rooms, labs. Through the glass panes that made up the exterior walls I could see expansive views of the red, gray, and yellow Mars terrain. Had the base just deteriorated under the war’s demand for funding, innovation, and manpower? Nothing, no one left to keep the incidental kiosks manned, the bars stocked, the holo cinema functioning. Or had the new inhabitants dismantled all of it? Someone had cleared the main atrium, wrecked piles of furniture, exercise equipment, broken appliances shoved against the dome walls. Things humans needed. The mess inside wasn’t from us. They had done this. So where were the people who had lived in this dome?

As soon as we crossed into the inner airlock, the Hush dumped me face down onto the floor, and I stayed there, too weak to move. Sick. Terrified. A new set of captors came forward, but all I could see were their boots— not quite boots really. Thick dark orange keratin in the general shape of a boot… but… not feet, hooves. Sorg.

I heard a click and suddenly the ion web no longer had me in its hold. Pulling my elbows underneath myself, I pushed up to sitting and snapped off my helmet, threw it as far as I could to get the comm away from my ears. I didn’t know if that’s how they got the fizz into me, but it had started there, as a sound. It worked a little bit, but not completely. Like it left a hangover behind, I felt wrecked.

No one seemed to pay attention to me. The Sorg remained silent as the faceless suits of the Hush soldiers started to incorporate the colors around them. The yellow polished rock of the floor. The gray and blue of the abandoned kiosks and derelict machinery. The swirling sand and iron dust of the hills and sky outside the dome. One of the Hush even took on the pattern of a shredded Earth flag draped over an empty counter, the leg of his suit erupted into the cobalt blue, gold stars and wavy green lines of the Allied Defense crest. We’d called them mirrored, but they didn’t reflect. They absorbed.

The faceless Hush soldiers chirped out short— maybe angry?— sounds to the Sorg, who remained silent, heads bent low. The three tall hooved Sorg warriors cowed before their diminutive Hush masters. The Hush at the front of the tight diamond formation broke ranks and brushed past the Sorg fighters, stepped close to where I’d fallen. Propped on my elbows, legs flat out in front of me, my head still pounding and confused from the fizz weapon, I looked into the prism like visor of the lead Hush. I could almost wish for death rather than that sizzling pain.

The Hush’s mirrored foot nudged my thigh, the toes turned the same crimson dusted color of my drop suit. If I didn’t know anything at all about them, never heard the echoing demands they projected over Earth, never watched the demolition of our cities, dodged their slicing lasers, watched them carve into my friends — if I wasn’t aware of all that— would I find this Hush intimidating? Petite, slender, graceful. It cocked its head at me. Like it was curious… maybe?

I stayed sprawled on the floor, didn’t dare move even a finger. I guess it got its fill of staring at me, watching my breath stutter, the sweat beading above my lip, because it whistled out something more to the Sorg warriors. Whatever it said sounded like a flock of starlings when they all settled into a single tree, calling to each other, rattling the leaves. When it turned around, the other four Hush spun in unison. Neat and precise, they marched back out, suits changing from the riotous blend of colors inside the dome to the muted beige sand and red dust of the planet itself. A shaft of blue light appeared, and they disappeared into it.

With the Hush gone, the Sorg finally turned their attention to me. I moved to bend my legs, plant my feet, testing my balance before I straightened to standing. They were big but not as big as me. I looked the tallest in the eye. Mine colored the faded blue-gray of a stormy Earth sky, his in phosphorescent shades of orange and red that might have matched the atmosphere of his own planet. Two dark nostrils, but no nose. A wide mouth, but no lips. Whatever twists of genetic material that form the Hush and Sorg into their species has at least a thread or two in common with us… with humans.

Imagine the surprise of Earth’s scientists when the first Hush beams appeared in the sky and those first aliens dropped down to visit. No webbed hands or antennae, no nightmarish monster or cute grey movie E.T. Just…people. Notably different, but very much the same. Suddenly the tinfoil hat theories about off-world travelers building Egyptian pyramids, carving Peruvian geoglyphs, or lining up massive rocks at Stonehenge didn’t seem as laughable. Something ancient and primal connected us, we looked alike in so many important ways. The Hush and the Sorg had two arms, two legs, two eyes, hair and skin and facial features that lacked any of the impressive special effects humans expected. Still strange… aberrant. Disturbing. And face to face, I couldn’t look away from the differences.

Few humans had seen the Hush without their reflective, faceless suits, they didn’t allow photos or holos, refused large audiences. Those who had seen them described them as beautiful, with heather green skin, wide silver eyes, ethereal grace. But, the Sorg—with their bright red leathery skin and pointed teeth— looked more like devils. With orange keratin hooves, claws, triple segmented arms and legs, they wrapped their bodies in strips of white cloth like mummies. All the ancient alien theorists found this detail especially vindicating. Even more alarming, the Sorg caked their hair in something chalky and white, arranging it in elaborate shapes resembling horns. I remembered the nasal voice of my social studies teacher, “Perhaps our human mythos of demons originated from memories of ancient visits from…” At the time, my mind had drifted off from class. Beyond the crops of clover and sage, the Sorg had nothing to do with me.

The three warriors held long metal spears inside the angle of their claws. Mr. Sanderson’s voice rose again in my head,”Body mutilations that denote the separation of childhood and adulthood…” There! I had learned something. Just nothing useful.

Come on, Landon… think. How did we know those facts? They must have told us. Unlike the Hush, they’d wanted us to know them. And that meant… they’d been friendly? Should I smile?

As I mulled it over, they pointed the spears at me.

Okay, don’t smile. I raised both hands. Did that gesture translate to “I’m not a threat” in the Andromeda galaxy like it did in the Milky Way?

My gaze still locked with the tallest Sorg, I took a step back as he grasped my shoulder in his claw, sharp serrations denting my padded drop suit. He grunted, “Roo Hoo.” Not like a word at all, more like a fog horn or the grunt of bull. Then he spun me around and shoved me forward. Tips of spears nudged my back.

Got the message. I started walking. Paused when a spear barred my way. Turned when it pointed in a specific direction. Either their takeover or a counterattack had really torn up the place. Gaping holes in the walls. Flickering lights. Fallen ceiling panels. Still, I knew the layout like the back of my hand. Two months in the same basic design made everything familiar. I didn’t see any dead scientists, but I didn’t see any live ones either. Just before we reached the command suite, a spear crossed in front and another behind me. Stop.

One of the Sorg crept forward to listen at the door. He growled in the low rumbling language they used only with each other.

In the entire time we’d known of them, the Hush had only ever addressed the Sorg in the breathy whistling Hush language. Then the Sorg would turn to each other and use guttural, snarling, barking sounds. Their own private language, one they didn’t invite us to try. The only word they allowed humans? The name of their planet and species: Sorg. Remembering this, I looked at my feet while the grunting noises went back and forth. Without the fizz buzzing through my skull and body, my will to live had kicked back in. One of the Sorg wedged his spear tip into the side of the remote door and cracked it open an inch to see inside, then rumbled back to the others. The other two answered with a furious chorus of their own whispered growls, and the first one wrenched it open a little more. I craned my head with my captors to see into the suite.

Just as in the atrium, the Sorg had broken and piled the furniture against the walls, made a large clearing in the center of the room. Well, empty except for a long hard looking silver pallet. On it lay another Sorg, with the claws and hooves of the others, but thinner and shorter. Skin more gray than red, hair darker under the white caking. He lay on his back. Dead? His chest didn’t move, and like I said… two eyes, two arms, two legs… lungs… Our enemies needed to breathe. Just like us. So… dead. Right? What did they want from me? I tried to remember anything I could about Sorg death rituals or religious rites, but I could only picture Mr. Sanderson slapping a quiz on my desk. “Unimpressive, Mr. Evans. Very unimpressive.”

Behind me, two of the Sorg warriors grumbled at the third. He had dropped down to his knees, bent his head and outstretched his arms toward the dead Sorg. Prayer? Worship? Here in the Milky Way, we would interpret this as worship. The other two tried to grab at him, pull him back up, but he resisted.

I looked back to the dead Sorg and my vision had gone wonky. I shook my head but could still see the Sorg, not moving, not breathing. But I also saw him floating just above his body. Not quite him, not solid. Like a holo. The floating version turned his head, looked right at us and I fell back with a gasp. He frowned, first at me, then at the scuffle happening among the three soldiers.

The two angry warriors had turned their spears away from guarding me to threaten the kneeling one. Jabbering at each other, they didn’t see the translucent Sorg sink back into his body and open his eyes. He bellowed the word from earlier, “Roo Hoo.” It ended the fracas and brought the kneeling Sorg to his feet.

The three pushed me forward, then down onto my knees. And left. I didn’t know if I should keep my eyes up or down. Didn’t know if I should try and get lower or stand. Should I stretch my arms out like the one worshipping Sorg had done? It couldn’t hurt.

“No. You. Not. Worship.”

He spoke! I didn’t know they could speak any human language. Without lips the words sounded strange but decipherable. “Worship,” came out a lot like “Ershift.” I curled my arms down to my sides. Waited a few beats, then stood back up.

“The one you saw. Wrong. Offense,” only it sounded like “Aw-shense”, but the snarl made this meaning clear. He looked away from me, made a huffing snort. Flared his nostril holes, the sharp triangular teeth showing in a grimace.

Frustrated?

At least… here in the Milky Way, we would label this expression frustration. And I think I understood why. On board the Bungee we officially spoke English, but unofficially we all communicated in a mix of languages to better connect.

“Nǐ xiǎo yīdiǎn,” a request to Ding.

“Hal turid mashrubaan?” an invitation to Adil.

“Belle! Stop med at skrige!” a plea I made for Belle to tone it down.

Just pieces of what I meant. Never enough words to make clear what I really wanted to convey. Frustrating. But at least I had English to fall back on. With my captors there would be no fall back. I couldn’t clarify if I got something wrong.

“Offense?” I prompted.

A long pause in which the Sorg studied me in silence, maybe trying to decide if I’d insulted him by speaking.

And in response, my breathing came too loud and fast.

The Sorg growled, a menacing low sound, a Rottweiler on a taut chain. “We Sorg do not worship…” and then the puffing, scraping noise I’d heard on news holos for the past three years. The Hush’s name for themselves. We Sorg do not worship the Hush.

I nodded in eager agreement. “No. No, sir. The Sorg do not worship…them.” While I bobbed my head I took in more of the Sorg commander. The not quite red skin, the slight bump of a nose, the silvery iris of his eyes. He had the same triple segmented arms and legs, but not as long. Not as thick. More Human… not human… Hush.

I’d heard of such a thing. When the aliens first arrived, we thought three species had come to us. The mirror suited Hush, the tall bright red Sorg… And another alien, acting as intermediary between the two. Its build between the slight and graceful Hush, and the rangy limbed Sorg. That third species acted shocked…no… offended by our human assumptions. They were no third species! They were Sorg! Mixed blood, yes. But, Sorg.

The commander appreciated my enthusiasm. His answering smile revealed the full set of knife point teeth, like looking into the mouth of a shark. “Farm boy…” came out like “Yarn voy,” drawled and contemplative. “You can grow Earth nature? Plants?” In his mouth the word sounded like “Hlants.”

“Wha… I yes. I grew Earth plants… on a farm.” I knew exactly which plants would most appeal to our former trade partners from the Andromeda galaxy. “Red clover. Sage. We grew both on my farm back in Kansas.”

If not for red clover or sage, we would never have gone to war. …Probably. …Possibly. For all the billions of planets that circle their stars inside a Goldilocks zone— not too hot or too cold— only Earth had the ideal placement and temperature. Our magnetic fields, our insulating atmosphere, our size and composition. We could grow anything. Right out of the ground.

The aliens marveled at our bounty. Like idiots, we showed all of it to them. Fruit. Grains. Vegetables. Spices. We traded them for technology. And the balance might have worked far longer than the eighteen months it lasted… if they hadn’t discovered the sage, and later the red clover. The aliens craved it, needed it. For medicine? For religion or ritual? They refused to explain to the polluting, carnivorous humans. Their desire for sage, for red clover, didn’t abide trade.

The silver in the commander’s eyes sharpened. And in a rush I knew what he wanted from me. The steaming agro bubbles and flooded carrot seedlings. The empty shops and hallways. They had crops, but couldn’t care for them. Had imprisoned or killed … probably killed… all the people who worked in the bubbles. “Grow clover here, Yarn voy?”

“Well it depends on… If the right seeds… Um I mean… Yes. I can grow them, yes.”

The shark smile again.

Do I smile back?

And then he drew something from behind him, smooth and black like a small stone. A seed? I reached for it. But that was no seed.

His claw depressed the stone.

The fizz. I dropped again to my knees, couldn’t see, couldn’t hear. Oil sizzling inside my brain and in the back of my eyes. Acid under my skin. I drowned in the corrosive pool of noise, and everything went dark.

Captive

“Owwww.” Someone gripped my hair, pulled my face off the floor. Wait. Not floor… ground. Damp sandy rock and grit that fixed to my skin.

Then a craggy voice shouted in my ear, “Looks like they fried him.” The hand released my hair and my face smacked down into the gravel. “Brain dead.”

Another yelling voice. “If he won’t live, then I would rather not watch his suffering, Cricket. Shall we finish him? We could smother him with—”

Finish him? “No!” Rolling onto my back, I tried to kick my feet toward the voices, punch away the blurry figures looking down at me. “No smothering.” My own voice sounded way too loud inside my ears and I groaned and curled my arms around my head. “I’m not brain dead. I’m… hungover or…something.”

“Or something is the right answer.” A hacking laugh that made me grip my head tighter. “The Sorg did a fry job on you, kiddo.”

The Sorg?

Mars! The mission! Faceless aliens standing over me. The words “farm boy” from the mouth of a shark. “Oh shit!” My eyes bugged out and I scrambled backward into a rock wall.

“Heh, that’s right,” the craggy voice said. “You got yourself captured.” The blurry grey solidified into a face. A crooked, lined face with bushy salt and pepper hair and a broken-toothed smile. “You’re inside Utopia Science Dome.”

“And um… you’re human? I mean… and are there…” My brain felt like it did the time I fell backwards out of the barn loft. Mom said she found me staggering behind our milk cow, Fussy, asking her for directions back to Colby. Maybe I should have let them smother me. “Hey! Who wanted to mercy kill me?” I focused on the other two faces. A hefty, olive-skinned woman in red coveralls and a young girl wearing torn cadet fatigues, her long black hair tucked behind her ears.

The cadet shrunk back, but the stocky woman crouched beside me and placed a hand on my forehead, looking into my eyes. “Sorry, but we’ve had a lot of death the last week. I’m very glad you will recover.” She stood back up and offered me her hand. “My name is Inya. I was the grav beam operator here.”

I looked at her hand and reached up and shook it. Her fingers gripped mine more tightly and she tried to pull me up, but I probably weighed more than two of her. I tugged my hand back and levered it against the rock wall for support, and dragged myself up. “Landon. Umm…nice to meet you.”

She cocked a thumb at the grizzled man. “That is Cricket. He is a medic.”

I nodded my head at the man as a greeting. But I had to ask, “Who’s the little girl?”

Inya tilted her head toward the long shadow that the girl had disappeared into. “That child’s name is Romi. He had only just arrived for a tour of the bubbles when the Hush attacked.”

Oops, okay, so the kid wasn’t a girl. “Hey Romi. Good to see all of you. I mean, humans. Besides me…” Standing actually made me feel better, less confused. It stretched my muscles. But when I took a step forward, I bumped my head against the jagged rock ceiling. “Is this a cave?”

Cricket’s wrinkled face morphed into a rueful smirk. “Yep. Sure is. Man made, too. We planned to connect to old lava tubes underneath us. Now it’s home, sweet, shitty home for us prisoners.” Another dry chuckle, and Cricket spit on the cave floor.

“And it’s just us?”

Inya nodded. “Yes. It is only us here now.”

A metal door sealed us inside and an ion track ran the length of the narrow cave, giving off a faint turquoise light. Toward the back of the cave was a collection of long narrow sandbags. Not the hard cold type of sandbags we sometimes used on Earth to build fighting positions or water breaks. Person sized, like bunks. And far more loosely packed, soft even.

Inya stretched out on one of the bunks. Romi and Cricket settled into two others. It felt like nighttime to me, but maybe because of the dim lighting inside the cave.

“They brought a sandbag for you after they threw you in. Extra huge just like you. Real damn considerate of them,” Cricket said. “If you turned out brain dead we could have used it as a sofa.” He expelled a low laugh of mostly wheezing air, followed by a round of coughing. Something about it unnerved me in the same way that Belle’s high-pitched staccato always did.

I pulled off my pressure suit before collapsing on the bag closest to Romi. At first my regulation khaki pants and t-shirt didn’t seem warm enough in this dank cave, but somehow, the sandbag warmed me right up.

“You know,” Cricket said. “Those Sorg outside this cave might not take kindly to the Allied Defense logo.”

“What?” I looked down at the gold stars glowing under the light of the ion track.

Inya looked me over. “Just turn it inside out,” she said.

I did what she told me while Romi watched wordlessly, his long hair hanging over his face. His chin and neck looked bruised. “Everyone else is dead?”

Cricket let out another of his brief irritating laughs. “Yep.”

“But there weren’t any—”

“Bodies?” When I craned my head I could see Cricket sitting on his bag and picking under his nails with a long shard of metal. “Aw hell, kid. You know the Sorg. They recycle everything. You’ll be digging into those soon enough.”

“I’m sorry. What do you mean?”

“I mean, those bastards turned them all into soil.”

Inya clucked at him. “Cricket, that is enough.”

“Soil?”

She shook her head. “The Hush used a type of machine I have not seen before. It was quick, and caused very little pain.” Inya punched at her sandbag to make a pillow at one end. “We will not speak of this again.”

My stomach lurched upward to my throat. All of them … dead? Utopia had housed almost 200 men and women. How many more had come on Romi’s agro tour? And only these three remained. I didn’t think I could sleep after that. Even though, I actually felt more comfortable on that damn rudimentary sandbag than I ever did in my stiff bunk on the Bungee. Nevertheless, I missed that plastic berth with a more painful sorrow than I’d ever had for the bedroom where I grew up. How had Bungee squad handled my capture? Did they think I died after the gravity beam closed? Had my name appeared on a casualty list alongside those of the soldiers who had died dropping into the dome? Missing in Action—Assumed Dead. How long would Allied Defense wait to inform Mom? My heart beat faster.

The Sorg would eventually kill me. But, the thought that everyone already believed me dead felt worse than accepting its impending reality. Had they already given up on me? Crushing loneliness sank with me into that squishy bag. I didn’t expect to, but I drifted off enough to dream. The Sorg commander floated above my bed, his pointed teeth showing.

In the morning, my brain clung to sleep, tried to convince me that noise and movement happening around me didn’t matter, wove the footsteps and grunts back into my dreams. Until a shout jarred me awake. I sat bolt upright to see a Sorg holding Romi aloft.

“Leave me alone!” the kid screamed.

The boy’s long dark hair wrapped around a scuffed orange claw. His small bare feet dangling just over his lumpy bed. Romi’s scrunched face reminded me of how Tonia had always snatched my easy-to-grip curls, nearly ripping them from my head to force me to sit up straighter in my chair. Or the pain as she’d pulled them like a leash, dragging me from the kitchen to the bathroom when I tracked mud inside. It had hurt like hell. Romi started to pant. Blood trickled down his forehead.

Without thinking, I jumped from my sand bunk. Aliens. A crying kid. Two years as a sweeper holding back civilians had trained my body to instinctively protect. On board the Bungee, we called that “lizard brain.” But the Sorg must have also had some lizard brain training. They dropped Romi and spun to face me. Two of them, almost as tall as me on their hooved feet, with longer arms, and metal spears. Maybe even the smooth black stone to make the debilitating fizz inside my head and skin. They looked me over with slitted red eyes and growled.

I tried to step back, forced my body not to tense. Look how defenseless, I am? Not worth your trouble. My heels both hit against my sandbag, so stepping back meant plopping down.

Oh! That worked.

Despite the strangeness of the alien faces, I registered approval in the chin thrusts and grins. And something more than approval… satisfaction. Of course. It took all my control not to roll my eyes. Even with aliens, that same familiar posturing. They’ll take down the big guy just to prove themselves.

One of them pointed toward me with the sharp end of his spear. “Ayhor” The Sorg looked right into my eyes. Almost as if he had said the word to me. But they didn’t do that. Everything, I ever read or heard said they didn’t, wouldn’t speak their own language to a human.

Even though anticipation zinged up and down my spine, I kept my body loose, unthreatening. I waited… they left me alone. Damn my stupid training, I needed to erase it from my head and body. What kept a soldier alive, could get a prisoner killed.

The two Sorg led us all out into main dome area where they had gathered to eat. I counted fifty of them crouching in groups before some of them started watching me back, and I decided to mind my own business.

The two Sorg guards gave us the same green spongey muffins everyone else ate. At least, I decided to call the mushy ball a muffin in my head. It looked more like a hunk of tree moss dripping dirty water. We prisoners all huddled together, crouched on the ground like the Sorg. My knees ached, but the position looked comfortable for our captors, their leg segments stacking up in accordion folds. Poor Cricket’s knees must have hurt even worse than mine. He kept wincing and stretching his legs out one at a time to shake the muscles loose.

“Don’t look my way, you damn trouble causer. What in the hell was that this morning?”

“Huh?” I looked to Inya who, braver than me, nibbled at her sponge muffin.

“What did he say to you, Landon?” Inya whispered. “The Sorg spoke to you.”

“What? How should I know? Even command can’t figure out what they’re talking about.”

Her dark eyes searched my own. “He spoke to you.”

“I… so what? You saw what they were doing to Romi. I just—”

Inya turned away and scooted just a little to turn her back on me. Ah, hell. I told myself that fear made her suspicious. She’d lived here for three weeks and watched her friends and comrades incinerated to dirt. I guess I couldn’t blame her for finding my interaction with the guards suspicious. I yanked my moss muffin into two.

“It’s not that bad, just don’t bite down.” Romi had let the trickling blood from his scalp dry to a crust on his forehead. He held up his own muffin for me to see and jammed the whole thing between his chapped lips.

“Yeah?” Copying him, I stuffed my moss hunk into my mouth. Oh god. It tasted like dirt and mold and fertilizer. I forced myself to swallow it down, tried not to think about the taste, the muddy water squishing from it inside my mouth. I really think it was a hunk of moss.

Romi snorted before slapping a hand over his mouth to stifle a laugh. He let his hair fall back over his face and curled extra tight into himself.

“You okay?”

When he looked back up, his round, dark eyes had filled with tears. “Thank you, for…” The boy shivered and hugged his thin legs to his chest. “They hate me. I feel like they only kept me alive so they could…”

“Will you two shut the hell up, you’re attracting attention.” Cricket coughed into my face as he scolded us.

Romi shrunk down further, his dark hair closing over his entire small body like a shroud. I shot Cricket a dirty look, and the old man scooted farther from me and closer to Inya. He didn’t know me well enough to understand that any glower from me ended with my eyes. Maybe he thought I would follow it with a shove or something harder because his wrinkled face turned red.

The two guards came back to stand over us.”Roo Hoo!” And then the spear game again. They poked us toward a pile of pressure suits with name badges and helmets. Romi, Cricket, and Inya had already set aside their picks, but I had to dig though all the suits. I don’t know why I bothered, none of them would fit. I turned toward the closest Sorg and pointed to the pile and then up and down my body. Wearing a pressure suit that didn’t fit wouldn’t help at all outside. I might as well walk out into the Martian atmosphere in my underwear. And die three steps out the airlock.

The guard roared in laughter, a horrible sound. Hyenas dancing over carrion. “Ayhor!” he bellowed. Then, he gestured to the other and both joined in the disturbing shrieking laughter. The second Sorg met my eyes like the first had. “Ayhor.”

I tried to place their expressions and tones into some category that made sense. Maybe it just wouldn’t translate. Not from their universe to this one. Again I tried not to react, pointed behind me, the way we had come and plucked at my inside-out t-shirt. Then at the heap of pressure suits. One of them let loose a string of grunts and barks like he understood. Grabbing my arm in his claw, he led me back to the cave to reclaim my own drop suit. The helmet still lay where I’d thrown it, and I picked it up and rolled it around in my hands to inspect it. No cracks. It would function.

The others had already started working in the agro bubbles, and they’d done about as well as a medic, grav beam operator, and untrained cadet could at growing plants on a dead planet. Which means they’d made a nice mess out of the entire business. Thick fog suffused the entire snaking length of the bubbles. Each section had a long raised planting bed with various protractible gardening tools. I could just make out tomato racks forming a V in the nearest bubble. Unused mounds of dark earth piled along the edges of the bubbles. Rich gardening soil from a grisly source. The memory of Cricket’s nasty cackling laugh prickled the back of my neck. “You’ll be digging into those soon enough!” I tried not to look that direction while I snapped off my helmet, peeled down the drop suit. But, proximity to the mounds of fresh dirt sparked my determination to survive this ordeal. First thing I did — crank down the heat. The cottony fog began to thin within seconds.

“What the hell?” Cricket slapped away my hand from the bio levers. “Leave them alone, you fool.”

The Sorg guarding us took great interest in how I planned to react to that small violence. They were out of luck if they wanted a show.

“You’re killing the plants. The heat is cranked too high and so is the moisture.”

“It helps them grow faster.”

“What? No it doesn’t. We used agro bubbles just like this back on my farm in Kansas. You’re killing them. If we dig them up now, we might be able to save them from rotting.”

Cricket screwed his face up, and balled his fist. He looked like he contemplated taking a real swing at me.

Inya wedged her bulk between us. “You worked on a farm, Landon? You can grow plants on Mars?” She didn’t realize how close her words came to what the Sorg leader asked me the night before, but they made me shiver.

“I know enough, I think.”

Inya nodded, still wary and distrusting. “Then we will do as you tell us.”

Behind her Cricket huffed and stomped his boots. “You just gonna take his word for it, Inya?”

I felt my face heat up. Confrontation didn’t come any easier to me on Mars than it had back in Kansas. “Why would I lie? I’m telling you, the plants aren’t going to make it if you keep the bubbles this wet and hot. And how long do you think they’ll keep us around if the plants die?”

Cricket’s lips pinched and he shook his head. But Inya and Romi seemed on board. “I think we should listen to him.” Romi turned pleading eyes to the other two.

Faced with Inya and Romi’s resistance, Cricket finally backed off. “Fine. Dammit, have it your way. But this better work.”

Once the dense fog cleared and the temperature dropped from sauna level to spring planting conditions, I saw the next problem: The soil. Varying in shades of red and beige, the dirt around the tender seedlings differed from box to box. I ladled some into the palm of my hand, sifted through it. Fine red dust and glassy yellow sand. “Oh, crap.” The Utopia staff never planned to feed people from the agro bubbles. They’d grown crops as experiments. It looked like the dome scientists had tried different techniques to leach chlorine and perchlorates from Mars soil. Maybe then infused it with various nutrients? Interesting… but our survival depended on the survival of the seedlings. Screw the experiments. “We need to switch out all this dirt.”

Inya and Romi answered with somber nods. But, Cricket’s face turned red, and he waved a hand trowel in the air. “Replace them? With what?” He knew exactly what would replace the mixes in the planting boxes.

“You said yourself that—”

“Boy, I know you can’t mean to use the ashes of all the brave people who served on this base.” He squinted up at me.

“It… they aren’t ashes. It’s soil and…” I looked to Inya for help, but she would’t meet my eyes. How could I convince them? “Listen, the dirt in those raised beds was intended for experimental plantings. If we don’t change it out, then some… probably most of the plants won’t make it.”

Inya might not have trusted me, but she didn’t have Cricket’s blind hatred. How had I managed to get on his bad side so fast? “Inya, I want to survive this. Don’t you? Won’t you do whatever it takes to survive?”

Inya took a deep breath, looked at the dark mounds of dirt. “If you say so, Landon. I will do this.”

Okay then. She and Romi took turns shoveling out the planting boxes. I followed behind them to fill the planters back up again with the dark soil, and tried not to think too closely about that nutrient rich dirt sifting through my fingers. Cricket refused to help with any of it at first, but later he did shake the tender seedling roots free of Mars sand.

Once I showed Romi to look for the curling edges and swollen veins of the overwatered plants, he got a good eye for it. He organized them by which looked strongest, could survive, separating from the ones that wouldn’t make it. Kale, garlic, radishes, and arugula all looked okay. Way better than the drowning herbs on our farm after our watering coil busted. Leeks seemed fine. Dandelions, chives, peas just needed new dirt and less water. The racks of tomatoes looked healthiest, tiny vines reaching toward the LED tracking. But, I didn’t see any red clover included in the seedlings, which made sweat prickle on the back of my neck. I’d promised the Sorg commander clover. Then, hallelujah, I found some bloated sage, just on the verge of rot. Whatever effect the Hush and Sorg got from consuming clover happened even stronger with sage. At least, I thought it did. For a solid two years, the crop recommendation pamphlets listed sage as the first choice between the two.

Using the tips of my fingers, I brushed all the muddy soil away, blew grains of red dust from the green felty leaves, poked tiny holes to aerate the roots. “Come on little guys, you can do it. Grow for me?”

Romi smiled as I talked to the tiny plants, a shy grin that made his nose crinkle up and a dimple emerge on one cheek that reminded me of Little Harold. For the first time since I met him — if you could call coming back to consciousness in a prison cell “meeting” — the poor kid didn’t look terrified. His child-like innocence brought to mind my nephews and home with such clarity that I wanted to keep that smile going, so I kept talking. “I think I know why the Utopia scientists chose you guys for their experiments,” I whispered to the little sage plants. “It likes to grow in sandy soil, and Mars has a whole lot of sand. That’s why I never had much luck with it back home. The dirt in Kansas is way too good for sage.”

Romi’s face did the exact opposite that I hoped, and the crinkle-nose smile disappeared, the little bit of color he had drained from his cheeks. “But these will live, right? If we kill the sage, they’ll be mad. They’ll…” The young boy started panting. Hyperventilating, like a panic attack.

“Yeah! Romi, don’t worry. It’s definitely going to live. Don’t even worry about that.” The Sorg leader’s shark tooth smile loomed at the front of my thoughts. Whatever reason they’d kept Romi alive, the Sorg let me live so that I could do this, grow the plants. And if the plants died, I knew that I would die too.

The Sorg changed guard several times, but I couldn’t tell them apart well enough to know if our original two returned to lead us back to the dome. All I knew was, by the time we rolled our pressure suits over our dirt caked clothes and made the long trudging march back to the dome, the muscles in my back throbbed from digging, my bones felt sore and bruised from kneeling, and every other part of my body ached with hunger. I really hoped we got to eat again.

After we shed all our protective coverings, the Sorg guard led us back to the same main dome area where everyone had gathered for the moss muffin breakfast. This time, I would have no problem eating that hunk of dirty vegetation if that’s what they gave us. But it didn’t look like we would get another meal, not right away at least. It didn’t even look like a meal would take place.

Instead of the moss chunks, we gathered around glass buckets of water steaming on heat rods. Ravenous, my head swimming from it, I dropped to our spot on the yellow rock floor.

I leaned toward Romi. “What’s going on? Do we get to eat again?” The kid looked way too scared to answer me. Maybe he hadn’t just exaggerated about the Sorg having a malicious interest in him. Twice, as we passed the other groups, claws reached out to tug his hair, slash as his pale skin. No wonder his grey cadet fatigues had so many cuts and rips. “Romi? You okay?”

Cricket made a huffing noise. “Stop talking and undress!”

“Do what?”

Cricket made pointed eyes at the groups of Sorg gathered around their own steaming buckets. They’d all started unwinding the long white coverings. Men and women both. Those gauzy bandages made it impossible to tell them apart, and turned their bodies into featureless mummies. But the differences became clear once the pebbled red skin appeared. Red breasts, long red penises. Muscled stomachs with two navals, the round red globes of their buttocks.

After coiling the strips of material into the boiling water, the Sorg added a pungent alien detergent on top. Heavy green fog massed over the glass buckets. Then the Sorg males and females used that same detergent on their bodies. The men and women soaped their genitalia in full sight of each other and us, without any shame or self consciousness. They picked at their nostrils, between their teeth, and inside their anuses. Gargled with the soapy water, and spit it back into the glass pots.

Cricket, Romi, and Inya also undressed. Tugging off their dirty socks, mud-stained shirts and pants to boil in our group’s soapy pail. When he saw me just watching, dumbstruck, one of the guards nipped at my side with his spear. Growled a warning.

Okay! I didn’t mind cleaning up. Sticky sweat had cleaved my skin and clothes together under the pressure suit. I dropped my dirty canvas shoes into the boiling water. My socks. Grasped the hem of my t-shirt and pulled it off. And then stalled out. Despite living in close quarters with my drop squad, I still didn’t feel comfortable getting naked with a bunch of strangers, let alone hostile aliens. On the Bungee, nudity only happened after an injury. No one cared about checking each other out when they needed a leg or arm reattached. As the Sorg scraped and polished themselves in all sorts of meticulousness, they kept craning their heads to watch us. Especially me.

Inya had already unzipped her coveralls, revealing a sturdy white bra and cotton underwear. My face heated up and I tried to find a place to set my eyes that wouldn’t have a naked body in it.

“There is no modesty here, Landon,” Inya said. “You will see everything they do tonight.”

“Everything they do?” I’d already seen way more than I wanted. But I thought of all the times Yulia had made fun of my Kansas prudishness.”You need relax, Mysha. Why so shy? We all have same parts, more or less.” Fine. Whatever. I undid my pants and pulled off my regulation underwear. Balled it all up and tossed it in the simmering water.

One of the guards scooped the green caustic soap on top. Up close, it smelled like rotted vegetation. Like something green… but not Earth green. The rolling steam had a metallic or chemical taint underneath. Something natural on their planet? Something added?

I jumped when one of the naked Sorg touched my arm with his claw. Not to scratch, like they tried with Romi, but to bend my elbow and test the range of my shoulder. Two others came forward to examine the muscles under my skin.

“Ayhor. Ayhor.”

I think it meant “big.” I stood half a head higher than most of them.Without hooves. My shoulders wider. Muscles thicker. I tried to sit back down a few times but they kept hauling me up.

“Ayhor.” One of them grabbed for my dick.

“Okay, that’s enough.” I pushed the naked bodies and way-too-close serrated claws away from me, and sank back down.

The first Sorg who’d prodded and poked at me shouted angry grunts and hopped backwards, the triple segmented legs stretching and snapping like springs.

A few breathless, worried moments passed. But, I crossed my arms and legs, determined not to rise again unless I had my pants back on.

Something in my position or expression made the Sorg dissolve into the yapping hyena howls of laughter. But they also gave up their curious examination of the ayhor human prisoner.

*

The guards expected us to wash our bodies and hair with the green soap. Spear points jabbed at the spots they wanted scrubbed. The pungent soap made me cough and feel queasy. “There’s more food coming, right?” I asked a guard, forgetting that he would have no idea what I said.

Our bare feet especially disgusted them, and I had to show the guards that I rubbed between every toe, under every nail. Only after a thorough washing did they hand out more food. Something dense and crunchy that tasted like tofu and tubes of green paste that I rolled around between my hands while I let the block of tofu-tasting stuff settle.

“It’s good. It tastes like cashew butter,” Romi whispered.

“Yeah?” I squirted it in my mouth and swallowed. Yeah, nutty-tasting. “It is good. Real good.” But not cashews… hazelnuts. The taste reminded me of my last birthday with the squad. I turned 21 the week before Ding got killed. Hell, just a month before I wound up a prisoner. Yulia got a bottle of Pervak on Orbit 3 so we could turn the day into a party. Adil played music on his oud and sang songs I didn’t understand the words to. His voice low and clear, the opposite range from Belle’s shrill notes on my comm. Adil smiled at me after and asked me how I liked his singing. Did I want him to sing me something in English? So close, the memory felt so close that I could hear the vibrating notes of the oud again in my head. I’d drifted off without realizing it, stopped myself just before belting out some whacked approximation of Adil’s singing.

“What was in that stuff?” The tube had dissolved in my hand after I ate the contents, and my palm tingled where it disappeared. I rubbed it against my naked thigh.

All around me the Sorg had turned into writhing and frenzied creatures. They tackled each other to the ground with joyous hyena yelps and angry growls. Claws extended. Pointed teeth bared. Red throats opened and howling… not howling… singing.

And… fucking.

They copulated in varying pairs and groups.The females and males joining in all types of combinations and styles. My vision doubled and turned kaleidoscope. The polished floor glowed from the recessed lights set into the dome walls. Beyond those lights, stars glittered against the red dust haze of the Mars night. Something jostled against me and I swung my head, my movements slow, the room spinning. It felt like trying to see through the whirring tunnel of a gravity beam.

The two males — the ones who had so much interest in the workings of my shoulders and arms — bent and contorted beside me. The joints of their arms and legs intertwined as one pinned the other to the floor. Eye level to me, a glossy red penis hammered into the protuberant ass of the Sorg beneath him. As he fucked, his spiked teeth dragged across the back of the other, carving into the glistening crimson skin of his partner and leaving behind a path of even brighter red blood. I watched them, interested. No, transfixed. Until the blood dripped and splashed onto my hand.

Gasping, I shook my head and took a deep breath. My lungs raw and sore. With the pain, some clarity returned. I didn’t want those claws and pointed teeth anywhere near me. On the very edge of the dome, dark shadows could hide someone small, like Romi but not someone with my large body. Still, I scooted on my ass toward one of those shadowed overhangs, hoping not to attract attention. The farther I got from the others, the easier it got to think without getting distracted by lights, sounds… memories. I managed to stagger to an abandoned kiosk labeled Mail and Delivery, my hands frisked the blue plastic panels for a way inside.

But, I’d only imagined my stealth. One of the Sorg guards caught at my bare skin with his claws and hauled me back toward the others.

The sex and wrestling had started to die down and attention turned to the dias. The base leader stood in front of the room. More fierce… more Sorg than I’d last seen him. His hair more thickly caked into tall white spikes. The gray tinge to his red skin obscured by a shiny gel or oil he’d slicked over his naked body. The keratin hooves stood higher too, like he’d added something on the bottoms to make his legs seem longer. Although, he still stood shorter and looked to weigh less than any of the soldiers under his command. He threw his hands in the air and grunted and barked in their bellowing animal language, beat on his chest like an angry chimpanzee. “Hergah! Hergah!”

The Sorg troops unwound themselves from each other and gave him all their attention. “Hergah!” They shouted with him, faces tipped to the dome’s fontanel overhead.

The Sorg holding me in place let go, and I sank down, scooted my legs underneath my body, and folded my arms to try to make myself a smaller target of attention. Scouring the room for the other prisoners, I found Inya and Cricket had moved toward the back of the room and managed to conceal themselves inside a fat plume of soap fog coming from two large boiling buckets of the white mummy wraps. Even from the edge of the crowd of Sorg, that syrupy green smell made my eyes water. It must have had suffocating potency from where they crouched behind the buckets. I didn’t see Romi’s dark head anywhere, but he was so small that maybe he managed to hide in the press of all the red bodies.

“Hergah!” A naked Sorg launched himself from the pack toward the leader. The hybrid commander assumed an elbows up stance just before they crashed together, then wrapped his threefold arms around his opponent trying to pull him to the ground. His challenger broke loose and the commander caught a clawed nail on the edge of his eye. But a broad knife-tooth smile showed his appreciation for the other’s technique. They separated and circled each other, each with arms radiating from their red bodies, the three hinges undulating, trying to catch their opponent. Kicking, biting, punching stabs… nothing appeared off limits as they clashed in their contorted postures.

Raising just the bottom section of a triptych leg, the leader kicked his thick hoof into the other’s groin. That must hurt just as much as it would on a human. His challenger fell to the ground with a coughing grumbling noise like an old fashioned motor. Jumping up, the dome audience barked and yelped their praise. Even the defeated Sorg rose on corrugated limbs and howled in praise for his leader.

Three more challengers flung themselves at the base commander, two female and another male. Accordion limbs snapping like jaws of insects, orange claws protracted. Each time, the leader beat them down to the adulation of his troops. By the fourth match, I began to see patterns in the circling they did, the rhythm of their jerking arms. I understood that the Sorg didn’t fight the leader, not really. I was watching a performance. At the conclusion of the last feigned clash, the leader made a rousing speech that I understood nothing of. The public sex, the violent mock fights had nothing on the din and ferocity that the speech whipped them into. The hybrid Sorg commander strutted, chest out and arms raised and oscillating in the battle ready patterns. His bright red penis engorged and slapping against his thigh, he neared the area where I huddled in on myself… passing by without noticing me.

Then the commander reached into a cluster of his soldiers while bellowing in triumph, the roar of a grizzly. Yanking free again, he raised one three hinged arm. Locked in his orange claw was Romi’s pale, fragile human ankle. The boy’s long black hair dangled to the floor as he twisted and flailed, trying to free himself.

“Romi!” I tried to force my wobbly legs up, but all the Sorg had surged up as well, roused by their commander’s growl. “Romi!”I shouted again. He couldn’t hear me, but I attracted the attention of a guard, who sank his claws into my hair and dragged me off my feet, his pointed teeth snapping in my face.

“I…I’m sorry… I…” But it made no difference what excuse I babbled in my Earth language. He could kill me as easily as the commander had hoisted Romi over the crowd.

The guard barked something at me, then picked up one of the glass buckets filled with soapy strips of cloth and tipped it into my face. I sputtered and spit until he gripped my jaw with his hooked orange barb and pried open my gritted teeth. Soapy liquid spilled into my mouth, and I swallowed it down.

Oh.

The tube of hazelnut tasting paste hadn’t made my head swim. That pungent green soap! It pulled me back under its murky trance, and the night furled out like Romi’s dark hair, the void of space outside our drop ship, the blacktop road from Colby to our farm. I ended up flat on my back, no more comprehension of my surroundings than the fragile seedlings in the agro bubbles. Outside the glass-topped dome, I could see the cratered, potato-shaped moon Phobos traveling across the night sky.

Fighter

Besides a little watering and light adjustment, we didn’t have much to do. Our seedlings grew at the same pace they would have back in Kansas. We saved the small gardening tasks for when the guards paid attention to us, and the rest of the time we slept. The Sorg only allowed us three hours in the cave. At the end of each night — the fighting and sex finished, the water and green soap boiled down — the Sorg wandered away to the other parts of the dome. Then, us prisoners had to clean up. We fanned the drug-sodden air up to intake fans mounted on the walls, stacked the glass buckets, and mopped the floor of blood and bodily secretions.

“You okay?” I whispered to Romi at the end of another long night. My arms shook as I nudged a bucket in place. Two nights earlier, Inya had cracked one in half, and the guards punished her with the fizz until her screams turned to gasping moans. Then one of the Sorg lasered the bucket halves together again with the tip of his spear. It took less than a minute of his effort.

Romi shrank out of my reach. “Leave me alone!”

“Romi?” The hybrid commander hadn’t pulled him out of the throng, held him up for ridicule again since my first night in the dome. But that didn’t mean the other Sorg didn’t pay him attention. Every chance they got, they pinched his pale skin with their claws and pulled at his hair. After suffering another gauntlet of pain during the moss chunk breakfast, he’d grabbed a pair of gardening shears, lopped off a chunk of the long black hair the Sorg couldn’t resist. But our watchers fell on him just as fast, blackening his eye with a red elbow jab and snapping the shears apart with a claw. As much as Romi’s hair offended them, they would not permit him to cut it and ruin their game of tormenting him. “Romi, is there anything—”

“Leave me alone,” he hissed.

One of our loafing guards propped herself up on her corrugated arms “Roo Hoo!” She shot a bolt of hot energy from the tip of her spear and it punched into Romi’s calf, knocked him to his knees.

“It… that was me!” I tapped on my chest, but the guard didn’t even look. She tipped her head back to yip and howl in the hyena laugh that always managed to send a ripple of fear down my spine. Slapping at the smoking burn, Romi crawled back to standing.

*

Once the green soap bubbled away to mist, the Sorg shook off its effects. They rewrapped their mummy bindings and stretched, refreshed by the tofu brick, the sex, the violence… I had no idea. Clearly, the Sorg didn’t need sleep like we did. Instead of deep sleep, they lounged. The hard rock floor, the piles of broken furniture and dismantled kiosks, even the muddy ground of the agro bubbles, all made acceptable surfaces for our guards to recline. Protracted limbs flopped out at awkward angles.

No catnap between guard shifts could make up for that sleep loss in a human. My vision blurred and none of my limbs cooperating, I staggered through the cleaning duties with the other prisoners.

It took hours to clean the expansive central space of the dome, and because of this, pushing a mop emerged as the favorite duty assigned to us. Way easier to lean on a mop handle than circle round the room flapping enormous silicone wings. My back and shoulders ached after a night spent pushing clouds of thick steam to the intake fans.

Cricket and Inya always tried to grab for the mops first. Assholes. I usually just let it go, after all if those wings left me sore, they must really hurt the others. But that night, I’d really just had enough. Neither Cricket nor Inya had helped with watering or aerating in the bubbles, and Romi had a red blistering wound on his leg. So, I marched over to where Inya and Cricket trudged beside each other with their heavy mops.

“Hey,” I said. “We had the wings yesterday.” They ignored me, so I stepped into Cricket’s path. “Our turn with the mops.”

After two weeks of captivity together, Cricket didn’t like me now any more than he had at the first. Even inside the agro bubbles, he questioned all my instructions. Sometimes, I even thought he sloshed more water into the boxes, or tilted the LEDs the wrong angle on purpose, spite overtaking his need for survival. Crazy old man. I hated him back, even though I didn’t want to. The Sorg, I tried to remind myself when I felt anger burn its way into my fists. You hate the Sorg, not this broken down fossil.

Cricket tried to plow me out of his way with the mop. “We got them first,” he snarled.

“Because you and Inya didn’t finish stacking the buckets!” Still coming off the soap drug, I had a backbone that felt unfamiliar to me. Height and bulk had only ever made me clumsy. Oafish. But dammit, I’d had enough of his relentless cranky hatred for me. His cackles when seedlings failed. His snort of disdain as the Sorg ogled the width of my biceps. His obvious suspicion when they growled their strange language at me. Like I understood any more than he did!

He squinted at me with that same cynical look on his face. “Get out of my way.”

“No. It’s our turn with the mops.” I grabbed the handle of his, but Cricket gripped it tight in both fists. When I shook it, he only held tighter. “Give it.”

“No!”

“Let him go, Landon,” said Inya as she poked the handle of her own mop toward me.

I batted it out of the way, and she responded by stabbing toward me with the tip, holding the mop in the same way the Sorg hurl their laser spears.

Our guards had unfolded themselves to watch, and used those very bolt producing weapons to point out what interested them in the confrontation. The damn Sorg. If not for them and their stupid cleaning ritual, their never-ending celebration of sex and violence that took place all night, every single night, I wouldn’t care about who got to lean on a mop for a couple hours.

“Fine,” I grumbled and shoved the handle away. But the green soap drug had made me careless of my strength. Cricket, moth-eaten sack of dried bones, flew head over heals across the polished rock.

Our guards’ staccato yipping laughter froze me in place.

“I…” didn’t mean to. A million scenes from playgrounds, school hallways, football fields, the alley beside Hotson Farm & Hardware. Someone hitting and someone falling. But in all those scenes, someone else knocked me to the ground. And I knew exactly how the humiliation mixed with the physical pain. How bad they both hurt.

Cricket’s lip must have split on the rock floor, a small fissure dripped blood down his chin. He pushed himself to his knees, then up on shaking legs to his feet. Behind me the barking yelps increased. The guards always enjoyed the sight of blood, theirs or ours.

Shame had me staggering forward, scraping the mop back up. I held it out to Cricket.

But he gave me another of his suspicious glares, wiped the blood off on the hem of his shirt, and picked up my abandoned silicone wings. And it might have gone okay at that point, all of us falling back into place— not exactly friends— but fellow captives. If only Romi hadn’t laughed. Quick, short, more air than sound. But, still unmistakable as laughter. Behind the billowing grey silicone wings, he hid his smile from the guards, but not from us. Inya, Cricket, me… we all saw the little moment of triumph. And, it split our group in two. After that, none of us viewed ourselves as “prisoners” or “captives.” There was Inya and Cricket. There was Romi and Landon.

The next day a guard interrupted my agro bubble nap time, poking my back with his spear tip. I jumped up, my eyes flicking around the bubble sections. Romi had squirreled away in the shadows of the furthest bubble, hidden from sight. Cricket and Inya must have woken up earlier, they’d sunk their hands into the dirt to look busy. But, the guard didn’t care about them.

“Roo Hoo, Ayhor.”

He wanted me to come with him. “Okay. I gotta put my suit on.” I rolled it over my clothes, but paused with my helmet in one hand. “Just me?” I tapped my chest and then gestured to the rest of the bubble. If I sprinted, maybe I could reach Romi at the end of the bubble snake and wake him before the guard caught him asleep.

The guard hoisted his spear and jabbed it in my direction, holding it an inch from my face “Roo Hoo.”

“Okay, okay.” I threw my hands up. “Got it.”

Inside the dome, three other Sorg joined my guard as we traveled to the commander’s room. When the door slid open my guards rumbled to each other without paying much attention to me, way more interested in their hybrid leader than a single human prisoner. Like before, the commander lay on his narrow pallet in the shadowy room, arms at his sides. But unlike last time, his chest moved, claws twitched, and a grimace of jagged triangle teeth flashed in frustration. Like we’d interrupted his sleep. No… like he couldn’t get to sleep.

My Sorg escort deflated, as if finding their leader awake and aware, not in the out-of-body trance had also disappointed them. They waited until he opened his eyes to shove me toward him and backed from the room. When the door slid back, he rose on his strange articulated legs to face me. The shark smile split his face, silvery red eyes tracking over my body with a wet and hungry shine. Knowing both the Hush and Sorg were herbivore species was a comfort right then. “Yarn Voy!”

“Wha…” Oh. Farm Boy. “I… it’s going to take more time.” Shit. Most of the vegetables had another month before harvest. But, more than vegetables, he would want the sage. “Two weeks and I can bring you—”

“Ayhor.” He pulled my right arm out from my side and bent the elbow. Okay? Orange pincers closed over my forearms, then my shoulders, and finally, my neck… I swallowed and tried not to flinch. The other Sorg had already examined me this way. Maybe he just wanted a turn? The commander tugged at his mummy wrappings and pulled out another smooth black stone, exactly like the one he’d pressed to shoot me up with the fizz.

On instinct, I took a step back. Not that a foot or two could save me. The effect didn’t seem to rely on proximity. But instead of the fizz, a holo sprang to life in the room. A life-sized replay of Cricket and my tug-of-war over the mop. The old man looked withered, frail, and weak next to my bulk. Holo-me shoved. And holo-Cricket flipped through the air.

Like the guards, the Sorg commander howled with laughter at the old man’s lip dripping blood. He grasped my head between his claws, the tip of the appendages curling in toward my eyes.

“I didn’t mean to—”

“Ayhor,” he purred at me and released my head just as the holo cut off. “Hergah.”

Fight.

The Sorg commander started the circling pace, triple segmented arms expanded and waving. Double sets of elbows pointed up in the stance that preceded every fight.

I didn’t dare move.

“Hergah!” As he came closer, the claws reached out to snap at my arms hanging still at my sides. His growling reached a lower, snarling range. A dog about to bite. “Hergah!”

Slow as a leaf unfurling in the sun, I raised my arms and imitated the commander’s position, arms held open with my elbows raised. Then, I bounced on my toes trying to recreate the bobbing motion of the accordion-fold legs. What now? I waited for him to strike, the sharp orange claws to slash my throat or face. When he leaned forward, ready to charge, I dropped the ridiculous mimicry, curled my arms over my head, squeezed my eyes shut.

But he didn’t charge. His claws closed over my wrists like shackles and he pulled my arms back out from my body…gently. When I opened my eyes again, he grumbled words that reminded me of Mom’s sewing machine buzzing through the bumpy seam of a quilt. And rolled my arms forward, elbows pointed up. Oh. That shove and Cricket’s airborne somersault had entertained him. And now, he didn’t want to attack me. He wanted to train me?

I shook out my arms and got them better positioned to look dangerous to a Sorg, elbows raised to the air, with fingers curled like claws. None of it made sense if I really meant to fight any creature of any species. But it did look kind of cool. I spread my legs and shuffled side to side on my toes, bobbing up and down.

The Sorg commander roared his approval, the terrifying “Hergah!” When he repositioned me for one of the face-first Sorg charges, I knew what he wanted right away. I bared my teeth, shook my head in my best impression of a rabid dog. He liked that too. We worked through several attack combinations. In one I charged to his face with my fingers spread like claws. At the last moment, the commander unfurled one arm to wind around my waist and twist me off my feet.

In another, he feinted backward, as if knocked off his own keratin hooves. Embodying their idea of the stupid human, I would then turn away to do the elbows up fighting pose. With my back to him, the commander sprang up in the air on his stackable legs. He landed on my shoulders with all four insect like limbs twining round my head. I would fall forward onto my face, and the commander let loose just in time so he could stand triumphant on my back. A show stopping move only possible because I had so much height and shoulder breadth on him. And, I got the point… it made his Hush ancestry, the slighter and shorter stature than the others, into an unforeseen advantage.

I surprised myself by forgetting my fear of him, that he might like to really kill me at the end of the display. Practicing all the moves reminded me of horsing around with Garret, James, and Little Harold. Letting the commander play at beating me up felt no different than pretending Tonia’s boys could take me down using all sorts of outlandish methods. At the end of the day, I’d almost had fun.

Romi’s dark eyes found mine as soon as we gathered at the steaming buckets. He had a new bruise on his face from when I’d last seen him that morning. “What happened to your—”

“Nothing.” He scowled. “Where were you all day?”

Huddling and whispering to each other, Cricket and Inya didn’t even look my way. They no longer spoke to Romi or me, but I thought they might at least care that I’d gotten dragged away for the entire day. It seemed like the divide between our two factions went deeper than I’d thought. But at least now they traded off on the mop duty.

“It was crazy,” I whispered. “The commander had me practice fighting him.” When Romi gasped and looked me over, I clarified.”Not real fighting, that fake stuff they do after the sex.” So as not to have to parse out Romi’s reaction, I busied myself yanking off my shirt and pants. The Sorg treated me better than the others because they admired my size. Maybe they disliked Romi for the same reason? When the green soap started boiling, the guards passed out the food. But my stomach cramped with nerves, and I gave Romi my nut paste tube.

He rolled it in his palms. “Then you take some of my brick.” He broke it into two pieces and handed one to me.

“Nah, I’m good. I’m kind of worried, actually. You don’t think he’ll decide to kill me for a better finish?”

Romi bit into the tofu block. “They haven’t killed me yet, and I can tell they want to. When the guard came back from taking you to the commander, he searched the bubbles to find me and…” Romi motioned to his eye.

“I’m sorry. I wish—”

“You stuck up for me the first day.” He flashed a dark look at me from under the shadowed waterfall of his hair. Romi always dodged my questions and attempts at sympathy. I couldn’t figure it out, but I thought he might feel embarrassed, or like he’d done something to attract their mistreatment. For the first time I saw what he really felt and it didn’t look like shame. He was angry.

“Romi, you know I can’t… there’s nothing…” How did he think I could help him? We were both prisoners, trapped in this dome with the enemy.

“Just forget it.”

I tried to wave away the drugged soap steam that night. Making a believable spectacle of our fight might save me from getting my jugular slashed or an eye skewered out by those snapping orange claws. I needed my wits about me to complete the show, and to make our match rousing enough that the commander wouldn’t decide to improvise. Or kill me.

Back in Colby I’d have welcomed a slash to the jugular if it meant getting out of doing some kind of exhibition fight… I hated anything that drew attention to me. Plays, music, even class presentations, I avoided them all like I avoided confrontation. No thanks. But the real threat of death worked a miracle on my natural self-consciousness. And heck, I didn’t even need to “picture the audience naked” like my speech teacher advised. Of course, I would also be nude for the fight.

Shit. Maybe we should have practiced like that? Another thing I didn’t want getting slashed by a claw.

Once the public sex for the evening ended, and everyone readied themselves for the violence, I rose from cowering on the floor to a ready crouch. The commander had worked out a signal, double thump of his left claw against his thigh, that would initiate my attack.

There!

I jumped up and imitated the face forward, claws fanned open, charge position. Our guards offered hideous lipless grins rather than trying to subdue me. When I’d tried hiding, they had beaten and drugged me. But challenging the leader to a fight? They gave me their full approval.

The crowded Sorg parted to help along my charge, eager to see the big human’s fighting skills. Some even cheered me on, “Ayhor!” Snapping my teeth and leaning forward, I barreled toward the commander. And just like we rehearsed, he whipped me to the side with his arm lassoed on my waist. I let the motion of his three segmented arm flip me upside-down. I even managed to sling my legs in the air as I cartwheeled over. Not easy for a guy my size, but I think it came out okay. The crowd howled and yipped their approval. Good so far.

Next we did the circling and arm waving. I had the stance down, my arms undulating in time with my opponent. The commander charged toward my face with his claws snapping, ready to rip at my skin with the sharp pinchers. I raised my leg in a frozen karate kick to block him. If I’d had the triple parts of a Sorg leg, I could have done a wrapping move right then, but my legs only bent at the knee. Instead, I spun and did a regular knee strike I had learned on Orbit 3. And the commander dodged by putting the accordion fold to his legs in action, an uncoiled spring tipping backward in a feint. Now the big finish. I turned, did the Sorg victory stance, my arms raised and elbows out. The Sorg commander jumped me, origami limbs binding my face, cutting off my oxygen. I staggered forward in a lunging step, another, but kept my balance. In our practice, the commander hadn’t squeezed as tight, as close. I knew it— the hybrid planned to really kill me! Bucking and twisting, I struggled to get him off my shoulders. My fists beat at the rigid muscles, my nails scratched at the leathery skin. I dropped to my knees, my lungs burning with the need for air. And, just as I fell to the ground… the Sorg commander released me. Planted a hoof onto the center of my back. Exactly the way we rehearsed.

Our audience went crazy, the Sorg euphoric over their leader’s victory. He kept that hoof on me a long while as he soaked in the adulation. Fine by me. Tears streamed from my eyes as I gulped air, my sweat clammy against the rock floor. It was over.

I should have known better. The Sorg wanted a repeat. Many repeats. The commander pulled me from the agro bubbles every day to come up with new moves. New ways he could defeat the large human and garner respect from the Sorg under a hybrid’s command. Which I didn’t mind, except that all the strategizing and practice cut into my sleep time in the bubbles. I was tired.

We had enough moves now that we kind of freestyled them at night without a set order. Every fight ended with a big move that would showcase how the hybrid commander’s differences from a full blood Sorg made him a better fighter. Sometimes that meant jumping on my back or shoulders to take me down. Sometimes he demonstrated how quick his shorter legs could wrap and trip me. Sometimes he slipped inside the reach of my arms and jabbed his claws in an undercut to slice at my torso. I really hated that move. He liked to cut me deep enough that I bled, always a crowd-pleaser.

During one of our practices, warriors rushed inside with a cacophony of anxious grunting. Two of them jerked me from the commander’s room and tucked me behind a stack of broken chairs in the hallway. “What’s going on?”

One of the Sorg shoved me down to my knees, a claw against my head until it bowed to my chin, pressing hard into my collarbone. Then furtive debate took place and other Sorg hauled me up just before three silver suits appeared. We Sorg do not worship the Hush, I remembered. The Sorg, who typically lounged around growling at each other, sometimes wrestling or destroying furniture, now waited at attention as the commander had the Hush inside his room. They didn’t stay long, and after they left, the commander shooed away his soldiers and brought me back in. I thought he wanted more practice, but he grasped my shoulder with his claw, met my eyes. “Yarn voy, have clover?”

“Not yet. Soon. Another week.” I didn’t have clover, wouldn’t have it, but I would harvest the sage in another week, and I expected to impress him. The aliens had prized sage above everything else that grew on Earth.

The commander made the sewing machine rumble that I thought might be a sound of contemplation. Whenever his fight choreography faced the limitations of my single jointed limbs he made this same rumble. “Need.” He motioned to the pallet I always found him lying on. “Need clover.”

Oh. Clover must play a role in that trance I witnessed. Without it, he couldn’t leave his body and go… wherever he went in that state. “Soon,” I promised.

That night the fighting had a strange intensity. He kicked harder, snarled louder, the claws snapped closer until he caught the skin under my arm, slicing me down the entire length of my body. Deep enough that the flesh split to the bone and the white of my rib showed. Then, I had to sweat and grit my teeth while pushing the edges of my wound together. Dangling her bright red naked breasts in my face, the Sorg female did a lousy job with the medical fuser. I’d reattached enough of Yulia's parts that I knew my way around veins and muscle. At least the Sorg instrument bonded my flesh faster and hotter than any human device. “Okay that’s good. Um…thanks. Yeah.” I kept my eyes off her nakedness, in case she decided to get curious about sex with a human. The Sorg already touched, poked, grabbed any part of our bodies that interested them. A few times the molestations didn’t just end with hyena laughter, and a claw gripped one of us in place, held us there in a heart stopping moment. I didn’t need to understand the animal language. Just looking in their eyes, I could see what they were considering.

When the guard deposited me back with the others, Romi looked at the bloody, raised fuse scar on my side. “Was it deep?”

For the first time in two weeks, Cricket turned toward us. “Don’t worry kid, they’re not going to kill their favorite.” He filled his hacking laugh with scorn. “Why are you still sitting with us? Don’t you want to party with your Sorg buddies?”

I turned so he and Inya could see the long raised mark on my side. “You think I’m having fun up there?”

Inya eyed the many red fuse scars cutting across my chest and stomach, then studied the zippers on her coveralls. Our clothes had dried and the Sorg had started to disperse. Cleaning time. I sighed and dragged my clothes on with shaky hands.

Cricket hefted a bucket, spit on the rock floor beside me. “I just know that I would rather die than play along with their games.”

My face warmed. “Sure you would.” I whispered it more to myself than him, but his words gnawed at me. Night after night, hadn’t I thought the same thing? When the Sorg commander stood triumphant on my back. When he planted his heavy hoof on my chest. When he held his bloody claw in the air, let my blood drip down onto my face.

Lack of sleep and the nightly clobbering took a toll on my mood. At home, I could take a book with me to the shade of the cottonwood trees, forget about farming, school, or older siblings. On the Bungee, I could hole up on my bunk and read on my hand-held, and no one bothered me. But as a prisoner, I couldn’t take any time away from what my captors dictated I should do or where I should be. I couldn’t release the frustration brewing inside of me.

The next night after that rib gash, I didn’t raise my fleshy human fingers when I got in the charge position. If the Sorg wanted to watch a match up between our species, they should know we didn’t pretend to have claws, would never plunge face first at aliens with mouths filled with knife-pointed teeth. Making the commander look good meant that he expected, his troops expected, that I appear a worthy opponent. The fight had to look real. Feel believable. Maybe I needed to start believing too. This was how my fatigue rattled brain reasoned it.

Instead of elbows up and pretend claws snapping, I barreled toward the dias like I once had on the football field. Coach liked to berate me as the laziest, most apathetic player he’d ever seen, but I think he might have given me one of his rare nods of approval if he’d seen me charge the Sorg commander. Instead of face up for a bite, I rammed the commander square in his chest. Crashed him off those extra tall hooves and onto his ass. If I hadn’t held back at the last minute he’d have flipped in the air like Cricket with the mop. The commander bared his teeth at me, not very happy with my improvisation. I had a feeling that if I’d tried that in a rehearsal he’d have pressed the fizz button. One of those claws snapped in my face, damn close to my nose, and I backed away.

I’d thrown us off the usual routine and we faced each other without assuming the Sorg undulating fighting stance. Tension bled between us and radiated out to the audience. Something new. They howled and yapped for more. The commander got back into the routine first, jointed limbs rippling, hooves shuffling side to side.

That slash in my side ached and the scar pulled as I got into my own imitation of the Sorg fight stance. My eardrums throbbed against the Sorg barking and yelping. Maybe I could get hurt or knocked down without going through the whole ridiculous show? I dropped my arms and shook them out. Why did we have to do the pointless circling and waving anyway? I could never figure out what they got out of the limb undulations. Come on already! I closed my fist and punched. Not really caring about making contact. I only wanted to hurry the stupid fight along.

The commander dodged the punch and kicked toward my torso. Okay, we had done this move plenty of times. He kicks. I double over. He leaps on my back. I flail around and try to pull him off with my inferior human arms that won’t bend backward. He springs off to face me and kicks. I land flat on my back.

Fine. Whatever.

The Sorg commander did the opening kick, aiming not for my chest, but a little to the left. To catch me on last night’s scar.

Pain knocked the air from my lungs, brought tears to my eyes. Holy Hell. When I doubled over, he jumped on my back as planned. But this time, I saw red. I didn’t do the arm flail, “oh how do I get this superior alien off of my back” the way we’d practiced together. Heaving myself forward and back, I shook him off me like a horse bucking an inexperienced rider. The roar I made came from agony, from anguish. It echoed as the room fell silent.

I turned.

The commander lay on his back, insect limbs akimbo. The chalky white spikes of his hair broken. Neon red blood on his teeth.

What had I done? My legs wobbled underneath me and I dropped to my knees. He would kill me. They all would. The pain in my side gave way to a strangling tightness in my chest. Not even my knees could hold me and I bowed forward, caught myself on my hands before I face planted against the rock. Grumbles erupted from the watching Sorg— Mom’s sewing machine straining against the lumpy stuffed quilt. We Sorg do not worship the Hush. But now I knelt, prostrated myself before the half-blood commander. It saved my life.

In one night’s bout, I’d undone the Sorg leader’s attempts to demonstrate the superiority of his shorter height and his thinner limbs, courtesy of Hush ancestry, as enhancements to fighting. But I’d also tapped into whatever part of their culture caused him to tell me, we Sorg do not worship the Hush.

His legs unfurled a section at a time, a marionette rising from a puddle of limbs to stand before me. His back to the audience, only I could see the Hush silver iris of his eyes darting back and forth, trying to formulate a plan. I sank lower, stretching both my arms out in a closer imitation of what the Sorg guard had done when he saw the leader in his deathlike trance.

The commander took a step back from me, and passed one arm over me. A benediction? A dismissal? It could have meant anything, but I backed away, keeping my arms outstretched and head lowered. The Sorg returned to cleaning and sex, but the atmosphere remained more subdued than all the previous nights.

“The hell were you thinking up there, showing off like that?” Cricket spat out. “You’re going to get us all killed just to make yourself look good!” He hunched in on himself, wrinkled hands covering his mouth. “A damn idiot, that’s what you are. A cocky damn idiot who deserves what that Sorg leader does to you.”

Ayhor

That night on my sand bunk, I weighed my options. At best, the commander would kill me in one of the fighting moves we had practiced together. At worst, he would dose me with fizz until I went insane. Until my brain fried the way Cricket and Inya thought it had when I first arrived. If I managed to live to another day, I would probably wish I hadn’t. The Hush had taken me captive because I knew how to farm. But by now, the guards must have reported back to their leader that his prisoners didn’t do much more than sprinkle the plants with water and adjust the lights, that we spent most of our time in the bubbles sleeping off the green soap fumes. Heck, in another week most of the plants would be ready to harvest. The sage only needed…

The sage!

I had planned to take only a single leaf, maybe two at most, from each of the small herbs growing in their planter. Sage needs a full year before it produces a true crop, and I had no idea how long the war would last, how long the Sorg would keep us captive, and how long our lives would depend on the success of the plants. But now, longevity didn’t matter. I needed to give the commander an impressive yield — something that made my existence as a living breathing human, outweigh my value as a pile of potting soil. The next morning, I gathered a good quantity of the sage leaves into a bouquet. Tucking it into my shirt, I waited for the guard.

It seemed like the entire dome wanted to know what punishment awaited me. As my guard led me from the airlock into the narrow hallways, we picked up a crowd of gawkers in our wake. By the time the door slid open, my heart pounded hard enough that I felt it throb in my temples. Instead of lying on the pallet, the commander stood in the middle of room. Claws flared and legs braced on his extra tall hooves. Eager for entertainment, the noisy mob of Sorg followed me into the room. They yipped and barked to see my blood spill, watch me die.

Do it now. In one move, I reached into my shirt, got my fingers on the bundle of sage, and sank to a knee. My overwrought breathing drowned out the Sorg hyena shrieks. Time for my Hail Mary… I pulled out the bouquet and shook it to separate the felty leaves and diffuse the scent. Then I held the sage up to the commander. Lowered my head.

The yipping gave way to a chorus of reverent “Ahhhhh!” As if, instead of a bundle of herbs, I’d produced a holy relic. The Sorg started to chant, using our human word “sage.” Although, without lips the G rolled out their mouths as Z. “Shajzh. Shajzh.” I’d hoped the bouquet would persuade the commander to let me live by reminding him of my original purpose. Remind him that he didn’t need a fighter, he needed a farmer. But this reaction…

“Shajzh! Shajzh!”

The Sorg no longer cared about me, what might happen to me. They focused on the shajzh… and the commander. They wanted him to eat it, for the sage to create the death trance they looked for whenever his door slid open.

The commander’s eyes bugged wild and afraid, and the dark nostrils on his barely-visible nose flared. Maybe stronger wasn’t better? I’d neglected to maintain my contrite and worshipping posture, and longed to throw the damn sage bouquet and run. What the hell had I done? I started to lower my hand and the chanting grew louder, less comprehensible to my human ears, until it reach a precipice.

In that sudden silence, the commander whipped the bundle of herbs from my grasp and bit into it with his pointed shark teeth. He tilted his head backward like a seagull swallows a fish. Tremors rattled from his throat down his torso and into his limbs, and he lurched to the pallet, fell onto it.

The throng of Sorg leaned forward, so I moved away. Crouched down to watch through their stilted legs. The commander lay on his back, unfocused eyes staring into space. His breathing stopped and his limbs lost all tension. But unlike the other time I observed him, color leaked from his face and neck. The red of his eyes disappeared and the silvery veneer became more prominent. Then the body inside his white mummy wrappings seemed to shrivel as well, and the shroud became loose, less binding. Where was the holo looking duplicate I had seen last time?

Oh! There. He floated above his corporeal self. But not a holo. A true double…a solid projection. The watching Sorg soldiers growled like dogs. Even without understanding the language, I could hear the wonder the commander inspired. Some dropped to their knees. And the familiar clash between those who worshipped and those who did not once again ignited. Finally, I understood. We Sorg do not worship the Hush. This thing the commander could do— the death trance and the projection—was a Hush thing.

In the commander’s projection of himself, his red skin gleamed with health, the eyes flashed with color and emotion. He pushed up from his shriveled body, knocked aside the soldiers gathered around him. This second self had a foothold here, like any of the real Sorg. No— he had powers beyond his physical self. The slightest movement, a flick of his clawed hand, a nudge from one of his double elbows and the others flipped through the air in the same way Cricket had when I shoved him. It took me a moment to realize that he didn’t throw the other Sorg around as a show of strength. He flung them aside to make a path to where I huddled.

When he reached me, I knew kneeling wouldn’t work. I had no more sage to offer. Somehow, my eyes stayed open so I didn’t have to wait for his attack in the dark of my mind. One sharp claw rose over my head. But it never dropped. The commander’s arm just kept lifting and his entire body squeezed as if drawn into a straw. Until that straw sucked him up into the ceiling, and he disappeared.

The Sorg in the room made the same barking sounds of approval that they did after a fight. But, I fell back panting, my back and face damp with sweat. My body knew what I had just survived, even if my brain didn’t understand it.

When I found him at the cleaning ritual, Romi threw his arms around me and hugged my waist. “Landon — I thought he would kill you!”

I patted the boy on his head. “Not yet.” I hadn’t told the three of them about the sage or what I’d planned. I wondered if they even noticed. Both Inya and Cricket kept a closer eye on the reddening tomatoes and the curling leaves of the kale. Anyone could see their intention to sneak some for themselves before we handed the vegetables over to the Sorg. I had ignored it just to keep the peace between our two factions, but dreaded when I would have to tell them off for wanting the vegetables. Even our guards had started to wander through the bubbles, admiring the Earth plants that they had once traded their technology to get.

“They punished you already?” Inya asked me. She spoke into her shoulder, taking extra care to roll off a sock, ducking her head. She didn’t want to get caught speaking to me now that I’d fallen out of favor with the commander.

Cricket snorted. “They should have killed him.”

I thought Inya might snap at him, she looked so angry and stressed. “Do they plan to punish all of us? Do they blame all of us because of your thoughtless actions?”

Thoughtless actions? My hands froze on the hem of my shirt and my mouth dropped open. But nothing came out.

Romi leaned across me. “They didn’t blame the rest of us when you cracked that bucket. Remember that thoughtless action?”

Inya didn’t even notice the sarcasm. She let out a breath now that the fear of punishment had lessened.

When the commander came in, he looked bad. Face not quite as red and eyes dulled to a grayish pink. He unwound his mummy wrappings with jerky movements, still not recovered from the deathlike trance. But that didn’t matter to his soldiers and they showed him the same respect they had when he fought in front of them, naked and strong. They yipped and howled as he sat before them. Some kneeled, but the commander growled and motioned them up. We Sorg do not worship the Hush. I knew he hated what my gift of sage revealed — that it never mattered how well he displayed his skill at combat, how the differences in his height and stature could work as advantages. The death trance mattered more to them than how he fought. The part of him that was Hush mattered more.

The next day a guard directed me to the box holding the sage. She looked familiar, and with a shock I realized that she was the same guard who had fused the wound in my side. It unnerved me. Not that her bare breasts had hung in my face, but that I had started to tell them apart.

I took some leaves from each plant, not as many as before. The plants couldn’t spare them, and maybe the commander would see me as back on his side if I didn’t give him such a huge dose. The guard took the leaves from me with such reverence, that I don’t think she realized I’d made a smaller bouquet.

Please let the commander notice. Please let him understand I want to help him. Although his projection wanted to kill me, the Sorg leader hadn’t looked my way once during the cleaning ritual and accompanying hoopla. Maybe the trance had left him too sick. Maybe he didn’t think he could beat me if I decided to fight back with intention. I think I felt sorry for him.

Even with the smaller bundle of sage, the commander looked no better the next night. His movements became slow and jerky. The three segments to his arms and legs no longer moved in orchestrated motion, an elbow or knee popped out of rhythm with the others and he wobbled. His color looked off. The gray showed more prominently in his skin than the night before. One of his soldiers reached to help him uncoil the mummy wrappings, but the commander pushed him off. That Sorg didn’t just back away though, he bowed and dropped to his knees, then shuffled backward. It was exactly the veneration the commander had fought against since I’d first met him.

A rupture happened then. Grunting arguments broke out across the entire assembly. One of the Sorg chucked a bucket at the middle of the room. Boiling soap and glass shards sprayed everyone. A thrashing red-bodied soldier dove on top of another and the first genuine fight took place.

The two battling didn’t use many of the fancy moves I’d gotten used to seeing. They bit chunks from each other with sharp teeth. Forceful stabbing motions with claws rather than flamboyant slashing arcs. A loud crack and a joint broke, the hoof and bottom segment of leg ripped loose and hurled across the room, white gauze unraveling from it in a bloody trail.

Romi curled into a tight ball behind me, his fingernails dug into my back. “What’s happening? Why are they fighting?”

Wincing, I pried his hands off me. “It doesn’t have anything to do with us. It’s about the …” I didn’t want to even whisper the word Hush. I didn’t want any of our captors seeing my lips form the word. “It isn’t about us.”

A resounding deep howl got everyone’s attention. The commander had risen on his tall hooves, raised his arms in the undulating fighting stance. Then he ripped into the remaining cacophony with a second louder howl that left him gasping for air. But the room quieted. Even the hoofless injured Sorg stopped his hyena screams. The commander got control of his breathing and delivered an angry string of bellowing sounds. Without recognizing a word, I could guess the content of his speech. I knew exactly which side he came down on regarding kneeling in worship of the Hush blood in his veins.

As he pontificated, he gained strength. He snarled and shouted out a string of barks, and the rest of the room made the same noises back to him. Echoing back to him what he demanded they believe. There. The airy sounds that meant Hush. And for the first time since that mock fight, since I threw the commander off my back, I felt safe. He had a much bigger enemy than a single human prisoner.

No one came for the sage the next day. Nor the next. We picked the tomatoes and harvested the kale and the radishes. I stood over Inya and Cricket with two guards to make sure they didn’t keep any for themselves. I probably saved their lives, all our lives, but Cricket hissed “traitor” once the guards left. The Sorg shredded the vegetables into a kind of slaw and even gave their captives a share. I got a mouthful and closed my eyes. I could picture the ripe fields back in Colby, smell the pungent earthy hay, feel the hot sun on my arms and the back of my neck.

Despite laying off the sage for several days, the commander did not recover. Without the death trance to impress them, the Sorg warriors scorned their leader’s growing frailty. They rumbled in low disapproval as his claws faltered to loosen his wrappings. White spiked heads bowed together to growl commentary each time he stumbled on his oversized hooves.

On the fifth night of the commander’s decline, one of the soldiers stood up from the writhing sex on the floor. A tall, muscled Sorg with bright red color, a raised scar across his back that I’d seen him show off to his friends. He lifted the double set of elbows into fight position. “Hergah!” Rather than the sideways slashing stance they used for exhibition, he flicked his claws outward, poised to stab.

The commander glared back with cloudy pink eyes. Unraveling his gauze covering had taken so much of his energy that I doubted he could stand, let alone fight his challenger. Everyone in the dome knew it. One of the soldiers sitting near the commander sprang up to accept the challenge, red arms pulsing in the fight rhythm.

But the challenger’s friends rushed forward to bark condemnation at the leader’s defender. A female, as glowing crimson as the challenger, bent forward ready to charge. Then another defender rose to block her way. More arguments broke out across the dome. Violence threatened to overtake and split the entire company. I didn’t know what this might mean for us. Would a new commander do away with the nuisance of human prisoners? The Earth plants didn’t require any special treatment at this point. Did the Sorg know this?

Then the chant began again. “Shajzh. Shajzh. Shajzh.”

Sage. The magic ingredient that leads to the death trance. Too physically weak to demonstrate his dominance by fighting, the commander still had one ability left to subdue his soldiers, to gain their respect. The death trance. The projection.

The challengers accepted this alternative with respectful bowed heads and a sound like an engine turning over. Then a guard hauled me up and pointed toward the bubbles outside. “Yeah. Okay.” I smoothed my pressure suit over my naked body and attached the helmet. I hadn’t ever made the trudging walk to the agro bubble on my own, or in the dark. Halfway to the bubbles I looked up into the murky night sky. The planet’s dusty atmosphere hid the stars behind a haze. But I could still see a pinprick of white light that I knew. Earth. My steps halted on the worn dusty path. A profound loneliness slammed into me, stealing my air with enough force that I wondered if the seal on my suit had ruptured. I turned to look back at the glowing dome. Just survive this, Landon, and maybe one day… I could go home.

I brought back a palmful of the leaves, and the Sorg parted to let me pass through the center of their gathering. Some even lowered their heads as the sage passed them.

The commander still hadn’t risen from where he sat after unwrapping. He gave me no special notice either, and took only half the amount I held out to him. His defender took the other half and tucked it away into a pile of clean white wrappings.

The commander clutched the leaves to his chest and the three sections of his legs creaked on top of each other until he stood. He still had an appetite for the dramatic and raised the sage over his head to show the horde of his people.

“Shajzh. Shajzh. Shajzh.”

He stuffed it past the row of pointed teeth directly into his throat and swallowed. There was no staggering this time. He tilted forward, off the tall platforms of his hooves and into my arms, his bare skin dry and rough as corn husk roasted in a fire. I rolled him to his back and laid him as gently as I could on the floor. Anticipating his resurrection, the other Sorg closed around him to marvel at their leader’s body. The cold papery skin and stiff limbs of a corpse long dead.

I scrambled away, trying to return to the other prisoners on the fringes of the congregation. Also to put as many bodies as possible between the commander and myself in case he tried to attack me again. When he appeared, the commander’s projection — solid, flushed red and healthy — took advantage of the adulation of his ability. He floated just above them, assumed the rippling bent arms and legs of a formidable Sorg warrior. He let loose an echoing howl that reached inside my head and body like the fizz. Then the same sucking phenomenon happened, as if someone placed an invisible straw at the tip of the highest of his white caked spikes of hair and sucked him inside and away. The Sorg howled and yipped in unison. They threw themselves at each other in limb coiling hugs that resembled their intercourse. The commander had brought his divided troops back together. And I was the only one who knew he’d hated the method of doing it. The Sorg do not worship the Hush.

They awaited the commander’s return to his body all night. The sex and fighting more subdued than usual. Even long past when the green soap had boiled dry, a contingent of Sorg knelt with arms stretched before them. Others lounged on piled rubble or slouched against it. Romi and I beat the silicone wings, driving drugged fog toward the intake fans. Inya hid in the shadows, pushing nothing at all with her broom while Cricket tried to sleep while leaning on his. It could almost have felt peaceful.

Sometime later in the night, a blur of red and silver streaked down to the corpse of the Sorg commander. The reclining soldiers bolted upright to watch, while the kneeling group dropped lower into submission.

The healthy red projection of the commander aligned with his paler, rigid body and he sank inside. The dead lungs expanded again and the eyes blinked open, the red having disappeared entirely from his irises, taken over by a milky white blindness. His skin flushed only a shade deeper than the pale grey pink. The commander was dying.

His soldiers moved the commander’s pallet into the main dome area and an incense that smelled like rotting leaves burned at each end. One by one, the Sorg would stand over him saying words that sounded like distant thunder. I think it was singing. When we brought vegetables in from the bubbles, the guard had us leave them near the pallet like offerings to a god. The cleaning happened in solemn quiet. No sex. No fighting. No green soap. Even the food changed. The brick of tofu-like stuff replaced with a bowl of mushroom tasting gloop.

The commander took slow labored breaths and sometimes moaned. His body seemed to shrink from inside, mummy wrappings becoming a loose shroud. His skin wrinkled and paled to the same bloodless color as his eyes. Maybe when the last of the red color leached away he would die?

Before that could happen, the Hush came. During the now somber cleaning ritual, four of them marched inside. They stayed in a diamond formation, helmets and pressure suits adopting the brown smoke of the incense, the bubbling white wraps and red skin as they passed the bathing Sorg troops. Their boots turned kaleidoscope as they kicked over the vegetable offerings. They knocked aside the thunder voiced singer, and stomped out the incense. Then stood over the dying commander. Not one of the Hush turned or acknowledged the disapproving barks from the Sorg.

Even an unlearned human like myself could see that the vegetables, the incense, the singer, and the quiet all functioned as pieces of the ritual. Sacred and revered. One of our guards tensed, assumed the pointed joint stance that meant he considered charging. With his muscled torso and an intimidating jagged rip of red leathery skin where he’d lost an ear, he would have put up a good fight. This one Sorg could easily take out all four of the slender diminutive Hush soldiers, but their unparalleled tech abilities kept everyone in check.

One of the faceless helmets bent down, let out a hissing string of commands or questions. Couldn’t they see the commander would never answer? I didn’t think he even knew they had come, that they stood over him with their wheezing demands. The Hush made whistling sounds of disgust. One gripped the white coverings and lifted the commander off his pallet a few inches and let his body drop again with a thud.

I shot to my feet, fists clenched, jaw tight. Red faces turned to me in shock. I felt them, but my eyes stayed locked on the Hush bastards. How dare they? If the Sorg commander had lived, hadn’t given the last of his strength to unify his company, then I have no doubt he would have ended my life with his claws and teeth. Still, I guess I respected his role with his troops. Respected the ritual of his death. Respected him. The missing-ear-Sorg dropped his heavy claw on my shoulder and pushed me back down. Not with malicious purpose, his press reminded me of Mom’s hand on my arm when Tonia or Buck lit into me. He rumbled something, a warning I think. Maybe I didn’t understand the exact words, but I still got it. We don’t stand a chance against them.

The Hush raised the commander’s body with the same grav-tech they’d used to capture me. They encased him in a blue light and started back to the main airlock on the side of the dome. One of the Sorg scrambled forward, stood in their way. Bright skin and scarred back. The commander’s challenger. Now, he threw his arms wide to block the Hush soldiers from taking his leader.

A flick of a wrist and the challenger shot upwards, out of their way. His red naked body hurled to the top of the dome, stuck for a second against the fontanel in a blue beam. Then the Hush flicked its wrist again, disengaged the beam, and the Sorg tumbled downward. He hit the rock floor with the cracking splat of a body that would never get up again. The one who had questioned the oblivious commander turned and addressed the room in his whistling language. Whatever information or warning he imparted, the Sorg troops took in with stoic silence.

Without the commander present, even as an unconscious body, whatever routine the dome had functioned under broke down completely. The Sorg cleaning ritual stretched all throughout the night and the heating rods stayed full blast with the soap drug boiling almost non-stop. Us prisoners wandered freely from the rock cave with our sandbag bunks to the main dome, even out to the agro bubbles. No guards escorted us or watched over us. After a few days, Inya and Cricket stayed in the cave, sleeping. But Romi and I took the opportunity to explore the base. We found clothes and shoes in a barracks. Looked through all the lockers for candy and snacks. We brought them back to Cricket and Inya as peace offerings. Petty jerks, both of them. They accepted what we gave them like they did us a favor. But they finally, grudgingly, started speaking to us again once we found a store of the rations that had fed the humans living in Utopia. We feasted on vacuum packed chicken tetrazzini, broccoli in cheese sauce, and chocolate pudding. Food considered scandalous to the vegan aliens from Andromeda galaxy. We ate two packs each, even Romi and Cricket who weighed a lot less than me and Inya. Even though I was already full, I decided to look around a little more. I was glad I did because I found an unopened bottle of Jack Daniels in a trunk, cracked it open and took a swig. Then I brought it back to the cave and passed it around. Cricket knew what to do, and took a big gulping pull of the Jack. He gave it to Inya who also had a respectable drink. Then we gave it to Romi, who coughed and spit out his first mouthful, making all of us laugh. But his second drink went a lot better. And finally, drunk, full and without the Sorg molesting and threatening us, we all became united again as prisoners of war.

That night, the others passed out early, but I couldn’t sleep. The farm boy in me couldn’t ignore my responsibilities in the agro bubbles. I’d let the plants go for over 24 hours, and I needed to get back out and water them, change the position of the lights. Stepping into the new underwear and cargo pants I’d acquired, I threw a balled up sock at Romi’s face. “Get up.”

He scrunched his nose and tossed the sock back at me. “No way. I’m sleeping as much as possible before a new commander gets here.”

I tugged a cotton sweater over my head. A little snug but I’d worn the same t-shirt for months now and it barely held together. “What do you mean? Won’t one of the others just take over?” But he had a point. If one of the other Sorg in the company could just appoint himself the new commander, or if they elected one or— more likely than the other scenarios— they used combat to determine their leaders, wouldn’t that have already happened?

Romi propped himself up on a skinny arm. “You said they followed this commander because he could do the Hush thing… project himself?”

I’d let Romi in on my theory about the commander having a Hush ability, but I hadn’t connected that theory to the current lawlessness in the dome. Would they only accept a leader able to slip into the death trance? We Sorg do not worship the Hush. But, maybe they did worship what the Hush could do?

Romi broke into my thoughts. “Are you going to water the plants? I don’t mind doing that. I like being in the bubbles.” He swung his legs off his sand bunk and rubbed his eyes. “Do you want some help?” His large hopeful eyes reminded me of Little Harold begging me not to leave after I got drafted into Allied Defense.

“Sure. Come on.” Romi had a whole new outfit and shoes. Just another pair of the military issue canvas sneakers that fit in a pressure suit, but I could tell his new digs really cheered him up. Even though I managed to squeeze into some fresh clothes, I’d have to wear the same ratty shoes for the duration of captivity. No one had feet my size.

The Sorg had already started the glass buckets boiling. I caught a whiff of the mossy soap and pulled the neck of my sweater up over my mouth and nose. With just the two of us, I didn’t mind the walk to the bubbles. Romi trotted ahead of me on the path we’d carved into the rocky terrain marching back and forth. And it almost felt like wandering the gravel side road between Tonia and Buck’s farm and Mom and my place.

Inside the bubbles, a few of the pea plant leaves had dry edges, but the rest seemed okay. On a whim, I kicked my shoes off, sat on the edge of the tomato box, and squished my toes into the dirt. I knew where it came from, but it still smelled and felt like Earth soil.

A smaller pale foot settled beside mine. “My grandma planted flowers in our back yard. But this is the first time I ever had a garden, grew something I could eat.” Romi smiled up at me.

I tossed him a tomato and he took a big bite of it, like an apple. Juice ran down his chin and neck. He looked like such a little kid that I laughed. We watered all the plants and got the lights set up. These bubbles on Mars had way more bells and whistles than anything we used back in Kansas. I hadn’t fiddled around with them too much because I had the others breathing criticism down my neck, and I didn’t feel confident enough to take chances. But a little experimenting didn’t intimidate me with just the two of us to bear witness. I pressed some buttons and a light rain came down from the rounded ceiling. “Oh man. I am an idiot, Romi.”

He looked at me with dark questioning eyes.

“Look at this.” I pointed to the array of switches and dials. “You can set up the lights and water to do everything itself. We didn’t even need to come out here.”

Romi frowned. “But, I like coming out here.”

I patted his head. “Yeah, me too. Also, I don’t think it’s a good idea to let the Sorg see they can run this shit without us.” I flipped everything off again. We suited up and then walked back in full darkness. I tried looking for the prick of light that was Earth, but the dust hung too heavy in the air that night.

When we came back inside, the cleaning ritual had progressed from sex to fighting. Two females circled each other in the familiar battle dance. But the two females couldn’t capture the audience with the same intensity that their commander’s fighting had. The unruly Sorg argued and shoved each other. Shouting in the barking language across the room, they mimed stabbing and slashing each other with their claws, then mocked those threats with hyena laughter. Violence wafted through the dome as thick as the green fog.

Since the commander’s death, the Sorg hadn’t demanded our presence at the cleaning ritual or revelry. Despite all their meticulous personal grooming, keeping the dome clean didn’t matter to the troops. Not without a commander watching over them. After Romi and I shed our suits and helmets, I thought we could slide along the shadowy edges of the rubble toward the down ramp, where our rock cave lay. The temperature there dropped a good 20 degrees, and I got the impression the Sorg didn’t like the cold. They seemed happiest in the sweltering drugged steam.

Romi and I got about half way across the dome before one of the Sorg spotted us. “Ayhor!” He called to me from deep inside the crowd. The others now turned to greet me as well. “Ayhor! Ayhor!”

“Hold up,” I muttered to Romi. He nodded, but looked down at the floor, let his curtain of dark hair veil his face and body. Tense, I waited as the Sorg who called for me approached on his undulating legs.

“Ayhor.” When he got closer I recognized him as the same missing-ear-Sorg who held me back when the Hush came. His body bubbled with muscles, and he had the intense crimson coloring that meant good health and strength. Like before, he placed his claw on my shoulder, but this time instead of a warning, it felt good natured. Then he let loose a series of grunts and rumbles as if I could understand him. Up close, I could see the gouge scars where another Sorg had ripped off his ear. He bellowed a loud speech of thunder and machine gun sounds as if speaking to me but also the watching eyes of his comrades.

I nodded. “Yes.” I didn’t know what else to do, what to say.

The females had ended their fight and all the red-orange eyes had turned toward us. The Sorg kept his claw on my shoulder, the sharp pincers closed, the pointed tip resting danger-close to my jugular. I don’t think he meant to hurt me. He had turned to the watching crowd and started pontificating on something. The claw dropped away and he imitated my sudden stand and posture as I watched the Hush try to question the commander. I had tried to take their part against the advanced race that ruled over both ours. The other Sorg made yipping noises and barks that functioned as cheers.

“Ayhor!”

One lengthy articulated arm coiled around my head and released in a gesture I had seen them make with each other. Sort of like a hug or a slap on the back. But whatever the one-eared-Sorg had said in his description also ignited fury at what the Hush had done. Another of the Sorg stood, the tall female who had once challenged the commander. She spoke words that sounded like a jackhammer working cement. The room erupted in barking and the raised sharp points of their many elbows. Claws snapped overhead. My new Sorg buddy howled and reached for me.

Not me.

Romi!

Scooping an arm down, the one-eared Sorg clasped Romi by the ankle as the commander had once done and hoisted the boy into the air, dangled him upside down.

“Landon!” Romi kicked against the Sorg’s claw with his free leg and twisted to look my way. His dark eyes widened in fear, his mouth fell open in a scream.

“Wait. Put him down! Put him—” The one-eared Sorg holding Romi turned on me with a snarl and snapped his claw in my face. I fell back a step, my heart pounding.

A shark smile answered my cowardice. “Ayhor.” The scarred Sorg hoisted Romi higher, and strode into the throng of his comrades. Romi’s black hair fluttered over the snatching claws that sliced and pulled at it until blood ran down the dangling raven strands.

“Landon!” Romi screamed my name into the spaces between the unarticulated Sorg noises. I balled my fists, nails piercing the meat of my palms. Just hang on Romi. He’ll make a speech like the commander did. Then let you drop. Romi would give me the cold shoulder for a few days and then…

The one-eared Sorg flared wide the claw not holding Romi, displayed it in the air like a prize. Then the orange pincer slashed downward and across, carving a deep gouge into the boy’s neck.

Romi’s body fell limp. Blood poured out from the cut, covered his face and streamed into his long hair. The Sorg shook him over the yipping crowd, splashed Romi’s blood in their faces as the hyena laughs echoed through the room.

Somehow I stayed standing. Watching. What had I done? What had I done?

Nothing.

Landon, you did nothing.

*

Cricket and Inya both saw the dried blood in my hair and on my hands the next morning. And Romi’s empty bunk. They huddled together and ate vacuum packed meatloaf in gravy with mashed potatoes, shot questioning glances my way. I think I scared them with my silence, my stone face, my bloody clothing.

The Sorg used the same device that they had on the Utopia scientists, an oblong box that radiated heat, to turn Romi’s body into a pile of dark earth that didn’t even fill a single glass bucket. I emptied it into the tomato box, where Romi and I had dug our bare feet. And I stayed with him in the bubbles that night, and the next day and night as well. Until Inya came to get me. To tell me that the Hush had returned. We had a new commander.

Inside the dome, I expected steaming buckets and green fog. But the air smelled clean. As I took off my helmet off and rolled down the suit, dried blood flaked off my hair, crusted dirt slid from my clothes and my hands. With how the Sorg valued personal hygiene, I would offend them by my griminess. But I was in no mood to care.

“Let’s get this over with,” I muttered. Inya had hustled ahead of me, not wanting to get connected with my insulting filth.

The Sorg stood perfectly spaced in a rectangle formation. Straight posture, orange claws to their sides, red eyes trained to the front dais. A single mirror suited Hush stared back at them. Slight and delicate, but the technological superior of both Sorg and human. A single mirrored suit could cleave through the entire assembly in just a few minutes. I understood the push and pull of worshipping them. Their technology turned the Hush to gods, but I also understood the resentment, the reason the hybrid commander had insisted, “We Sorg do not worship the Hush.” Inside that reflective tech was just another being, as vulnerable to death as all of us assembled. The Hush unfastened it’s reflective helmet and it peeled off like a rubber mask. I stood on my toes to see better.

Long dark hair spilled out of the helmet, a wave of deep green, almost black, that rolled past the Hush’s shoulders to his waist. Inky hair like a veil, a shroud…like Romi’s. The Hush shook the blanket of hair away to reveal a pale elfin face. Wide almond eyes.

And I could hear Romi’s voice, “They hate me. I feel like they only kept me alive so they could…” But the Sorg hadn’t seen a human boy when they tortured Romi, they’d seen this. A Hush.

The new commander regarded his subjects with a cold, blank expression. With the power of that reflective suit and its myriad of weaponry. With blank silver eyes that glowed, as if lit from inside. The cold gleam of a mirror in the dark. Of a moon. Of starlight.

Human

Lucky for me the Sorg couldn’t read sarcasm in human voices. Didn’t understand our body language. Hadn’t ever learned to speak English. They didn’t have any idea how much I now hated them. And they acted toward me as if we were friends. I could walk anywhere. Do whatever I wanted. The Sorg treated me like one of them. “Ayhor,” they would address me when I passed them.

“Yeah, I hope you get shredded in a grav beam malfunction, you spider-legged shit ball.” I flipped them off, cursed them, vowed to see them dead. Right to their shark smile faces and they had no idea.

Maybe I went a little nuts around that time, because I caught myself talking to the soil inside the low planting boxes. Not just to Romi but the others too, men and women I had never met but still ran my fingers through, formed into mounds and wells for the plants that would save my life. All of them braver than me. Scientists and soldiers who believed in what they did, who would not have stood down when a Sorg murdered their friend. Inya and Cricket pleaded with me to act normal again. Well… Cricket mostly railed at me, calling me an idiot and a selfish lunatic. But, Inya pleaded. “You want to die Landon? Acting crazy like this will lead to your death. Do you want your family and friends to know you didn’t care about living?”

No. I didn’t want that. I wanted to sit under the cottonwoods again with Mom. I wanted her to comb her fingers through my curly hair and tell me about my father. I wanted Little Harold and the other boys to pile on my back for piggyback rides when Tonia kicked them out of the house. And I missed the Bungee crew too. Laughing with Yulia. Listening to Tory read aloud the history of a place I’ve never been. Curling up on the dojo mats with everyone while Adil played us songs on his oud. I missed all of them, and the life I’d had, and I wanted it all back again. That meant, I had to let go of my anger and get back to surviving.

I stopped telling off my captors whenever I saw them. Stopped wearing my bloody clothing. Stopped talking to the planting dirt. Instead, I focused on the agro bubbles and farming, tried to lose myself in it.

At least I could take some pleasure in that the new Hush commander was a real hard ass. No more lounging around on rubble and laughing like hyenas for the Sorg company. The new commander made them clear out all the shattered furniture, the rubble from demolished walls. They broke it all down to dust and pumped it out the top of the fontanel like a fountain. It fell like snow around the dome. Kinda beautiful, but I don’t think the Sorg thought so. They were too busy getting treated like slaves by the tyrannical Hush.

Before he came, the only cleaning that happened in the dome took place after the nightly revelry. Done by prisoners for the Sorg amusement. Now, the Sorg warriors crawled on their many knees to polish the floor. They bore the harness of the silicone wings to fan drugged air, and scuffed their claws stacking the heating rods against the glass dome walls. Those heating rods that the new commander only allowed during their ritual. Without them, the temperature of the entire dome dropped twenty degrees. The Sorg hated it. They hated him. Although they treated him, treated his orders with silent respect, once that reflective suit left the room, they growled like tigers from a nature holo.

And the new commander made another change that enraged his Sorg company: he separated the women from the men. They no longer worked together or ate together. Women cleaned themselves in the mornings and men in the night. And this put a huge crimp in their sexual habits, inspiring secrecy and disobedience. I blundered across pairs and threesomes of limb flailing Sorg sexual encounters. They went at it in the bubbles, on the ramp to our cave, in the airlock vestibule. Anywhere, any time, but out of sight of the new commander.

Meanwhile, Inya, Cricket, and I existed in the shadows of the new dome work ethic, ignored by both Sorg and their new Hush commander. My fellow prisoners took the opportunity to slack off, left all the chores to me. But I didn’t mind. Tending the plants felt almost ceremonial now, like a personal observance following Romi’s death. I liked the quiet. I liked the chance to think. I’d worked alone in the bubbles for so many days that I startled when a Sorg appeared in the airlock.

“Ayhor.” He motioned for me to follow.

Great. What now? I might have set aside my hatred for Romi’s murderers, but I hadn’t forgiven them. Would never. And I wondered if I would get a chance at revenge for what they’d done. After all, they hadn’t just killed my friend, a boy who had no power and had done nothing against them. They’d killed Romi as a stand-in, a doppelgänger for a Hush. I wondered what the new commander would do to them if he found out.

The guard led me across a now spartan dome, nothing broken or piled up to steer around as we took the familiar hallway to the officer’s suite. When the door slid open, the Sorg bowed his spiked head and backed out. None of the gawking and standing around that the previous commander had allowed.

The Hush lay on a silver pallet, maybe the same silver pallet that the hybrid commander had used. Frozen and without breath, the new commander had fallen deep into the death trance. I could stare all I wanted. Dark green hair, longer than Romi’s, pooled underneath him. His lashes and delicate arched brows had the same inky green hue. And I could also see the similarity to Romi in his height, his slightness, but the comparison ended there. To Romi and to any human. The eyes just a little too wide set, the nose and mouth too sculpted, too exquisite, like the features of a doll. His gray-green skin too smooth and hard looking. I’d heard that, unmasked, the Hush were beautiful. And I could see it now for myself. But the beauty had an edge of repellence too. The differences warning me away. His clothing resembled human clothing, unlike the Sorg bandage coverings. A silky gray tunic over thicker gray quilted pants. A glittering gray jewel fastened the shirt at his throat and a long chain cinched around his waist, sparkling like flowing water in the sunlight. I crouched down to see through the optical illusion of his belt. How could water both flow and stay still? Where did the light come from? I reached a finger out.

“Touch me, human, and you will die.” The silver eyes opened, catching the meager light and throwing it back in a cold gaze. No iris or pupil, the Hush had the blank eyes of a marble statue. And then I noticed that the commander still wore the deadly reflective gloves of his high tech suit. Up close it looked like he had dipped his hands in clinging liquid metal. He sprang from the pallet to stand over me. If I too stood, the diminutive Hush commander would only come to my shoulder. So I stayed crouched to the ground.

“You…” I cleared my throat. “You can speak—”

“I have learned all your simple human languages. None are efficient in comparison to Hush.” He used the human word for his people, in a voice lower than my own. “The inferior biology of a human requires we speak like this.”

Because I couldn’t read any emotion from him, I decided to follow what had worked with the Sorg commander and just agree. “Yeah…um yes that’s true.”

No reaction. Maybe they didn’t have expressions? His skin looked as smooth and still as it had in the death trance, like a mask, a doll.

“You will stand, human.”

“Okay.” Slow, unthreatening, I rose to my feet. And at last a reaction from the Hush.

A slight widening of the large almond eyes. Green lips parted. He almost stepped back, one foot moved, but then dragged forward again. Like he caught himself. Decided to stifle his fear of the hulking alien prisoner. From the tilt of his head, I knew those silver eyes assessed the width of my chest, my arms, my thighs, wondering if I might attack him. I stifled a frustrated sigh. What threat could I pose against those silver hands? None. He must have decided the same because he turned away from me to open a panel in the wall. It slid aside to reveal a glass ceiling to floor window looking out onto the hills and cliffs surrounding the dome. “These Sorg claim you healed the Earth plants when they were dying.”

“I…” Healed? I’d never heard gardening described that way. “Yeah, I guess I did. I was a farmer. Before the war.”

The Hush turned from the view back toward me. “Farmer. This was your purpose?”

“My… I guess it was? We owned land and grew all kinds of different crops — Earth plants for humans. And some for Hush too.”

“Sage? Clover?”

“Both. We grew both on my farm. But we also grew other herbs. And vegetables. Sometimes lavender and bamboo. It depended on what we could sell. What people wanted…”

The commander’s eyes had begun to glow and dapple like sunshine through leaves. I had to squint against the light from them, and then blink. When I did, the effect had gone and they looked as silver and flat as before.

“I wish for you to grow more plants from what is here. We will build more bio domes. Produce more soil. Did you learn to do this on your Earth farm?”

“You mean grow plants from a cutting? Yes, I can do that.” I didn’t like the “more soil” part and I couldn’t hide my shudder. Survival, Landon. Focus on survival.

“Begin preparations immediately.” The Hush commander opened another panel in the wall to reveal an array of instruments. I didn’t recognize any of them. He flicked a metallic hand in my direction. Another gray jewel sparkled on his cuff. “That is all, human. You may—”

“Wait! I won’t be…” The Hush spun toward me when I interrupted him. The eyes turned darker, pewter rather than silver, sculpted mouth tight. My voice trailed off. If the Sorg felt insulted when other species used their language, maybe the Hush turned deadly at an interruption. “I… sorry.” I threw my hands up, still trying human gestures on an alien race. “Sorry… I just thought of something. I won’t be able to give out any more vegetables… not even the sage if I make cuttings. But I can make more plants, yes.”

My apology and explanation placated him. Again, he became the expressionless marble statue. “This is acceptable.” The Hush turned back to the instrument panel. “Go.”

I couldn’t get to the door fast enough. But something made me turn right before leaving. Curiosity?

The Hush had also turned from his instruments to watch me leave. Fuzzy diffused light from his eyes clouded around him. I paused, waiting for him to speak again. “Human?”

“Yeah…yes?” What had happened to my voice?

“The other two. Are they useful to you? Do they grow the plants?”

My blood turned cold, a numb hand fumbled with the door control. More soil. “They are. Yes. Very useful.”

The silver eyes lightened to crystal as they searched my face. I tried to will myself to project truthfulness. To mean it. And I guess it worked because he chose to believe me. “Good.” He turned away again, and I stumbled from the room on my rubbery legs. It looked like I would live another day and however many more days it took to grow more plants.

The soil came via a grav beam drop. But, not as black dirt, glistening with nutrients. It came as the bodies of soldiers that had scattered across the frozen Mars desert. The casualties of Allied Defense’s pathetic mission to retake the domes.

The Sorg had to don their waxy black pressure suits and retrieve the bodies from outside. Which they hated. It looked like a lot of work for Sorg to get into their pressure suits. The waxy black covering rolled over the many segments of their limbs, sealing over the hooves. Sometimes it would rip against the pointed ends of the claws if tugged with too much force. When that happened, the Sorg reacted like frustrated human toddlers. Throwing themselves on the ground and roaring with anger.

I’d suffered under the three hours of sleep the Sorg allowed us, but now they seemed exhausted by the grueling pace of work their Hush commander expected. Behind his back they rumbled and snarled to each other, and sometimes even to me, like I could understand their complaints.

They weren’t the only ones, Inya and Cricket groused every time I tried to get them out of the rock cave. They wanted to stay holed up on their sand bunks with their store of Earth rations. Hide out the rest of their captivity by hoping for a rescue. “I prefer the Sorg commander,” Inya said. She crushed an empty pouch of apple juice in her fist.

Cricket looked up from his creamed corn and chicken, my least favorite of the ration packs. It looked like cat vomit. “The Hush are bastards. They should return our dead back to us. Those soldiers didn’t deserve to wind up in a planting box growing vegetables for a bunch of pointy tooth devils.”

“Come on, guys. The new commander gave me some pretty strong hints that we needed to stay useful if we didn’t want to end up in the planting boxes ourselves. And hiding out in here is not being useful.” Of course, the commander had only insinuated that Cricket and Inya should prove themselves useful, but I didn’t want to say anything that might lead to another divide between us.

“He is right, Cricket. We need to show that we are needed here.” At least I could count on Inya’s healthy fear of punishment to make her rational. But, Cricket huffed and gave me the stink-eye, like I brought him more tribulation than the aliens holding us prisoner. Crazy old man.

I fastened my helmet at the top of the ramp instead of in the airlock vestibule and kept my eyes on the polished rock floor. The Sorg had bodies stacked and that soil machine going nonstop, so the entire place reeked of meat and bog. At least the machine warmed the place up, I bet the Sorg hoped we never ran out of dead humans for them to convert.

The bubbles had turned into a winding maze with our original boxes in the middle. I’d taken tender stems from most of the plants and put them into rooting gel and then water capsules, then spread plastic wrap over the boxes to make mini greenhouses. Inya and Cricket didn’t have Romi’s aptitude for planting, but I taught them the basics. Still, I almost always had to stay behind and fix whatever they did wrong.

Sure enough, Cricket had taped his plastic down too close, choking the cuttings of oxygen instead of warming them. I would have to redo the plastic on all his planters. No, I would have to redo the boxes too. Cricket must have slapped the water capsules in without first digging a trench like I showed him. They’d all emptied out. I knelt in the mud leaking from the box seams. Thrust my left hand into the sludge to fish out the plant stems. “God dammit, Cricket you stupid—”

“Who do you speak to human?”

I shot up with a gasp and a swallow. “Um…” The Hush commander skipped back, silver eyes watchful. I’d startled him. And now I towered over him, one hand dripping mud and sweat staining my shirt. I should have stayed on my knees where I looked less threatening. A lifetime of towering over people with power had taught me how much they hate looking up to meet my eyes, calculating how much of a threat I might pose. And then they decide to strike first. “S…sorry…” I sank back down to the box.

Apologizing might have been the wrong thing to do. The iridescence of his eyes darkened. That same thing happened when I interrupted him. Of course. Landon, you dumbass, apologizing means you noticed he was afraid of you. “I didn’t want to get you…” I held up my muddy hand, and nodded at his mirrored suit. He didn’t change colors, adopt the background like a chameleon. I guess they could turn that ability off if they wanted to.

My excuse placated him. “I am not averse to water and soil, human.” He bit the end of a reflective glove to pull it free. Teeth with more points than those of a human, but not a mouth full of daggers like a Sorg. He pulled off his other glove and tossed both aside, then reached into the swampy mire of the box, scooped out a tiny orange carrot. “These plants were not attended with the same care as the other boxes.” He pursed his cupid’s bow lips and blew water droplets from the fragile dangling of leaves.

Cricket, you idiot. “It’s okay. I can fix it.” I’d dug out the kale clippings and dandelion stems, used my fingertips to place them in a puddle of muddy water on the bubble’s floor. The Hush commander knelt to place the tiny carrot beside them. Up close, he really didn’t look that much like Romi, not as doughy in the face, not as child-like. And he didn’t remind me of my nephews at all. The commander had a man’s shoulders, strength and training evident in the cords of his neck and ropey muscles of his arms and legs. I knew Hush physiology had a lot of similarities to ours, that what I noticed on the new commander revealed a soldier’s discipline. Those precise movements, the confidence with his own body, demonstrated it too.

When I turned back to hunt for more of the drowning shoots and cuttings, two gray-green hands dug beside mine. Elegant long fingers with oval clear nails combed through the mud searching for the plantings. A ring made from purplish crystal — amethyst, if it had come from Earth — left a starburst impression in the wet dirt. When he found a small stem of sage, the Hush commander held it up to his strange eyes and examined it.”This small leaf of sage… is it from the same plant which their chieftain swallowed?”

“Oh…Um…maybe. I made…he had… leaves from each of the sage plants.” Had he caught my slip? Of course, he did. Now he knew that I was the one to give the hybrid commander sage. “I didn’t know it would kill him.”

“He is not dead.” The Hush bared his teeth, little menacing points showing against his curling green lips. “The half-blood are weak. Inferior. But the Sorg would rather die than ask our help. We cured him as punishment, and sent him back to his home.”

“He’s alive?” Before Romi’s death, I might have felt relief. Before Romi.

“Your Sorg lives in a village between volcanic mountains at the southern tip of their planet. I saw him there myself.” The commander sank to his knees and mimicked my stance by leaning over the box, resting his elbows on the edge. As if my careless posture indicated some formal procedure for handling vegetable cuttings. “This is the correct method for tending the plants,” he said, but not as a question. The commander was prideful.

I couldn’t quite keep the smile off my face. “Yep. Yes. Very correct.” My hand hovered over his to take the sage cutting. “And the former commander wasn’t my Sorg.”

The Hush muttered something in his language that sounded a little like leaves scattering in the wind. Two eyes, two ears, a nose, a mouth… so much the same. But the minuscule difference of holes and crevices in their mouths and throats made their language incomprehensible to humans. He caught me staring and I looked away.

“Set it here?” The Hush ignored my outstretched hand and placed the sage cutting near the radish.

“Yeah… yes.”

Cricket had thrown all the chives together in a clump and I had to pick the spidery roots apart with my fingernails. It took a deep breath and lot of control not to start cursing him again. The Hush examined my facial expressions as closely as I monitored his. And I really hoped my face didn’t heat up in embarrassment as soon as I realized it. “So… now you are their… chieftain?” I also hoped it was okay to ask questions.

“Do I appear the same as a Sorg to you, human? How could I be their chieftain?”

“No, no. You don’t look at all…I…sorry.” God, shut up, Landon. You’re a prisoner, not a cultural exchange student. As I looked up, I caught him holding one of the chives to sniff. “I love the smell of chives too. They grew wild in our yard at home. Whenever I mowed, the whole yard would smell just like that little plant you’re holding.”

Cradling the chive in both hands like something precious, the Hush brought the cutting to his face and inhaled with new interest. “Your home has the scent of this plant?” He’d tied his dark green hair into a knot at his neck, but a few strands fell forward as he hovered over the chive. “I will help you.”

“It’s going to be kind of messy.” I plucked at my sweat and dirt stained undershirt.

But he ignored my warning and fumbled at the neck of his suit until his fingers caught on a loop of the material. When he tugged the loop, his pressure suit rolled down off his body like a banana peel. Underneath he wore another gauzy shirt, this time black instead of grey, tucked into black pants. Another faceted jewel, also black, pinned at his throat. “On my planet, seedlings as these are…” He seemed to search for the word. “They are…sacred. Soil is sacred.” He knelt back beside me in the mud, and plunged his hands back into the box. “I am not a chieftain. I am … as you described. A military leader. In this dome, I am Commander.”

“Wha… Oh, right.” I had a hard time meeting those blank eyes made of light. “That’s a hard job to lead a company of Sorg though, right? They aren’t your same species.”

“Hard? Difficult you mean? It is not difficult to control a species subservient to my own.”

“I don’t know if you should trust them that much.”

“You humans have an unnecessary fixation on trust. Hush know the truth of supremacy and inferiority. Trust lies in the truth that I am superior to both you and the Sorg.”

If the Hush had such superiority then why didn’t they leave my planet alone and return to theirs? But I could hardly say that to him. Not with my life on the line. “I don’t think we understand trust in the same way,” I said, and decided a change of subject might work better. “Just a few more cuttings to find and we can replant them.” Another couple pea shoots and some arugula stems. The commander and I found them drowning on the bottom of the planting box.

I showed him how to use a knife to poke draining holes into the box, while I cranked the lights to high. Now it felt like a summer afternoon in Kansas. The commander rolled his sleeves up to help me shovel new dirt into the box, fluff it with the muddy soil. His hairless forearms looked thin and weak as a young boy, but they had hidden strength and he could heft and carry the loads of dirt as well as Inya. Just one elbow on each arm. Just one knee on each leg. He moved like me… well a little better than me. More agile and precise.

The high temperature and hard work started to get to both of us. The commander pulled the dark jewel from his neck with muddy fingers and the gauzy black shirt opened to reveal the smooth dusky green of his chest, still dry and cool looking. Stop staring. My own shirt clung to my body with sweat and I tugged it off.

Okay, so he also stared. Maybe he had just as much curiosity about me as I did about him. I ran my shirt under the water line and squeezed it out. “So, am I the first human you’ve ever…” Met? Captured? Fixed a planting box with? “… seen? Up close, I mean.” I pulled my wet shirt back on and turned. When last I had looked the Hush commander stood over the planter admiring our work, I think. But now he slumped limp against the cold bubble wall. The Hush panted, his lips moving but not speaking.

“Commander?” I stumbled over the trowels, the piles of muddied soil and hosing. “Are you alright?” My hand suspended over his face, remembering how my mother would lay the back of her fingers against my forehead to gauge my fever. But I froze, also remembering how he had avoided laying the sage into my palm. Don’t touch. And finally I noticed that the silky black shirt looked perfectly dry while sweat had soaked my own clothes.

The grow lights. I dove toward the controls near the bubble’s neck and cut them off. At once, the temperature started to drop. But I felt around in the dark for the water line and pulled it toward the commander. “Sir. Here…” I cupped some water in my hand and pulled the back collar of his shirt from the hard dry skin. Trickled the water onto the back of his neck.

The Hush came to all at once, convulsing. Then surging to his feet. His dirty hands balled into fists, and his eyes flashed like strobes in the night of the bubble. He pulled something from the waist of his pants. A black button. I knew what that could do.

I took a step back, hands raised in front of me. “You were overheated. I tried to cool you down.” My voice cracked. “I…didn’t touch you. Just your shirt.”

Neither of us moved. Through the clear plastic of the agro bubble, the night dust of Mars swirled. Choppy winds first revealed, and then concealed stars in the sky above as we watched each other, each distrustful and on guard. Even without any expression on his marble face, I could tell the moment when the commander regained his poise. A subtle release of his shoulders, an upward tilt of his chin. “Not overheated… heated too quickly and I could not… adjust.”

“So you’re…cold blooded?” Like a snake.

The Hush ignored my question. “Will the plants live, human? Do they not need the light?” He tucked the black button away again. “The soil has recovered?”

I shuffled toward the box, my eyes not leaving the Hush. His gaze fixed on me in return, neither of us certain of our safety. I dipped my hand into the planter. The soil felt as if a hard rain had come, not a flood. “I think I can put the plastic back over it.” Just then, the storming Mars sky again filled with thick dust and the night became black, impenetrable to star or moon. “Oh…perfect.” Without the grow light or the ambient glow of space, the inside of the bubble became a cold blind void. “This happens sometimes, we just have to wait for the sky to clear again.”

Had it not been for the commander’s silver eyes that cut through the darkness, I would have had no point of reference at all. The commander, with his black clothes and inky hair, melded with the night. His gray-green skin blended into the shadows. But I would have bet he could see me just fine, the silver eyes glowed like a those of a bat. I placed both hands on the edge of the planter, in sight of the Hush. “I’ll need to turn the lights back on… not as hot but…” The gleaming eyes moved closer. My hands squeezed the box to keep them in place. Footsteps. Rustling fabric.

“Return the lights, human.”

Stumbling backward, I reached out my hands like a blind man in the darkness. “I might need to wait for the dust to blow clear again. My hands groped along the bubble’s framework.

“It is here.” The low voice came just beside me, and I froze, careful not to touch, even by accident.

He inched the lever over slow enough to mimic a sunrise.

“A little more, I think.”

“Like this?” The Hush had again donned the mirrored suit. The lights wouldn’t bother him now. “Human?”

“Y..yes. Perfect.” I went to stretch the plastic wrap back over the cuttings, now snug in their water capsules and dirt.

The Hush watched me for a moment. Then he retrieved his gloves and helmet from the muddy floor. “I will leave now.”

“Oh..okay.” But he didn’t leave. Instead he continued watching me stretch the wrap, tape it down. Pausing in my work, I floundered over what to say next. Would it offend him to show gratitude? Would it enrage him if I didn’t? “So… thank you. For helping me.”

The curved green lips opened, closed. Opened again. “Plants are sacred. Edible plants more so.” He thrust a mirrored hand under one of the hot bulbs. “Your home is this climate? This temperature?”

“Oh… uh yeah. Sometimes. But it also gets hotter in the summer. And then colder as the Earth travels away from our sun.”

“Yes, I understand this, human. My knowledge of these things surpasses your own.”

“Right.” I could feel my face heat up. “But thanks. I appreciate your help.”

After he left, I stomped down on something that cut into the arch of my foot like the spiky seed of a sweet-gum tree. But no tree could grow on Mars, not even in an agro bubble. Instead, I found the black gem from the commander’s shirt, its size and shape like a sharp-edged quail’s egg. My fingers twisted it in the half light of the bubble, letting the facets absorb, then reflect the light just like the Hush’s silver eyes. I’d never touched something so exotic before, a creation from minerals, pressure, and heat made in a galaxy far from my own. I slipped the dark jewel in my pocket. I would give it back of course, but it awed me in a way that fighting aliens, living as their prisoner, never had.

*

The next day I couldn’t convince either Inya or Cricket to help in the bubbles. “If no one comes to get us then we should just stay out of sight,” Cricket argued. He’d made a quilt of sweaters and jackets that Romi and I scavenged, and punched a little nest for himself in his sand bunk.

“That’s like saying you want them to come get you. Listen, we need to keep taking care of the plants or there’s no reason for them to keep us alive.”

“What are you so worried about?” Cricket made a hacking noise, a scornful cough. “They’re your friends!”

“I’m not friends—”

Inya waved a hand between us. “This is why you should go, Landon. The Sorg like you. There is no danger for you.”

I really didn’t see any added danger for the two of them. The commander kept the Sorg busy enough that they paid no attention to us at all. But I needed to get started if I had to do all the watering and lights myself. “Fine.”

When I got back to the cave that night, Inya shushed me before I even said a word. She hovered over Cricket who had curled like pill bug in his quilt nest.

“Is he sick?”

The old man moaned and trembled. His skin beaded with sweat and the bushy gray hair dripped with it. “I’m not sick, you blind fool boy.” He uncurled enough to glare at me with reddened swollen eyes. “The Hush did this to me.” He held up a hand, his right, to show me. The skin had turned dark blue, fingers swollen and puffy, black nails sunken into flesh. I knew what it looked like… frostbite. “He just showed up down here and whistled a bunch of that so-called language at us. Then he pointed at my hand and…this!” Cricket brandished the rotting hand.

The skin on the back of my neck prickled. Twice I’d come close to punishment from the Hush. Don’t interrupt him. Don’t touch him. I needed to keep those rules at the forefront of every interaction.

Inya sat back on her own bunk as Cricket raged and waved the dying hand. “It began as white and hard. I believe he has frostbite.”

“Yeah, that’s what I think too. Shit. We need a splicer. We need to take it off or—”

Cricket’s eyes bugged out of his face. “You’re not taking my hand off!”

Inya tucked the rough quilt around him the way a mother soothed a fussing child. “You were a medic, Cricket. You know we have to.”

Tears rolled down his face, getting caught in the lines and wrinkles. “Fine. Just do it.” He held the hand up to me. Like I just carried a med splicer around with me. “Don’t just stare at me like the brain dead moron you are, boy. Go find a med kit.”

I ran a hand through my hair. When Romi and I hunted for ration packs, I’d found the med bay near the officer suite. We stole the antibiotics and bandages, but I never imagined needing a splice laser.

“Hurry up you big lazy bastard!”

I bit back what I wanted to say, that his own slothfulness brought this about. Not that he deserved it— I watched pain dissolve the old man back to a teary whimpering mess. “I’ll be right back, okay?” I sprinted for the ramp.

The mossy scent of the green soap drug still hung in the air, but the main dome had cleared out of the Sorg males. Creeping through the hallways, I kept stumbling into and over the Sorg as they coupled with females. Mid coitus, they called after me, “Ayhor,” no differently than they did passing me to work on the bubble maintenance. Glistening red stiff penises thrust between the segmented legs of grunting females without a pause.

“Yep. Hi. Looks like you’re having a good time there. Just passing by.” As the med bay door slid open, neon blood orange labia met me. I nearly collided face first into it when a snaking arm tossed me aside.

“Roo hoo, Ayhor.”

“Right. I just need…” I pointed at the instrument cabinet, but the Sorg didn’t give me another glance as he gripped the female’s ass with one claw. Teased between the shiny red globes with the tip of his other pincer. “Oh Jesus— just give me a sec here.”

Med splicer — had it!

I ran and hurdled the couple screwing just to get out of there faster. Slapped the door control and shook my head to clear it of …that.

“What did you steal, human?” The melodic low voice hid the threat. But I still felt it like icy fingers down my spine. The jewel in my pocket. “Show me.”

Oh. He meant the splicer. I’d pressed it against my thigh to conceal it from the Sorg. The same Sorg fucking around every corner. If the commander separated the males and females from washing together, I couldn’t imagine he would excuse their public sex. “Commander?” I practically shouted, pitching my voice as a warning to the copulating Sorg. “Sir?” I held out the medical splicer for him to see. “I wasn’t stealing it. I just needed to use it.”

“Use it for plants?” Dressed in sea-foam green with green jewels in the small lobes of his ears, the commander looked like a creature from a fairytale. Except for the reflective gloves bristling with weaponry.

“I… no not plants. Cri… one of the other prisoners. I need to remove his hand.”

The dark brows rose. “Remove it? Why?”

You know why. I rubbed my lips together. Careful. Be careful. “It won’t heal. The punishment you gave him…caused the hand to die. I need to remove it or his blood will become poisoned.”

The commander seemed unmoved by this explanation.”I need him to help me with the plants?” But this was the war between our species in a nutshell. We simply could not understand each other. The Hush had marveled at our plants, our trees, our flowers, and herbs… but they didn’t care about the people living on the planet. And they would never care.

“He mistreats the plants,” said the Hush commander. “The old human disregards their needs. He is not useful. He has no purpose.”

If only I could read emotion from the frozen marble of his face. “He… um he is still learning. And misunderstood…” Even an alien species could tell I flailed for an excuse. “Growing plants from cuttings is difficult. But I need him for the mature plants. So I can focus on the new plants… to… make sure they take root.”

The med bay Sorg must have wrapped up his dick by then because the door behind me slid open. A claw touched on the back of my neck, with a rumbling order. Alright. I got it. Pretend the Sorg brought me here. I played along, nodding to my Sorg guard and trudged dutifully in front of him.

A whistling command stopped us. The Sorg growled lowly, but the commander waved a gloved hand to silence him. “Human, I will allow you to take the device if you truly require the use of the other prisoner.”

The Sorg shot a penetrating glare at me. Would I give away the ruse of his guarding me?

No. I wouldn’t. I’d warned him and the others around the hallway bend, hadn’t I? An instinct to conspire against a shared authority. Like the automatic response to a teacher’s, “What’s going on here?” as I cupped a hand over my black eye. “Nothing.” My grip tightened on the splicer. “I do. I need his help.”

The commander gave a cold look to my “guard,” probably suspicious about how much freedom he’d allowed me. Another order in puffs, wheezes, and whistles. Dismissal.

We’d cleared the hall and entered the main dome, when the Sorg growled and barked out his frustration to me.

“Yeah, you got cock-blocked, and I have to go amputate a hand. The Hush are bastards alright.”

The Sorg must have appreciated my commiseration. At the top of the ramp, he coiled his arm around my head in the their familiar friendly gesture.

“Right. I still hate your guts though.” I waved a hand as I descended to the rock cave. “Hope you die soon!”

Thief

While the Sorg had decided not to bother guarding us, that didn’t mean the commander didn’t take an interest. Because he definitely did.

Cricket blamed me. Of course. “If you hadn’t joined up with the Sorg, that bastard Hush commander wouldn’t be checking in on us so much.”

“I didn’t join—”

“That little hand-burning bastard— he’ll be freezing off something of yours next. Too bad I can’t work the med splicer one handed. That’ll be a nasty death!” That cackling laugh would kill him one day. Every time he guffawed, his lungs sounded about to burst.

I didn’t mind the commander’s presence. If Cricket and Inya worked beside me, the commander just watched us in stony silence, the silver filling his eyes. But when he found me alone, he asked a lot of questions. The flat metallic color drained away and his eyes glowed with light. Despite his claims that Hush revered plants, the commander gave me the impression he didn’t have much experience with them. He asked to touch them, to water them, to adjust the LED positions. I had to make up tasks so he didn’t realize how gardening in an agro bubble didn’t take much work at all. No disease, no fungus, no little plant munching insects. I invented a bunch of chores to keep him busy. He blew dirt from the leaves, changed the intensity of the lights to mimic sunrise and sunset, combed the soil with a bristled scrub brush. Sometimes the perfect bow of his lips would twitch and I wondered if he suspected that none of my made-up tasks affected plant growth.

“Human, what is this plant called?”

I craned my neck from the other side of the planter to see. His fingers brushed against a pale stem the same celadon green as his skin. Lately, I’d spent a lot of time considering names for the different shades of green. Pistachio, pine, olive… Forest green, the color of his hair. Emerald, his lips. A pale sage for his skin… Celadon. He belonged in a fairytale, in a painting, a dream. Oh no. Landon, you dumbass.

“Human?”

My face had turned bright red, I could feel it. Blood rushed in my ears. “Um… it’s a radish. Put your fingers near the dirt and pull it out. You can eat it.”

He stiffened, drew his hand from the plant and into a fist. He no longer wore the silver gloves in my presence. “Do we not need to use this plant for growing others?”

Right. Besides how little his prisoners worked, I’d also hidden that we sometimes ate the vegetables. Those ration packs wouldn’t last forever. And the three of us preferred eating kale, tomatoes, and zucchini rather than chunks of muddy moss and bricks of that tofu-tasting stuff. I suppose I had liked the nut paste. “Well… it’s okay to eat a small amount.” I pulled the radish loose, sliced the root tip off with a pairing knife to tuck back in the dirt. “Hang on and I’ll rinse this off.” After I’d cleaned the red bulb, I held it out to him by the greens. He wouldn’t need to touch me to take it. “Just eat the root.” His fingers closed over the bulb and I pinched the greens off. “Also it’s a little spicy… to humans.”

“Spicy?” The dark hair fell forward over his face, reminding me just a little of Romi. But the commander’s hair looked better cared for, smoother and thicker. Seaweed green.

No… he no longer reminded me of Romi. But sometimes the slight expression in his marble face had an innocence. Did Hush age the same way humans did? The Sorg aged faster, died younger than us. They’d found it fascinating that humans lost hair and teeth, that we withered into old age before death. The Hush, always so enigmatic, hid their fascination better. But not their disgust. They’d shown revulsion to children, to childbirth. Once, when a heavily pregnant Earth ambassador had greeted them, they fell back in horror and departed at once on a gravity beam. All the information about them I had shrugged off in Kansas had me burning with curiosity when I watched the commander. I wanted to know his name, his age. Did he have a family? Did he miss his home?

“Take a bite.” My voice came out croaky.

He looked up at me with interest. Any time my voice or face changed…if I blushed, if I scratched… he examined me, trying to glean understanding. I motioned to the radish.

He bit down. His eyes widened and glowed as he held the bite in his mouth. I waited for him to spit it out. He didn’t look like he liked it, but he swallowed. “I see.” Then he popped the rest in his mouth and chewed. Licked his lips, then licked his fingers with his pale green tongue. Jade green.

“Do you like it?”

The light in his eyes fragmented and the pieces danced like sparks around us. “I do.”

I grinned back at him. “Okay, you need to try more.” We went from box to box and I cut him pieces of vegetables and herbs with my pairing knife. His sharp teeth cut into the course leaves of the leek much better than human teeth, and pierced the taut skin of a tomato that he sucked all the juice from before eating. Back in Colby I would fill my pockets with candy that I knew Tonia never bought the boys, just to see their faces as they scrunched their noses at Fizzy Dizzies, or puckered their lips after eating Sour Chews. The commander’s doll features didn’t change, but the light effects from his eyes altered depending on what he tasted. A steady warm glow. A dappled sunlight. The fractured light of a disco ball. I didn’t know what any of it meant, but I liked it. I liked being a part of those dazzling reactions. Landon, Landon you stupid, stupid boy. The voice in my head sounded a lot like Yulia.

“I know,” I answered her.

The commander cupped his hands around the arugula to breathe in the peppery scent. And then the chives. “Your home?”

“Yes.” I cradled a slender stem in my palm and inhaled with my eyes closed. “Saturday… early evening. Right after I mow.”

“We do not condone that practice… mowing. You should let the plants grow without interference.” A standard Hush criticism.

“Sometimes vegetables, all plants really, thrive better with a little interference.” Our staple answer.

“Perhaps.”

Really? I couldn’t remember if the Hush had officially acquiesced that point. Or if the commander himself had this opinion. Someone like Tory or Adil would have had no problem recalling every particular of the Hush grievances and demands, the aspects of their culture and biology that humans had deduced. But my way of dealing with the war and our minutes-long drop battles, hadn’t involved study, or even training like Yulia. I’d read novels, watched holos, and played VR games to escape the war and my part in it.

I slit the seam of a bulging peapod, and held it out to him. “Eat just the… seeds.”

His fingers plucked a single pea to taste. The wide eyes closed and he sighed.

Oh. Not a sigh, a word. “Good?”

The eyes opened with fractured light again. “Yes.”

* * *

After that, I looked for him, waited for him, shooed Cricket and Inya off so that if he came, he would find me alone. Would stay. Don’t interrupt. Don’t touch. Watch his eyes for the tarnishing clouds. I hadn’t found anything new to add to my list of reminders. But he didn’t mind questions.

When he described his home world, I pictured Antartica, mountains of frozen rock and ice, patches of frost-covered tundra, deep turbulent oceans with glaciers and icebergs. Too cold to grow things like we could, and the reason Earth had seemed such a miracle to them. “A miracle with ungrateful beings destroying it,” he added, dragging his fingers through black dirt. His gleaming eyes focused on the leek I trimmed, but I felt he watched me too. What could he see with those glowing eyes? How did I look to him?

“We aren’t ungrateful. Not all of us.” Light flecks danced over my hands and arms. I turned a hand so that it seemed one of them settled in my palm. “That’s so cool…” But when I turned toward him, he hid the light with the flat silver fill. I think I’d embarrassed him.

The commander explained that the Sorg planet lay on the other end of the circumstellar habitable zone of their solar system. Closer to their star. I couldn’t picture it, Earth didn’t have a place that hot. Sorg didn’t even have liquid water, just thick swampy fog. A place where wearing gauzy bandages probably felt really comfortable. Just enough to wick the sweat away. No wonder they had liked to keep the dome steamy and warm before the Hush commander arrived. Now the commander kept the dome so cold that green soap fog turned to oily frost against the dome glass. In response they layered the white wrappings over their bodies until they really did look as thick and stiff as mummies. I stretched for the water hose and unfastened it from the plastic wall, motioned for him to stand back. “Don’t the Sorg need more warmth than this? Will they get sick?”

The commander answered me with his usual placid expression. “Why should that matter?” he said, watching me spray water on a bed of dandelions, something I would never do back home. The damn things tried to choke out our garden every year.

“Well…it matters because…” It took a lot to keep the recrimination out of my voice. “Because they’re your troops and their welfare is your responsibility.” Then I bit my lip, wondering if I had said too much.

But I didn’t need to worry. The commander brushed the dirt from his hands. “They are only Sorg,” he answered. And I wondered that he could show so much worry over eating a single radish bulb but not care at all that the soldiers under his care huddled together, miserable, inside the dome.

* * *

When I woke up the next morning, Cricket slapped a wet rag at my face. “Your buddies, have gone on strike.”

I’d stayed late in the bubbles pruning dead leaves from all the boxes and crushing them into mulch, then came back inside the dome to find the buckets unstacked, green fog hanging so thick in the cold air that I’d had to tie my shirt over my nose and mouth and run for the ramp.

“No wonder a lazy fool like you loves the Sorg so much. You’re all a bunch of loafing idiots sucking down that drugged soap.”

“What are you talking about, Cricket?” I sat up and stretched. To avoid the increasingly violent cleaning ritual, the three of us had started filling a bucket from the dome waterline, then bringing it back to the cave. The water, suffused with shards of ice and the bucket white with frost, made fingers numb and clumsy while washing. But worse than the ice bath, I had gotten way too familiar with Cricket’s flabby, aging body. When I stood and twisted, my spine made a satisfying roll of cracking noises. But it also forced me to see the old man straddling a glass bucket and scrubbing between his grey furred ass cheeks with my Allied Defense t-shirt.

Jesus! I gave my full attention to dressing in my pilfered sweater and cargo pants. “What do you mean, they’re on strike?”

“They’re all lying around with the heating rods cranked and the soap boiling. They better hope the new commander’s Hush buddies don’t drop in.”

When I’d delayed getting dressed as long as possible, I looked up to see that Cricket had finally gotten some pants on and had started fanning his underarms dry. A definite improvement from that last visual.

“We should remain inside the cave today,” Inya said. She opened a package of orange juice and some vacuum packed bacon that looked and tasted like party balloons. I’d rather eat the tofu brick than one of those.

“We still need to go to the agro bubbles.” A lifetime of living and working on a farm taught me that some chores supersede the likelihood I might die trying to do them. And I had braved plenty worse than an alien work strike. Trudged to the chicken coops during lightning storms that made my hair stand straight from my scalp. Led the cows back from the field when a tornado pulled a twenty-foot elm up from the ground, roots and all. Watered, plowed, and harvested crops with every imaginable illness or injury.

But Cricket and Inya, who I had to coax to do work on the most boring regular day of our prison camp experience, had no intention of pitching in with the threat of violence hanging in the air like green soap fog. “Whatever, I’ll do it myself.”

“Won’t your friends get mad? You’re crossing their picket lines and all. Scab!” Cricket dissolved into his usual hacking laughter.

“They aren’t my friends.” I wondered what my fellow prisoners would think about my daily meetings with the Hush. After detailing what the commander had said about usefulness the first time, I’d kept all my later interactions with him a secret. For no reason that made sense… Okay, for no reason that I wanted to admit to myself. You’re a fool, Landon. Cricket’s right about you. But my time with the commander had nothing to do with the other prisoners, I reasoned. And I got enough shit from Cricket because the Sorg accepted me. So it made sense not to say anything… right.

The Hush commander didn’t come to the agro bubbles that day, and I took a long time to water, adjust the lights, fertilize, and prune. Working in the dirt under the lights, the earthy scent of vegetation pulled me into a familiar meditative state. “Okay,” I told the pea pods. “We’ll just wait this out.”

Back inside the dome, the sit-down strike had wound down. Buckets littered the rock floor, but the fog had dissipated a little. I didn’t see any work happening. No cleaning. No construction. Some of the Sorg lounged in sight, insect limbs draped over each other. I’d made a bundle of sage, chives, and pea pods for the commander, the plants he seemed most drawn toward in the bubbles. The damn sweater and cargos I’d found fit me like a second skin, and I had nowhere to hide my bundle from a bunch of soap-high Sorg if they wanted to take it from me. But, they just raised their triple jointed arms in lazy greetings. “Ayhor.” Wherever the others had gone, they’d taken the heating rods with them to hide. Maybe they’d gone to get the couple hours of sleep they needed? None of them stopped me, when instead of heading for the ramp down to the cave, I made my way toward the maze of hallways and office rooms.

No red leather labia in my face. No bizarre sexual acts or positions. Instead of warning me, I took this as a lucky break. At the last bend for the officer suite I stopped short. Outside of the gray door stood two Hush soldiers. Their suits duplicated the drab hallway, the seam of the door, the glow of the control panel.

One tilted its head just a fraction. A camouflaged hand moved to its waist.

Keep walking. I held the bundle out in front of me, on the flat of my palms like an offering, kept my eyes on the door. Hoped like hell that the tech on those suits couldn’t judge heart rate or respiration, or if they did, that the Hush wouldn’t know how to interpret it. At the door a chameleon arm shot out to bar my way.

“These are for the commander. Plants.” Could they understand me? I tipped my palms a little to make the sage more prominent. The arm remained. But now both soldiers reached for their waists. I gritted my teeth, fought to keep my eyes open. Waited for the fizz. Waited for the frostbite weapon used on Cricket. Waited to die.

The door slid open, startling all of us. The commander stood in the entryway. He had the gray outfit I’d seen him in the first day, but more jewels. Grey starbursts pinning back his long hair, sparkling on his fingers and wrists. A torque of the water-looking metal flowed around his neck. Looking at it hurt my eyes.

No shadows or tarnish in the silver eyes. “I brought…” Behind the commander, another Hush stepped into view.

Well, the Hush must age in a way at least somewhat similar to humans. This male looked older in all the ways that a human would. Creases lined his wide forehead, the sides of the delicate nose, the tiny pointed chin. His long hair had faded to the pale green of a new leaf, and it reached almost to his knees. In his long layered robes, he reminded me of a wizard from one of the picture books my mother had saved from her childhood.

My mouth had dropped open as I stared. Swallowing, I started again, “You didn’t come down today. I thought you might… I…”

“Show me.” The older Hush’s voice had the same surprisingly low tone as the commander’s. Because he still faced me, I saw a flicker of darkness cloud the edges of the commander’s eyes, but it cleared before he turned around to let me inside.

With a quiet hum, the door slid in place, sealing me inside with the two Hush. Despite the freezing room, sweat prickled under my arms and at the back of my neck. I really hoped I didn’t stink of nerves.

Even under the LED planter lights, the commander had no scent at all. It made me really self conscious. And now it made me wary of offending the visiting Hush. His fingers, also lined and knobby in the way a human would age, sifted through the bundle I’d made.

The commander made some comment to him in the whistle language, and the older Hush snapped something back in a staccato of words that sounded like breaking glass. He turned on the commander with dark flashing eyes.

The commander hung his head, the heavy fall of his hair straining against the starburst clips. He clasped his hands in front of him as the older Hush berated him, the picture of contrition and shame. And I thought of myself standing in front of Tonia or my older brother after making another mistake on the farm. Of my football coach lecturing me about another game lost. Of the training officer’s expression when I fell behind in another exercise. When the older Hush paused, my mouth opened before my brain could stop it. “The commander has doubled the number of vegetables we’ve grown. How much sage…”

Both of them turned toward me with flashing eyes. Had I interrupted? No. I hadn’t. Now besides the sweat, my face filled with heat. I nodded toward the bundle in the older Hush’s gnarled hands.

“This human was a grower on Earth. A farmer,” said the commander. “He has great knowledge of tending vegetables and herbs.”

“A grower,” the elder Hush repeated, voice flat. He regained the blank silver in his eyes. “Then, I suppose he has a purpose here. Unlike…” But he didn’t finish the rest of that sentence for my ears, and made another wincing sound only the commander would understand. He tucked my bouquet of greenery into one of the voluminous wizard sleeves of his robes. Then he turned and the door slid open, and the two Hush guards stepped forward as if awaiting his lead.

The goodbye as he left us came out less severe, a sound like a breeze over water. And the commander bent in half, a low bow of respect. I hurried to do the same and stayed in that position for as long as it took the older Hush to retreat down the hallway, for the door to slide back into place.

“I… I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have come if I’d known that you had a visitor. I hope I didn’t…” Make things worse, I wanted to say.

“You have status as a grower. A farmer. That matters to us. It matters to my…” Even though his face didn’t change from its placid beauty and his eyes still held the silver fill, I recognized his frustration in the pause. “He is my progenitor. Do you understand?”

“Progeni… like a father? That was your father… parent?”

“Yes. My parent. I have displeased him because these Sorg no longer obey me and I do not give them purpose.” He pulled the torque from his neck and threw it across the room. Although it looked the same as water thrown from a cup, it bounced against the glass wall with a metallic clang and dropped to the floor, resuming its collar shape.

“It isn’t your fault.”

The commander tilted his head and light began to flicker against the silver fill.

“It isn’t,” I insisted. “The Sorg commander never made them do anything so they hate working.” Now I had my chance. When I’d planned to see the commander, I’d used the herbs and peas as an excuse. But, I’d really meant to help him with the Sorg. “I have some ideas… of how to win them back.”

“Ideas?” The concealing flat silver returned, and that empty blankness unnerved me and I sighed. Which made the commander rear back, but he recovered in the very next moment. I’d probably just said something in Hush. “Tell me your ideas, human.”

Here goes. “I…I think you should let them do the cleaning ritual the way they like it. Females and males together. That way they can… you know… have sex while they wash. And not just fight…”

He turned away from me, pulled the ends of his hair forward to conceal his face. What did that mean? “Sex,” he repeated. “Intercourse? Between male and female? Mating?” His sculpted lips pursed, then popped open with another airy noise. A word. A curse?

“Uh… yeah? Only I don’t think they do it for mating, for making little Sorgs or whatever. Sex for recreation. Sex, for fun.” My constant curiosity about Hush, about him, bubbled over. “Don’t you… the Hush, I mean, don’t they also do this?”

“No. Not for recreation. Never with the females.”

Okay… then how…I shook my head to clear out the questions bubbling up. “But the Sorg do. They like sex. A lot. So if they could have the women and men together for the cleaning again, morale would rise. They wouldn’t need to sneak around to do it.”

I had planned to also suggest that he attend the cleaning rituals. Not to wash himself in front of them, because no way would he agree to that. Not with how prickly he got at even the potential for touching. Just to go, make an appearance. But I held my tongue, uncertain how he took the advice I’d already given him.

“This is as I thought,” he said.

“You did? Oh, okay.” I smiled with relief. “That’s… um…good.”

“Is it?” He angled his head and the flickering light returned. Despite speaking my language, I don’t think the commander knew much more about humans than I did about Hush. Curiosity derailed our communication for him as often as it did for me. “Tell me human, the Sorg call you Ayhor. Is this your name?”

“Oh…” I didn’t bother to hide my surprise. “No…I thought it was a word in their language. That it meant…big or something about my size.”

“Then it is a word in the dialect of their tribe. There is no point in learning all of them.” Again, the Hush acted indignant that I might not consider him all-knowing, that he hadn’t recognized the word brought the dull clouds back. Maybe the marble skin wouldn’t give away much insight to his moods, but I think I was getting the hang of reading the changing shades of those eyes.

“My name is Landon.”

The moonlight glow I’d become familiar with when he looked at me had returned to his eyes. “Landon. I thank you, Landon.”

“Oh… yeah. You’re welcome.” I know I smiled like an idiot then. And turned red too. Maybe it would have been less humiliating if Cricket and Inya had gone ahead and shoved me out the airlock on that first day.

As soon as I left the commander’s room, I could smell the green drug. Kind of early for the Sorg to start with that, but I guess they decided to turn their work strike into a full-blown holiday. Down in the main dome the heat and soap fog made my head swim. I expected to get pulled into one of their binding head embraces, but aside from a few segmented arm waves, they didn’t appear in any state to chase me down. Instead of making them horny and aggressive, the group had become slothful and lazy like stoners I’d seen in high school. “Ayhor!”

“Yeah. Hi guys. I think the boss is going to let up on the rules tomorrow so don’t huff all that shit down tonight okay?” Their teeth made me shiver when I looked into their faces. “Right. Catch you later.”

Inya gave me a suspicious glare when I came in. She had a brownie in one hand and another on her lap. “Have you spent all day with them, Landon? You are friends with the Sorg again?” I could hear the cackle from behind her, even though I couldn’t see Cricket. He’d gone digging through the ration pile we kept at the back of the cave.

“What the hell, Inya? I told you that I had to take care of the plants. Like always. I do all the work around here, while you guys sit around eating the ration packs.”

Cricket sprang up from the ground waving his stump in the air. “I’ve already given a hand because of all the work I’ve done for these bastards. Don’t you go yelling at us just because the new commander won’t let you prance around showing off like the old one did!”

“You lost that hand because you didn’t work.” It came out a lot harder and louder than I meant it to. Inya recoiled, shocked. No one wants a big guy standing over them and shouting. The minute I hit puberty and started to sprout up taller than her, Mom repeated that like a mantra to me.”Don’t stand over me and raise your voice. I will not raise a brute who uses what God blessed him with to intimidate others!” But she never had to worry much. Once puberty passed, my angry, arguing phase passed too. I sagged onto my sandbag, shook my head. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to yell.”

Behind me Cricket muttered my name and then, “Sorg sympathizer” and “traitor.”

But I pretended I couldn’t hear. If we split up like last time, there wouldn’t be anyone on my side. Just the two of them against me.

I reached into a thigh pocket of my cargo pants. For weeks, I’d avoided looking at or thinking of what I had hidden there— the black Hush jewel that the commander had left behind in the agro bubble. He’d never asked about it and I hadn’t seen him look for it. From what I’d seen tonight of the starburst hair jewels and the liquid metal torque, he had many other, finer ornaments. Maybe he’d just forgotten about this one? In all the days hidden against my thigh, the jewel hadn’t warmed and it still felt like carved ice in my hand. Jet black ice that never melts. It burned my fingers if I held it too long.

Traitor

I’d finally drifted off to sleep when someone shook me back awake. “What?”

“Ayhor” The grimacing shark teeth of a Sorg loomed over me.

“Shit!” I jumped up out of my sandbag so fast that spots appeared before my eyes and my knees wobbled. Inya had plastered herself against the rock wall.

Cricket shivered beside her, cradling his stump against his chest. “They never come down here!” Inya’s voice trembled. “Ask him what he wants.”

The Sorg raised the segments of his arms so that they clacked together like train cars, and from his thorax came the grumbling sound that I had come to associate as an expression of frustration.

“What’s he saying?” Cricket hollered.

Teams of scientists and linguists hadn’t decoded either of the alien languages, but Cricket and Inya thought I’d become fluent in Sorg. “How should I—”

“Ayhor. Roo Hoo.”

Dammit, I did actually understand him. “He wants us to go… to come… with him.” Cricket gave Inya a knowing look that I ignored. “Come on.” I’d fallen asleep in my clothes, so I only needed to shove my feet into my sneakers. “I think the strike might end today.”

We trudged up to the main dome to find all the Sorg in formation, the same way they had stood when the new commander arrived. Eyes forward, red bodies tense.

Last night I expected the Hush commander to announce that the fucking and fighting we’d gotten used to under the Sorg chieftain would return. The Sorg would rejoice, maybe take another day or two off, then get back to the bubble construction. And I would return to plant splicing. I’d even started to wonder about the experiments the human scientists had undertaken. If we could continue their attempts to clean the Mars soil of perchlorate, determine the optimal lighting… If we could grow enough sage and clover here on Mars, that might make Earth less attractive. Less worth the effort of fighting a war. We could work together. Asleep, I’d dreamed a mirage of golden fields and lush green gardens thriving under the weak Mars sunlight. As if a snaking chain of agro bubbles could replace the full terraforming job the tiny red planet would need to become livable.

None of that mattered to my dream logic. Because, in my sleeping mind I stood with my hair caught back the bandana I’d left slung over a bedpost in my room at home. Dream Landon had pulled the black jewel from his pocket and tossed it in the air. Pitch sparkling like a dark star against the red sky. The commander caught it in his sage green fingers, smiled at me just like a human would. “I thank you, Landon.”

Well, I had the brain of a fool. When we took our places at the back, against the freezing glass wall of the dome, any idiot could see that this assembly wouldn’t go the way I had hoped. As we all faced the dias, I saw the reason for the tension in the room. Faceless Hush helmets looked back at us from every angle. Eight of them, which would make easy work of sixty Sorg and a handful of humans if the commander decided to kill us all because of the strike. The commander too had donned the high tech reflective suit, but he’d left his helmet off, and the dark hair cascaded down his back, his eyes black and shiny as a raven’s wing.

He spoke the whistling Hush language that I think all Hush employed when communicating with the Sorg, that the Sorg spoke back to them in return. Without understanding a single word, the announcement made my skin prickle. Though my brain couldn’t translate, my blood turned to ice. This was no conciliatory declaration that would reinstate the cleaning ritual, make the work easier, or promise a temperature change in the dome that would make the heat-loving Sorg more comfortable.

All around me, growling turned into frantic yapping and howling. One Sorg broke from the formation, triple segmented arms in the air, all the elbows pointing up, claws out. He bounced on his accordion legs, readying to charge. And watching him, my entire body burned with recognition. I knew that particular Sorg, his intense red color, his wide body, the jagged raised scar in place of an ear. All these weeks, I’d forced myself not to search for him, to act on the rage that now boiled inside me. Romi’s murderer. My arms pushed aside the Sorg in front of me. And the one in front of him. “Ayhor!” The pocket of warriors I struggled against smiled their approval. They thought I aimed for the Hush, that I’d taken their side.

“Get back here, you stupid traitor. These red bastards aren’t your people. This isn’t our fight!” Cricket’s raspy voice stood out from all the animal and motor rumbling sounds in the room. “You’re going to get us all killed, you damn waste of skin!”

Right. Not the place. Not the time. I came back to myself, put my hands on my head, gulped air to stay calm. Attacking that Sorg wouldn’t bring Romi back, it would only get me killed. Especially in a room permeated with fury and resentment.

Before the one-eared Sorg could attack, two of the females launched themselves from the assembly toward the commander. Vaulting into the air from spring-like legs. Limbs raised, claws forward to stab, knife-teeth bared to bite.

The Hush guards reacted faster. Blue lasers pulsing, crisscrossing in the air. They sliced the two Sorg females into so many pieces and with such speed and force that they exploded over our assembly. Neon blood and leathery red body fragments sprayed over us.

Angry howling drowned out my own shouted surprise. “What the hell is going on?” The growling sounded like a rocket firing up on the launch pad. No other Sorg tried to attack. But they flashed their orange pincer claws in the air, slashed and twisted. Demonstrated what they wanted to do. What they would do if given the chance.

The Hush commander threw both silver palms in the air and a blue energy emanated from the reflective gloves. A split second later the other Hush followed suit. Soon the spheres of lightning joined together to ignite a blue grid over the Sorg company. The force field, generated an energy that caused an icy sucking sensation over my entire body, different from the grab and pull of a regular grav beam. The females! The grid drew them up above us, picked them out from the men, like invisible fingers plucking berries from a vine. The entire pack of Sorg moved in a wave of surprise, dog whines and yaps arising from individuals within the crowd. The males tried to hold the leg and arm segments of their females to pull them back. But the Hush soldiers, so deceptively lithe and small in their chameleon suits, shook the Sorg loose with no effort. Corralled the females to float in the center of the dome.

The commander hadn’t moved. His beautiful face, the elfin tilt to his nose, the sculpted bow of his lips just as placidly serene as always. My appeal to him last night hadn’t worked the way I’d intended. “Intercourse? Between male and female?” Like a fool, I’d focused on him thanking me, saying my name. And I’d missed the most important part of that conversation. Hell, I’d actually told him that the Sorg snuck around behind his back to have sex!

Above us the fontanel opened and a gust of freezing oxygen roared over us. My nose and lips blazed with the cold. The grid dissolved into a blue radiance, unlike any gravity transport I’d ever seen. It scooped the entire mass of angry resistant females into it. At least thirty unwilling transports, no drop suits, no positioning, no helmets, all sucked up to a ship. There would be no more sex happening in Utopia Dome. At least not the kind that the Sorg seemed to prefer.

That icy wind had silenced the crowd, and we all shivered and panted, waiting for it to clear. My eyelashes felt crispy with frost. The Sorg stomped and shook, trying to warm themselves. Their hacking and snorting reminded me of watching a nature holo on mating rhinos.

Inya tugged on my sleeve. “Landon, what happened? What are they saying? Why did the commander kill half of them?”

In all our time held as prisoners, neither she nor Cricket had learned to tell the males from the females once they’d wrapped themselves again. “He didn’t kill them. He took the females away so they can’t fuck behind his back anymore. I’m pretty sure he just… sent them somewhere else. Maybe sent them home?”

On the dias, frost had dusted the commander’s cape of dark hair with shimmering luminescence. The cold didn’t bother him. Neither did the mournful howls of the Sorg. Without word or gesture, he turned and retreated back into the hallways. The Hush soldiers followed in his wake.

After that assembly, cold settled in the dome like an aching tooth. I hadn’t minded the humid heat under the Sorg chieftain’s rule, and I’d gotten used to the wintery crisp air that the new commander favored. But this numbing frigidity made it impossible to think of anything other than staying warm. We all had to wear pressure suits or accept dying of hypothermia. Peeling them off for a cleaning ritual became unthinkable, even for the hygiene obsessed Sorg.

We all went back to work. Inya and Cricket took a sudden interest in gardening again. Even though I knew they lounged under the lights for most of the day, they sprang into action whenever I found them. Patted the dirt while they watched me from the corners of their eyes. Adjusted and readjusted the lights with exaggerated care. “How’s this look, Landon?” Suddenly cordial and concerned with my good opinion, now that they believed me fully in league with our Sorg captors. I’d ended up on the other end of a divide deeper and wider than before.

The commander avoided me, I think. For two days I had waited for him to come, losing myself in the tedium of chores that had occupied me since childhood. I found comfort in touching the fragile new leaves, the scent of the dirt under the LED version of sunlight, the ache in my muscles as I shoveled and hoed. Still, I felt lonely. On the third day, I decided to stop looking, stop waiting, and he came.

I could feel him behind me. The rustle of fancy clothing and the long fingers trailing over the edge of the planter, into the dirt, into the same grooves I had made with my own fingers. “Human… Landon… you feel anger toward me?”

“Angry?” I hefted a rake up and out of the planting box. Working with a tool like that, on a raised bed, took a great deal more effort than the same tool would have out in a field. Having to hold it out in front of me like a pool cue to keep the dirt from packing too tightly made my arms and back ache with the strain. I turned around and set the rake down, took a couple of deep breaths to buy myself some time before having to face him. “Not angry at you. At myself? Yeah. I’m angry at myself.” I’d made a headband out of some long johns I’d found in the barracks, to keep my unruly hair off my face, keep the sweat out of my eyes. So I pulled that off, took a long time shaking out my hair, and scratched my head. Man up, Landon. Finally, I looked at him. The smooth planes of his face, the perfect features. When I met his eyes the light fractured between us like a broken windshield into a million tiny pieces,

“Anger for yourself?”

I took another deep breath, tried to let it back out without making a sound. Because who knows what that would mean to him? “Well… I wanted a way around fighting. You know? A way to make the Sorg happy and also you happy.”

“I do not understand this want.”

Yep. The Hush did not negotiate. I’d known this. They’d gone to war with us for not following their rules. Wouldn’t hear our reasons or complaints. That’s how much they did not negotiate. Maybe now I understood a lot better why the Earth ambassadors found the Hush so perplexing. “I can’t judge your decisions. We aren’t even from the same galaxy. I gave you a human solution, and you aren’t human.”

“Yes. I have come to understand this as well. We do not always understand each other. Our… insults do not correspond.” His lips pursed and released. “I have a curiosity, hu… Landon. That I believe you will allow.” Then, he raised a hand, reached for my face.

I drew back in surprise. Gasped. Shit. That probably meant something. “That sound wasn’t a word. You just surprised me.”

The commander held his hand still in the air between us. Light bounced from his eyes. “You have just agreed in my language. I wish to touch your hair.”

“Huh?” Both the commander and his…progenitor…had long straight hair. Maybe every Hush did? My own tight curls had grown long enough to become a tousled mass of dangling corkscrews. I had to pull it into a knot just to fit my head into my helmet, but since I’d just shook it out, the ringlets probably looked wild and alive. I’d made him curious. That gasp had meant agreement? I tried making another gasping noise, this one intentional. “Go ahead,” I added, in case I hadn’t gotten the Hush word right.

The commander reached out again, touched a single finger against a coil of my hair, tapped it so that it sprang back. The glowing eyes examined me a long time and I tried to hold in place, barely breathing. “This too is very different from Hush.”

“Curly hair?”

He said something in his language, a pebble rolling across the floor, ice shaking in a glass. Words he knew I couldn’t understand. “I will let you return to your work.”

“My what? Oh… yeah. Okay…” I scraped the rake off the bubble’s floor, my eyes watching him don the faceless helmet. After he left, I found myself alone again. Still, I didn’t feel marooned like before.

*

As soon as I stepped through the dome airlock and disengaged my helmet, I knew things had changed. The dome was warm, really warm. The Sorg had lit the heating rods to their highest settings. Although they hadn’t boiled water or broken out the soap drug, the heat alone felt decadent.

“Ayhor!”

Since the assembly with the Hush, I’d gained even more popularity with the Sorg. They’d only seen my anger, not where I’d pointed it. Without a helmet, the heat felt good on my face, but I didn’t dare take off my pressure suit. The temperature of the rock cave maintained a steady numbing frigidity.

“You guys get permission for this? I’m guessing not.”

They grumbled back at me, tractors on a gravel road. Claws waved in the air.

“Yeah? That’s a lot of big talk. Sounds like someone’s going to wind up getting sliced and diced by those blue Hush lasers.”

A cacophony of barks answered me. Seemed like they at least picked out the word “Hush” and recognized it.

“Right, you guys are bad asses. I’ll be sure to remember you while I mop the floor of your chunks.”

The ration packs froze solid in the rock cave, so we tucked the individual vacuum packed portions into the pressure suits and kept them warm with our body temperature. I’m surprised Inya could even move with how many desserts she had stashed about her person.

Without our helmets, our noses and lips froze, so we wrapped our heads and faces in cloth to keep them warm. Cricket wrapped his entire face, but Inya let her eyes show. They looked wide and frightened. “Landon, what do the Sorg plan up there?”

Cricket turned his fleece shrouded head my direction.”Whatever the hell it is, you keep us out of it. I’ve got half a mind to go to the commander and tell him you’re conspiring with them!”

“They’re just trying to get warm.” I’d cut up a windbreaker with a soft flannel lining for my own head wrap. The shoulder fit over my skull and the arm over my face, then looped into an opening I’d cut with gardening sheers. Not bad engineering, in my opinion. It didn’t look too different from the waterproof balaclava I wore to clear the winter fields back home.

“Are you sure Landon? They had a secret meeting outside the dome. Then they sealed the docking port with the spear lasers.”

They had? All that must have happened while I finished up in the bubbles. With the commander. “Docking port? The fontanel?”

“It is called a docking port.”

“Whatever, Inya. They sealed it? Why?”

Cricket tugged at the fleece pajama pants he wore over his face to reveal his mouth. “How the hell should we know? You’re the one who speaks their language. You’re their buddy!”

“I’m no—”

“They want to attack that evil little shit the Hush put in charge. Good riddance. I hope he dies a nice painful death.” Cricket’s voice broke like a young boy’s, “I hope they knock him out the airlock and I can see his dead body every time we have to— where the hell are you going?”

I’d ripped my baclava off my face. “I…” Where was I going? Bending over, I scooped my helmet from the floor. “I’m going to check on the plants.”

“Right now? You just got back, you lunatic!”

Inya pointed a gloved hand at me. “He is going to join them, aren’t you Landon? You hate the Hush because they took the old commander.” She tightened her makeshift head covering so that it hid her eyes. Hunched in on herself like Tonia’s boys did when they got angry at me, tried to ignore me. “You have joined the Sorg, as Cricket said. You are a traitor!”

“I’m not—”

“Don’t you dare join up with them, you big fool!” Cricket batted at his head-wrap with his stump. “You going up there will just bring the Hush down on all three of us!”

“I’m not one of them. I’m going to save the commander.” Had they even heard me? I raced up the ramp, thundered past the Sorg lounging by the heating rods. Like Cricket, like Inya, they believed I’d taken their side. That I hated the commander as much as they did. The Sorg had blocked the twisting hallway path leading to the officer suite. Assumed the double raised elbow fighting stance as they kept guard. “Ayhor.” They let me past, some even shuffled aside. They believed me a fighter, like them. Maybe more than them. I’d gone against their chieftain many more times than any of his soldiers.

My heart pounded hard enough that I felt it in my throat, in my temples, against the roof of my dry mouth. The pressure suit kept me from sweating, but my skin prickled and stung just the same. The maze of rooms had never felt so long, so filled with turns. The final bend revealed an empty hallway, the commander’s door slid closed. I barreled forward, the pressure suit helmet clutched in my left hand, but I gripped it with intent now, thumb sliding up the edge so the impenetrable shell faced forward as the door slid open.

Hyena laughter, yipping.

They had the commander face down on the ground. Three of them. Mummy wrappings gone, naked. The scent of green soap wafting from their shiny red skin. One Sorg gripped the commander’s thin wrists together between orange claws. Another held his legs spread wide. Green blood soaked into the commander’s grey pants where he’d fought the pincers holding him in place. I knew first hand how those claws could cut and tear the skin with their saw-toothed edges.

The third Sorg in the room had a wide scarred body and a missing ear. Romi’s killer. He swiped a claw down the commander’s back, slicing the thin gray fabric of his shirt, the velvety pants. Gray-green skin exposed, the commander writhed to break free, twisting. Romi’s killer stepped between the commander’s legs, penis erect. Ready to mount. They must have followed him in from the bubbles, waited long enough for him to remove his reflective suit with all the weapons hidden inside. Somehow my brain registered that fact even as my body acted of its own accord. Instincts I’d pushed down my entire life came uncorked. I exploded. Swung my helmet into the face of the nearest Sorg —the one pressing his pincers into the commander’s ankles. With my full strength behind it, the unbreakable helmet slammed into the red alien like a battering ram, and the Sorg flew backward, crashed against the thick glass wall. He collapsed twitching, segmented limbs askew.

I swung around. The missing-ear Sorg had abandoned the commander and now faced me. Elbows raised. Shark-tooth mouth open. “Ayhor,” he purred.

He paced to the side in the familiar shuffle, as if he expected me to play along in the Sorg style of a fighting match. My arm shot out, bashed the helmet against the side of his head. One triple jointed leg collapsed like a spring retracting to the ground. But he popped back up. Reached out with a hard orange claw in a slashing motion and clapped the helmet from my hand.

I kept my knees bent, ready for movement, head forward. Perfect stance that my football coach claimed he had “pounded into me” day after hot day on Colby High’s practice field.

No more shark smile. No more dancing side to side. He turned his claws forward, ready to stab.

I barreled into him. My skull connecting with his gut. He hadn’t expected it. Dropped down on his bare ass, jointed arms flying wide.

“Landon!”

“Comman—”

The third Sorg let go of the commander’s wrists with a howl. He burst up on the springy joints, aiming his claws at my face. My fist punched out like it had always itched to do when someone attacked me. The blow landed just under the two open nostril holes — would have split the upper lip of a human. Instead, my knuckles broke through the upper row of sharp triangle teeth. They plunged down from the Sorg’s howling mouth to his throat and he spat neon blood.

“Human, behind you!”

Arms and legs twined around my face. Press of a hard dick in my neck and that mossy, chemical scented soap in my nose.

No fucking way. The Sorg had tried his chieftain’s favorite move during the mock fights. I almost busted out laughing. The Sorg could have done some damage if the jagged claws dug into my eyes, my jugular, my chest. If the shark-teeth bit down. If he’d had the time to smother me, and I didn’t fight back. But the move had always been for show. The Sorg chieftain wrapping tight, knocking me forward, then springing loose with all four limbs extended. A release only possible with his shorter, slimmer half-Hush-blood limbs.

I dropped forward, just as I’d rehearsed and performed a hundred times before. Not the dramatic face plant, the tree cut down in a forest. This time, I dropped to my hands and knees, slammed my head into the floor.

Elbows out — the standard Sorg defensive — could not defend against blunt impact attacks. Two of his joints snapped under the force of my wallop. The Sorg released me with an engine revving scream, a claw slicing into my scalp.

My vision got wonky, but it looked like the middle segment of his right leg wouldn’t hold, and right insect arm hung limp. Still, he lurched up. Arched his left arm backward, joints snapping closed in the air, links in a chain. Pincer open and pointed at my face.

I scrambled backward, kicking out, hands sliding on the floor. Everything stretching and sinking in my vision like in a funhouse mirror. The one-eared Sorg had also risen joint by joint on his freaky stackable legs. He growled, a long rumbling accusation, “Ayyyhooor.”

Blood dripped into my eyes. “Fuck you.”

A high buzzing noise. Laser fire! And the Sorg on my left blew apart. Neon blood, white spiked hair, red leather skin slapping against the ceiling, raining back down.

I threw my arms over my head, even though the pieces of Sorg couldn’t do a thing to me. Missing-ear had turned away, claw aimed at a new target. The commander!

He had his arm inside his mirrored pressure suit. Hand outstretched and the reflective mirror swirling away in imitation of the scuffed gray floor — Activated.

The thick, missing-ear Sorg threw his head back to howl. But he never made a sound. Anger froze on his face, as his body split into a million pieces. They burst out over the room, as if detonated from inside. His blood covered me, rained over the commander, lying prone on the floor in his torn clothes. Over his arm, sheathed in the deadly suit. Fluorescent red, the exact color of a cherry flavored Fizzy Dizzy. The color of Little Harold and the twins’ fingers and tongues when they ate them.

“Landon?” At first his voice came from someplace far away. I watched Little Harold’s eyes widen, cheeks bulging with the popping candy. Then he spit it out, a gush of red vomit spilling onto Tonia’s freshly mopped kitchen floor.

“Landon, put on your helmet.” The commander’s voice — right beside me this time. It knocked me back like a punch to the chest and I gasped. The helmet. The commander tossed it to me. I put it on, engaged the seal, folded down the gloves and secured them. Like a routine suit check before a drop. Temp control engaged. Gravity balanced. Mic on. Headset searching… found— one transmission.

I spoke the words as if in a dream, “Accept transmission.” Had I closed my eyes? I opened them to see the enemy standing in front of me. Facing me, just an arm span of distance between us. His suit swirling with color, military gray, the black and charcoal swirl of dome glass. The shimmering candy red of Sorg blood.

“Landon, you will follow me. We must escape. I cannot kill all these Sorg while protecting you as well.”

“Escape? They’re guarding the hallways. They’re—”

“You will follow me.” He waved a hand in front of the control panel I’d seen on my first visit and it slid apart, showing a small alcove. An elevator? Inside it we gripped a metal railing before the tiny space closed up. Leaning in as far as possible, I did my best not to touch him. My mind had cleared enough to remember that boundary and why I needed to respect it, now more than ever.

The transport elevator shot down the side of the dome with a spectacular night view of the Martian cliffs, craters, and lake beds. Much nicer scenery than a gravity beam drop, but even more stomach churning. Thank God I hadn’t had a chance to eat anything all day. “Where are we going? They’ll check the bubbles as soon as—”

“We will hide in the canyon.”

“But—”

“No more talking.” The commander led us out against the hills. The long Martian twilight had just ended, but we stayed in the shadows. Because of me, I realized. Against the black sky and the red dust, my white drop suit glowed like a beacon. The commander’s suit became indistinguishable from the terrain. “My suit should produce oxygen for fifty hours with continuous use,” I said. Probably a Hush suit could go twice that… or who knows maybe indefinitely.

“That will be enough.”

We came to a cliff pocked with small caves. Maybe these had once functioned as lava tubes, like the science dome inhabitants tried to search for. We adjusted the gravity balance to climb to one of the highest caves, so we could look down on the dome and bubbles. The rocky face would have made for easy climbing, if not for the dust. My hands and feet slid on the thick rust powder before each hold, each step. The commander didn’t have those problems. Not only because of the superior pressure suit. His lithe body hopped from step to step, grasping hold for just a fraction of a second before leaping to the next. He found a ledge and whipped himself up to stand on both feet, pivoting to look down on me. “This cave will be fine.”

The next hold came at a struggle, but I managed to kick to the side enough to grasp the ledge with both arms. Please don’t break. A guy my size would never make a good climber. I slid forward on my stomach into the shallow recess. The rock depression couldn’t be any deeper or wider than the farm truck-bed back home. “When they figure out that we aren’t in the bubbles they’ll come looking for us. We should go farther.”

I couldn’t see his face through that helmet, which shimmered red and gold to match the cliff face under the hazy night sky. “I only need dark… calm so that I can… sleep.”

“Sleep?” He didn’t mean for rest, I got that much. “You mean that thing you do… like the chieftain.”

“Phase. Yes. The phase.” He huddled into the deepest part of the cave, lay down on his back.

“But we don’t have any sage—”

“I don’t need it.”

“But it makes it easier?” I peeked out from the edges of the cave, looked down on the dome. “Maybe I could somehow sneak… “ The Sorg had come looking for us at the agro bubbles alright. But they hadn’t just searched them. They’d demolished them. I tapped the edge of my helmet visor. “Enhance.” The Sorg held bundles of radishes, chives, sage, kale, tomatoes. They brought them back into a dome turned swamp green with vapor.

“What do you see?”

“They ripped the bubbles. They took all the plants.” Anguish bled into my words, into my heart. Romi’s body and the bodies of all the men and women who died in that dome had fed those plants, had found new life in their leaves and flowers and fruit. All this time, I had cared for them without realizing what they meant to me, how I hadn’t only seen a crop to harvest. Romi’s tomatoes. “They killed them.”

“They will pay, Landon. I promise you.” His words slurred a little at the edges, a child asking for a last bedtime story. “They will pay…”

And for what they did to you, as well, I thought. The commander had killed Romi’s murderer, but angry vengeance still burned inside me. They’d all conspired to torment Romi for their own amusement, just a kid who shared a passing resemblance to a species they didn’t like. And they conspired to rape, to kill the commander. I would want them dead for that alone. Even if it made me a terrible person. “I will not raise a brute who uses what God blessed him with to intimidate others!” Mom hadn’t wanted a brute for a son, but the universe demanded it of me. The universe was brutal.

Mars wind swept the scraps of the agro bubble plastic across the bumpy lakebed where the dome sat. Mixed the dark soil with the red dust, the yellow sand. Romi would never again grow tomatoes. The chlorine in the sandy Mars soil would kill any Earth seed planted in it. I kept watch while the commander lay behind me in the death sleep of the Phase, as he’d called it. But I tried to keep my eyes ahead and watch for any changes in the dome or the smashed bubbles. Partly because that death trance freaked me out a little, and I worried that maybe I misunderstood, that the attack had injured the commander badly enough that he really had died. That the Sorg would come before he woke and I couldn’t defend him. That he couldn’t defend me. The Sorg must have know their Hush commander escaped what they’d planned for him in the dome. They would look to these cave pocked cliffs first.

My jangled nerves kept me wide awake, pins and needles in my feet and legs as I crouched waiting…watching. By first light, I’d worked myself up to a point of terror as I debated between staying hidden in our nook or going farther into the terrain to escape. In the hazy sun the dome looked a little clearer than it had under the stars, like that green drug steam had dissipated some. At last, the air lock opened and the Sorg emerged and spread out across the rocky empty lake basin. Some headed toward the crater pits on the west side of the lakebed. Six of them headed north toward the cliff face where we hid. I scrunched up into the shadow-darkened back end of our tiny cave, near the commander’s lax body. His suit absorbed the weak yellow light of the sunrise penetrating our spot. Would the Sorg climb the rocky cliff like we had? I imagined the triple joints of their limbs would make short work of the height we had reached. “Whatever you’re doing. Do it faster, Commander. The Sorg are going to find us soon.” Gravel skittered below our hiding place. The sound of a climber’s release, jump, grab getting closer. I scooted in front of where the commander lay unconscious. Minus the weird elbows-up position, I stood and assumed the Sorg launch stance to push any unwanted visitor back over the cliff face.

A sunlit arm reached across me. Five fingers spread wide in a gloved hand swirling with blue shadow, red dust, hazy lemon sunlight. The commander stood at my side, pressed his gloved hand against my chest, pushed me back to stand in front of me. The suit. Now that he was awake, I didn’t have anything to fear. When the first Sorg appeared, the commander blew him back with a flick of his wrist. I scrambled to stand by the commander’s side at the mouth of the cave. Blue laser cut down another Sorg, slicing him to pieces like the females who challenged him at the assembly. Picked off a third climber, those pieces seeming to float to the ground. The remaining three ran for the dome again. Lumbering movements slowed by their pressure suits. Their gangly bodies never meant for the suffocating encasement of a space suit.

Above us, sunlight broke through the dust clouds. Wait, not sunlight — silent lightning bolts destroyed the three Sorg running from the cliffs. Five more bolts hit in the western lakebed. A grav beam dropped to the fontanel.

I hadn’t told the commander, yet. “They sealed it! They won’t be able—” The gravity beam broke through with a pop. All the remaining Sorg would die inside the bubble. I knew it.

“The occupants of this dome knowingly destroyed fragile plant life and will be eliminated. We are abandoning this planet. It has proven useless to our mission.”

“Cricket and Inya—”

“The human prisoners are inconsequential.” A grav beam shot into the cave. An angle no Earth technology could duplicate.

Air blasted the rock around us. “You’re letting us go?”

The faceless mask turned toward me. “The others, yes. Not you. You will serve me.”

“Serve?” The Sorg chieftain’s defiant words echoed back to me. We Sorg do not worship the Hush. Because they demanded worship? “I… no… I need to get back to the other prisoners. If the Hush abandon this planet, then I’ll be rescued. I can go home.”

The commander’s suit had taken on the pale blue light of the gravity beam. He had become invisible, an outline of a figure turning toward me. A drawing that needed color and detail to be recognizable. “You will serve me. You will kneel before me.”

“Commander, please—” But the Hush grav beam had engulfed me too and jerked me from the cave with its irresistible force.

Prisoner

No drop ship waited in the Martian exosphere where an Earth vessel would hover. That final layer of atmosphere slipped away underneath us, and the blue beam still carved upward into the dark of space. I flailed as if I could grab hold of walls made of light, and ended up flipping myself over into a somersaulting tumble. “Commander!”

His chameleon suit had turned dark as space, but the commander’s outline remained just ahead of me, still and upright as I thrashed behind him. Glimmering stars, iridescent dust, the shrinking orange planet beneath me, I could see everything. Not at all like riding inside the Bungee’s energy tornado. The sudden and intense vertigo had more in common with how I felt doing exterior repairs on a drop ship. Hanging in space with just a pressure suit between me and the endless void. I’d always hated that duty. Only this time I had no tether to keep me from floating away. Like treading water in the deepest part of an ocean. I kicked and shouted, and the commander’s outline turned toward me. “You are safe, Landon,” his low voice crackled over my comm.

Blue sparks plumed under my heels as my feet skidded against the beam, but I got myself back upright. “I’m…I’m…” fucking terrified. We left Mars behind us, a whole lot faster than the Bungee could. Craning my neck, I watched the planet diminish into a fist sized red ball. When I turned back, flashing light marked the distance, illuminating the path of the blue beam. Crooked lightning strikes, yellow. Then blue. Then yellow again. Laser fire. And our beam headed right toward it. As we got closer, I could make out two massive black capsule ships. Like bloated glossy seal bodies, the two Sorg vessels rolled over in the ocean of space. Angry zigzag bolts discharged from their sides and tails each time they revolved. I couldn’t see what they fired on, but the two vessels appeared to retreat from the fight and head toward Mars, noses pointed our direction as they swam through space. “Are they… shit… They’re headed straight for us!” The capsules’ forward thruster vents gaped open like the shark-toothed smiles of the aliens inside. “Holy…they’ll hit us!” In my panic, I’d started flailing again, and blue sparks jumped around me in a cloud.

The commander’s outline dove over me, mirrored arms and legs grasping and surrounding me. On instinct, I caught and held him too. Then the beam cut off. We dangled in pitch black, clinging to each other. “What did you do?” My voice squeaked inside my helmet.

“The Sorg ships will spot the beam, we need—”

“We need to get out of the way. We’re gonna get smashed—” those gaping vents gained on us,”—or fried by their thrusters!” I tried to remember what I’d learned in physics class about bodies in space.

“Do not interrupt me.”

Oh, hell. “Right, right. But—” Already the two ships looked larger and more detailed than I’d ever seen on a holo. The shiny black surface had ridges and pocks. Some intentional and others where space debris had beaten them in. I kicked against the weightlessness, fought against my inability to move. “Holy crap!”

Then they were on us.

Long towering walls without windows or light. Mammoth black ocean liners on either side with just a few feet of space in which the commander and I clung together. On water, they’d have churned, dragged us down between them. We’d have drowned to the deafening roar of their propulsion. But the airless black remained undisturbed by their flight, and the enormous capsule ships passed us by in silence. The only sounds heard were my heavy breaths on our comms. “I think…” I had to swallow to stop panting like a big terrified baby. And I forced my fingers loose from the much smaller frame of the commander. “I think that I might hate space travel.” Because thinking back on it, no one else on the Bungee disliked exterior work. The rest of them always clamored to get “outside” when they could. Every soldier I’d known had.

“Then you should have remained on your farm, on Earth, to grow the plants.” The commander released me, balled his fist. “There are so many of you, that not all should need to be soldiers.” The blue beam appeared again, pulling us forward. In the brilliance of the gravity tunnel, the commander’s mirrored suit once more disappeared into an outline. “Up ahead, our ships.”

At first they appeared like two giant beehives, rounded gradient levels stacked upon each other with hundreds of shimmering cell windows looking out. Luminous ornaments hung in the blackest space. “No one’s ever seen your ships before.” I said it aloud without realizing it. “Um…no human, I meant.”

“Without the beam, they would be invisible…to your eyes,” the commander’s voice had gone faint in my comm and I could hear the crackle of the beam energy as we got closer to the larger of the two beehives. Its honeycomb layers shimmered like crystal, no…like water… that strange liquid metal that the commander had worn as a torque and a belt. “They’re beautiful,” I said, but the words bounced around in my helmet. The commander had quit transmitting.

On board they stripped me of my pressure suit and helmet, reflective fists pointed at my chest and head. It didn’t make sense. They knew my suit didn’t pose a threat, that humans carried their weapons rather than wearing them. But I guess that didn’t stop them from wanting to kill me on principle. Fear bubbled just under my skin and a weight settled on my chest. And cold. Intense, bone-deep cold that made me blurry and stupid.

Did I fall? Did I black out? Did I hit my head? My entire body hurt. My lungs felt scalded. My eyes leaked tears that froze on my face. “My suit— I need—you’re killing me.” I lay on a silver floor in a silver room. The only light came from a wrap-around window overlooking the glow of stars and a ringed planet hanging in the distance like a golden pendant. “That’s….” My brain wouldn’t provide the word.

The old wizard-looking Hush peered down at me. The commander’s father…no his…”He is my… progenitor. Do you understand?” A younger Hush male stood behind him. That Hush had a placid beauty similar to the commander’s. Flawless gray-green skin, chiseled nose, high cheekbones. But all of these features appeared harder in this male, sharper edged. Glowing white jewels studded his elaborate hairstyle of loops and braids, and he wore clothing so white that I had to squint to look at him. He projected the imperiousness of all Hush, but with an extra layer of detachment that belonged to a leader.

The progenitor nudged my side with a jewel encrusted boot. “To your knees, human. You will answer questions.”

I rolled forward, my body rattling. My teeth chattered hard enough that I thought they might break in my mouth. Somehow I got my knees under me. They went numb from the icy floor. “Please. I’m freezing.”

“You are a grower on Earth?” the Hush leader asked.

“Yes. I have a farm in Kansas. We… we… we grow sage and…and… other crops… plants.” Upright now, my vision improved as the faint light from the window illuminated more of my surroundings. The room didn’t look as blankly silver as before. Furniture made of colorless, translucent material filled the space. Glass? Ice? A long table. A scattering of different sizes of chairs. A bulbous vase that looked almost like a fish tank with lavender and green florescent tubes floating inside.

An airy whistling floated from behind my two interrogators. Another alien had entered the room. They both turned. The commander stood some distance away. Still wearing the reflective Hush drop suit over his torn and bloody clothing. In all my wonder at traveling the Hush beam, I’d forgotten the attack that happened back in the dome. Guilt flooded me. How could I forget? The commander looked perfect and composed, except for a thin green scar on the back of one hand. His eyes had filled with that opaque silver.

The progenitor turned back to face me. He took over questioning from the Hush in glowing white. “Tell us, human. What took place with the Sorg?”

“I…” My body had started to shut down from the cold. Limbs stiff, numb. Head heavy. But I knew not to tell these two what I’d seen when I walked into the commander’s room. The rape. In his months as my captor, I’d watched the commander bristle in outrage at even the suggestion of touch… and the Sorg had violated him. I felt certain that he would not want me to tell his progenitor and his leader.

“Speak, human.” The progenitor reached toward his jeweled belt. Toward a fizz weapon.

“Yes. Sorry, I think slower in… in the cold.” Back in the cave, what had the commander said? “The occupants of this dome knowingly destroyed fragile plant life and will be eliminated.” Okay, I could do this…

“The Sorg attacked the agro bubbles,” I said. But then I remembered how his progenitor had castigated the commander for not controlling soldiers the Hush viewed as inferior. I needed to make it clear that the Sorg hadn’t outsmarted the commander. “It wasn’t a plan or anything. The green drug… the soap that they use sort of… riled them up. The commander and I tried to stop them, to save the plants … but the Sorg overpowered us.”

The other Hush startled, the white jewels in his hair clinked with the hollow sound of wine glasses. “How could this be true? Thirty Sorg are no match against our suit weapons!” His eyes had dimmed from silver to black, and he turned that unforgiving dark light on the commander.

Shit! Think! When I realized what would work, I nearly laughed in relief. There could only be one acceptable excuse. “It was for the plants. We didn’t have our suits on in the bubble only because … we needed to judge the heat… for the health of the plants. We barely got our helmets on before the atmospherics gave out.” There. I’d done it. My eyes closed on their own and I didn’t think I could open them again. I didn’t think I could speak again either. My throat had gone completely dry. But I must have said what they needed to hear.

The next moments came as flashes. The commander walking in front of me down a corridor as icy as the silver room. Two suited up Hush towing me in some kind of grav scoop. Rooms opening with holographic doors. The dark of space. Its burning smell. The robin’s egg blue of a planet hanging over my head.

And… at last… warmth. I dreamed of the agro bubbles. No revolt. No guards. No awareness of anything but my fingers dipping into black earth, water filling the depressions left behind, green shoots giving off the scent of sunshine and growth. The way plants back home had smelled.

* * *

Crust had sealed my eyelids closed and I rubbed them raw before they would open. Rolling out from a fetal ball, I stretched my arms and legs to relieve their aching stiffness. I lay on a pallet like the one in the officer’s suite back in the dome. It had looked hard, a little like painted wood— as if the Hush would ever desecrate a tree for their furniture! The material had warmed to my body temperature, and when I pressed my fingers into it, the pallet surface molded around them like warm sand.

“You appear much improved. This is good,” The commander’s voice made me aware of the dark, and I scrambled up to search for him in the shadowed room. Curved silver walls and a sloping silver floor, like the one where my interrogation took place, but this room lacked the long window looking out to space and the starlight to see by.

“Commander?” Something shifted overhead, the drag of a broom, and the entire ceiling opened to a thick window and the view of a swollen blue-green sphere hanging above us. The walls and floor absorbed that color, along with red from a dust ring and bright blue from an outer ice ring. “Is that…Uranus?”

Someone had removed all my mismatched prisoner garb and replaced it with luxurious Hush clothing. Quilted gray pants, a gauzy green shirt under a quilted gray jacket. Velvety grey boots that would have worked as slippers back home. Where had they found clothes to fit me? No Hush stood taller than my shoulder. How long was I unconscious? The shirt pulled at my neck, just a little too tight, and I tugged at the collar. A jewel. Oh, no. I squeezed my eyes shut, slipped the pin loose. The commander’s black jewel. He’d found it in my pocket, knew I kept it all these weeks on the dome. “Commander, I’m sorry…I should have returned this when I found it in the bubbles…I was going to return it…

“Pin it back at your throat. I have known you had my jewel in your possession since that day I left it. I have often wondered how you would return it to me. Or if you intended to keep it…”

“No. I wouldn’t keep it! I’m not a thief or anything… I just…”

“Our leader awarded me that stone in front of every soldier on this ship. It will mark you as belonging to me,” he said. With his boot, the commander tapped at the foot of my pallet and it sank into the floor. The Uranus-blue floor. The entire room worked like their chameleon pressure suits. “Landon, the stone? Pin it back.” He wore clothing identical to mine, gray pants and jacket. Pale jewels studded his cuffs and collar.

I hurried to pin the jewel back before his words caught up with me. “Belonging to you? Commander, why didn’t… You could have let me go!”

“I could not.” Above us a lumpy moon came into view. It reflected light into the room like a miniature sun. “After you stopped them, defended me, the Sorg would have killed you.”

“No they…” He was right. They would have ripped me apart, spilled my blood across the dome floor.

Somehow the commander called down a panel of instruments, maybe just by standing in the right spot for them to descend. “I will instruct you in your duties. You will serve me.” A flick of his fingers and the curved wall behind him lit up.

“Serve you… as your prisoner?”

“No, not a prisoner.” Light flickered from his eyes. “No. As my…” The flickering increased as he searched for the word. “As my squire. You will serve me as my squire.”

Farmer, squire… but still a prisoner. The truth closed in on me, turned the shining room to a vise on my chest, the overhead view of space into a heavy weight. I clasped my hands behind my neck and took a deep breath. I wanted to go home. Or back to the Bungee. Or just have the freedom to determine my own actions without constant looming fear and helplessness. Back in the dome, I’d liked the commander. I’d liked him more than I’d liked my fellow humans. And after saving each other from the Sorg, I thought we’d become something like friends. “Or… you could drop me back to Earth, the next time” when you attack? “When the Hush drop again.”

“I cannot. I am not commander here. You saw that when you came aboard.” A cabinet opened in the wall revealing an array of new levers and buttons. A diamond shaped pad that looked like fresh clay. “Faesosh and Vareech allow your presence only if you have a purpose. You must have a purpose. Do you understand?”

“I wouldn’t need a purpose if you’d let me go.”

“Because you would be dead!” The light from his eyes had turned from flickering sunshine to charcoal flashes. “Place your hand here.” The commander gestured to the pad of clay.

“But… isn’t there anything you can do?” My voice sounded whiny as a child’s. On Mars, I’d tried not to count the days since my capture, to live in the moment, which came hard to a farmer. But I’d had the plants to focus on, what they needed each day to stay alive, to grow. And if I thought of the future it centered on harvesting, pruning, gathering cuttings to replant. “I don’t know how to be a squire.” Because I could only picture swords and jousting poles from the Renaissance Festival in Wichita.

“You must have a purpose. Or you will die.”

Yeah. Yeah, I understood. I scrubbed my face with my hands. While I’d slept, someone had combed all my hair back and tied it into a knot at my neck. Just like the way I’d seen the commander wear his. He’d done everything he could to make me feel less like a captive and more like an equal. Back home, my older siblings always called me ungrateful and I’d just ignored it as another in a long list of their complaints against me. But now I’d acted exactly as the spoiled kid they’d described. I couldn’t blame the commander for saving my life when I’d thrown my lot in with his in the first place. Before I marched to his rescue, the other prisoners hadn’t shunned me. The Sorg treated me well. And the commander had never asked for my help. When I heard about the attack, I went to his room. I fought the Sorg for him. My decisions led me to the Hush ship. Stop acting like a jerk, Landon. “I’m sorry, Commander…” I had no idea how a squire would apologize, so I went with what I remembered from books and holos. Stood up straighter, tugged my jacket in place. “I’m grateful for what you did, I really am. It’s just been a really long time since I saw my home, and… Well, that’s no excuse… Thank you.”

“Zaeth,” he answered me. “A squire would use my name.”

“Zaeth,” I repeated. None of the names he used so far sounded like Hush words. But maybe he had translated them into something I could say, the way humans used onomatopoeia to label his people “Hush.” Their own name for themselves sounded like a heavy door sweeping shut, the kind that scrapes against the floor as it closes. The commander… Zaeth… probably had a different name in his language, one that I could never hope to pronounce. “What does a squire do?”

The dark light between us vanished. Not like a switch flip, the way I understood light to react. The shadow colored light from his eyes disintegrated like fireworks. “When you came aboard, you met our leader, the ruler of our clan, Faesosh.” He repeated the name in his language, a wave breaking on a shore. He is the chieftain of our clan.

“And I met your progenitor.”

“Yes. Vareech. He is commander. When he dies, I will take his place, it is what I was created to do. My purpose. And perhaps then…if you still wish to…” He rolled his lips in to stop his words.

“Then, you will set me free,” I finished for him.

“Yes. But until then, you are my squire.” The commander gestured again to the gray diamond. “Your hand.”

I thought the clay would take an imprint of my hand, maybe some DNA. But it sucked my fingers inside and locked me in place. Then a headset descended and covered my eyes while I tried to pull my arm free. Both my eyes watered and strange shapes and colors washed across my corneas. “Is this… it knows I’m not a Hush right? That I don’t have the same eyes?”

“It knows.”

* * *

The controls to the room, to the entire ship, adapted to whichever individual worked them. It was technology that learned, that knew its user. When I touched a wall, or stood in the spot in the floor where my pallet might appear, pictographs informed and guided me. Zaeth scoffed at how long it took me to read them, at their simplicity. Whatever he saw on the walls, floors, ceilings didn’t register at all to my human eyes. “Do not operate any controls in front of the others. They will mock me for your stupidity.”

“Why would I need to use any controls?” Once we left Zaeth’s quarters, a bone deep tremor shook my body. Antartica, I remembered. My breath clouded in front of me and the exposed skin on my face and hands stung. We entered a barely lit corridor made of what looked and felt like rough thick ice. It even had the watermelon smell of frozen seawater. When the Far Reach probe passed over the Hush home-world it labeled the temperature, Cold, but livable. But in those corridors, I really took issue with the “livable” description.

“You are unpredictable sometimes.”As we passed another Hush soldier, Zaeth’s eyes filled with the concealing silver. But light from the other Hush bounced with curiosity over my body and face. He looked a little doughier than Zaeth. Squishy and small.

“I’m really not.” When I spoke, the doughy Hush jumped and walked a little faster to get away. “Am I scary?”

“You are very large. But Clatuk is also young and has not yet faced a human in battle. He will probably request to stay in training for another year now that he has seen the massive size of our enemies.” The dappled light met my laughter.

“Poor kid. You should let him know that I’m the exception.” But my laughter faltered. I couldn’t keep the sticky “our enemies” description from the front of my thoughts. So far, squiring had only meant serving as waiter and maid… if tapping the floor and wall controls equaled cooking and cleaning. I opened holographic doors Zaeth paused in front of, and pulled out chairs for him to sit in. But he’d also chosen the word “squire” instead of “servant” as my label. A squire would help defeat enemies, maybe fight alongside the knight or whatever Zaeth considered himself. I couldn’t do that. I wouldn’t.

The two beehives had melded together with silent liquid metal and groaning ice so that their chieftain could address an assembly of the clan. The melding created an enormous tiered chamber with Faesosh on a small platform that hovered in the center of the multi-level assembly room, and Zaeth’s progenitor standing just behind him. Zaeth also had a prominent spot on a lower hover-platform with me just behind his left elbow. We didn’t have tech like this on any of our space stations, so it had taken a deep breath and a pointed look from Zaeth before I could bring myself to step onto the slick white platform. Once in place, I bolstered myself on sheer nerves while we rose and then sank to the correct spot.

The night before as we’d settled onto our pallets, mine warming and softening as Zaeth’s hardened and cooled, I’d turned toward him. “How do you say your name? Your real name,” I’d asked him.

His response sounded like wind blowing through icy branches. Like the red cedar outside my bedroom window back home on a winter morning. A morning so cold, I wanted to stay huddled under my covers rather than trudge out into the snow to feed the animals. When I described it that way, his eyes glowed with interest.

“We do not have trees on Hush.” He pillowed a slim arm underneath his head and turned toward me. We’d left the ceiling open to the stars that night. Just the faint sheen of dust and ice lit the room. Our section of the beehive must have gotten rotated from the sun and Uranus. I had no idea which of the twinkling points out there might be Neptune.

“I remember that from the holos Far Reach sent back. Lots of towering mountains and ice. It reported limited vegetation, like what grows on Earth’s poles.”

“Perhaps.” Zaeth held a lot of information close to the chest, like all Hush. I didn’t see why. Allied Defense could get a full list of specs on their people, home-world, their military, and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.

“It’s not like I can tell someone, you know. And even if I could…” I rolled over from my search for Neptune to mirror his position. “Earth is no match for you. For the Hush,” I didn’t keep the bitterness from my voice or face.

“Then they should not fight us and accept our rule.” The silver had started to cloud over his eyes. “But we should not discuss this. Tell me about the farm. You told me once that you grew sage. What else did you grow?”

Would a squire just drop whatever subject displeased Zaeth? A prisoner had no choice, but I thought a squire might have more leeway to ask questions. “Why can’t humans and Hush share Earth?”

“Why would we share, when we can simply take it?” The flat words came with a penetrating dark light, darker than the view of space I’d just contemplated.

“Fine!” I huffed, frustration making me hot enough that the pallet started to cool.”We grew a bunch of stuff. Vegetables, mostly. My mom planted sunflowers and lavender too.”

Zaeth’s nose wrinkled a little at the mention of Mom. One of the first things I noticed, no females lived in the beehive ship. Zaeth claimed he’d never even seen a female Hush. Like everything else they did, the Hush reproduced using test tubes and tech. Zaeth had grown to adulthood in something called a ripening capsule. Remembering that had made my irritation deflate, it sounded so lonely that I felt guilty for arguing with him. To make up for it, I’d described my home and the farm in so much detail that it made my heart ache.

* * *

“There’s a Sorg in the crowd…” I whispered.The bright red warrior stood just behind a menacing-faced Hush who wore a choker of blue jewels. Military honors, I’d learned. Not mere decoration. “Oh wait, he’s mixed species like the chieftain.” But unlike my former commander, this Sorg had not tried to conceal the blend of his genes. He wore the same velvety gray uniform as the rest of us and didn’t spike his hair in the white paste. He let it grow dark and tied it back at his neck the way I wore mine now.

“There are two,” Zaeth whispered back. And yep, I could see the second one down below us, standing at the elbow of a squat little Hush below our platform. Another mixed-species squire. And me… a human. Not a drop of Hush blood to explain my presence there. Questioning light flickered against my person from the crowd all around us. And I caught snippets of wind through icy red cedar branches as the Hush gossiped. But Zaeth kept the silver in his own eyes. Face forward, unbothered.

“Ssssorg. Ssssorg.” The only word I understood in the flow of hissing, snapping, and whistling noises from Faesosh’s speech. Angry black and charcoal flashes from his eyes fell down past our platform before dissipating. It sounded like the Hush now had to fight wars on two fronts.

“This conflict has been coming for a long while.” Zaeth translated for me. “Faesosh brought technology, and purpose to the Sorg, in exchange for their plant life. The other clans have no interest in the Sorg. Well, aside from the female clan with their strange appetites and desires.”

“Right.” He meant sex. And making the mixed species Sorg, I suppose. Maybe the females even made them the old fashioned way. At least I assumed that at one time the Hush had reproduced the way humans did. Two eyes, two lungs… two sexes… “But now they want their freedom?”

“Freedom,” scoffed Zaeth. “ This will be a timely reminder of Hush superiority to all Sorg, not just these insurgents. They lived like primitive animals before we took an interest.”

“That’s kind of…um…Don’t Hush say the same thing about Earth? Just because they accepted your tech doesn’t mean they wanted to be ruled by you.”

Zaeth turned to show me the dark light cracking through the silver in his eyes. “Most of the Sorg do not mind. They worship us.”

Not all of them. “The Sorg do not worship the Hush.” I didn’t say it. I didn’t think a good squire would argue in front of the clan. Also, what loyalty did I owe the Sorg? From what I’d seen they deserved whatever the Hush planned to dish out to them. The Hush would never keep a kid like Romi prisoner just to torture him. Hush wouldn’t see that as purpose. Nope, they would have just zapped Romi with the soil-making device right away. I lifted a hand to rub the thought out of my head, but then Zaeth gave me a subtle kick with the back of his boot.

“Stand still.”

“What’s going on?”

“We will go to war with the Sorg.”

“But what about… does that mean you aren’t still at war with humans?” A strange wave of relief washed over me, which I hadn’t even realized I needed. Humans fought the Sorg, maybe not directly, not in the drop fights like we fought the Hush. But Sorg played a part in the taking of Mars. No need to feel disloyal or traitorous about helping the Hush in the war against Sorg! Zaeth had answered me, but I’d gotten too lost in my own thoughts. Oh…that the conflict with the Sorg would get settled first. Hush didn’t want to fight on two fronts. “Makes sense,” I whispered back, nodding.

Zaeth cut the silver-filled eyes back at me. Too bad he didn’t have actual eyeballs because I think he would’ve liked to roll them.

Once the assembly concluded and we’d all bowed our heads to Faesosh, the beehives had to pull back apart. The groaning, cracking ice made me wince and the floor under me trembled as the ship knit itself back together. Our quarters…Zaeth’s quarters… lay close to the center and they vibrated like an earthquake. We decided to sit on our pallets for the evening meal instead of standing at a slick tablet of ice that would emerge from the control wall. I had to handle Hush dishes with more care than Mom’s best china, like delicate seashells and some of them burned my fingers like dry ice. But I did like the food. Much better than the Sorg moss and tofu bricks, Hush ate a wider variety of food, although nearly all of it cold. Zaeth watched my reactions just like I’d studied his in the agro bubbles.

We must have looked a little too cozy with our picnic, when Vareech swept into the room. Our holographic door responded to the Hush chieftain’s second-in-command, because of course it did. Zaeth belonged to Vareech just like I belonged to Zaeth. The progenitor paused as he examined us, eyes glittered with dark light. His words sounded like the heavy stomp of a boot in crisp snow. Then a storm of howling wind.

Zaeth sprung up from his pallet, so I did too. We both faced forward, as if called to attention, and Vareech circled us silently. What did he want?

“You have chosen to abandon your own kind, human? To fight against them?” the old Hush rasped.

Zaeth flinched and answered in Hush before I could speak. But I couldn’t keep the denial off my face, or conceal the tremor it shook through my body. No. I hadn’t abandoned my kind. And I realized with a sick twist in my gut that I would willingly “lose my purpose” here, let them execute me, if it meant fighting against other humans. It was unthinkable to turn on Zaeth, to see him as an enemy I wanted dead. But I would never fight against humans for him.

The progenitor saw what I didn’t say. I think he didn’t need any kind of expertise in human physiology or culture to recognize the horror I felt at getting pitted against my friends and my people. “I see. So you will not turn against the humans,” he said. He stood just behind my shoulder and I couldn’t see him, couldn’t know if that dark light leaked from his eyes. If he took out a weapon, ready to kill me for what he’d seen in me. “You will not even fight against them out of loyalty to my progeny, to his having saved your life.”

Zaeth snapped something out in their language, an echo of the thundering sounds Vareech had made earlier. But Vareech silenced him with louder ice cracking admonishment.

“Answer me, human.”

“I can’t,” my voice broke and I had to swallow, steel myself. “But I am loyal to Zaeth. I would never turn on him…never.”

Vareech slowly circled back in front of me. That dark light from his eyes bounced between me and Zaeth, measuring out how much danger I posed as Zaeth’s squire with my divided heart. The dark seeped away and a flickering took its place. Questioning. Calculating. “Then I will leave you,” he said. Silver filled his eyes to hide whatever answers he found in all that mental figuring. “For now,” he added. Then he nodded at Zaeth, who performed the low bow I’d seen him give Vareech back in the dome.

After Vareech left, I sagged back to the pallet and its tech struggled to comfort me with warmth and softness.

“You can’t ask me to do that, Zaeth. I can’t fight my own people…I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”

His eyes sparked with dark light, an oil geyser of hate or unhappiness fizzling out between us. “I do ask it, Landon. When I brought you aboard, that was your purpose.”

Squire

“Why didn’t you already have a squire? One made to order for this job?” I looked up at Zaeth from my spot on the floor of a cavernous training room. The basic setup didn’t look all that different from the dojo on Orbit 3. Padded flooring, open space, holo projectors imbedded in the walls. Only bigger, immensley bigger, and with a curved wall and ceiling made of thick clear ice looking out into space where Uranus and all its orbiting moons floated. I stared out both mesmerized by the robin’s egg blue planet and filled with dread thinking of the impossibility of that view. For a human. For me. For any hope of rescue.

“A squire does not stare into space. He does not show emotion.”

“I can’t help it!”

As one of my duties I had to inspect Zaeth’s reflective suit and helmet for any tears or cuts that would affect his performance, or put his life in danger outside the ship. An easy job at the moment because we hadn’t left the beehive once since our arrival. The Sorg and the Hush had reached a kind of standoff with the black capsules making flyby attacks every couple hours that did no damage at all to the massive Hush ships. But Zaeth insisted I go through the motions of a suit check, like a devoted squire would.

“You will want to finish that before the others arrive, Landon.” As part of his pre-training routine, Zaeth stretched his slim legs and arms, flexed his fingers and rolled his neck while I worked. I never stretched before a fight, not even in training, but I didn’t have anything near his skills. He could do all the leaping and flipping moves that Yulia did.

Flickering light dropped onto my lax hands, the silver material limp in my fingers. “Okay, okay…I’m doing it, don’t worry.” And I started feeling inside the suit’s lining again, slick and cold, and free of all the buttons or sensors I expected it to have. I had no idea how the suits worked. When my skin caught on a raised nub in the fabric, Zaeth showed me how to dab a finger inside a cylinder of the liquid metal, then let a droplet absorb and mend the suit. The metal behaved like mercury… no…like magic… but it wasn’t anything so fanciful. The Hush had built it. Tech, more of their astonishing, undefeatable tech. They’d made their beehive ships of just that fluid tech and ice. “So why didn’t your progenitor…”

“Vareech.”

“Right. Var-eeeech,” I quipped. No one used titles, not when respect and deference literally came built into their DNA. Vareech’s name in Hush sounded like a door slamming shut. It fit him, the crusty snob. It seemed like every trip outside our quarters and into the ice corridors of the ship involved a run-in with the old Hush. His eyes glittering black as they examined me, like I didn’t know what that meant. Or like he didn’t care if I knew. “Why not just cook up a squire as long as Vareech was making you?”

Zaeth had bent himself backward into a perfect circle and his dark green hair pooled on the mat beside me. In a whip-fast movement, he uncurled and hopped back to his feet. Could a human do that? Maybe a really flexible one. A tiny fissure appeared between the arched green eyebrows at my wording, but I owed him for all the disgust he showed whenever I mentioned my life back home with Mom. “Can you not just say her name instead of that…title? Do we both need reminding about the revolting method of your creation?

“Vareech’s own squire died without making another. He and Vareech both agreed on this.” He paused, and I knew that this meant he debated whether or not to tell me the truth. He never fully let go of that fact that I was a human. That I was from an enemy race who might use information the Hush would rather keep secret. “There are elements of my genetic composition that forbid use of a squire.”

“Which elements? Oh you mean the parts of you that come from the same family as Faesosh.” Some of the gene mixture Vareech used to create Zaeth had come from the royal family back on Hush. But not directly from Faesosh. Zaeth had told me this twice, just in case my inferior human brain didn’t remember it from the first time. “Got it. You are in no way cloned from the wacky clan leader,” I’d teased him. And he’d shot back,”I am not a clone!” without any humor.

“Yes. Those elements. The ruling clan of our planet does not take squires. All the subjects underneath them are the squires.”

“But now I’m your squire. Doesn’t that break all kinds of rules? No wonder Vareech hates me so much.”

“You are also a human prisoner…one I have tamed to be at my side.”

“Tamed?”

“Tamed. Your presence is an example of my willpower and bravery.” He coiled his dark hair behind him in a knot, pinned it in place with a large blue stone. “You are finished?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah.” The fabric slithered from my hands like something alive and aware. When Zaeth held out his arms it crept up his body and sealed him inside. Even without the helmet, it unnerved me to see him in the reflective suit, the symbol of Earth’s enemies. Maybe I also couldn’t fully let go of the fact of our differences, our opposing sides in the war. I could pretend that the hostility between our species didn’t exist inside the beehive Hush ship, following Zaeth around and marveling at Hush technology like an explorer instead of a soldier. But not when I came face to face with those deadly, weapon-laden suits. Cricket and Inya thought I’d gone traitor for the Sorg. But I’d just grown plants in a bio dome, crops that the Sorg didn’t even need to survive. Inspecting a mirrored suit for damage did more to keep the enemy alive than a handful of herbs. I told myself that my life would end right after Zaeth’s if I left behind a dangerous snag or hole. But I just didn’t have the stomach to murder one of the Hush in such an underhanded way. And hurting…killing…Zaeth? He’d saved my life. And despite all that talk of taming, he was my friend. I wouldn’t betray him.

When the other soldiers started arriving, I had to stand off to the side, straight backed and expressionless in the line of squires — petite, dark-haired soldiers created to fulfill this role. Meanwhile, I fumbled when Zaeth would hand me his gloves and suit, and I struggled not to break the delicate shell-like dishes as I brought him tea or food during a break. All my blunders worsened when light from the eyes of the watching Hush spotlit my clumsy hands. That eye-glow found the expressions that I couldn’t hold back, and my heavy-footed steps as I moved about the room. It made me feel a thousand times more awkward. Sometimes wind chime laughter floated behind my graceless movements. But, when I tried to catch them staring, silver filled every eye.

A loud crackling reverberated through the training room and we all looked up. One of the Sorg black capsules swam by, like a fat black caterpillar crossing over our view of Uranus. Allied Defense didn’t have any ships as big as those capsules, couldn’t dream of creating something as magnificent as the beehives. But I watched those heavy black ships through a layer of ice, and their proximity reminded me that a black void waited outside the ice, ready to blow my lungs and veins apart as punishment for not staying put on Earth. The capsule’s shadow threw the room into a spotty darkness with the glowing empty eye sockets of the Hush as the only light source. They reminded me of the strange creatures that existed in the deepest parts of Earth’s oceans, as foreign to the humans living above them as these aliens from the Andromeda galaxy. I couldn’t hide the tremor in my hands and legs. An intuition of wrongness, of not belonging came over me. I didn’t want to die here, far from Earth, from my home, and among strangers to my species. A volley of hot white bolts and crooked yellow lasers jumped toward us, but they fizzled to nothing on the Hush defensive shields.

“They test us,” Zaeth whispered. I hadn’t even noticed him come up beside me, something that I understood as improper behavior toward a squire, unless requesting my services. A moon-faced Hush standing to my right stared, a minuscule twitch of disgust on his lip. I had stopped seeing the Hush faces as expressionless masks. With most of their intent coming through as projected light, they didn’t have the need for more than a subtle change. A twitch in lips instead of a grin, a blink instead of a frown. I’d missed those little signs with the spill of light distracting me. Zaeth leaned in close enough that his lips hovered just outside the shell of my ear, but didn’t touch. Hush didn’t touch. “They’re looking for a weak spot, but they won’t find one. The entire ship is buffered with laser shields.”

“I wasn’t worried.”

Light danced out between us, sunlight through leaves. I’d come to see that response as laughter.”You appeared worried, human.”

“Nah.” I stopped myself from releasing a huff, which I thought counted as curse words with Hush.

* * *

As the capsule drifted away, Vareech swept into the room, his long silken wizard robes billowing around him, long leaf green hair trailing like a cape. His orders and admonitions like sandpaper on rusted metal. The soldiers scrambled into the regimented diamond formation, instead of four or five of them, sixty small lithe forms created the shape. Zaeth moved to his spot on the farthest left point, silver fill shielding his emotions. The dojo set up might look similar, but Hush training had nothing in common with Allied Defense drills. On Orbit 3 and in the dome, all soldiers performed standard patterned techniques. Repetition made our bodies react to laser fire, to obstacles, to attacks with ingrained identical maneuvers. Not the Hush. They took turns fighting in mêlées that made no sense to me. Vareech prized escape rather than engagement. I think because of the tech. In those mirrored suits, defeating an enemy required almost no effort, but capture might result in disaster. Vareech released the full complement of his soldiers from formation so that they could observe each other in smaller squads. It reminded me of a Saturday morning holo my sister watched as a teenager called Dance! Battle! Dance! with groups of dancers imitating and improving on each other’s moves until the audience declared a winner. Tonia had a favorite group she always voted for, regardless of how well they danced. “That’s not fair,” I’d told her, old enough to recognize her bias but way too young to keep silent. “It’s fair to me!” Tonia had countered and she’d pinched my pudgy arm hard enough to leave a bruise.

* * *

The Hush fought holo-humans, just like we fought holo-Hush. With one very noticeable difference, Allied Defense’s holo-enemies were no more threat than the empty lasers they fired — projections of light. The Hush tech could do more than a 3D projection. The holo-humans materialized with substance. White Allied Defense pressure suits that grabbed for the Hush, that caught them. “Gravity technology,” Zaeth explained.

Whatever. The projections belonged in a horror holo. Faceless empty helmet windows, but super-human strength. They kicked and punched hard enough to send the Hush soldiers skidding across the entire length of padded floor, flying into the walls and ramming each other over like bowling pins. Even with twice the weight and bulk of a Hush, I couldn’t do those feats of strength. And I would never try to stomp a soldier to death. To rip one limb from limb. The holo-humans attacked in a frenzied rage like animals and not like Allied Defense soldiers would. No wonder that little soldier, Clatuk, had raced away from me in the hallway. Based on the dojo projections, I might erupt into wild butchery at any moment.

Vareech called Zaeth’s squad forward to begin each training session. They would try to wow the rest of the company with their moves to subdue the humans. Then, the groups that followed would attempt to improve upon their strategy. I didn’t really like the other members of Zaeth’s squad: a pug-nosed and angry Hush with a name like knuckles cracking, and a tallish soldier with nearly as many gray jewels as Zaeth. He had a translated name, Pu-hud, that stood in for the sound of a drawer sliding shut. I just called the pug-nose “Crack” since he didn’t see the point in having his Hush name made pronounceable to a squire. Their own squires, young, newly hatched or whatever from the capsules where they grew, stood near me while the squad performed. I got the impression they thought I smelled funny. Or maybe that I might decide to eat them on a whim.

Crack and Pu-hud lined up behind Zaeth. With only three members, Zaeth’s squad couldn’t make a full diamond like the other four and five member teams. Instead, they settled for a triangle, legs braced, left hands over their right wrists, as if they had just traveled a grav beam. Zaeth stood at the front point, the obvious leader. When the five holo-humans appeared, they went right for him. Grabby handed, rampaging suits hell-bent on ripping apart the mirror suited Hush. As a drill, it made no sense to me. Earth drop units never singled out one Hush from the others. Vareech had to know this because when the other squads performed, the holo program spread the threat of capture and death. I tipped my face to Zaeth’s progenitor as the old Hush watched from his hover-platform. Like the holo-humans, Vareech’s attention never strayed from his progeny.

Crack did a flying kick to one of the empty helmets, knocking his opponent onto the mat. In real life, I think the recipient of that kick would stay down for good. Not the holo-human, who rolled to one knee as a long-ray materialized in this hands. “What the hell?” I spoke without realizing it. “That would never happen!”

One either side, the squires hissed their disapproval at me. The Hush valued stoicism. Reacting to the fights in any way, exclaiming, a facial expression, would shame Zaeth. Shit. I didn’t dare look up to see Vareech’s reaction.

The holo-human advanced forward and aggressively planted a leg to focus his heavy weapon. He shot a scatter beam from the long-ray, the penetrating red flash in that close range would decimate Zaeth’s team. In the second before the beam ignited, Zaeth leapt into the air and tackled both Crack and Pu-hud to the ground, held them flat to the floor so that the pulsing red Earth laser missed them. With the same motion, he slid toward the holo soldier and swiped his leg, throwing him off balance. In that unsteady moment, Zaeth grabbed the weapon from the holo-human and turned it on him. A battle winning maneuver that outclassed all the smack and dash attacks I’d see from other Hush.

Vareech didn’t think so, the sound he made scraped against my eardrums like feedback on a microphone. The holo-humans vanished. The long ray gun disappeared. The pug-nose Crack and bejeweled Pu-hud sprang to their feet, heads down, hands clasped in front of them. I recognized this pose of contrition from when Zaeth’s progenitor had visited him in the dome. I’d thought it his own, but it must have been a formal stance of penitence. And then Vareech made a sound like wind through frozen branches.

The two Hush dropped their hands, raised their heads, turned flickering light onto Zaeth that caught on the blue jewel in his hair. Now Zaeth bowed his head.

His progenitor laid into him. Breaking glass. A groaning hinge. The smashing thud of a tree coming down. Then silence, and the practice resumed. Twice more Vareech called out Zaeth for the mistakes that Pu-hud and Crack made. Finally, another squad came forward and Zaeth and his team retreated to the edges of the center mat.

“Good job,” I whispered, but Zaeth ignored me and watched the next group with silver filled eyes. He’d probably scold me for it once we got back to the room, but someone needed to tell Zaeth he’d done well. And Vareech only ever found fault with his progeny and eventual replacement. In every group that followed, the leader of the squad tried the tackle and slide that Zaeth had performed, but none of them took out the holo-human soldier with the long ray gun. Vareech treated them all with more care than he had Zaeth, which I expected to humiliate them worse than if he’d dished out the same condemnation he had on his progeny. But none of them cared that their commander expected less from them. Their own progenitors had created them to fulfill their roles as soldiers, and I think they counted themselves lucky not to be compiled of any leadership genes.

As the last group took their spots, Faesosh came to confer with Vareech and watch. This happened often, and when he appeared, the chieftain always made a point of speaking with me, the human squire. As he tipped his head toward me, the white jewels in his hair clinked together, light and musical as Hush words. “How has my little brother performed today, Landon?” The other Hush gawked at our interactions. I got the impression that they considered Faesosh eccentric and sneered at his attention to me. Any “little brother” reference especially rankled Zaeth and Vareech because of its vague association to disgusting human reproduction.

Although, as a lowly squire —and a human—I never contradicted what Faesosh said. “Zaeth did great.” I aimed my toothy grin toward Vareech’s hover platform. “He’s always the best,” I added and hoped that bragging from a squire didn’t break any of their alien social rules. Don’t know why I worried, Faesosh acted way more interested in my facial expression than my words. His face split in an imitation of my smile. Not a good imitation either, a baring of teeth and lips with exaggerated, almost sinister tilt.

“This demonstrates pleasure, doesn’t it, human. I have performed the expression correctly.” Like Zaeth he didn’t ask for my approval, but rather demanded it.

“Uh…yep…yes, that’s a smile.”

“I enjoy the strange contortions of human faces. They are most undisciplined but interesting.” Maybe Faesosh didn’t notice, but over his shoulder I could see dark clouds in the eyes of his soldiers… and in Vareech’s.

“Oh… uh…thanks.”

Faesosh whistled something toward the commander, and Vareech’s platform lowered to the floor. I tried to slink back a step, but Zaeth’s boot slid behind my heel, warning me to keep my place. They spoke in Hush, a cacophony of sounds I couldn’t hope to understand. But that flickering white light moved down my arms and across my chest.

My size.

I didn’t need to speak their language to know what they discussed. Even tech reliant Hush couldn’t resist making use of the potential in my size. Would they ask me to fight? Order me to join them or die? I would go into battle against the Sorg, but not against my own people. Zaeth might trust me, but Vareech wouldn’t even consider allowing one of the enemy to join their ranks. The progenitor’s eyes clouded dark. He didn’t even like me as a squire, but Faesosh wouldn’t stop flashing light over my body, and all the muscles that he wanted to see fighting on their side.

His boot sliding out from behind me, Zaeth waved an arm between Faesosh and me. A long high pitched word like the staccato chirping of a sparrow interrupted the argument between the Hush leaders. Vareech snapped something back, but Zaeth ignored whatever he said.”Landon, make us a pot of tea.”

“What?”

“Do not speak,” he snapped. “Make tea.”

“Yes…sorry.” Zaeth’s mouth pursed at my response. Right. Don’t speak. The entire room watched my plodding steps to the curved silver wall in the back of the dojo. Their twinkling interest like walking through a storm of fireflies. Tea. Okay. I came close enough that the wall tech registered me and an array of holo-pictures appeared. A teapot, dishes of food, a uniform, a canister of liquid metal. I pointed to the teapot, tapped it three times, and a cubby opened with the delicate shell pink cups and a pot of milky tea that tasted like pure sugar in my human mouth. How a ship made of ice could produce hot tea mystified me, but the Hush drank it at the same piping hot temperature as humans. When I turned back with the pot and cups, the room erupted in wind chime laughter.

What?

All the green faces turned my way, dappled-light amusement leaking from their eyes. The pictographs. Zaeth had warned me that this would happen, that the others would see just how inferior my mind compared to theirs. The warning had nothing on a room filled with laughter pointed my direction. My body flashed with heat to rival that teapot. Shame constricted my chest.

Zaeth gestured toward me with more of the bird call sounds and the groaning hinge that Vareech had used with him. I understood ridicule when I saw it. With the laughter echoing through the room, flashing memories filled my head, all the times Riggs and his buddies had mocked me at school. Our football coach laughing with them, when one of them snapped a towel against my bare ass. “Look at ‘im flinch! Big mama’s boy!” My arm and hand spasmed, and the stack of little cups shattered between my fingers. Red blood dripped from my fist. All the dappled laughing light sucked away as if I’d flipped a switch.

“Put the tea down and fix your hand.” Zaeth’s voice sounded robotic and his eyes still had the silver fill, all emotion concealed. Not like when we were alone. He shows his feelings when just the two of us are together. He marched toward me with an angry crease between his perfect brows. As if ready to reprimand an errant squire, but I finally understood that I watched a performance.

Despite what he’d claimed to expect from me, he saved me from Faesosh and Vareech forcing me into becoming a soldier. I took a long time placing the teapot back in the cubby and surrendering my hand to the ministrations of the medical lasers. Faesosh and Vareech had moved on from considering my suitability as a soldier. Just as Zaeth predicted, the ship’s tech had revealed the stupidity of his squire. I needed pictures to point at, could only work the most simple of the controls.

And when I broke the cups? What had that demonstrated? When I took my place behind Zaeth, the other Hush moved away from us.

Like children called to story-time, the soldiers all sat cross legged in the dark room as Vareech opened a holo over their heads. A close-up of a Sorg capsule appeared. It hovered like a dark legless bug body in the air and then the outer pocked shell disappeared and only the guts floated over us, a meandering tunnel layout inside. No operations room. No dojo. No drop room for beam outs. The inside of the black capsule looked like an ant farm I’d had as a kid. Nothing but tunnels layered over tunnels. And little red Sorg writhing around inside, basking in green fumes, fighting, fucking. I didn’t think the Hush would go for that level of detail in a simulation. The tech that made this holo must have looked inside an actual capsule, maybe one of those that had done a flyby earlier. Vareech picked apart the tunnels with his knobby green fingers and whistled instructions. Every passage looked the same to me, but the Hush must have seen something I didn’t. Zaeth especially. He studied the holo and those twisting ant tunnels with rapt focus as Vareech laid out his attack plan.

* * *

That night a popping noise woke me. Not popping…panting…sobbing… as if the person crying had a range of extra sounds to release his anger and fear. For the past three years I’d slept in cramped bunk rooms, then a narrow cave, and I’d trained myself out of waking at the sounds and movements of the people sleeping next to me. But my body and mind had become so attuned to Zaeth’s constant presence that I felt the panic in his nightmare race down my own spine, clench my stomach and render me breathless.

“Zaeth?” I reached out to shake him awake, but stopped my hand just before it made contact with his skin. No touching. I’d almost forgotten. His eyes opened and muted gray light flooded over us. Zaeth slapped at his bare wrist, the way he would activate weaponry in his reflective suit. Fear and anger battled in tensing, trembling muscles, the pulsing dark light of his eyes.

That damn Sorg holo — their accordion limbs and naked bodies contorting in violence and sex—it must have reminded him of what happened that last night in the dome. The assault…rape.

“Okay?” Somehow I didn’t think he wanted me to ask about what happened in his dream, at least not when he fought to get control back from his nightmare. I reached out, touched the edge of his pallet. “Can I… get you anything? Water?” The tech offered it deliciously cold and pure, served up in heavy iced tumblers.

The walls, floor and pallets absorbed whatever color they found outside our translucent ceiling, shades of light and dark blue when Uranus appeared overhead. Sometimes, lemon yellow when we passed through a shimmering ring. Sometimes, baby pink as we neared one of the five large moons. Ariel, I think. Maybe Umbriel? I only remembered that astronomers named them after Shakespeare characters. But our side of the beehive must have faced open space that night because the room had absorbed only black and the faint glow of faraway stars.

Long hair slid over Zaeth’s back as he sat up and clasped thin arms around his knees. We both slept shirtless, but we probably should have slept naked because the tech in our pallets adjusted better against skin. I bet the other Hush slept naked… But, I didn’t want to suggest it before Zaeth did.

He took a deep, tremulous breath. “I am fine. It was not my intention to wake you, Landon.” He sounded hoarse, the musicality scrubbed from his low voice.

“It’s okay. I don’t mind.” If only I could come up with the right thing to say to him, to offer him… “I used to get bad dreams sometimes too. When I was first taken prisoner. They were about a friend of mine, another drop soldier on my ship. About her death.”

“You no longer dream of this?”

It made me feel guilty to admit, but I didn’t. Too much had happened and I’d grown far apart from the Landon whose closest brush with death came from a squad member. The Landon whose greatest fear meant assuming her role.

“Your friend was killed by Hush?”

“Yes.”

Zaeth rubbed his face and shook his hair back. A lock of the silky forest green hair grazed my fingers, still resting on his pallet. He sucked in a shocked breath, turned toward me with wide eyes that shot light over my hand.

I drew it back. “You could feel that? On just the ends of your hair?”

The white light cracked into mirrored shards, the disco ball fragmentation that I deciphered to mean the same thing as the blush heating my face and ears. Zaeth dipped his chin, pulled his long curtain of hair in front of his face. “Yes.”

“I… sorry.” But I thought of the bubbles, of his finger tapping the springy end of a curl. “Back on Mars, in the agro bubbles…were you testing out my hair when you asked to touch it?”

“It is not the same for humans. I realized this before asking, that my touch would have no effect.”

I slid my hand forward again, my fingers stopping closer, but not touching his sensitive hair. “It had an effect.”

And between the long strands of dark green hair, I saw Zaeth’s eyes close, the slight downturn of his lips.

“Zaeth? I don’t… I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No. You should not. We should not talk…like this.” Darkness, as if the black of space had leaked from our skylight window, settled between us.

“But we already are taking like this.” I couldn’t just let it drop, not with my heart pounding and stomach churning. “And not talking about it doesn’t change what we feel.”

“Landon, no. Say nothing else.” The silence lasted what felt like a long time in the dark, with both of us breathing hard, so close to each other and so aware of what we didn’t dare say.

That silence wrapped tighter and tighter until I thought it might strangle me. “Do the Hush never touch,” I asked him. “Not even…” My mind blanked on the rest of what I wanted to say. Not even for comfort, for affection, for love… “Do you never want to touch?” I settled on.

“Yes.” The wooden jingle of soft laughter in his voice. “We want to and we do.” But then he hugged his knees tighter, hid his face against them. “We are not like the Sorg. We do not have sex… as you said …for fun. The connection is stronger for us. I cannot explain it because you are not Hush, and you would not understand. But we are not like the Sorg.”

“What the Sorg did to you was wrong. It’s a crime on Earth, and if they’d been human soldiers, then they would have been punished. Humans—good humans— wouldn’t do that.”

Zaeth released his death grip on his knees and uncurled to face me again. “Like you, Landon. You are …good.” Zaeth settled beside me on his pallet. “We do not have good or bad on Hush. We only have purpose.”

I lay down, folded my arms underneath my head and stared at the points of starlight above us, the endless void of space beyond our icy skylight. “Purpose,” I repeated. “Having purpose is hard for humans. We aren’t made especially to fit one.”

“I do not think I would like being a human.” Zaeth’s words were slurred and sleepy. “It sounds…confusing.”

I listened until his breathing evened out and I knew he’d fallen back asleep. Then I closed my eyes too.

*

The next day of training, Vareech ordered that his soldiers perform their mock-battles without the mirrored suits. After it peeled away from Zaeth’s body, I folded it over my arm and held it against my chest like a good squire. Stoic, expressionless, silent, I tried my best to act like a Hush. To not shame Zaeth.

His squad of three would go first, like they always did. Vareech hovered overhead, ready to pass judgement on their performance. When the faceless holo-humans appeared, they again grabbed at Zaeth before the others. I held in a gasp as he ducked a laser and rolled out of the path of a charge. I couldn’t understand Vareech’s whistled instructions, but I could figure them out watching from the sidelines. Escape. Evade. Avoid Capture.

One of the holo-humans stood taller than the others, much taller, with wide shoulders. A familiar girth to its thighs, its arms. I cut my eyes up to Vareech’s stiff form. What now?

The tall projection grabbed for Zaeth with inhuman speed, caught his shoulder, and flung him across the room one-handed. My skin itched with the desire to protest, I couldn’t do that. No human could do that. But one look at Zaeth’s silver-filled eyes and I knew to keep silent. He pressed a hand against the wall and levered himself to standing.

The bulky Landon-holo stood at the ready, facing Zaeth with arms at his sides, ready to attack. The other Hush on Zaeth’s squad had backed away and the other holo-humans vanished. Vareech railed at Zaeth in Hush. It sounded like a tray of dishes dropping to the floor, ball bearings spilled into a metal pot, the key-making machine at Hotson Farm and Hardware. But Zaeth didn’t cower from his progenitor’s condemnation like he did back in Utopia dome. He panted, one shoulder hanging a little lower, maybe dislocated, but he took slow and cautious steps back onto the mat.

The Landon-holo moved again, gripped Zaeth’s waist with a long muscled arm, and pivoted to one foot like a discus thrower. I clenched my teeth to keep from shouting. Balled my fists to stop myself from moving out of the line of squires. It won’t help. Zaeth kicked at the holo’s neck, and again just under the holo’s chin. Either blow would have knocked me down, had me at least loosen my grip. But Vareech had made that holo to teach his progeny a lesson. It jumped backwards, rotated and let go of Zaeth at the same time, hurling him out to the wall again. When he hit, Zaeth’s body slammed against the wall on his injured side, a loud snapping noise and a whimper the only sounds. The room went silent and light pattered between me and the holo-Landon. It wouldn’t help anything but I couldn’t keep myself from shouting at Vareech and the others, “I’m not that strong. I would never do that.”

But no one paid attention to my words, or they didn’t understand them. The empty helmet of the holo-Landon stayed pointed in the direction it had thrown Zaeth, waited for him to rise and continue the one-sided fight. Stay down. Just stay down. Please Zaeth.

A shuddering groan emanated from outside the ice ceiling, and then the entire room tilted like a ship on rough seas. I lost my footing and slipped down to the floor. “What was that?”

But we could see what had caused the beehive ship to tilt as it swam just outside the expansive window overhead. The black capsules had returned. Not just the two. I counted eight. They no longer pelted the Hush ship with their bolts and balls of energy. Two of the immense black craft had turned to face the beehive head-on. Smiling forward thruster vents pushing forward, they barreled toward us. Toward the window ceiling of the training room. All around me the Hush soldiers began to sprint for the holographic doors. Vareech shouted into something that amplified his voice to echo throughout the crowd, but I couldn’t understand. Of course I couldn’t. I moved toward the back of the room, where I’d last seen Zaeth holding himself up against a curved silver wall.

“Zaeth!” A human word, a human voice couldn’t carry over the cacophony of sharp Hush cries, or the groaning of the tilting ship. The noise reminded me of a train grinding to a stop on the tracks. I’d seen that once, when a cow had gotten loose from Old Frank Walter’s place. She’d planted herself on the tracks and refused to move as the train thundered down, horn, brakes, whistle all screeching. I searched for the one dark head among many dark heads. The sky blue jewel he’d used to pin back his mane. Crackling laser had my hair standing on end, my skin prickled with it. I cupped my hands and shouted. “Zaeth! Zaeth!”

The Hush had thinned out and most stood behind the holographic panels, watching the battle taking place outside the ceiling window. The beehive ship threw a volley of blue energy at the charging vessel, but the long black capsule rolled over like I’d seen it do from the grav beam, so that no single spot of its hull absorbed the full damage. It would breach within minutes. Where…. my lungs had turned to stone and panic stole my breath. The black Sorg ship had blotted out the aquamarine light from Uranus, the pinpoint glow of the stars. There! God—there!

Zaeth held his side, one arm curved to his chest. “Landon?”

Don’t touch. Don’t touch. I still had the reflective suit in my hands, and I threw it around his shoulders for whatever protection that could provide. It undulated and squirmed, trying to sheath his body. A thundering boom rocked the ship and Zaeth and I skidded across the floor. The Sorg capsule had crashed into us, jagged smoking ice chunks speared into the room, cut deep into the floor like gigantic stalactites. The liquid metal rained down in a freezing torrent. We needed to get out of that room. I pulled myself up from the floor to see the last of the Hush racing behind the holo barrier.

My right hand still clutched Zaeth’s jacket sleeve, but a boulder of ice pinned his legs to the floor. “Run, Landon.”

“No.” I threw my weight into the boulder and rocked it back and up a few inches, enough for Zaeth to slither loose. But he didn’t hop to his feet, not like I’d seen him do while stretching. I pulled him into my arms, careful not to touch skin, not to touch him. And I ran, my feet slipping on ice and fluid. The brittle snap of the holo door closed behind us just as the full ceiling gave way, and the pull of space yanked the ice, the instruments, the padded floor from the room. Even the crumpled Sorg ship flew backward into the void. Red bodies spinning in the debris. I set Zaeth down against one of the corridor’s icy walls, and panted into my hands numb with cold. Wrapped my arms over my body.

The silver suit wormed against him still. He held his side, as if something pained him there. But white hot light shown from his eyes and I took that sturdy radiance as a good sign. When he spoke, his voice sounded strong as well, the voice of a leader. “Thank you, Landon. You saved me.”

“Of course—” Around us, all the Hush had gone silent, turned away from the view of the destroyed training room to shine their curious flickering light on me. I hadn’t used my size to kill like the holo-Landon. I’d used it to save. And Vareech, his eyes still covered with silver, nodded at me. “Of course I did.”

Hush

Despite that nod, saving Zaeth’s life didn’t score me any points with Vareech, who still looked over his progeny’s shoulder every chance he got to regard me with that glittering black stare. And my rescue effort only increased the curiosity of the other Hush. Light buzzed around my every move, even though I never did anything worth looking at — just the exact same “standing around and holding things” duty, like any other squire. Except I had to fight the urge to bat the little light flashes away as I risked getting bored to death. Despite all that interest, none of the other Hush tried to speak or interact with me at all. Not because I looked like the enemy, and not because they didn’t engage with each other. They chattered together, the words like pebbles skipping across water, rain drops on a car roof. They played juvenile games like school boys would have, pranking one another by piercing holes in the shell thin cups of tea, hiding the vials of liquid metal that repaired their reflective suits. But Zaeth and I remained outside that camaraderie, and it wasn’t all due to me. His portion of royal genes doomed him to a friendless existence in the clan. Beyond saving me from the Hush, I think I understood another reason Zaeth brought me onboard. Loneliness looked the same in both our species.

“Why did Vareech do that to you? What good are those genes?” My voice came out reedy thanks to the ice water dunk I took every day to bathe. With actual chunks of ice.

Zaeth got that little fissure again as he weighed out the danger in revealing too much. “Certain abilities come with those genes. They would be useful to a commander, otherwise Faesosoh would not have agreed that Vareech could request them.”

On the Bungee I’d used a thin shammy to dry off, but the Hush used tech, of course. We stepped onto flat opaline discs and all the water on our bodies and in our hair rolled down into them like magnets sucking up metal shavings. “What abilities?” The first time we had to bathe together, I caught Zaeth staring, checking me out to see if we had all the same parts. We did, except for his missing bellybutton and my fuzzy body hair.

The pause lasted so long that my frustration bubbled over. “Why not just tell me. You know all the others treat me like a not-quite-reformed enemy. I would really appreciate it if you didn’t as well.” I threw my arms in the air. “Forget it, Zaeth…” The console wall produced new uniforms and a selection of jewels for Zaeth to chose from. He froze with one hand hovering over a string of deep blue stones, and I could almost see the resignation as it flowed through his body.

“I will tell you, but you must never speak of it again.” He didn’t wait for me to promise anything. “I can…see into the future. Just a moment or two. Or sometimes a little longer. But you can see how this would be advantageous for a commander.”

My fingers paused at the ties to my uniform pants. “See the…Are you serious?”

His head moved into a quizzical cant as he pinned the blue jewels up the side of one sleeve. “Why would I joke about this? Yes. And I have other abilities related to the phase.” When he shrugged on his uniform jacket, the blue stones poked down his sleeve like spikes. “But those benefits are minimal… What? Why are you making that expression?” He dropped his mouth open and raised his eyebrows.

“It’s…just…God, humans stand no chance against you, do they? As if the tech wasn’t beyond anything we could dream up…but a commander that can see the future?”

“Vareech is commander. He does not have this ability.”

“But…” When Zaeth took Vareech’s place, the Hush would become unstoppable. Beyond unstoppable. My shoulders slumped. But he’ll also let you go, I reminded myself. Changing the subject, I pointed at his sleeve of pointy blue stones. “That looks cool. Should I wear the black jewel?”

“Yes. I will fasten it for you.” The slight tilt in his lips gave away his satisfaction as he pinned it on my collar, and I couldn’t help thinking how that stone, awarded to Zaeth and now marking me as his squire, emphasized my status as his tamed human.

“We are ready,” he said.

Even if Vareech hadn’t thought much of me rescuing his own progeny, the leader of the Zaeth’s clan, Faesosh made a big production of thanking me. He had me brought to their command room at the bottom of the ship. Stepping inside, I had the same stomach drop of vertigo that I experienced in their blue grav beam. Instead of a ceiling window, it had a completely translucent floor that I felt dizzy while standing on. And afraid. “This isn’t ice, right?”

“Do not speak,” Zaeth hissed.

But Faesosh didn’t seem to mind my question. He turned that dappled sunlight effect on me. “Yes, Grower, you are standing on ice. Not a welcoming compound for one who specializes in Earth plants.” The chieftain’s white cabochon jewels glowed like tech. “You have demonstrated loyalty to my fledgling commander. You saved him at risk to your own life.” He waited for a response from me, but I cut my eyes to Zaeth, uncertain how to respond.

“It is his purpose,” Zaeth answered for me.

Ah right, of course. “It is my purpose,” I said.

Faesosh’s eyes glittered charcoal with intent. “Then I shall keep you at your purpose. I long to see how you would perform at Zaeth’s side.” He turned to Vareech with his unreadable blank face.

No. Zaeth hadn’t thrown the clan leader off my potential. Or I’d made things worse for myself by rescuing Zaeth from the demolished training room. “I…don’t think…”

“You will follow Zaeth, as a soldier, not a squire.” Faesosh’s voice had grown, filled the room with his proclamation. “You protected my little brother during the Sorg attack…” His lip ticked up a little at the “little brother,” a hint of a sneer on his face. “I will have my answer about training humans as soldiers when the mission is complete. If Zaeth dies, you will die as well.”

Vareech’s black eyes glittered with dark anger. But Faesosh had him by the balls, as we would say back on Earth. Vareech would now have to root for my success or wish his own progeny dead.

* * *

For the attack, I would ride the grav beam in with Zaeth’s squad. He finally had the full diamond shape, although Pu-hud would take the back point as I stood beside Crack.

“Stay right near me,” Zaeth whispered as Vareech elaborated on the mission plans. We had gathered again in the beehive’s new training room. Construction done with ice and intelligent tech meant instant repairs to any damage the ship took. Astounding. And, I could picture the raging frustration of the Sorg, they’d lost two ships filled with their warriors, and the Hush beehive looked whole and new just hours later. Zaeth kicked his boot against mine. “Do not trust the other two, Pu-hud and Crack.”

“What? They’re on our squad!”

“And it was a great honor for them until a human squire became a member. They would like to see you die in this mission.”

“Good to know.” I took a long slow breath, unclenched my jaw. What else could I even do, besides stick close to Zaeth? I didn’t understand any of Vareech’s directions, which came too fast for Zaeth to translate. A ping pong ball snapping back and forth. A rattle. A tambourine. Stick with Zaeth. I guess Faesosh hadn’t expected me to contribute, just to guard his future commander. At least I hoped so.

When Zaeth finally had a chance to explain the plans to me, it hardly qualified as a full operation — more like a storm. The Hush, used to always being the baddest and meanest on the playground, didn’t put a lot of effort into mission tactics. The best squads would land grav beams against the side of the capsules, bust in and crash them into the frozen surface of Uranus. The only tactics came in picking apart the chaotic tunnel system to reach the passageway near the center of the ship where Sorg command lay.

But first I would get my own reflective suit. Not a pleasant experience at all. Two squares of clay opened on the wall to our room and my hands sunk inside them. Then liquid metal crawled up my arms, not only inside but also outside my gray and green Hush uniform like a blanket of insects. The fluid tech measured and learned every nuance of my musculature, my nerves, my weaknesses and strengths. It burned and itched, but when I tried to squirm away, Zaeth did something to the floor so that my feet also froze in place. And by that time the tech had spread along my shoulders and down my chest and thighs. It held my muscles rigid and made it impossible for me scratch at the itch or flinch from the pain. Stretching across my back, it locked like an iron band. My lungs constricted, I could only take shallow breaths. Then it dug into my balls and those breaths turns hot and quick. In the reflective wall my face showed red, swollen. Finally the iron band released, and I gasped for air. As each inch of the crawling tech moved on, the fabric it left behind solidified into the cool material I’d run my hands over so many times to check for tears and snags. “Is that it? Is it over?”

“No.” Zaeth watched me with pulsing, worried light. That same headset from my first day on the ship lowered and doused my skull in the metal. I jerked back and tried to shake it off, but it closed over my mouth and my eyes. Zaeth’s voice,”Do not fear—” The liquid metal sank into my ears with persistence and I couldn’t hear the rest of his words. “—Landon.”

And then I could. And I could see him. The green blood rushing under his skin. The bruises he’d gotten on his back and shoulder from the Sorg attack. The crystal prism surface of his eyes underneath the pulsing light. “Zaeth,” I whispered and it came out metallic and inflectionless from the helmet. The clay released my hands, and chrome gloves formed over them, fitted to my skin, my fingernails, each individual hair and pore. Power surged through me, an electric current from the top of my head to the bottoms of my feet, all down my arms and into my hands. I didn’t even need to test the suit to know I had limitless strength, weapons buried in every limb. “This… this is amazing.” I couldn’t rip my eyes from the ice window above us, the distance, temperature, and other stats flowed out in a ribbon of information when I looked up at the scarred sphere of a moon — Ariel. It provided the Earth name for the moon and all the data in terms that I could recognize and understand. “Do you see this like I do?”

When I turned toward him, Zaeth’s own suit had rolled up his body and sealed him inside. But I could still see him, Zaeth, as clearly as if we both stood under bright light, no pressure suits, a magnifying lens on every inch of him. “Follow me,” he instructed. “The mission begins now.”

“What? Now? Right now?”

“Yes.” The ice corridors that had looked frozen, rough, and featureless to me for weeks now had glowing arrows and holo representations for different control panels and doors. And the ice wasn’t solid. Schools of translucent fish swam inside water veins that twisted all around the corridor. At least they looked like fish to me, but I wondered if the tech had translated them as well, made them into something recognizable and categorical for my eyes and brain.

Oh there. We stopped at a holographic door with a cartoonish blue beam hovering over it. I waggled my fingers through the projection and the little beam sign darted between them.

“Landon, stop.”

“Sorry.”

Allied Defense ships had thought the Hush used a cloaking technology to camouflage their drop ships from ours. We sometimes shot into anomalous scanner readings or blanketed the atmosphere directly over a Hush drop with energy, whatever we could think of to try to scuttle their invisible ships. But now, I thought those cloaked ships might all have lived in our imaginations. When Zaeth and I first arrived at the beehive, we’d done it on a beam that found us in a cave and yanked us up at an angle from Mars to Uranus. The Hush must have used similar beams to shoot their soldiers down to Earth. No drop ships needed, because they had grav beams capable of direct passage from their massive ice and liquid tech ship.

I’d expected a large round room, all of the Hush soldiers waiting their turn to ride out to the individual Sorg vessels Vareech had assigned each squad. But the four of us crowded into a small alcove with only a flat featureless disc embedded in the ice. It looked a lot like the drying pads we stood on after bathing. Pu-hud kicked me into the correct spot beside Crack. I guess the no-touching rule didn’t apply when they wanted to do a little violence. Zaeth spun to snap something at Pu-hud for kicking me, sharp black crystals in his eyes. With my helmet on I could see the green blood flow a little faster through Pu-hud’s veins, but he didn’t retort. Maybe he couldn’t because of those royal genes. The beam ignited and I jolted. The disc in the floor vanished and we all zoomed outside, into the void.

The reflective suit kept me stable in the beam, my feet shifting on the blue light as if on solid ground. Slushy solid ground, like standing in deep snow as the grav beam hurtled through space, even faster than the dizzying speed at which we left Mars. I could feel Pu-hud studying me, waiting for me to stumble or falter. Zaeth hadn’t exaggerated about the hatred rolling off him. In the constant river of information it provided, my suit let me know Pu-hud watched me, that darkness tried to edge out the silver in his eyes. The way Zaeth’s body tensed, I thought he must have the same data.

Stay close. His words whispered into my ears, my brain. For a second the sensation reminded me of the fizz weapon, and my mouth dropped open as heat crawled up my neck. A fleet of Sorg capsules appeared, and then I noticed all the other beams like blue spider silk traveling around us toward their destinations. My suit tech offered to provide holo pictures of the Hush riding inside those strands, so I tried not to look too hard that direction. And then I tried not to look at all as we barreled toward one of the ships like a comet on a collision course. My eyes squeezed shut, but the beam slowed in the last second and deposited us carefully onto the side of the pitted black craft. Allied Defense boots could fasten and walk without gravity, but the reflective suit adjusted my entire body to the precarious spot. I knew we’d landed on the side, our bodies jetting out that direction, but it felt like flat horizontal ground. Whatever the suit took in on the pockmarked landscape of the black Sorg ship couldn’t translate from staticky labels to human understanding, but Zaeth and the others must have fared better. They walked with purpose toward a grooved rectangle that looked exactly like twenty other closer rectangles. Finally my suit found a word that it could translate: Port. I hung back as Zaeth gripped one of the grooves and pulled. But that backward step got me, and I set my left foot into a divett and stumbled, dropped to one knee. Crack made a pointed look at my feet as I scooted back up.Yeah I got it — try not to clomp around like an oaf. Take it up with your chieftain! I didn’t volunteer for this—

Zaeth yanked the rectangle loose and it sailed away in the black as he dropped into the hole— alone. Shit! I dove in after him, not waiting for Crack like I probably should have. The fall didn’t last long and I landed on my feet — thanks to the suit— into a gritty cave-like tunnel that steamed with heat. My suit began to register so much information that I swayed and blinked for a full second as the rest of the squad shot blue bolts down the long passageway. Sorg charged us with their laser spears pointed forward, white spiked hair and teeth glowing in the darkened contours of the tunnel, claws ready to rip at the end of muscled triple segmented arms. Back with Allied Defense I would have shit myself in fear. But the power of that reflective suit rushed from the back of my neck down my arms and into my palms. Weapons came online inside the cool silver fabric, their tech connecting to both my mind and body. I held my fist out and sliced into the enemy with hot white lasers, severing a raging Sorg in half. To the right— the tech connected its ribbon of information to my movements, and I turned my arm to shoot a volley of blue bolts into two more Sorg. They died in mid-leap, ready to bite into the mirrored fabric.

We moved forward following Zaeth’s lead, our steps falling in unison as we carved through the attacking Hush. Down. Down. Down. Zaeth led us through the twisting featureless tunnels without a single hesitation — as if that high-speed holo dissection Vareech had done in the training room had sunk into his memory to emerge with flawless recollection. Maybe that’s exactly what happened. I didn’t feel like myself as I walked in step with the others, or not like only myself. That tech had merged with every part of me and become fluid. The white lasers and blue bolts shot from my hands and wrists because I willed it and I willed it because the Hush suit told me what do, where to look. A part of my psyche rebelled against the intrusion of the Hush tech while another part drank it in like Mom’s lemonade after a hot day in the fields.

Sorg soldiers surround us when we came into a bulge in the tunnels. Our diamond formation tightened. Laser whipped through steam and darkness faster than my eyes could track, but the suit made sense of it all and my own blue and white shafts found target after target. My mind emptied and gave over to the tech as it guided my arms and legs, my hands, my head. Then Zaeth said my name— the fizz like private communication that had rattled me earlier. Landon, move toward me!

One of the Sorg broke into the middle of our diamond and forced it apart with a double hooved kick to Pu-hud’s back. He skidded onto his stomach, but then his suit had him twist, lasers zapping from every part of his body. I knocked the Sorg into the spray of Pu-hud’s weaponry and the creature exploded into leathery skin and fluorescent red guts.

Landon!

I took a single step toward Zaeth and then Crack slid between us, blocking my way with both fists clenched and pitch-black leaking from his eyes.

As if in slow motion, I watched Zaeth bend his knees, ready to leap past Crack on the right.

The right. Then he’ll shoot from the left. With my Hush enhanced speed and strength, not to mention my Hush enhanced comprehension, I reacted. My hand shot out and clamped Crack’s fist inside my larger one, then I crashed my back against his chest and pulled him round me like a whip. He flew from my grip over the Sorg and into the rough cave wall of the tunnel. Both Zaeth and Pu-hud froze for a second. I’d just performed a move eerily similar to the holo-Landon from before the Sorg attack.

Down— Zaeth ordered. And we carved our way from the bulge to go lower, lower. At last we must have reached the center area from which we could scuttle the ship. Zaeth shot a straw-thin laser into the damp grainy floor, and it twisted like a drill.

“More Sorg are on the way!” I said it aloud, even though Pu-hud and Zaeth must have received the same alert from their suits. “We need to go!” Neither of the Hush answered me, but Puhud raised both hands, clutching his wrist in the Hush ready position.

“Zaeth?” The tunnel shuddered and the floor rolled underneath us.

“We need to leave now. Is Crack alive?” Zaeth spoke in English and Pu-hud flickered light between us, trying to understand.

“I don’t know! I just reacted— I didn’t mean—”

Pu-hud whistled and we faced off with another clutch of Sorg, but they only shot a few lasers and then scrambled backward to escape the disintegrating passage. The suits guided our feet to the stable chunks as we followed the Sorg back toward the bulge where we left Crack. But we didn’t need to go far, as we rounded a bend he staggered, one sleeve missing, his helmet dented, the visor torn loose.

Zaeth made the puffing curse word noise, but let Crack resume his spot in our diamond. “How’s he going travel the beam back to our ship? Zaeth? His helmet is totally fucked — He’s missing part of the suit!”

“It will be unpleasant but he will survive.”

Neither Crack nor Pu-hud said anything. We sprinted back toward the rectangle we’d first kicked open. A holo barrier blocked the tunnel from space, but on the other side of that barrier the dark cave had turned a brilliant blue. The beam! Zaeth slapped a hand against the cave wall and the barrier disappeared. The blue light yanked us forward and the four of us jumped inside. We all craned our necks to watch the Sorg capsule spin and dive. The long black pod collided with another and they both broke in two. Chunks of metal and clouds of grit skidded against our beam and the beams of other Hush riding out. What looked like twenty ships had started to funnel through the icy rings of Uranus, headed for a crash on the frozen-methane planet. And those that didn’t fled into black space, headed toward Neptune, toward Pluto, toward the edges of the Milky Way and then home. At least I hoped they had. I didn’t want to kill any more of them.

The beam sucked us into a different vestibule than the one we left from. A silver lounge with clear furniture and a wall of ice. Colored tubes in a vase. I remembered this room. They’d brought me here that first night. It looked different from behind the reflective helmet. Symbols I didn’t recognize gleamed from the floor and ceiling. I’d thought they’d questioned me in the dark, but all the tech labels glowed bright enough to bathe the room in simulated daylight.

Beside me, Crack shook ice from his hair and blinked frost off his eyelashes. His little squire accepted the broken helmet from Crack with a string of chirps, more worried about the repairs it needed than how it affected his soldier. Jumping into the beam, I’d forgotten all about Crack’s torn helmet and suit until I’d turned away from the falling Sorg ships. A bubble of oxygen encased the Hush soldier, and he floated inside it, curled like a fetus. An ice cold fetus. I remembered when the same technology lifted all the female Sorg from the dome and back to their ships. They must have hated that bitter cold ride. But they had lived. Only the males left behind had all perished when the Hush retrieved Zaeth and me. I still didn’t feel bad about that, they’d all conspired in what happened to Romi, in what they’d done to Zaeth. My time as a captive had found a kernel of retribution inside me that all the bullying, combat training, and warfare hadn’t ever touched. Or it could be the effects of the Hush tech I’d absorbed in that suit. As soon as I raised my hands to release the helmet, the tech understood and I could peel it off as easily as yanking a ball cap off my head. Then it opened at my neck and fell away like loose silk. My heart hammered in my chest to see it puddled on the floor, just a drop suit, something I wore and now took off like I did my uniform every night. Then why did my mind keep flashing back to my first drop on the Bungee? To my severed hand waiting on a tray for reattachment?

Maybe I stood there, examining my discarded suit just a little too long. Light pulsed over my hands and body…Zaeth. “I’m okay,” I whispered.

Pu-hud made the huffing noise, his disgust and irritation clear enough that even the human could hear and see it. “Take your spot,” Zaeth said. Not quite an order, like he could tell how disturbed that reflective armor left me.

I moved beside Crack, my eyes forward, my hand over wrist. Whatever shit he’d tried to pull back in the Sorg capsule, my reaction had him thinking twice about attacking me again. Tamed human, my ass! The only one of you I’m tamed for is standing right in front of us. My teeth gritted so hard that my jaw and neck ached. I couldn’t blame the suit for my anger now…I’d changed.

Hero

“Landon, you have performed well today.”

The chieftain only had eyes for me, ignoring the other squads that had completed the same mission, and even the other members of Zaeth’s team.

“I only followed Zaeth. I protected him, fulfilled my purpose as his squire.” Over Faesosh’s shoulder I could see the twitch of Vareech’s upper lip. Maybe he hadn’t made Zaeth his clone, but I recognized that twitch as satisfaction, having seen it disturb Zaeth’s placid expression hundreds of times. Vareech didn’t want me as a soldier. He barely tolerated me as squire.

“You followed Zaeth as one of his soldiers. You are not built to serve the Hush as a servant, but as a fighter.” And the roaming light from his eyes made it clear that he didn’t mean “built” in that metaphorical way humans used it. He wanted to use me, use the body he saw before him and turn me into his tool. All the other times, I hadn’t cared what others wanted to mold me into, but this time I would need to fight against it.

Bracing myself for his reaction, I delivered the lowest retort I could think of. “I was not built at all. My mother gave birth to me.” Thunder rumbled all around me, the disgust as unmistakable as a storm rolling over the plains. I’d found the perfect phrase to remind the clan leader, to remind the entire clan, that I would not fit seamlessly in with the Hush. Only Faesosh appeared indifferent to my repellent words.

“Come with me, Landon.” Finally he tore his strobing eyes from my body. “And you too, Little Brother. Bring your squad.” Coming so soon on the heels of my own declaration, Faesosh had made “little brother” an added offense. Now I understood why this title so bothered Vareech and Zaeth. To Hush ears, it came across as derogatory, crude…inflammatory. And my own stupid, rebellious phrase had set up Faesosh’s insult to hit extra hard. I gritted my teeth against apologizing, making things worse. My limbs dragged with exhaustion in the ice corridor, not even frigid air reviving them.

Faesosh led us into command with its dizzying translucent floor. The beehive had moved some since our beam docked. Uranus had grown smaller, and I found the red pinpoint of Mars in the distance. I hadn’t felt or heard a thing as the ship traveled millions of miles, hundreds of millions. Marveling at the scene under my feet, I’d forgotten to maintain my spot in the diamond. Crack tugged my sleeve to catch up. That showdown in the Sorg capsule had resigned both he and Pu-hud to my presence on their squad, or at least they no longer wanted to provoke Zaeth’s pet human.

In the low light of the stars, the chieftain’s white jewels glowed, and he looked like a spirit from a fantasy holo. Like an angel. Now that I’d looked up at him, I couldn’t look away. “You have taught me something important, Landon. You have taught me that humans can have other uses besides soil to feed their plants. I could train others like you.”

Like me? Did he mean oversized and strong, or willing to turn their backs on their own people? Faesosh tapped at the floor with his jewel encrusted slipper, and the view of space swept forward. Mars grew to the size of basketball, a boulder, a lake of red and yellow swirled underneath us until we passed it by. “Are we moving?” I asked.

The wind chime laughter tinkled around me. “No,” Zaeth whispered. At least he didn’t appear amused by my question. “It is a …you would say, a scope effect.” Then the blue and white globe of Earth appeared. My heart jerked in my chest, the sight of my planet calling to it and trying to pull it free of my body. The zoomed-in view of Earth expanded, filling the entire room, so that we now stood over its azure sky and snowy clouds. “Colby, Kansas. You have a farm.”

“I…” My chest tightened with anxiety.

“Zaeth has provide us this information,” Faesosh said with obvious satisfaction in his voice. “Latitude. Longitude.” As he spoke, the view under all the enemy feet zoomed toward my hometown.

Puffy clouds shifted loose over the black tar highway. Faesosh tapped his foot again. An old blue Chevy heading north on Franklin Street. Pulling into a spot in front of Hotson’s Farm and Hardware.

Another tap of Faesosh’s jeweled shoe. Redbud flowers skittered over Cherry Street. Bright pink blossoms that lit the stark command room with their cheery springtime hues. A lay cat stretching in a patch of sunlight on the curb.

Tap. A boy with a fishing pole on County Road 20. Blond hair blowing in a gust of wind. A shaggy brown dog chasing back and forth. Yapping and scattering a flock of starlings.

Tap. My farm. A combine moving across the back field. What had Mom planted there? It looked like barley of all things. The roof of the farmhouse had missing shingles. Laundry fluttered on the line. Bright green teardrop leaves of the cottonwoods unfurling from their winter buds, and underneath them Mom sat reading a book. Her dark hair now faded to gray, she held her finger against a page, closed the book and looked up into the branches of the cottonwood tree. Thinking of my dad, not knowing I looked down on her.

Zaeth hissed something. A baseball thrown through a window. Glass smashing against concrete.

“Oh I see this disturbs you.” Faesosh made a complicated gesture with his fingers and the focus pulled back with blinding speed until we all stood again over the black of space and the silver twinkle of distant stars. Uranus had shrunk even smaller as we’d scrutinized Earth. I staggered on my feet as the Hush tittered with their wooden jingling laughter.

Tears dampened my face and choked my air. Don’t pass out. Don’t embarrass yourself any more than you already have. I used my sleeve to swipe at my nose.

Faesosh’s face had gone blank. His eyes filled with silver. “There is no need for … sadness?” He tilted his head to examine the spectacle of my grief. “You have done a great service to your species, Landon. Soon we will invade and conquer Earth. When that happens, I will offer the worthy humans the chance to serve as our soldiers. Only the others, the unsuited and useless inhabitants will become growing soil.” Faesosh peered up at me, flickering light studied my effort to regain control. “You have brought this great honor to your fellow creatures. You should feel…pride… and happiness.” Then Faesosh’s face split again into the stomach churning imitation of a human smile.

I don’t know how I made the walk back up to our room near the top of the beehive. Crack had plucked at my sleeve again to keep me at his side as we left their operations room, but I think Zaeth had decided we no longer needed to keep formation and he’d ushered me the rest of the way back. I found myself collapsed on my pallet, which squished around me like the beanbag chair I’d had as a kid. Zaeth pulled my boots from my feet, eased the jacket off my shoulders, played the part of squire much better than I ever had while I recovered from my stupor. “I have to do something. Zaeth…” my voice sounded wrecked. “Isn’t there anything we can do to stop this war? What if humans agreed to live how the Hush do?” But humans didn’t really know how they lived. They’d never told us anything about themselves. “We could agree to not harm the environment… to not use…”

“There are too many of you. Anything you promise would be a lie.” Zaeth gave up on undressing me and sat on his own pallet. Both of us were exhausted from the battle against the Sorg, and neither of us spoke for a long, long time. Finally, Zaeth pressed his fingers to the floor and tea appeared between us, so we drank. Then bowls of food, so we ate. “The Sorg ship is very different to Hush,” Zaeth said into the gloom between us.

“What?”

“It is strange because all their technology was given to them by us. Yet they perverted it to be less organized. Less efficient.”

My sluggish brain accepted this as small talk, something to distract me from the future Faesosh had arranged, for the end of humanity. “I suppose they organized it in a way that made sense to them. Humans did this too. All our best tech came from you, but we had to adapt it to fit our needs…so it would have familiarity and…” Wait a second…The Sorg! The Hush had conquered them at some point and they still lived. The Hush had allowed them to live.

“How did the humans … create familiarity?” Zaeth pronounced the words as if he didn’t quite understand them. Because he did not. He pulled his hair loose from its knot at the back of his head, it fell like silk over his shoulders and onto the pallet behind him. Don’t get distracted, Landon.

“Zaeth— why can’t humans be like Sorg? You didn’t eliminate or enslave them… the Hush let them live separately…as friends.” A dark light seeped from under the fall of forest green hair and clouded like fog when he brushed that silky hair from his face. “Alright,” I threw up both hands. “Okay, okay…not friends. But the Hush let them remain independent.”

Silver flowed over the dark of Zaeth’s eyes. I hated when he did that—it creeped me out to see those empty statue eyes, devoid of movement or life. “I do not know the reasons behind this. The royal family dictated our terms with the Sorg long before I was created. Before even Vareech. Perhaps the females spoke up for them.”

“But you could find out? You could ask. And then maybe Faesosh would hear these reasons and spare Earth too…” My hand trembled as I reached for another little cup of the tea. I had to clench my fist and release it several times to make the shaking stop. Too close and too fast, despair and hope had crashed through my battle drained body. I collapsed back to the pallet and watched the stars flowing by… as the beehive moved closer to Earth.

“We can plan for this tomorrow,” Zaeth soothed. “Tell me about the familiarity…no, tell me Landon of your life before your capture…when you were an Earth soldier. How was it different from my life here?”

I rolled on my side to face him, and he sank down beside me. We both crooked our elbows, rested our heads on our arms like boys in a sleepover. Well, how I always saw sleepovers in the holos about friendship and love. I’d never known either growing up. “You already know that we have many small ships that we drop from. Not a single ship like this.”

“And you lived always in this small ship?”

“No. We all trained together as recruits. On Mars, but also on the space stations. I lived on Orbit 3 at first…” I didn’t give away anything important, no plans or tactics from Allied Defense. And even if I had, all my information came from a year earlier, before the Hush took Mars, old and useless information if used against us. Instead I described the obstacle races Yulia and I set up in the long corridors between Orbit 3’s modules. We made any challengers lay a bet on themselves with candy or booze. I told Zaeth about how Yulia always won, and even though Commander Brenchley busted us and ordered us to sweep out every docking bay, we didn’t mind. Yulia and I took all the winnings and threw parties in the med bay. If we slipped Doc some chocolate, he agreed to sleep in the bunk room for a night. And the med bay rested far enough on the edge of the spiderweb of modules that we could crank our music as loud as we liked without getting caught. “And even if we did, the commanders never really came down on us ‘cause of Yulia…” My words started to slur, and I didn’t know if I rambled in the waking or the dream world. I just knew the silver had slipped away from Zaeth’s eyes and the glow between us felt warm and intimate. “She was my closest friend… before you, Zaeth. I wish you could meet her. You would like her…everyone likes her…you’d probably like her more than you even like me.”

“No, I would not. Not more than you.”

I might have dreamed that last part. Dark, deep sleep claimed all my thoughts and I slept like the dead. And took a long time to wake again, my mouth dry and throat sore. When I sat up, Zaeth had gone, his pallet sunken beneath the silver floor. The tea and dishes from the night before had also vanished. I could only think of water and stumbled to the control wall to pull the lever and drink. My head ached and my skin felt tacky with old sweat. I felt as bad as I would have after one of those med bay parties I described. Hungover. “Where the hell is Zaeth?”

I’d just stepped out of the ice bath when a squire appeared in our room. Smaller than Zaeth and skinny as a stick, the little soldier plastered himself against the wall farthest from me. “What did you want?” The freezing water hadn’t helped much with my headache or thirst and my mood had turned to shit because of it. The Hush trembled and spoke to me in a rush of airy chirping noises.

I shook my head before remembering that head shakes and nods meant nothing to them. And that my own head still throbbed. “I don’t understand.” This happened often. Even though they knew I couldn’t speak Hush, they assumed I understood it.

But then the Hush made a sound I recognized, wind through frozen pine needles. Zaeth’s name. “Okay, let me get dressed,” I said, and the kid took a slow step backward and disappeared through the holographic door.

He’d waited for me in the ice passageway, made a gasping sound when he saw me. Not because I startled him, I think that sound meant “come.” Or maybe “yes.” I had a hard time catching the subtleties of the airy noises they made. When I stepped forward, I made sure to make slow movements, appear as unthreatening as possible to the tiny Hush. It wasn’t his fault I felt like I’d drank an entire bottle of Baijiu on my own. Definitely a hangover. If I didn’t have a missing roommate, I would have blamed the mirrored suit.

The skinny Hush led me to a round amphitheater. Crystal benches rose up from a low center stage… not a stage. A grav beam disc. Vareech stood in the center of the disc, like he waited to ride into space in nothing but his gray robes and glittery jewels.

When I entered the room, most of the dark heads turned my way, inquisitive flickering beams danced over my face and body. The little Hush I’d followed waved me over to a seat in the very center of the audience where Faesosh waited. I didn’t see Zaeth near him, nor down near the floor by Vareech. Acid rolled in my stomach. What was going on? The gathered Hush soldiers stood and leaned away so that I could lumber through them to their chieftain’s wide seat on the central tier.

“Landon, at last you have arrived. You humans require so much sleep. Your host is returning to great celebration! You will want to witness his triumph, will you not?” I looked over the “great celebration” of gathered somber Hush. Stiff, still posture. Eyes clouded with silver fill. Nothing at all like the drunken chaotic celebrations I knew from Allied Defense.

“Yeah? Well… congratulations, then.” I swallowed and tried to school my expression into something more friendly than I felt right then. Whatever feat Faesosh accomplished could only mean more disaster for Earth, for humans. My stomach tightened in fear, but I still had to know. “What did you do?”

“Not me!” Faesosh’s eyes leaked the dappled light and he purred with the airy jingling laughter. “We will celebrate your dear companion, Zaeth. He led a raid on one of the human space stations and achieved a great victory for us this day.”

There’s no way—Zaeth wouldn’t… Parts of our sleepy conversation came back to me. Zaeth’s interrupting questions:”How long were the corridors you raced in?” “Why would the commanders not hear music from the med bay?” “How many soldiers were in your operations module when the commander reprimanded you?”

“A space station?” I asked Faesosh.

“Yes. Station Three. You are aware of this station? Zaeth truly has achieved his purpose as a successor to Vareech. He fought his way through the station to their…” He stumbled for the words. “Their head of operations center. None of the humans could stand against him as he claimed the station for his own.”

In the center of the amphitheater, a gravity beam emerged from the ground with the same seamless technology as our pallets, as the control panels and view screens, the suits made from liquid metal. Three mirror suited Hush soldiers appeared on the disc. Unmarred and clean — nothing like their human counterparts would look after a drop. Shoulders back and feet apart, hands to wrists. They reminded me of dancers more than fighters. They unlatched and peeled free of their helmets in graceful unison. Zaeth stood in the front. “Station three”… Orbit 3… He had likely killed people I knew, maybe even my friends. White light bounced from his eyes, his exhilaration obvious to even my own human eyes.

Vareech rose from the lowest bench and made a brief speech in whistles and wind… pebbles on a window, fragment of flute song, a gust of winter snow flurry. He produced a round pale green stone as large as my fist and so beautiful it hurt my chest to look at it. But maybe that was Zaeth who pained my heart. His graceful hands accepted the smooth green jewel and held it aloft for the room to see. Then Crack and Pu-hud bent a knee and Vareech gave them smaller green stones. The size of quail eggs, the size of the black jewel pinned at my collar.

When Faesosh rose to do his part in the show, the Hush on the benches below us moved aside to give him a path to the floor. Zaeth’s face tipped to me and he saw me for the first time since his return. The victorious white light faded behind silver as Faesosh spoke. As he congratulated Zaeth for killing his way to the command module of Orbit 3. After that final speech, the Hush dispersed and I went with them. All my previous wandering had at last given me a sense of direction. I knew my way around pretty well. Not as well as Zaeth, though. He’d beaten me there and knelt at the little dining table, the milky tea and delicate shell cups all placed just so, the way he would for a normal midday meal. I had to close my eyes at the sight of that pearly rounded teapot. He’d brought that same pot out the night before, poured me cup after cup of whatever concoction had loosened my tongue. I’d trusted him, and he’d used me.

“Thinking of drugging me again? I never really learned my way around the other stations, so it won’t do much good.” Orange and yellow striped the room as Mars shown through the skylight ceiling. We’d entered a better point position for killing humans. Lingering in the center of the room, I’d activated my pallet without meaning to. But I threw myself onto it anyway just to avoid coming to the table. Zaeth expected humans to bow down and accept the superior Hush judgment, he’d told me as much. And here I’d proved him right – I’d been stupid and short sighted, while all the time Zaeth had coldly used me, stripped me of useful information so that he could invade Orbit 3…kill my real friends.

“I drugged you so that you would not follow me. So that you could not follow.” The silver fill still blocked whatever emotion he didn’t want me to see. “This meal has been set for two and it would break protocol to eat alone.”

“I’m not hungry.” My uniform felt hot and tight until I slipped the black stone from its fastening at my neck. Turning it in my fingers reminded me of all the nights inside the dome, when I would pull it out and think of Zaeth. His long dark hair and dusky green skin, his eyes made of light. “Can you at least answer a question for me?”

Zaeth placed both hands under a fragile bowl filled with something purple and gelatinous. “Accept your role at the table and I will answer any question you like.” Zaeth trembled and the jellied substance quivered in its bowl.

My eyes burned and I dug my palms into them. “I trained on that station you attacked. My drop ship reports to that station.” I dropped my hands, watched Zaeth set the bowl back on the table.

“Why does this matter? You no longer live on a human drop ship. You live here.”

“That doesn’t make me some honorary Hush… no matter what you and Faesosh want to believe. I’m still human, Zaeth. My friends are human. They might have been on that station when you attacked.” At some point I’d gotten back on my feet…and started yelling. “Dammit!” My hands clutched in my mess of long hair and pulled. I turned away so I wouldn’t tower over him.

But I didn’t need to worry because Zaeth didn’t act the least bit cowed by the raging creature I’d become. He darted around me, light on his feet as ever, despite the dark clouds inching out the silver fill. “And your human friends? Would they hesitate to kill me? No they would not. Why should I feel shame or sorrow for their deaths?”

“Because they were no match for you!” I didn’t notice that I’d turned and advanced on him. At last, he backed away, wary and tensed. “We don’t have a single piece of tech that could stand against yours. Even if you can’t feel guilt, Zaeth, you have no right to be… proud. To accept some huge jewel as a trophy for killing people that had no chance against those mirrored suits.”

The fill in Zaeth’s eyes had gone black as space. “They swarmed me in that space station. I could not move, could not defend myself.”

“You were enemy attackers! Did you expect us to just let you take Orbit 3? You Hush are so arrogant! Expecting humans to just bow down and accept whatever judgement you make on our way of life…on all our actions and opinions…”

“I saved your life. I continue to save it when I stay silent as Faesosh talks of you joining us. When you mock purpose.”

“You should tell him— let Vareech push me out an airlock like he clearly wants to. Then I wouldn’t have to watch you play the hero for besting a civilization a millennia behind yours.” I waved a hand at the low table with all its dainty bowls and cups. “I’m surprised you didn’t have that green jewel on display!”

He returned to the table and slapped its surface. The jewel appeared in an alcove in the wall, it glowed from inside the same way Faesosh’s white jewels did.”There. Look at it, the proof of my conquest. Of my superiority over you, my captured human.”

My jaw clench tight enough that I felt the pain down my neck and into my spine.

“Did you know I was one of the drop soldiers who captured you? We mocked the way you tripped yourself, picking up the body parts of your inept comrades. Pathetic. Only with our Hush technology are you a competent soldier.”

Okay. I got it. Maybe our friendship, our closeness had only existed on my side. In my fist the black jewel’s sharp edges cut into my skin. I threw it down at Zaeth’s feet. “You’re right, I’m probably the worst soldier Allied Defense ever recruited.” Was this my first time saying it aloud? “I’ve spent my whole life walking away… trying to walk away… from fights because I was always taller and bigger, stronger, than anyone who threatened me. And that meant, I would win. But, that’s what no one ever got. I’m not a bully. I don’t want to get better at it.”

The dark pulsing ceased and Zaeth’s eyes emptied of fill and color. The blank eyes of a statue.

“The Bungee. That’s the name of my ship… I just want to know if it was docked on Orbit 3… if my friends…” My voice had gone so hoarse and shaky that I just stopped talking. I would not break down again. What point could I possibly make to inspire compassion in a Hush? Just the night before, I’d called him my closest friend, but I’d forgotten we came from different species, different galaxies. Nothing could bridge that chasm.

Despite the magic padding of my uniform, the bitter temperature of the beehive’s corridors made wandering around them too dangerous. Covering the distance between our room and the training dojo left me with frosted eyelashes and eyebrows, hands and cheeks burning with cold. Whenever I left those glacial passageways for the more temperate training dojo, I thought of how the Hush must have viewed Earth the first time they saw it. After living in a world made of ice and silver metal, I could imagine the miracle that Earth represented to them. Our sky blooming with color, the verdant scent of our air, the warmth of the planet’s core radiating into the soil and growth. I’d lived in a paradise my whole life and hadn’t seen it.

“Why do you come here, human?” In the dim light of the dojo Vareech’s eyes glowed like a cat’s. “I know quite a bit of your species and I recognize all the troubled emotions playing over your elastic face.” He moved toward me with the stealth of a feline too, like a bobcat I’d seen on a camping trip with Tonia and her family. I’d gone out to take a leak during the night, and two gleaming eyes had found me. Almost stopped my heart. This felt the same, like any sudden movement on my part could mean attack. Those billowing wizard robes must hold as many weapons as a mirrored suit.

“What is it you want?”

“Do you expect me to tell my wants to you, a captive human, an unfit squire and an abomination under my progeny’s leadership?” Vareech wheezed the words like an old man would, disgust plain in every one. “I dislike what you represent to Faesosh. He would pad our ranks with haphazard creations like yourself.”

“I don’t want to join up… I don’t want to be that.”

But Vareech didn’t care what I wanted or didn’t want. He just talked over me despite the taboo of interrupting. “I created Zaeth from the best of all genetic material in our clan and even ventured outside tradition so that he could be more than this position I have occupied for over a hundred of your Earth years.” Vareech crossed his arms, placed his hands inside the bell sleeves of his grey robe. Now he looked even more like a wizard. An angry wizard with eyes of bottomless pitch.”Your presence causes reprobation, shame. I will not allow you to upset my plans.”

Behind me, the wall split open in a perfect circle, and the dual bubbles of an airlock appeared. I lurched forward—or tried to— but the blue haze of a grav beam locked me in place. “I’m not… please…”

Through the murky distortion of the beam, I saw the doorway open again. The holo barrier disintegrated and Zaeth appeared in its place. He slapped his hand to the ground, against a marking I could never hope to see, and the beam released me. I fell to my knees and gasped for air, even though the beam hadn’t deprived me of oxygen or choked me at all. Oozing back in place, the liquid metal hid the airlock once again. But I gave it a good six feet of space, just out of caution.

Zaeth slid in front of me. He didn’t speak to his progenitor, his parent. Maybe his defiance in saving me spoke loud enough. “Come Landon.”

My feet took a minute to obey…but what were my choices? Stay with the guy who’d wanted to toss me out an airlock, or follow the one who’d probably killed everyone I’d known without a second thought. But he’d also saved me when I was of no further use to him… Slowly I turned and walked after Zaeth. He’d donned the mirrored suit, grasped his helmet in one hand. My stomach twisted, he had readied for another drop. Humans would die. Friends, strangers, it didn’t matter.

Back in the corridor, he took a twisting route that I didn’t know. “The Bungee was not docked at the station.”

The news knocked the air from my lungs, relief strong enough to uncork all the panic building since the ceremony. Yulia, Mekhi, Adil, Tory, Belle. All of them alive…as far as I knew. “Thank you for checking.” A laugh gurgled from out of my gut. Maybe I’d finally gone space crazy? I’d heard of that happening. Too long on a drop ship and sometimes a soldier lost it, opened an airlock thinking they could just run out into the expanse of space, breath freely. But as the elation faded, my anger returned. Despite the relief that my team was okay, Zaeth did still drug me and take advantage of the information I provided. “What do you want with Orbit 3?” I asked. “What happened to the other soldiers on the base?”

Zaeth ignored my questions, even though he stopped and turned toward me, his eyes absorbing the little bit of light coming through the ice. “I do not wish for you to suffer. That was the reason I hid the jewel.” His fingers tapped against a wall of ice that looked like every other part of the narrow tunnel, but it dissipated just as the holographic doors did. A long chute slide appeared. No wonder I never beat him to our room. When he jumped inside, I followed without a single hesitation. My arms tucked against my sides and my chin to my chest, I shot down through the chute.

My landing didn’t look anything like Zaeth’s— he maintained all his usual grace as he alit onto the frozen surface of another corridor. Helmet still held loose between two fingers. My entrance looked more like the arm waving, jelly-legged moves my little nephews made jumping into the cow pond. “Did you really laugh at me when you captured me on Mars?”

Zaeth cocked his head. “Yes?”

Ice shards and frost coated my uniform, and I had to stomp my feet to shake it off. “Really? I was that bad?”

“I had never seen a human that big. But I felt comforted that you were so inept.” Zaeth did a head shake that looked a lot like one that Mom did when she got exasperated with me. I must have picked it up from her and then he’d picked it up from me. Instead of creeping me out like Faesosh’s smiles, it made warmth spread from my core through my limbs.

“You know Vareech might be right about me being a bad influence. You’ve certainly gotten a lot more expressive since I’ve known you.”

“That was a weakness of mine long before you. It is difficult to maintain the veil… what you refer to as, ‘silver fill,’ when experiencing intense feelings. But, you are correct. Vareech dislikes my lapses.” He turned and showed me the light dancing from his eyes at our conversation. “My progenitor finds Faesosh’s blatant imitations far more worrisome.”

“Yeah. That smile is kinda gruesome.” The frozen corridor opened to a small rounded viewing room, with only the floor opaque white, and domed ceiling and curved walls translucent ice. Like stepping out onto a platform in space. “Wow…” The beehive had moved farther from Mars. Closer to Earth.

“You can see your planet from here.”

My blue and white planet frozen like a baseball hanging in the air. The little platform where I stood, first base. But I would never bat it away. I would catch it… keep it.

“I will help you … Landon, I will try.”

When I turned toward him, silver light shimmered on his smooth marble cheeks and dripped down his chin like water. Like tears. He snapped the helmet over his head, hid his face.

“You can cry?” My last words as the grav beam exploded open below my feet. The sensation of cold so intense that it seared my skin like fire, a capsule closed around me like a watery coffin and I floated weightless inside. The blue light kept me blinded, it rushed in my ears and stole the air from my lungs. I couldn’t move. The force of the drop hit me harder than even on my very first ride through space. And that smell. You don’t expect space to have a scent but it does, it smells just like a barbecue, a lot of soldiers panicked and landed flailing and certain they’d caught fire.

And I had a long, long time to work up a good thrashing panic. To work up a nice loud scream. To work up an impressive shot of vomit. When the beam dumped me, flat on my back against hard metal, I did all three.

“Stop.” Zaeth’s voice. “The effects of the capsule will not last. You are safe.”

I peered up to see him standing just inside a thick metal airlock. A door too clumsy and heavy to belong on one of the beehives. Stale air filled my lungs. It reeked of rancidity and artificial pine. I knew that scent, it permeated every Earth station and drop ship. Even the domes used that cleaning agent. Well, they used it before the Sorg invaded with their mossy soap drug.

“Zaeth?” I rubbed at the back of my head, my vision swimming. “I think I have a concussion.” When I pulled my hand down, it came away sticky with blood. Thick and dark. I sat in a puddle of the stuff, way more of it than the little bump on my head leaked. Not mine. “Zaeth!”

He was gone.

Corrugated aluminum floor. Silicon rubber seals. Regulation two-inch glass panes. I knew this place, had come here many times. Stood at attention beside Yulia as the on-duty commander battered us with a lecture. Spittle flying. Threats. But our only concern, getting back to our hidden liquor stash, our waiting celebration.

Somehow my quivering legs bore my weight, carried me to a control dock splattered with congealed blood. The dials and levers doubled, merged, and drifted. I definitely had a concussion.

The comm…

Found it.

“Come in, Allied Defense. Come in.” The connection jumped to life, like someone waited at the other end, watching and hoping for a transmission.

“Orbit 3. Copy. What is the status there? Go ahead.”

“I don’t know. I think it’s just me. This is Landon Evans… prisoner of war. I just… they let me…”

“Say again, Orbit 3.”

“This is Ground Soldier Landon Evans. And… I’m…I’m back.”

Suspect

“What are they saying, Evans?”

A foghorn blared, noise ripping through my eardrums to stab at my brain like a fizz attack. Grunts and howls, metal grinding and whining, hyena laughter and the foghorn again. “I don’t know.” The sound burrowed into my head, a red hot drill into my rattled skull.

“You’re lying. Tell me what they’re saying.”

My eyes watered under a blinding spotlight. My fingers and feet had gone numb from the tight binds holding me in place. “Please… Playing it louder doesn’t make any difference. I. Still. Don’t. Know.”

I would welcome that electric, cramping agony of the fizz weapon over Commander Brenchley’s favorite torture. At least the fizz would spread the torment out so my head didn’t get it all. The bastard knew I had a concussion. I had heard the doc tell him, “No loud noise. No bright light.”

Brenchley used both trying to get me to “break.”

The doc didn’t have much sway at Orbit 3. He’d gotten the job at the same time I’d entered sick bay. A medic recruit promoted to chief physician in the wake of the Hush attack. He’d argued on my behalf since my first hazy night I spent strapped to one of his sick beds. Not that it did him much good.

Brenchley brushed him off. “I’ll not take orders from some elevated new recruit. This is my station and my prisoner.” Flying spittle rained down on me as they faced-off. “You’ll do well to remember it, soldier.”

The med recruit didn’t back down or flinch. “I’m putting this all in my official logs.”

“You do that.”

I knew Brenchley had left when the doc threw his scanner against a wall. “Fucking sociopath!”

And each time Brenchley returned me to the med bay, Doc repeat his threat about the official logs. Then he shot me with painkillers and sleep aids while grumbling to himself about his powerlessness. After spending over a year as a prisoner, I could understand his frustration. But I couldn’t even tell him that much. The debriefing sessions left me too weak for much talk. Just focusing my eyes too all my effort. Sometimes I couldn’t even swallow the broth the young medic spooned into my mouth.

As the days progressed, he became more and more nervous about patching me up.”This is messed up. This is so messed up.” He reminded me a little of a kid I’d known back in Colby, red puffy afro and a chipped front tooth. But that kid laughed like a Sorg and had a great time snapping rubber bands at the back of my head during class. And this young Orbit 3 doc was kind and gentle.

“It’s not your fault,” I rasped back at him.

“No, but it’s my problem now, isn’t it?” Doc dimmed the overheads and made me sleep between questionings. But a lot of activity still happened in the med bay of Orbit 3, and everyone who came in wanted to take a quick peek at me — the human prisoner returned by the Hush. It made for restless sleep. My dreams felt like a grav beam pulling my consciousness away to someplace cold and dim. They tugged at every part of me…body, mind, heart…all in free fall toward a point far beyond the med bay, beyond even Orbit 3. Then the curtain around my bed would rustle and I’d fly back into the warmth, the stiff med bay mattress, the artificial pine disinfectant hanging in the air.

The foghorn changed to a machine gun and then an engine revving. It didn’t all sound like Sorg. Not that I could remember. Another test? Pick out the words from random low noise?

Hyena yapping. “That’s laughter… I think.”

“You think? I have it on good authority that you speak their language. That they accepted you as one of them.” Brenchley liked standing just outside the spotlight of UV heat he kept me restrained inside. My wrists and ankles cuffed to a metal chair. Some old-timey interrogation setup that might have freaked me out if I didn’t have a concussion splitting my skull.

“Good authority? Ha!” My laughter disolved into coughing. So Cricket and Inya had survived the dome. “Does the Governing Council know about me? Why haven’t they sent anyone to ask me about the Hush?”

“Maybe they don’t trust the stories of a traitor.”

Or no one else knew. But Brenchley couldn’t keep a secret like me from a busy station like Orbit 3. At least not for long, with drop ships and recruits coming and going. Wait…Doc said they didn’t house recruits anymore. The failure of the Mars mission had changed the Allied Defense I remembered. “I’m not a traitor,” I said after too long a pause. My brain felt scrambled from the UV light. “I’m telling you what I know!”

“You’re holding back.”

“I’m not.” And I hadn’t. I’d answered what I knew. That we couldn’t scan their drop ships because they don’t use drop ships. That the massive beehives could move a full astronomical unit, 149.6 million kilometers, in under an hour. That the Hush planned to enslave some of us as soldiers and kill every other human on the planet. I explained their command structure — Faesosh, their clan leader — a chieftain who ruled his people, territory on Hush, and would rule Earth, but who maintained fealty to a higher royal clan. Vareech, who acted as military commander. But our ambassadors had already met them both. Spoken to them. Brenchley wanted more… He’d had command of Orbit 3 when Zaeth’s squad first breached an unguarded port in med bay— the best entry point to avoid detection— something Zaeth learned from my drugged ramble about parties and music. This, I didn’t say. If I had, I’m certain Brenchley would have killed me. He wanted to, hungered for it, yearned for it. “Thirty loyal soldiers died when the Hush attacked.” Brenchley’s eyes looked wild with rage. “Someone has to take the blame.”

“I don’t know anything about the attack. I was a prisoner. They wouldn’t tell a prisoner their secret mission plans.” But Commander Brenchley remembered me, knew that Allied Defense had assigned my drop ship, the Bungee to Orbit 3. “You knew this station, and this is the one they picked.” For Brenchley, that alone proved collusion. Treason. “Why you, Evans? And why keep you alive?”

“I have no idea why they took me… Curiosity? I’ve told you everything I know.”

Almost everything. When Brenchley asked about the three Hush who attacked the station, I didn’t say anything about knowing their names. The name of the attack leader. I’d explained how on Mars the Hush had pulled me to their ship, had me serve tea and shallow bowls of their strange food, made me pick up after them, and showed me how to mend the mirrored suits. But, I never said Zaeth’s name. Instead, I tried to explain the conflict between the Sorg and Hush, the retaliation the Hush had taken against the black capsules. Brenchley didn’t care, and that worried me…because Allied Defense should want to know about the breakdown in alliance between our enemies.

“He’s not looking for information,” the medic told me. “The Hush attack on Orbit 3 messed up Brenchley’s head, man. He wants revenge. You try to keep your head down, ya know what I’m saying?” The doc patted my arm and set down a tray of rations he’d heated up for me.

“Landon.” I drank down a packet of chicken soup that scalded my throat and tasted like salt and metal. But that might have been the blood in my mouth. I’d bitten my tongue during the last interrogation session.

“Huh?” Doc turned away from a cloudy holo of someone’s digestive system.

“Call me Landon.”

He cracked a smile that didn’t do much to change the worry written all over his face. “No problem, and I guess you can call me Finn. I’m not really a doc yet.” Finn scratched at the back of his neck, “But looks like I’m all you got for now. Brenchley ordered all drop ships and rockets diverted since the Hush stormed the place.”

“What does that mean?”

“Means you are fucked, Landon Evans.” The words sounded glib but Finn’s face crumpled like he wanted to cry. “You are very fucked right now. And I’m not sure what to do about it.” Two guards ended our conversation by barging into the curtained-off nook Finn had put up for me. Sleep deprivation had become Brenchley’s newest tactic in getting a confession from me. I don’t think he planned to settle for anything less than pinning the entire station attack on me, maybe the entire war.

He had me brought again to the dark interrogation room, strapped me back into the metal chair. I waited for the hot light, the blaring Sorg recording. But he had something different in mind. Instead of the blistering UV spotlight, he slapped a square glass chip into a holo projector just over my shoulder. The attack on Orbit 3 began to play. Holo-soldiers ran past me for the entrance to the med bay module. At the far end of the hallway three Hush pushed past them with a laser shield. I knew what it felt like to operate one of those blue shield. I remembered the snap of that defense tech emanating from the back of my wrist. Positioning guided by the mirrored suit as I deflected fire.

The holo-soldiers fell back and left the three Hush alone in the module passageway. Crack beside Pu-hud, hands on wrists. In front of them, Zaeth pointed in the direction of the long wide tube running toward the spiderweb’s center. Toward Orbit 3’s operations module.

I’d told him that. My heart clenched.

“Their squad leader spoke English. He yelled for the humans to stay clear.” Brenchley leaned over me, put hands as wide as mine on the arms of my chair. “He told my soldiers that they wouldn’t be harmed if they just stood aside.” Brenchley’s snarling face pressed just inches from my own. “You expect me to believe you didn’t teach him those words?”

“I didn’t need to teach them. Some of them could speak Earth languages.” Around us the holo humans swarmed the advancing mirrored suits. The humans jumped on top of them. Kicked and punched. My heart beat like crazy as a reflective hand reached out, scrabbled to get free of the mass of humans. So delicate and vulnerable in appearance when compared to the bulk of the human bodies. He survived. He described this to me.

Holo-Zaeth squirmed out from the pile and ignited something from his waist. All the human soldiers seized, legs stiffened, arms flailed. They grabbed for their ears and convulsed on the floor, trying to shake free of the crackling noise that shorted out everything. The fizz. I remembered the pain and the blackout after. But the fizz didn’t kill.

The holo-Hush resumed their almost-diamond formation. No more humans rushed them, none of them could. Instead, the denizens of Orbit 3 cowered in the hallways, drooling and insensible. When the holo switched to the operations room, a few of the humans had donned pressure helmets. I understood the impulse. The fizz started as a noise, but no pressure helmet could protect from that penetrating sizzle. A holo version of Commander Brenchley writhed near the main controls. The Brenchley interrogating me had lost a lot of weight in the weeks since that attack. Still a big man, now his shoulders drooped, his cheeks had hollowed, his uniform bagged on his thinner frame. Holo-Brenchley was the commander I remembered from my time stationed under him. Beside him another commander, an older woman, had ripped her own helmet off. She had more control under the fizz than I’d ever seen. From beneath the control desk, the woman pulled a black serrated fighting knife, held it in front of her.

As Zaeth entered Operations, the woman launched herself, jabbing the weapon at his chest. I hadn’t seen even a mark on that suit when Zaeth returned from the raid, but my breath still caught as the jagged edge cut a slice in the metal fabric. Zaeth spun to the outside of the female commander’s reach, past the blade. His mirrored glove clamped down on her arm and my own hand clenched as sense memory brought back the power of the suit. The steel vise of my grip when I’d worn it. The knife clattered to the floor. Then Zaeth swung the woman away from him. Sliding across the room, the crumpled heap of her body dragged the black knife along with it. Both came to land at holo-Brenchley’s side. His eyes bugged at her mangled arm, Zaeth had crushed the bones to nothing. Her hand and wrist folded back like it would on an empty sleeve. Then holo-Benchley saw the knife just a few feet away. He must have seen a chance.

Behind Zaeth’s back, holo-Brenchley crawled over the woman toward the weapon, his shaking fingers closed over the hilt, and he stood on trembling legs.

But the mirrored suit gave its wearer preternatural awareness. Zaeth tapped his wrist and the fizz surged again through holo-Benchley, caught him, enveloped him, and his body seized in the burning acid pain. Brenchley tried to stay upright, his body jerking and fighting for control.

But the mirrored suit could crank up the torment without any prompting. Zaeth had already turned back to his search of the module, as his weaponry struck out with a jolt of fizz so strong it would have flashed like lightning if we could see it. Brenchley convulsed, his bowels emptied, his nose gushed red blood. His hand spasmed into a death grip on the black fighting knife, just as his legs crumpled, and the long sharp knife tip came down on the female commander’s neck. Blood spurted like a fountain.

Brenchley had killed her. No wonder he’d gone nuts since then.

Holo-Zaeth stood at a console, pressing buttons at random, the way I had done while looking for a comm. But Zaeth bypassed that control and stopped at a touch keyboard, spread his mirrored glove to hover just above it. The view screen above the keyboard showed him suctioning up the data from inside. Information he couldn’t get from drugging me. Pu-hud and Crack entered the operations module just as Zaeth found an unused airlock from Orbit 3’s early days. Before the Hush came to Earth. Before Allied Defense, when we had just called it the space station. He cranked the heavy door, and blue light slid into the operations module, scooped the three waiting Hush. Feet apart, hands to wrists. On the other end of that beam, I’d watched them arrive in a beehive made of ice. I’d seen Zaeth accept a dazzling green gem as reward.

Shivering and bound to a metal chair, I blinked away the memory. Holo-Brenchley had climbed to his feet, his fellow commander’s blood smeared across his blue uniform, he staggered toward the control panel Zaeth had just left. Brought up the security screens showing med bay and the connecting tubes, the soldiers inside still unconscious or dazed from the fizz. Holo-Brenchley twisted a knob, then another. I watched the view screens with holo-Brenchley as he opened the airlock hatches. What? What? “You vented the station!” His soldiers slid over the floor as if emptied from a bottle. A tangle of bodies that sticks for just a second, then disappears into the black of space. “The Hush didn’t kill those soldiers. You killed them.”

Brenchely’s face had gone red and his eyes narrowed. “They’d been infected.”

“What? Infected with what? The fizz is a weapon, not a disease.” Hadn’t Cricket and Inya explained about the fizz? They must have. Then again, Allied Defense had rescued the two of them. Unlike me, who the Hush had personally delivered. Still, by now Brenchley had to understand that the Hush had incapacitated his soldiers, not poisoned them with toxins. “If you don’t believe me, then ask the higher-ups. The prisoners kept with me would have explained the fizz. Governing Council would know…they have to know.”

“You saw what it made me do— It was mind control!”

“You spasmed. It was an accident.”

Brenchley hauled a beefy fist back. I closed my eyes and the punch hit me square in the face. Crunched my nose. Rattled my already throbbing skull. Blood washed down my shirt, clogged in my throat.

“I don’t cause accidents.”

* * *

Doc clucked like a chicken when he fixed me up. “Brenchley’s gone space crazed…” He swiped at his forehead and left a streak of my blood on his skin. “Can’t you just tell him something that makes Allied Defense seem like we got an actual shot against the Hush? Even if it ain’t true, just make up something so he lets you go.”

I didn’t think Brenchley had gone space crazed. Just deranged with anger and guilt. “He’s not doing this for Allied Defense. It’s about what he did after the Hush attacked.” My face hurt too much to say more. And I worried that telling Finn what I’d learned would put him in danger. Why had Brenchley shown me that entire holo— that he’d vented the station and killed those soldiers? Only one reason made sense, he didn’t plan on my surviving this interrogation.

“You still alive?” Finn squinted at me, he looked very young and afraid, and every bit the new recruit. “Stay with me here, Landon.” A mug in his hand steamed with some thick soup. When he put the metal straw between my lips, I sucked in the liquid even though it burned my mouth and throat. Potato and sage. I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry, sage would always remind me of the dome and the Martian agro bubbles. Of Romi and the way I froze as the one-eared Sorg slashed his throat. I’d thought the guilt would drive me insane, and sometimes it still ate at me. Brenchley’s guilt must surpass my feelings by about a million miles. He wouldn’t rest until he could shift it all onto me, then take his revenge. He’d kill me to try and destroy his own feelings of guilt.

“Doc… Finn… I need your help. I’ve got to get off Orbit 3, away from Brenchley or I’m dead. I need you to try and reach the Bungee.”

“Bungee,” he repeated. “That your drop ship? Would they come for you? They’d be breaking orders.”

“They’ll come.” I sounded a lot more certain than I felt. I hadn’t seen my former squad in just over a year and I had no idea if they even remembered me. Or if they still were a squad. Mekhi might have a whole new crew and my friends had scattered.

Finn reared back with a nod, patted me on the chest. “Try and get some sleep.” And he whipped the curtain around my bed and dimmed the med bay lights.

That same cold sucking feeling hovered on the edge of my consciousness as I started drifting off. The weird dreams always began with the awareness of dreaming. I still lay on the uncomfortable med bay mattress, I knew this. But that cold tunnel beckoned. And this time, I couldn’t resist it. The sucking feeling engulfed me and carried me to its source. Cold that raised goosebumps on my skin and sank into my bones. Then, a lithe figure dressed in gray stood before me. Long hair, the green of a forest at night. He held out his hand for me to take, the way Zaeth never would have done. Cold fingers interlaced with my own warmer, larger, coarser fingers. And his hand warmed to match my own. The silver eyes met mine and glowing light filled the narrow space between us. Zaeth’s other hand reached up and touched my newly mended nose. Finn might have gotten the bones and cartilage all fused just fine, but he couldn’t erase all the bruising, couldn’t take away every bit of the swelling.

A dark flash cut through the gentle light. “They hurt you?” His voice as clear and real as if he stood right beside me in Orbit 3’s med bay.

“Zaeth?” I gasped awake to find the doc standing over me with an IV bag. His mushroom of red hair matted on one side and his face pale underneath it.

“You’re in a bad way, Evans. Thought you might not make it there for a second.” Finn’s hands shook as he hooked up the bag. Then, he pressed a scanner to my forehead and cheeks. “Same old concussion, which looks to be healing alright. Having nightmares? I guess that’s understandable after what you went through. I could give you something—”

“No.” My dreams felt real enough without going under even further. “I’m good. Any more of that soup?”

“Not the potato. Not till tomorrow.” Finn reread the scanner results. “But I have some bullion, if you want it?”

“Thanks.” The hot bullion felt good on my throat. But I didn’t want to sleep again. Finn didn’t seem in any hurry to go back to sleep himself, and pulled out an old fashioned deck of playing cards. We played Kings in the Corner until a soldier showed up, said Brenchley wanted me back for interrogation. Then, Finn leaned closer, his eyes flickering to the cameras in the corner of the room. He scratched at his nose to hide his mouth when he spoke. “You hang in there, Landon Evans. Just a little longer.”

* * *

Brenchley had me strapped back to the metal chair in a spotlight hotter and brighter than before. At least it felt like that to my concussed head and bruised face. I think he tried to psyche me out by staying completely silent for a long stretch of time. Maybe it would have worked a couple weeks ago, but I’d gotten used to the routine of that chair and that light. I hung my head and thought about Dr. Finn’s encouragement to “hang in there,” that it implied help might come for me. And from there I drifted into remembering the dream I’d had. Zaeth’s hand in mine, on my face. We’d never touched, but it still felt so real.

When the holos started up again, I realized why. Of course, I dreamed about him. There he was, large as life. Zaeth landing beside me in the airlock hatch of Orbit 3’s operations module. Me, falling flat on my back and smacking my head against the metal floor. He’d never stepped inside, just waited in the blue light of the grav beam. I’d landed in a smear of tacky blood left from the female commander’s death. Ice melted off my clothes. Watery vomit dripped from my hair. I mouthed a word, a name… Zaeth. The holo zoomed to my frenzied scramble away from the blood. Staggering, eyes crossing and squinting, I called Zaeth’s name again.

Brenchley’s gruff voice from the shadows. “What are you saying?”

“I don’t know. I had a concussion. It was just shouting… it didn’t mean anything.”

“You expect me to believe they just returned you? That this Faesosh let you go?”

Faesosh hadn’t let me go, had no intention of letting me go. If Vareech had succeeded in killing me, Faesosh wouldn’t have liked it. Zaeth had let me go. I’d avoided thinking about it, locked in this stalemate with Brenchley, but Zaeth must have faced consequences for returning me to Allied Defense. A knot formed in my stomach. They wouldn’t kill him, would they? Vareech needed Zaeth as his replacement. He looked pretty old to just whip up a new successor from scratch. And he’d even gotten special permission from the royal clan.

“Nothing to say for yourself, Evans? You saw the chance to save yourself by turning against the soldiers you served with. You committed treason against the human race.”

“No.” Think. Think. Oh! Of course. “They let me go because I’m not a soldier. Not really. I’m a farmer. I was before this war and…they respect that. I care for plants and they see that as… sacred…worth saving.”

When he stepped into the spotlight, Brenchley’s face had tightened, red and furious. From the sleeve of his sagging uniform, he pulled a black fighting knife like the one from yesterday’s holo. Serrated, but ending in a lethal spear tip. Actually, the same knife. I could see the dried blood on the hilt. Just punching me— breaking my nose again— wouldn’t satisfy his rage this time.

My arms and legs couldn’t move under the straps, but I twisted my neck to get away from that black knife and Brenchley’s angry red face. “I don’t know what else you want me to say… It isn’t my fault that other commander died. I wasn’t even here when those thirty soldiers died!”

“You’re lying. They wouldn’t have let you go, certainly wouldn’t have escorted you back to an airlock.” The knife point tapped my shoulder, pierced the blue Allied Defense t-shirt and cut into my skin. My flinch just made the tip go deeper. I could feel my blood well up in the shallow wound. “Admit it, lad… you worked with them. You led them right to this station.” He dragged the knife down my arm, cutting deeper into my flesh. I’d used reattachment tools enough to know which veins needed attention, which to steer clear of. As he watched my face, Brenchley’s leering grin showed he knew as well.

The pain made me gasp, a wincing agony that radiated up from the bone-glancing scrape on my humerus toward my jaw. Like a dentist’s touch to the nerve. A scream. At first I didn’t recognize my own voice, then the panting horror of seeing my skin split and the muscle exposed, blood filling the open gash. Nothing like the neatly cauterized slice of a laser. “I told you everything I know!”

“Not that word you said, you didn’t. It was a name, one of theirs. The name of your master?” The knife etched against the bone. “Open your eyes, Evans!”

But I couldn’t, sweat dripped from my hair down to my lashes. Pain swamped my brain, I no longer had control of any of my responses, not what my eyelids did at least.

“Who’s name did you call? Another leader? Who sent you back?”

Zaeth. Zaeth. His name had lived at the front of my mind for months. What good did it do to keep his existence a secret? Laughter ripped from me with the same detachment of that first scream. If I’d learned anything aboard the beehive, I’d learned that the Hush could destroy us any time they wanted. They just hadn’t yet. Why protect someone who didn’t even need my protection?

Brenchley backed off when I started laughing. Like my weird reaction finally proved to him that the Hush actually turned me the way he suspected. But the pain hadn’t broken me, hadn’t made me lose it. I might die in this chair, but I still couldn’t give up Zaeth. Not if it put the blame on him for the deaths Brenchley had caused. Not if it focused Allied Defense on hating him, hunting him. The knife plunged and stuck in my elbow. A jolt I felt through my entire body. Electric current. Fire. I couldn’t catch my breath, and the knife twisted deeper. I would have said, would have done anything to make it stop. Anything but the one thing Brenchley wanted. My burning eyes squinted up at him. Claustrophobia might not have caused his version of space crazy, but rage had twisted him the same direction.

On the holo, I had figured out how to work the comm. Holo-Landon would soon be rescued…imprisoned…tortured. “Why can’t you leave me alone? I didn’t kill anyone!” Tears choked the rest of my words. “I just want to go home.” Did I though? A part of me did, but a part of me missed the blue light of Uranus, dusky green skin like marble, eyes that could shatter mirrored light in the room. “I just want to go home…” Tears and snot ran down my face, strangled me, made me stupid and numb.

Then the chaos inside me became chaos around me. Someone tackled Brenchley to the ground. Nimble fingers worked loose the straps pinning my wrists. A gentle hand stepped into the circle of light and cupped my elbow with the knife. “He will need the bone fuse, Doctor Finn.”

I knew that voice, that soft accent. “Adil?”

“Need a key to unlock his ankles! Now, now, now!” I definitely knew that voice too, had followed it on instinct when I’d gone into battle as a drop soldier. Belle.

“Give me a hand here, Tory.” Everything swam into focus again. And I saw who had knocked that huge SOB Commander Brenchley off his feet and held him down. Dark almond eyes. Blonde buzzcut and white teeth showing in a cocky grin I could recognize anywhere. “Yulia!”

“Nice seeing you too, country mouse. Get you unhooked in one second.” She had Brenchley’s thick neck in a headlock and her powerful legs twisted round his body. “Tory!”

“Can’t you…” Tory’s frustrated growl brought back all the nights he’d tried to explain gravity physics or how an adjustment to the Bungee’s exterior shields could make it faster or more agile. “Mekhi’s in my ear, telling me not to move from lookout.”

“Zhopa, I am right here and I say pat this suka down for keys!” But as she said it, Yulia loosened one arm and dug in Brenchley’s right pants pocket. She’d underestimated him. Brenchley twisted against the floor, moved his hands from fighting her off to pushing up. Knocked Yulia off balance. Now his legs pinned hers.

But Yulia still compressed his neck in her arms. I recognized the move. She wouldn’t let go until he passed out.

The commander got his beefy hands on her face, thumbs stretching for her eyes. “Oh no, no, no!” Belle screeched. She kicked at Brenchley’s back as he fought against Yulia's choke hold. The fat thumbs dug under Yulia's eyes, pressing into the sockets.

No.

My body twisted and I clutched the handle of the black knife. Jerked it free. God! Black spots dotted my vision. But I had the knife in my grasp, dripping blood and gore from my arm. Elbows up! Face forward! Pain muddled my senses, and I saw the Sorg Chieftain in front of me, his shark’s grin and red eyes. The clawed hands positioning my body. I lunged up to standing, took a dragging step with my ankles still locked to the legs of the chair. The Chieftain let loose a howl. Hergah!

Slash, slash… no, that move only worked in a show fight. When it mattered, they’d stabbed. I sank my knife into Brenchley’s back. His blood leaked from the slash like a torn water line. I’d have to go to Hotson’s. Get a replacement. Listen to a bunch of shit from Tonia and Buck about how Mom and I had no business running our own farm.

“Holy crap!” Tory’s voice from the darkness. “Right in the pulmonary…and three…two…one… Mekhi? We got a problem…”

Yulia pushed Brenchley off her. She had the keys to the ankle restraints in her fist and her battle face on. “He is dead?” She held two fingers to his neck. “Not yet. Dr. Finn, you better fix something here.”

Finn appeared from nowhere with a med kit and bent over the commander.

“Did I kill him?” My voice shook worse than my body.

Adil pulled off his blue Allied Defense t-shirt. “It was self-defense,” he said. He knotted the shirt around my elbow. It smelled like him, like those cardamon scented candies he liked.

“You good?” Yulia's fingers slipped on the keys as she jammed each one into a lock. “Wrong one. Wrong one. Blyat’!” The ankle restraints popped open. “Hey handsome, you good?”

My first step wobbled and Yulia grabbed me by the waist, threw my good arm around her shoulders, but I pushed her off. “I need—”

“You need this arm fixed,” Adil insisted.

Somehow I got around the metal chair, made it a few steps toward the back wall before my knees buckled. “The holo projector, Yulia. Find the holo projector!” The room started tunneling. No. I had one last thing to do. “The holo chip.”

Adil knelt beside me and place a hand on my back. “Landon, my friend, it can wait—”

“No! I need that chip.” But getting to my feet again didn’t seem possible. The rough metal floor had slanted like the steepest hill under my hands and knees.

“Landon.” Adil threw his arms around my waist and tried to haul me back up.

Even with months apart, Yulia knew me best. She started pushing buttons on the dark console behind the chair, ran her hands over the knobs.

Suddenly Finn appeared on my other side with a reattachment kit and a blood pack. “Lay him flat, right?”

“What about Brenchley?” My fingers clutched at Finn’s sleeve. “Is he dead? Did I kill him?”

“He’s not dead. Just…resting.” The bone fuse wand dug into my elbow. Damn! That hurt like hell. How did Yulia and the others go through this after every drop? “Come on, Evans,” Finn sounded like a real doctor, less like the scared med bay recruit. “Hold him down, I need him to lay flat!”

Yulia smacked a fist against the projector panel and the chip popped free, arced into the air, and landed a foot to my right.

Good. Good. I just needed… My hand came down on the chip and ground it into the corrugated metal, dragged it toward me as I crumbled the little chip down to metal shavings, crushed fibers. There. Done.

I looked up at Yulia, her dark serious eyes. I could see I’d freaked her out some too, her smile forced. “I got your back, Mysha.”

For the first time, I felt like I’d come home, and not just shoved down a grav beam and dumped. And once Finn got me patched up enough to walk to the med bay, I remembered why I’d wanted—part of me wanted— to get back here. Home. Yulia lounged beside me on the stiff hospital mattress. Adil and Tory on the one opposite us. Tory skimmed Allied Defense treaties and regulations on a hand-held. Belle found a squeaky roller stool so she could annoy all of us by making a circling route around the beds. “So what we gonna do, do, do?” She singsonged “Now that Landon almost killed the station commander?”

“Blyat’ Suka! Belle—”

“That’s enough chatter. We need a plan.” Even over a tiny comm, Mekhi’s gruff voice had the power to silence all of us. “I say we hightail it to Orbit 1 and explain that Brenchley was torturing you, Landon.”

Tory scooted up from his sprawl. He’d plucked off his wire rim reading glasses and stuffed them in a pocket. “That interrogation definitely was off the books, but it doesn’t mean that Governing Council didn’t know about it. Just maybe not all of them. I mean, we do know at least one member of the council wouldn’t let a member of Bungee squad get treated like that.” He turned a knowing smirk toward Yulia, who for the first time since I’d met her three years ago actually blushed. She dipped her head to hide it.

Mekhi made a grumbling noise that both reminded me of a Sorg grunt, but also sounded so familiar that I could picture the furrowed-brow expression that came with it. “Yulia, are you still in contact with Councilor Aubert? Could we count on his help with this situation?”

“Wait! I can’t get you guys in trouble because of me.” My head still swam from the patch up job Finn had done, and no way had my blood count risen back to normal, but I had enough marbles left to know my friends needed to jet out of here. And that I needed to face the consequences of this alone. “You guys rescued me and I appreciate it, but you need to leave me here and take off.”

Yulia reached over and slapped the side of my face. “Aw yangoliatko. You are handsome and noble little country mouse stupid.”

I didn’t need to understand those words to know she made fun of me. “I’m serious.” I gave Yulia the sternest look I could muster, but it probably just made me more pathetic. Never could pull off that formidable look that Mekhi had mastered.

Belle rammed the rolling stool into my legs. “We just got you back! Don’t ruin everything. This was an A-plus rescue plan we did.”

Yulia grasped my chin. “You make me agree with Belle now. Don’t piss me off like this. We leave this station with you on Bungee. End of discussing.”

Aw, damn. Those painkillers had me tearing up. I never could pull off stoic either. “Are you all sure about this?”

“Yes!” I got a bunch of looks that varied between Adil’s tender smile all the way to Yulia's irritated eye roll.

Mekhi’s no-nonsense voice broke over the moment. “Landon, we already made the decision before I dropped those fools down. Now, like I said, we need a plan!”

Just then, Finn slid into the room on his sock feet. “Ha caught you all! I just bought you enough time to get away.” He held up a report tablet. “I put that psycho Brenchley into a medically induced coma. You got a week before his lung heals and I have to wake him up.”

“Finn, you shouldn’t have—”

“Relax, Evans, I’m the only one who can out-rank him when he’s incapacitated or unfit. He’s lucky I didn’t push him out a hatch and record him as space crazed.”

Belle’s mouth dropped open. “Wow. Doctor Finn, you cold blooded boy. Cold, cold, cold.”

Finn’s face turned as red as his hair. “Well, I’d still hightail it to Orbit 1 to plead your case. Brenchley might be a sadistic prick, but if Command Council hears your story from him, they might just treat you worse.”

Mekhi now ordered us all back to the Bungee. Which meant I had to pull a pressure suit up my injured arm, cram a helmet over my still aching head. A bulky white Allied Defense suit that didn’t give a damn who wore it, would never slither across the floor like something live, and seeking. But my friends had saved it, and brought it for me — which mattered more than its lack of magical tech.

We rode the energy tornado up to the Bungee in pairs and I wanted to puke just like the first time I’d taken a gravity beam. I flopped to my back in the round launch room, unsealed my helmet and let Yulia pry it off my head. Tory, Adil, and Belle all hightailed if for the steam showers, while I took in the familiar surroundings, tried not to cry again when Mekhi appeared and shook my hand. Then pulled me into a hug. “Good to have you back, Landon.”

“Thanks for coming to get me,” I answered. Relief washed over me, but grief also lanced through my chest. “I missed you guys.”

Friend

Orbit 1 floated over the opposite side of the Earth, so we took a route stealthy enough to elude other ships. Brenchley’s sedation only lasted a week, and with our meandering route, it would take two days before we docked at Orbit 1. And then came the hard part, convincing Governing Council to see us and hear me out. Anything could happen. Someone back on Orbit 3 might report a prisoner missing and demand to see the commander. Not a problem, according to Finn.”No news is good news when it comes to Brenchley. The man hasn’t got a friend onboard. Should be fine!” Finn’s words sounded comforting in the moment, but we were all in deep shit if our plan fell through.

Meanwhile I tried to recover both physically and mentally, and I might have hid it okay but I was kinda a wreck. When the Allied Defense military machine put ships like the Bungee together they didn’t have deep space travel in mind. Maybe I noticed every shudder and clank more than I had before traveling across the galaxy in a smooth, futuristic, Hush ship. But the Bungee was no state-of-the-art space craft, and all those shudders, rattle, and clanking thuds had my pulse going double-time. My nerves were fried.

As our plan now stood, we would claim that Brenchley refused to pass information to Governing Council, that he wanted to paint me as a traitor more than he actually wanted to help Earth survive this war. And he would have blamed those thirty deaths on the Hush squad leader. He would have revealed Zaeth’s name. I couldn’t let that happen.

Mekhi crossed his arms over his bulky chest. He’d cornered me in a cramped observation alcove to finalize our plan upon reaching Orbit 1. “First of all, we’re going to tell the council that you got loose and fought Brenchley all on your own. Stabbing him in the lung was self defense after he started carving up your arm.”

“Yeah. Of course.”

“Next…we need something valuable to give them, more than what you told Brenchley or you’ll just validate his…methods.” My squad leader’s face twisted in a sour look. “Something that will convince the council you’re still on our side.”

“But Brenchley vented the station. He killed all those soldiers. What if I just told—”

“And reveal the council’s blunder for keeping it classified in the first place? We need something new… information that will make a difference in the war.” I appreciated that he said “we” and not “you.” I’d forgotten how it felt to be part of a team. To not have to stand on my own. And I thought back to Finn’s advice to come up with a piece of hopeful information, a way we stood a chance against the Hush.

“I’ll think of something.”

“See that you do.”

Actually, I did have a theory that had rested in the back of my mind since my first days on the Hush ice ship. But I’ve never been a quick thinker, I needed to ponder it… alone and quietly.

I had my old bunk again, although no one let me crawl in and go to sleep after my first night back. After my rescue we all crashed hard, but the next evening we gathered in the galley so they could hear the full story. I told my squad the same account I’d given Brenchley: that when Yulia called me farm boy, the Hush captured me to save the plants left behind in the bio bubbles, that the Sorg chieftain singled me out because of my size to do his show fighting, that the Hush took me to their ship to determine if humans could be trained as soldiers, made into warrior-slaves for Faesosh’s clan. The story stayed the same, but the telling of it changed. Brenchley asked about weapons and tech. He poked at conversations with Faesosh, hoping I might incriminate myself. My friends wanted to hear about me eating chunks of moss, getting high from the soap drug, holding my freshly scrubbed toes apart for a guard to inspect. They howled in laughter while I imitated the Sorg fighting stance.

Only Tory questioned my story. He’d faithfully worn Ding’s cat ear headband before I got captured, but I guess he’d given that up at some point since. “And they let you go—the Hush? Why not keep you there or toss you out an airlock?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “It was the farming thing, right?” Tory always had the biggest brain of all of us, and his theory made sense.

“Yeah.” I picked at the ration pack. Burger, fries, and chocolate shake, this used to be my favorite. In the med bay, Finn had only trusted me with soup and Jello. Looking up, I found Yulia watching, studying, me. I could feel her picking apart the holes in my story. Maybe seeing that the holes had the shape of a person. I’d never hidden something from her before. But that also reminded me of her own dark blush, her own person shaped secret. “What’s the deal with this council member…Aubert? How come you—”

Adil shook his head at me. Like I’d brought up a sore subject. “We can let Yulia discuss him with you in private.”

Really? All of them grinned like they’d gotten something good on her and Yulia flipped them off with both hands. I wished I could give one of those cool appraising looks that Tory always pulled out in moments like this. Like he’d already figured out the answer and waited to see how you would spin it. “Okay. Whatever—”

Just then the door slid open and I felt everyone’s eyes on me. Riggs stood in the opening. I’d completely forgotten about him. He looked thinner and harder than I remembered, even from the one day I’d seen him before getting captured. No longer the freckled bully I had known in Colby. “Hey, Landon. It’s good to have you back.” He came forward and stuck his hand out to me. “Back on Mars, that mission, you saved my life. I won’t ever forget that.”

My hand moved to shake his before my brain registered his words. He’d grown up. Maybe I had too? “We’re part of a squad, we save each other’s lives.” Whatever he’d told them about our history, I could feel everyone loosen up around me, like this last thing had stood in the way of all of us truly unwinding together.

Riggs plopped onto the bench near Belle and threw his arm around her shoulders, and Belle pecked his cheek with a kiss. My eyes must have bugged out because the squad disolved into laughter just looking at me. “Maybe you guys should fill me in, looks like more exciting stuff happened here than my farming for aliens experience.”

Belle screeched in laughter, that eye watering high pitch that made all of us wince. All of us except Riggs, he gave her this sappy devoted look that had me shaking my head. “Seriously, guys, what happened while I was gone?”

Right after the Mars mission debacle, the drop ships all got called back to Earth, and my name scrolled over the news holos as one of the dead. But my squad knew I hadn’t died during that ambush near the bubbles. They ignored orders and the Bungee stuck close to Mars. “They left the bodies all scattered, we could see you weren’t there,” rumbled Mekhi. With a face rigid in anger, he shook his head as if Allied Defense had lied to him personally.

“I even did a quick hover drop to make sure,” Belle piped in. “So we could get you listed as captured instead of killed in battle!”

“Shit. You shouldn’t have done that. The Sorg have spear weapons that can shoot bolts that high.” I pushed away my burger and fries. “But, yeah…the Sorg just left all the bodies scattered across the rocky surface, let dust blow over them. They were too lazy to bother with them. But when the Hush commander came, he…” I grabbed Yulia's water bottle. My mouth felt dry, my throat parched.

Adil tipped his head. “Finish what you were you going to say, Landon.”

“Um… that was it.” But that answer only drew Yulia's attention again. That piercing gaze. She knew me better than any of the others. Too well, in this case, and my skin prickled under her stare. “I was just going to say that he ordered the Sorg to drag the bodies inside, convert them to soil.”

Belle shivered. “Creepy!”

“It’s not creepy if you know them, the Hush… it’s like… respectful…I think. You can’t really get offended because their culture is different from ours.” Things got quiet and serious, but I didn’t know how to fix them. What would the Landon from before have said right now? When I thought back to before my capture, I just saw someone on the fringes, wanting to slink away to his bunk to read a book on his hand-held. Not quite believing in these new friendships, his role on the squad, but certain that the enemy was his enemy. That Landon wouldn’t have spoken up to defend the Hush.

Yulia jumped into the awkward silence to describe their first drop after the Hush abandoned Mars. They’d landed on an offshore oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico. Upon exiting the beam, Riggs plunged off the edge and Belle had to dive to rescue him. “The Hush pounded the thing with that same pizdets pulse weapon they use on Everest.” Yulia imitated the effect with a downward punch to her thigh.

Tory jumped up from the bench to work the holo projector. Since Mars, and the ambush, Belle had a camera embedded in her suit. So we all took the stomach rolling dive with her to pull Riggs up from black ocean waves. When she darted back overhead we saw the Hush laser melt the well platform like an ice cream cone held in the sun. Tory pointed to where the laser boiled the sea water. “Our instruments couldn’t even measure the joules, like forty bolts of lightning hit dead center in the well. Amazing, really, they melted the entire structure down into the well like a plug.”

Adil leaned into my side. “Amazing, yes, but a great tragedy still. We could not even save the crew.” I could see the oil rig workers rolling down the funnel of bubbling, steaming water.

After that sobering end to the story, we all split up. Belle and Riggs went into the control room for “alone time,” and Tory started a historical holo, turning the galley into Medieval Germany. Adil invited me to listen to music with him, but I begged off to get some sleep. And I meant it, everything still hurt from Brenchley’s interrogation and just hauling myself up the ladder to my bunk left me aching and exhausted. But Yulia had other plans and climbed in beside me, elbowed me into the corner and bounced the mattress to keep me awake.

“Cut it out.” I tried to push her back out but she wrapped her arms and legs around me, tight enough that I had no hope of shaking her off. “Okay, okay. I give up! What do you want?”

Yulia propped her head on an arm and smiled. “Tell me real story, country mouse. What thing you leave out for the others.” She poked me in the side.

“Hey, stop!” But I turned toward her, crooked an elbow under my head, like I had so many other times as we swapped stories in my bunk. “You’ve got some secrets of your own, though don’t you? What’s with that blushing shy thing you do whenever this Councilor Aubert guy comes up?”

She flopped to her back and slapped a hand over her face. “Eh. He is French man who like me. He want to meet up whenever we dock,” she sounded nonchalant, Yulia's brand of vulnerability. “Ebanashka,” she scoffed, an insult that lost all its power because of the soft smile peeking under her hand. “Even came all the way to Orbit 4 when we replace a stabilizer.”

“Huh…” I pulled the hand away that hid her expression. “It definitely sounds like he likes you.” I smiled when she just shrugged that off. “But how the hell did you manage to hook up with someone on Governing Council. I mean…” Whatever my expression did made her crack up. But then she got serious again.

“He give me big fancy award.” She looked pretty grim for someone recounting how they met a new boyfriend.

“Why are you acting so cagey? Just tell me.”

“Okay, Okay. You are too pushy now. Where is Mysha?” Yulia shifted so that she could sit upright. “Award of valor on the battlefield.” She scoffed like she disagreed with that assessment of her performance. Not at all the Yulia I remembered. That Yulia loved attention and praise — would have bragged about getting an award. “I was not brave,” she grumbled. “Khuy —I was pissed off. Hush take Mars…take you. Fucking Hush. I hate them.”

They aren’t all bad. My mouth opened to say the words before I caught myself, swallowed them back. What would the Landon from before say? “Tell me.”

“We did drop in Amazon. This after they melt down an entire oil rig with big laser.” Her hands formed fists as she talked. “We fight them, but those blyat’ Hush, to them we are nothing!”

“Yulia calm down—”

“Our lasers are nothing to mirror suits. All we ever good for is to chase them off.” Yulia wiped at the sweat beading above her lip, jaw set. “I don’t know what get into me — I throw my gun away and grab a big khuy tree branch.” She mimed holding the branch over her head, angry grimace on her face. “And I charge at them.”

“What?” I sat up too. “Are you nuts?”

“Yes? I smacked it, pow!” She swung her imaginary branch like a bat. “Knock little suka Hush down into ditch. And then—” She mimicked a shoveling move. “Pop helmet off and tackle him. He hit head on a rock and knock himself out.” An incredulous laugh burst out of her as she relived her surprise. “Little suka buddies freak out and leave him there. Guess Hush don’t have friends, right? Disloyal suky!”

“They’re terrified of capture. That we’ll get ahold of their tech.”

“Good.” She smiled then, the bright grin I knew so well. I tried to smile in return, but I felt frozen and sick. “Anyway, the little suka did something to fritz mirror suit, but… yes your friend Yulia just capture first Allied Defense prisoner.” The shining smile again.

I tried to cover my weird reaction with the kind of teasing joke I’d have made before.”Wow. So you really are the hero of Allied Defense now? And they didn’t make you a commander, offer you a spot on the council?” I shook my head. “Shouldn’t have thrown all those parties back during training.”

But instead of laughing along, punching my arm, like she would have a year ago, frustration radiated off her. “No mouse, we act stupid back then. We treat war like game, think scrimmage is fun,” she spat.

I’d never thought that. But looking back, I couldn’t argue with her that she’d treated our drop battles like recreation. “Hey, it’s okay. We were kids. We grew up since then.”

She plopped down on her back beside me, motioned for me to lie down beside her, more like we used to hold our heart-to-heart conversations before I got taken. “Mysha, after I lose you on Mars… Chyort! I hate that it take losing you for me to get shit together.”

“You always had your shit together, Yulia. Always.” I jammed my arm underneath her shoulders and squeezed. “I’m back now, be happy about it. What’s with this mood?”

“What is with mood?” She turned her face toward mine, “What about you defending the blyat’ Hush earlier? They capture you and hold you prisoner for over year. I will kill all of them for that. Every last one—” she bit off the end with a hot huff of air through gritted teeth. I’d never seen her so bitter. She’d changed a lot too, not just me. I didn’t know this version of my best friend. I just hugged her tighter, the only thing I could think to do. “Mysha?”

“Yeah?”

“Why are you here with me? Adil say to come with him and listen to music, maybe code for welcome home kiss, right? Before Mars, you would forget about my name after invite from Adil.”

“No I wouldn’t have!” I laughed. Then a big sigh came out that I turned into a yawn. “Anyway, I’m too tired.”

She put her hand flat on my chest and I covered it with my own. “I miss you, handsome friend. My country mouse.”

So I guess I’d turned into a big baby since getting my whole captivity and rescue experience. At least with Yulia, I didn’t have a reason to hide my welling eyes. She’d always accepted making friends with a big softie like me. “I missed you too.” She didn’t seem in any hurry to get back to her bunk, so we both fell asleep in mine. Cramped and too warm, I slept like crap until Yulia finally got into her own rack. And then I had the same weird dreams from Orbit 3’s med bay tugging at my consciousness. But I felt stuck and unable to reach them. An ice tunnel. Clouded frozen water with tiny fish swimming inside. Reflective metal that beckoned me forward. My mind wanted to take me back in time to the Hush ship, but my body wouldn’t let it.

I woke up with a pounding headache from my still-healing skull, right arm aching from the quick surgery job, and starving after barely picking at my burger and fries the night before. Tory, Riggs, and Yulia had taken over the galley with holo ball. Belle cheerlead commentary in eardrum piercing volume. “Ooh high-slap. Nice, nice, nice. Go, go, go…”

“Hey!” Yulia shouted from across the room as she made an impossible one-handed dive shot. “Baby, I would ask you for join in but you look like fried korvo. Go back to bed.”

“I’m hungry. Can’t you guys—” I fell forward as Riggs slammed into me from behind.

“Sorry!” He tried to haul me back up, but crashed down beside me as Tory piled on top of him.

“How is she so good at this?” Tory pointed at Yulia with his racket. “I play just as often as she does.”

“She should have gone pro!” Riggs yelled in my ear and tried again to help me up. I waved him away and went to heat a ration pack.

When I opened it back in my bunk, I saw the same creamy potato soup that Finn had fed me back on Orbit 1. Potato and sage— lots of dried sage still available since the war had started and we didn’t trade it away — hard cheese and bread. Hearty stuff that I made myself finish off even though my stomach felt queasy. Maybe I’d gotten too used to the sea vegetables and clear soups of the Hush? My blanket and sheet felt stifling wrapped around my body, so I kicked them off the bunk. Stop thinking about the Hush. I’d told Mekhi I would find something useful to present to Governing Council. And I thought I had something useful, but it made me sick to think of how any information I gave might be used. And then I felt like a traitor… for caring about what I gave away on the Hush. They’d held me prisoner. Faesosh wanted to kill all the people he couldn’t turn into slaves. Whatever I felt for Zaeth had no place in my duty as a soldier for Allied Defense, as a human. I would tell Councilor Aubert everything I knew. “I’m not a traitor,” I whispered.

As soon as I closed my eyes I felt that sucking sensation pulling me deeper asleep until the cold tunnel swallowed me down. Not down… out… as if a grav beam had opened right in the center of my chest, scooped my guts out, and hurtled them through freezing space. But I didn’t travel in that disembodied state for long. I landed…somewhere… and my insides slammed back into my body with an ice cold punch. Had I died? I’d never had a nightmare so vivid.

Cool arms curled around my waist, tugged me backward. “This way. I made a fire.”

When I turned, I could see yellow and blue flames dancing in a black stone pit, they fed on a twisted, porous chunk of coral. Well, it looked like coral anyhow. Purple, green, and blue like what I’d seen in aquariums. Warmth emanating from it as real as any campfire I’d ever lit back home.

“Better?” The small green hands dropped away from my waist.

“Zaeth?” My heart jolted and my eyes squeezed shut and opened again. Still here. “I was hoping I would dream of you again.” This time, I wouldn’t waste it. I spun around and found him. Long dark hair, elfin sculptured face, eyes made of light. My hands cupped his face, my fingers slid over his skin the way they would on polished marble, but marble that heated under my touch. “I’ve always wanted…” I pressed my lips to his forehead, then his cheek. Everywhere I touched hard and cool as caressing the carved face of a beautiful statue, but then turning warm and velvet under my fingers and mouth.

Dream-Zaeth didn’t pull away like he would have in real life. He was no cold statue as he leaned toward me. Closed his eyes. His hands clutched at my cotton t-shirt I’d worn to bed. “I have missed you, Landon.”

I brought my lips to his, breathed into the space between us, and then sealed Zaeth’s mouth in a kiss. He tasted of the sweet milky tea we’d shared on the ship, and his lips and tongue warmed just like his skin. When he started to draw away, I held him tighter, ran my fingers through the long sensitive strands of his hair, and his eyes flew open with a flash of white light. Shirtless and barefoot, he wore the silky gray sleep pants I’d seen him in so many times. “I wish we could have done this back on the ship,” I whispered. My kisses trailed down the curved slope of his neck, across his collarbone. His skin smelled like frost, like winter wind. “I want you. I’ve wanted you for so long, since the first time I saw you. How can I… What should I… Parts of you are so similar to a human, but parts are so different, that I don’t know what… “ My brain caught up with my rambling words and laughter caught in my throat. Please don’t let me wake up. “If you were really here, what would you like? What would feel good? I want to make you feel good.”

The light in Zaeth’s eyes cracked and reflected in the familiar pattern of desire. At least I’d learned to identify that much. “I am really here.” His slim fingers tugged the edge of my shirt, and he drew it up over my head. “As to what I would like, I explained to you before, the Hush have determined that we have a common ancestor. I believe we would like many of the same things.” His hands roamed across my naked chest and over my shoulders.

“Right, you said that in the agro bubble…” I pulled back. “The dream pulled it right out of my subconscious.” The knot on the gray pants came loose as soon as I tugged it and they fell to the ground. “Well, that part of you looks familiar enough…minus the ice bath…” I sank to my knees, nuzzled into him. “Is this okay? Will this feel…good?”

Zaeth’s eyes lit bright enough that I had to blink agains their flash. “Yes.”

And I swallowed him whole. His gasps and moans sounded like raindrops hitting water. Then snow breaking off a tree branch and drifting into silence.

You’d think that my cotton pants and standard issue white briefs would magically disappear in a dream this good, but I had to wriggle out of them, just like I did when I was awake. At least a sleep pallet appeared under our feet and when we rolled to the floor it became velvet warmth. Zaeth’s skin cooled as soon as my skin left his, but heated again where I touched. The strands of his hair felt like silk and he gasped and writhed when I stroked them.

He pulled me to my side, drew my hand across a spot on the flat rock floor that slicked my palm and fingers with oil. “Come, Landon. Lay on top of me.” He spread his legs and tugged my hand underneath him.

So they did this the same way as us too. I pushed inside, light from his eyes crashing around us like a meteor shower. “Okay? Are you okay? Can I…”

“Yes.” His sharp teeth bit into my pec as we fucked. And it hurt, but every other inch of me flooded with happiness… And that pretty much summed up how it felt to have fallen in love with a Hush.

When I fell asleep in my dream, I woke back into my real life, throat dry and still achy from the escape from Orbit 3. For a long time, I lay in my bunk with my eyes closed, trying to drift back to sleep, back into my dream world, back to Zaeth and away from my duty to betray him. The Bungee would dock at Orbit 1 in a few hours and Councilor Aubert had agreed to meet us and escort us directly to an assembly of the Governing Council. For some reason, I could hear my sister’s mocking voice from all the times she caught me with a book under the cottonwoods or curled up reading near the fireplace. “You’re as bad as our mother, dreaming your life away.” Just the memory of Tonia’s scornful voice could shake off the best dream of my life. I groaned and climbed out of my bunk, headed for the shower and steam room. Belle had promised to cut my hair from its long curly mess today, so I would look more like a respectable soldier instead of the hulking wild captive I’d become.

“A Viking… but a crazy one.” She snipped the scissors in my face. “Who got lost at sea and—”

“Captured by the Hush?” I pushed her aside to grab a shammy from the wall rack. “Give me a sec and I’m all yours.” By a few weeks into assignment to the Bungee, we’d all gotten used to seeing each other naked. But I hadn’t changed clothes in front of my squad mates in seven months, and I needed to get used to it all over again. Lifting my shirt hem reminded me of dream-Zaeth’s fingers doing the same. That and it being first thing in the morning meant I’d gotten hard as a rock. This could get embarrassing.”Okay, get out of here, Belle. You can cut my hair after I shower.” Not to mention that Riggs had looked about to have kittens when his girlfriend followed me into the cramped room.

“Fine, fine, fine!”

The steam had started to roll over me, stinging and prickling, before I looked myself over. A long scratch on my shoulder. Clusters of purpling bruises on my arms. A round bite piercing my chest. What the hell? I slapped my hand over the teeth marks, cranked the steam off, and hit the button to drop the mirror. Two semi circles of broken skin. Sharp alien teeth. How?

“Done in there, Landon? Ready to get all official looking? Ready, ready, ready?” The door unsealed. I grabbed for a clean t-shirt and briefs.

A scraping noise came from just outside the steam room, but the door stayed closed. “Jeeze at least let him get dressed, Belle.” Riggs sounded annoyed.

“Don’t worry, sweetie, Landon doesn’t even look at girls. Didn’t you know? I thought you grew up with him?” Belle’s voice carried through the entire ship when she got excited or nervous. She sounded nervous. Riggs made a lot of coughing sounds.

T-shirt on, pants on, I pounded the door control. “Dammit, Belle, just cut my hair and stop… being you.”

From the gallery, Yulia gave me a whoop of support.

“Sheesh! Fine, fine, fine.” Behind her I could see the look of disgust on Riggs’ face, the “I knew it” scowl of the boy from Colby. I guess saving his life didn’t outweigh my sexual preference.

I sat on the metal steam bench as Belle worked, hung my head to watch the long coils of my hair fall around me. My hand kept going to the teeth marks under my shirt, pressing into the fingerprint bruises on my arms. Sage— it had speckled the potato soup I’d had before each vivid dream, coated my tongue with its earthy green taste, filled my nose with its peppery scent. The sage must have worked on me like it had on the Sorg Chieftain. And killed him? I rubbed my sweaty palms on my pants. But the Chieftain had looked bad, weak, pale right away and I felt fine. Better than fine.

Belle flicked the vent to blow cool air at me. “Don’t be scared, Landon. Aubert is sooooo nice.” She leaned in to whisper into my ear. “And soooooo handsome too! Yulia is a lucky, lucky, lucky girl.”

* * *

Alain Aubert met us at Dock 17 on Orbit 1’s massive platform. Everyone else seemed to know their way around, but I’d only been to Orbits 3, 4, and 5 during my time as Bungee’s sweeper. Of course, I’d seen the station before, a prism made of hundreds of modules floating over Earth, lit up like a star and teeming with activity. Shuttles flitting from point to point. Walkway tubes always in production around the edges like tentacles dangling and reaching as they sought connection. On the prism’s eastern side, Venus loomed big as the harvest moon in the night sky over Colby. The Councilor had to clear his throat twice to bring my attention back on him and off the burning gold planet that hung outside the dock windows.

Mekhi put a hand on my shoulder and turned me from the view. “Landon, this is Councilor Alain Aubert. Yulia and I have briefed him on what happened at Orbit 3.” The hand on my shoulder tightened, reminding me that Aubert knew both what happened and what we would say had happened… and that I would need to have the information that Governing Council wanted— information to defeat the Hush— if I wanted our plan to work.

“Right.” I nodded and took a deep breath.

Aubert didn’t look like he belonged on a space station, or like he had any part in Allied Defense. He wore a charcoal grey silk suit rather than one of the blue coverall uniforms. His slicked back chestnut hair cascaded away from a pale chiseled face and bright green eyes, maybe the most classically beautiful man I had ever seen. I shot a glance to Yulia and raised my eyebrows. “Wow,” I mouthed. Yulia shook her head and looked away to hide her smile.

Before I could salute, Councilor Aubert held out a thin, manicured hand. “I am very pleased to meet you, Landon Evans. Not only because of your unique experience, but also as the dear friend of Yulia.” The sharp eyes belied his polite smile, and I hoped that had more to do with jealousy over Yulia having a male “dear friend,” rather than my former status as prisoner-of-war.

I grasped his hand in my own, tried to project that he could trust me as both. “Thank you for helping us, Councilor. I mean it.”

“Call me Alain, I insist.” He motioned us through the docking bay to a public mall area, the largest module I’d ever seen. Balconies stacked on top of each other five rows overhead. Crowds of people going back and forth from little shops, food stands, bars, offices. All of them crammed together like shopping malls in Kansas City. “If you would all like to amuse yourselves, I can assure you that Landon will be safe in my company.”

Yulia butted her way in front of me, and Mekhi put his hand back on my shoulder. “We’ll all stick together, thanks.”

I turned to look at the others and everyone wore their drop mission faces. We would stick together. The rush of gratitude hit me square in the chest, a pain that nestled under my skin… skin marked by a dream… by Zaeth. I would have to do this, betray what I knew about the Hush to save my friends. I had to stop Faesosh’s plans for Earth.

Alain escorted us into a plush conference room, thick blue carpeting muffled our steps. The gold star pattern of Allied Defense lay inside a group of lacquered wood tables set in a circle with blank faced Council members watching our entrance. Alain pulled out a chair for me. The Bungee crew would have to stand. In a lengthy and formal sounding address, Alain explained the story of my arrival on Orbit 3, and my detainment by Commander Brenchley. Alain gestured with one elegant hand, gold cufflinks and an expensive looking gold watch on his wrist. Seriously, this guy had made not even the smallest effort to conform to living in space. Most of the other Governing Council members wore the cobalt and white uniform, but a few wore civilian clothing. I didn’t count them or take in anything else about the room, just that a lot of serious—and old— faces fixed their steely gaze to me.

A stocky woman with gray hair and dark skeptical eyes leaned forward to peer at me. “Well, let’s hear it then, Drop Soldier Evans. I’m not a fan of Brenchley’s methods, but he suffered a shock when a mere handful of the enemy invaded his station and lost him thirty soldiers.”

I bit the inside of my cheek. Yulia had passed on from Alain that I should forget arguing over Brenchley’s decision to vent the station. Everyone in that room had the information that my fellow prisoners, Cricket and Inya, gave them about the fizz weapon. But they had decided not to share that information, how defenseless the fizz could render us, with any of the soldiers outside the room. If Brenchley vented the station and killed thirty soldiers, he’d done it based on their decision to suppress that information. And they knew it.

“Are we boring you, Soldier?” The gray-haired commander slapped her palms onto the table in front of her, kind of like she wanted to vault over the thing and shake me for answers. “Regardless of how Brenchley conducted it, you were debriefed upon your return. Are you telling this council you deliberately held back information from a commanding officer?”

“Well, I had a concussion at the time, Sir…Ma’am. And what might actually be helpful information didn’t occur to me at first. When I did think of something, that didn’t matter to Commander Brenchley. He just wanted to punish me for what had happened on the station. Thankfully, word had gotten to my squad that I’d returned and they came to see me. So I guess that ruined Brenchley’s … Commander Brenchley’s plans.”

“I see.” The gray-haired woman had a look that reminded me of Cricket’s face whenever I fought the Sorg Chieftain. “Well, then. Why don’t you tell us about this ‘breakthrough’ you had?”

Right. “I told the commander about the chieftain’s plan to invade. To enslave the soldiers and destroy the rest of the human race.” Which hadn’t made a lot of sense to me, because Faesosh had at first dismissed me as too stupid for a role, his own war commander, and his soldiers considered me an insult in their ranks. Why insist on compelling even more humans into his military? And I think I had my answer…Greed. Not just for the natural riches of Earth, but the gigantic fighting force he could wield with human military slaves.

“They don’t reproduce the way we do. It’s a complicated process of mixing genes and growing and training successors. So their population never expands.” I paused and took a breath. This next part Tory had worked out with me. “Controlling their population was probably was necessary on a planet with so few natural resources. So yeah, their tech surpasses anything we might create, but I don’t think there are enough of them to invade the way they want to.” I held up a hand and ticked off my theories on my fingers like I’d practiced with Mekhi.

“They didn’t hold Mars because they couldn’t control the Sorg and there aren’t enough Hush soldiers to hold Mars and fight Earth.” I tapped a finger.

“They didn’t keep Orbit 3 or take any of the other stations, which would obviously cripple us, because they don’t have enough Hush to man all of them.” Another finger.

“I’m not sure exactly what … the…um Hush soldier looked up when they took Orbit 3’s operation center, but I bet he looked for places on Earth with low population, low military presence… where they could begin an invasion.”

And say it, Landon, say it. “Their biggest fear is how many, many more of us there are. That we will use our numbers to overpower them. I estimate there are around six thousand Hush in Faesosh’s clan and they live completely separate lives from the other clans. Some…one… of the Hush in Faesosh’s clan said he’d never even seen a female of his species. And only Faesosh wants Earth, I think the other clans own better quality land on the Hush home world, better able to grow things. That means no other clan will back them in this war if Faesosh’s clan falls. And they will fall if we let them land and swarm them.”

The room erupted in questions and proclamations that drowned each other out. Alain stood, tried to get the rest of the council to come to order. Then Yulia took a running jump onto Alain’s chair and let out one of those two finger whistles that made my eardrums ache when she did it on the Bungee.

Well, that worked. She hopped back down and Councilor Aubert took his seat again. “Landon, do you think we might have success by approaching the Sorg and asking for help? Our ability to communicate with them has developed over time. We could offer to return their soldiers the Hush abandoned on Mars. Is it possible they might side with us?”

“I might know one you could contact…” We Sorg do not worship the Hush. “If you have a way to contact the Sorg planet, I have a rough idea of where you can find him, where his home village might be.”…between volcanic mountains at the southern tip of their planet.I remembered Zaeth’s shudder. “One of the Hush described it for me.”

Dreamer

Zaeth waited for me by the fire pit, his long hair loose over his bare shoulders, his sleep pants a sea green this time. Dangling from his neck, a rope of sharp-looking green jewels.

The pile of burning coral looked taller, and the yellow flame leapt up higher than Zaeth. “It’s warmer,” I said. “I can see better.”

“I am better prepared this time.”

I plucked the necklace from his skin with one hand, let the pointy beads spill through my fingers. Then my hold tightened and squeezed the cold facets in my palm until they cut into my flesh.

“Stop that.”

I opened my hands and watched the tiny slivers fill with blood. “This is real?”

“Yes.” Zaeth wrapped my bleeding hand inside both his hands. Ice cold skin, slick as glass, warmed to match my temperature.

I dragged my free hand over the smooth planes of his chest, the peak of a grey nipple, the dip and rise of muscle, it felt real. I’d fallen asleep shirtless, my hand against the bite he’d left behind, its scabby little teeth marks. Oh, there… on his stomach, a mark of my own making, a forest dark bruise sucked into the sage green of his skin. “Is this a dream or is it real? Where am I?”

“You are in my home, on my planet.”

“Your home? Did the sage… did you bring me here?”

“I have each night since you left, but you need sage for the phase to fully connect.” Zaeth peered at my hand. The little gemstone cuts no longer bled. He threaded his fingers through mine and tugged. With the temperature change, I didn’t need to cling to the heated circle of the fire’s glow.

“This is Hush.” He led me from the circle of firelight into a room made of mossy rock and crystal. A towering slanted window looked out at a dark turbulent sea teaming with jagged icebergs. Snow-crusted mountains and spiked jet-black rock. Only the sky had color: pink, blue, green, yellow. Sunset hues reflected from Zaeth’s eyes back into the shadowy room. “I have longed to show it to you.”

Iridescent clouds swirled through the sky, at least they looked like clouds to me, but the shimmering bits moved in spirals and curlicues that seemed too organized, not random but alive. “It’s beautiful.”

“Not as beautiful as Earth, as the farm where you lived with your…parent.” Zaeth’s arms circled my waist, he put his lips under my collarbone right at the mark he’d left on my chest.

“So you are in the death trance—the phase— back on your ship.”

“Faesosh has confined me to my room. He is still deciding my punishment for setting you free.”

“You shouldn’t have done it.” I sagged against him, kissed the top of his head, his sensitive hair.

“I had to. I should have never taken you on board. Once we had killed the Sorg, you could have returned to the dome. I was selfish.”

“I’m glad. I wanted to stay with you.” My eyes squeezed shut against the awful truth of those words. “But now you’re in trouble. What will they do to you?” My hands clutched at his skin. “They won’t execute you will they?”

“Do not grieve on my behalf, Landon. Faesosh needs me. He will summon me to win my purpose as Vareech’s successor. When we invade Earth…” His eyes swallowed the reflected light and the luminous tears again trickled from his eyes. His hands flew up to cover his face. “My reaction is shameful. It is…mystifying…” I touched one of his glowing tears and it clung to my skin like liquid, but was entirely dry and faded away like a match burning down.

“On Orbit 3, they showed me the holo of your attack. You didn’t kill anyone. You even warned them.” He did that because of me, for me. “You didn’t want anyone to die.”

“I defied my purpose.” He dropped his hands to show me the dark light waiting in his eyes. “And pointlessly. There is no stopping this war between us. After what I did, Faesosh will not accept you as a soldier, not even a squire. I sent you home to die with the rest of your kind.”

The desperation in his voice broke me and I gathered him in my arms, pressed his cool skin against mine, but I couldn’t think of anything to say that would make our situation any better. Our relationship would end in death. Whether his side or mine won this war, the two of us together would lose. His hair smelled like cold wind and sea water, his skin like the stone and green moss. We didn’t talk anymore, anything we might say would cause us both pain. I dragged him back to the black stone fire pit and we sank to the sleep pallets. I’d had sex with a few other men since becoming a soldier. Other drop soldiers in rushed, awkward, usually drunken coitus while hiding in a storage locker or maintenance bay. What Zaeth and I did fit better into the old-fashioned description of “making love” as we tried to bridge the gap between our species, the beliefs of different sides of a war, the inadequacy of language that defied translation. I wanted to know him, to understand, to connect—and he reached out from his side of the gulf, tried to meet me as well.

When I closed my eyes on Hush, I opened them on the Bungee, still docked at Orbit 1. Yulia's panicked voice called for Tory. “Right the hell now — Pospishayte!”

Tory’s thin face appeared over me. “He looks okay to me?” A bony finger jabbed into my side.

“Ow! What are you doing?”

Yulia wrenched my arm over the lip of the berth. “Get down here. I will scan you!”

Even Yulia didn’t have enough strength to drag someone my size out of bed, but I rolled out to indulge her anyway. “Jeez, I’m fine. I’m just a heavy sleeper.”

“Sleep?” She fired up the humming scanner and passed it over my heart, shoved me to turn, and then pressed it against my back. “Baby, you look dead. I don’t see you breathing.”

I turned around and reached for the scanner, tried to grab it away but Yulia had it tight in her grip. “Of course I’m breathing.” But I wanted to see what the scanner said. I remembered how fast the Sorg chieftain went downhill after phasing.

Yulia passed the scanner to Tory for opinion. “Huh, it says you’re fine… but your temp is low. Maybe—”

I grabbed the scanner out of his hand and held it behind my back. “Stop hovering. I’m just behind on my sleep is all.”

But Yulia didn’t pay attention to what I said, because she and Tory got distracted checking out the bites and fingertip bruises that covered my chest and arms. “Jeez! Do you two mind?” I dug in my bunk for the obnoxious bright blue sweatshirt we all received in training. The giant ALLIED DEFENSE printed across the front and down both arms, just in case we forgot which side we fought for.

When I turned back around I found Yulia with a tight angry expression and Tory flushed red with embarrassment. “Um…it looks like he’s just…real tired. Okay, Yulia?” Tory slipped the med scanner from my hand and left the bunkroom like it had suddenly depressurized.

“So this what you have been up to?” She slapped my chest, where the darkest bruises lay. “Playboy suka of Orbit 1?” Yulia wore shorts and a sports bra- she must have come looking to spar with me as her morning workout. “I wouldn’t think you find time for fuck with how long Governing Council keep you.” She smacked me again where that bruise lay, harder than before.

“Cut it out. What’s wrong with you?” Usually she laughed and hounded me for details, slapped my back and launched into her own conquests. I hadn’t expected this blatant disapproval etched all over her face and attitude. “Don’t give me that, ‘what you’ve been up to shit’ when you disappeared with Alain first chance you got.”

“That not same.” She got right in my face to say it. And yeah, if she thought I’d just picked someone up for a quick fuck against a wall, then she had a point. That kind of meaningless sex and love were not the same at all. Damn, she really liked that slick Councilor Aubert.

I threw my hands up. “Yeah. Okay, it’s not the same.” And I thought of how I would feel if she tried to compare Zaeth to a regular horny grope session of hers. I’d probably get riled up just like this. “I know it isn’t the same. When you really care about the person, every second you’re not with them hurts…aches.”

She softened and put a hand on my shoulder. “Mysha,” she said, sympathy filled her voice and eyes. “I know you had loneliness for all year. But you’re back now. You don’t have to miss us ever again.”

“I wasn’t talking about me.”

“Sounded like you talk about self.” She rolled her eyes then. “Unless my Mysha have secret boyfriend I know nothing about.”

I ducked my head before laughing her off. God knows what my face looked like. I do have a secret boyfriend, Yulia. He’s a Hush. A future Hush commander. What would her reaction be to that?

“Get dressed, blyat, so I can beat your ass in fight.” She shot me that million-dollar hero’s grin. I loved that smile. “I will have you feeling much love as I stomp you into mat.”

Days and nights passed while Allied Defense waited for a company of Sorg to coalesce under the chieftain. Because of me, Command Council ordered the Bungee to stay docked on Orbit 1. The council wanted me nearby to meet with the Sorg commander — no matter how many times I explained that he wouldn’t exactly be glad to see me.

The nights I spent with Zaeth, making love or watching the vast icy sea outside the window and talking. We never mentioned the war again, even as it boiled to a head back in our real lives. The Hush planned to invade. We planned to fight back. But Zaeth and I still hungered for connection. I’d learned to sleep with my pillow over my face and bedcovers mounded on top of me. The rest of the squad accepted and shrugged off, that I slept like the dead since my return to the Bungee.

I spent most of my day hours bumming around with the squad pretty much the way we always had on a break. We played vicious games of holo ball, drank in bars with other drop squads docked at the station, worked out in Orbit 1’s ritzy sport center. We even refreshed the shitty red stripe we’d painted around the bulging middle of the ship after Ding’s death.

But I wasn’t completely let alone. Per Governing Council, I had a regular third-wheel lunch date with Yulia and Alain. From what Yulia explained, a daily meeting would satisfy Council’s desire for “further interrogation” of Drop Soldier Landon Evans—Former Hush Captive. And Yulia's presence satisfied Bungee squad that “further interrogation” didn’t involve restraints or knives. She’d added the lunch part to get a fancy officer’s meal. And we ate well in the Council’s private dining room. I always had the potato soup loaded with sage and butter. It had become my favorite food, along with Parmesan infused herb and rye bread. Even that Parmesan had sage studded within it. I think I reeked of the felty herb more than when I had grown a field of the stuff back in Colby.

Alain unfolded his napkin with a fluid elegance that reminded me of Zaeth’s movements. Actually, his impeccable table manners and the many knives and forks and spoons used in the Council’s private dinning area recalled the elaborate ritual of the Hush meals.

“I understand the uncertainty and loneliness you must have felt, Landon. But I envy your experience traveling with such an advanced and interesting species. Would you mind describing it in more detail for me?” And no amount of detail was too much for Alain. I had to recall each experience using all five senses, over and over. His interest always sounded sincere, but his shrewd eyes as he listened to my descriptions and details made me aware that he had read about the bare bones of everything I told him already. He probably watched holos of my initial debriefing by Brenchley, who’d woken up hopping mad and full of accusations. But Brenchley had also hidden my initial return from the Council, and that disinclined them toward listening to his ranting. Besides, he could have accused the members of Council of those thirty deaths when he vented the med bay tubes of Orbit 3, so they hardly wanted him traveling between stations and making a fuss.

“We’ve made contact with your chieftain, Landon.” Alain watched and measured my reaction to the news, and his fingers touched a handheld that transmitted a bombastic Sorg voice full of growls and motor sounds and a foghorn exclamation. Whether the voice belonged to the dome chieftain from my captivity or some other Sorg, I didn’t know, but Alain let the recording go on a little too long for someone just demonstrating a sample.

Under the table, Yulia squeezed my leg because she could tell when I started getting angry. Probably, my face turns red and a bunch of other tells that I never learned to conceal. “I don’t understand their language. Like I said before.” I nodded toward the handheld. “Is that him? The Sorg commander from the dome?”

The recording shut off as a waiter in white gloves removed our plates, and Alain made a show of acting embarrassed and remorseful with his downturned eyes and hands folding together. I get that he was handsome and classy, different from Yulia’s usual muscle-head, macho type…but something about him…”I apologize, Landon,” Alain interrupted my thoughts. “Let me tell you what we have translated…”

The Sorg commander had spun a tale to Governing Council about the events I’d already told them, and mostly corroborated by earlier accounts made by Inya and Cricket. Only the Sorg’s version began with him leading a rebellion against the Hush and ended with an attack and slaughter of his troops with only himself surviving.

While I snorted with laughter, Alain’s lips tilted in a wry smile. “Yes, this differs quite significantly from the account given by you and the other captives.”

No mention of Zaeth’s little squad dropping him home. Or how they’d healed him from sage poisoning after he’d used the phase like a party trick. But I hadn’t given full details either. “The Sorg commander was what my mom would call prideful.”

Alain smiled. He had a devastatingly gorgeous smile. I mean… I definitely understood Yulia’s attraction. I pressed my foot on Yulia's and she knew exactly why I did it. She kicked me in the ankle with her boot.

“Despite this discrepancy,” Alain spoke over our antics in the long-suffering voice of a parent with misbehaving children. “In the time since the Hush exiled him to Sorg, he has gathered new soldiers, followers in his refusal to worship the Hush as superior beings. He will be a valuable ally.” And the Sorg commander did me one last favor by telling that fabricated version of how he left Mars: Governing Council now had to allow him to save face by barring me from attending the formal reception of the Sorg ship to Orbit 1 space station. They’d called in all drop squads to stand in formation in their biggest docking bay, including the Bungee squad, for no other reason than to impress the Sorg. Council also insisted everyone wear our white drop suits, I guess because those bright blue uniforms with the gold stars just looked too friendly.

Even though Council told me to stay hidden on my ship, I snuck out to watch the oblong black Sorg vessel blot out Venus. The butt end docked at the station with a metal creaking thud. The Sorg commander — Zaeth had called him their chieftain— and ten of his crew emerged with a fearsome presence. The tall triple-sectioned limbs ending in hooves and claws, the serrated triangle teeth of a Great White, spiked and painted hair, skin and eyes the bright red of a warning. The chieftain’s shades of gray, his smaller stature identified him as mixed Hush and Sorg, something that our assembled troops and council members noticed and dismissed. At first, I’d held my breath at the possibility of our new allies explaining the phase, the use of herbs in achieving it, and then connecting it to my newfound love of sage-infused meals. But one look at the proud set of the Sorg chieftain’s body, his double elbows tilted out, his double knees bobbing in a hint of show-fight stance, his shark teeth bared, and I knew that he would never again make the mistake of relying on his Hush heritage to achieve the death trance and astral projection that his people revered. The phase.

In my dreaming life, Zaeth had scoffed at my stories of the dome under Sorg rule. “He should not have attempted a full phase on his own. This is our method to communicate with them, not a Sorg entertainment.” He ran a hand down my body, the cool marble of his palm against my sweat damp skin, goosebumps appeared in his wake. “I doubt he could remember any of his travels. He probably visited his…mother.”

The scrunch of his nose made me laugh. “His Hush mother?”

“Our females have strange desires. I hope never to meet one.”

But I tried not to even think of Zaeth during the daytime—out of fear of giving away our nights. I’d probably end up back in Brenchley’s care if I did. Or my brain cut open and experimented on. At the very least, Governing Council would declare me a traitor for meeting with the enemy. I shuddered and again pushed Zaeth out of my mind.

The Sorg chieftain held a spidery net of tech out to Alain, an agreed upon term of our alliance. That spidery tech would work as defense against the fizz weapon. It looked like a long beaded scarf, but was made from technology a century ahead of anything our Earth scientists had achieved. Alain accepted the tech, passed it back to the soldier behind him. Then he gave a handheld to the Sorg chieftain— our battle plans for the defense of Earth. We would swarm the Hush. We just needed them to land.

*

“I must tell you something, although I do not wish to upset you.” Across from me, in a wide room made of blue tinted crystal and rock, Zaeth’s low voice echoed, deep and musical, similar in tone to the sonorous cracking noises of shifting glaciers outside the windows. Like their beehive ships, Hush made their homes from crystal, tech, and ice. I could only spend time in three of Zaeth’s rooms without waking up with frostbite in awkward places. Try explaining that to a space station medic. Thankfully, Hush also used the pallet tech in every place to sit or recline. Beanbag looking seats and chunky caterpillar couches that warmed or cooled, supported or squished in answer to your body’s needs.

Zaeth balanced a delicate tea set as he made careful steps back toward me, placed the cups, teapot, and leaf-thin plates down on the low table where I sat. “Do not break these. Vareech gave them to me as a gift.” Then he shot me a stern flash of gray that cut through the room’s peaceful sea blue light.

My fingers slid one cup closer. “If I drink something here, will it be in my stomach when I wake up?” At some point I’d gotten used to the tea, the syrupy taste connected in my mind to the frozen beauty of the Hush world, the long hours of pleasure with Zaeth.

“Yes.” Zaeth straddled me, scooped the cup from my hand and set it behind him. “Landon, I must tell you something.”

My fingers threaded through his hair, and Zaeth shuddered and his eyes closed. I could never quite believe in his presence, my presence…that we could talk, could touch. I remembered when the Hush first appeared in the sky over Earth, the blue beam announcing their arrival like giant azure balloons hanging over every city. They began as a mystery, and then became our enemy. “So, tell me.”

“I have been recalled back to duty. Faesosh has forgiven my weakness in returning you to the humans, and I am given another chance to demonstrate purpose.”

My hands closed over his biceps, the hard chilled skin heated and bloomed to a more verdant color, less gray as I stroked downward. “Zaeth… I … it’s going to be dangerous… we’ve…” I couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t! But he didn’t expect me to.

He place a hand over my mouth to stop my words. “There is nothing you can develop which will stop us, you are like the insects of your planet, the little ones… ants. We will stomp you out just as easily.”

I gripped his face between my palms, his perfect face, his flawless skin, light leaking from downcast eyes, through the long forest green lashes. “Where will you be?” The words came from my throat clogged with unshed tears. “I’ll try to get assigned somewhere else. I can’t fight you. I won’t.”

His forehead fell against mine. “It doesn’t matter where I am, where you are. We cannot escape this.”

* * *

I woke with a physical heartache like a giant bruise in my chest, the hurt as real as the time our cow kicked me in the stomach. Zaeth had given up, accepted our fate as enemies. I couldn’t, I couldn’t… even as all the preparations for war rolled forward around me, swept up Bungee squad, swept up me, to play a part. Landon Evans existed as an unimportant cog in the huge machine of Allied Defense. No. No! I needed to think of something… some way to make a difference.

The pillow over my face disappeared and Belle’s pixie grin appeared. “Yep he’s awake! Get up, get up, get up. We gotta learn to club down the enemy, Yulia style!”

“You will never have my style.” My blanket whipped off and I sat up to grab it back. But too late, because Yulia had already checked me out in that flash of skin. “Okay playboy, you need to put muzzle on new vampire boyfriend.”

“Whatever.”

“Whatever back to you. Get dressed, sex addict Mysha, we gotta train.”

“Train?” My question came out muffled as I pulled a dri-fit over my head. Between my dream life and real life, I lost track of details, forgot conversations. Which things did Alain tell me about the Hush? Which things did Zaeth tell me? More drop ships had come to Orbit 1, leaving just a single fleet to monitor Earth. I guess I hadn’t asked why. I preferred my time asleep, wrapped up in my first love.

Once I got dressed, Yulia thrust an energy drink in my hand. “Drink up or you make me late.” I popped the top and took a swig. Grape. Yuck.

“We’re going caveman against the Hush lasers!” Belle shot a thick metal pole toward me and I had to catch it or get pummeled in the face.

“Is it a weapon?” It looked like a heavy grooved rod. Like one of the wooden fence posts that my little nephews used to “sword fight” each other. “They have us fighting the Hush with actual sticks?”

Tory held his pole like a baseball bat and mimed hitting Belle in the back of the head. “It’s a fighting staff, like ancient Japanese monks used.” He twirled it over a forearm and around his waist. “This is going to be so cool.”

“The other side will be shooting us with lasers.” And that crater-making weapon that they’d used to melt down an oil rig. “Worse than lasers!”

Yulia did an impressive side kick that stopped just short of my face. “This why we need to train.”

“Okay, let me put my shoes on.”

Command had cleared the biggest hanger on Orbit 1, Omega Bay to give us the space we needed to practice with this both new and ancient style of fighting. Then holos would take over. Mekhi jogged off for a squad leader meeting with the Council, leaving us with a slit-eyed warning to “fall in line” with the rest of the squads. Rescuing me from Orbit 1 had given us a bad reputation with our superiors, and we needed to show that they could count on us to follow orders. And, according to Alain, “Remember you are part of a bigger family than Bungee squad.”

We staggered off the ship, dragging or leaning on our staffs like walking sticks, snapping and zipping our cobalt blue uniforms in place, eating ration bars, and crushing empty juice boxes to get a last sip. Even in complete disarray, we still got a lot of rubber-necking looks from the other squads because we had Yulia— who brought in the first and only enemy prisoner. And me— the only surviving human prisoner of war. And it turned out that everyone knew my squad had defied orders and ignored drop targets to rescue me from the sadistic interrogation of Colonel Brenchley. Word gets around, and like Finn said, Brenchely didn’t have a friend on the entire station. With no new holos and no sports for the last four years of war, the main entertainment in Allied Defense would always be rumor and gossip.

We crowded through the entry tube to Omega Bay with all the other drop soldiers. Thousands of us. I lost track of my friends right away, but it didn’t matter. We’d all get trained the same. Commanders instructed each of us to stand on a red dot painted into the floor.

“Landon!” Adil ran up and threw an arm around my neck like he hadn’t seen me in months instead of minutes. “Come. Let us find two spots together.”

“Sure.” He knew I hated to stand out so he moved us toward an edge of the assembly away from the front. I slouched and tried not to look promising for hand-to-hand combat. Guess I got lucky that the training officers instructing us all looked familiar. People didn’t tend to forget someone my size, and they’d trained me as a recruit. None of them would pull me out to the front or slap me around and hope that turned me aggressive…capable of killing. And it wasn’t like I’d improved at all since back then. The only time I’d had any real skill as a soldier, a mirrored Hush suit had guided all my actions.

“Both hands on the stick, soldiers!” The instructor demonstrated three moves that we would make in our hand-to-hand surge on the Hush: swipe, cross down, jab. An entire fighting technique based on Yulia cracking a Hush helmet with a fallen tree branch.

Swipe— take out their thigh tech with a low baseball bat swing to the legs. I had to crouch almost to the ground to hit the laser mark projected down our row. I looked like an idiot.

Cross down— crush the wrist tech. Having worn a mirrored suit, fought in one, I didn’t think either attack motion would have an effect. We could only defeat them with our numbers, rush them, crush them underneath us.

“Is Yulia off signing autographs or something?” I wicked sweat off my forehead. In the space-cold docking port, the press of bodies and movement had all of us steaming.

Adil smiled a little at my joke, but only enough to be polite. “She is quite popular, but it is well-deserved popularity. Even with the staff, her talent exceeds everyone else. Command will have a difficult time deciding if she will be in the first wave to fight the Hush with the staff, or second wave to kill them with a laser.”

My panting breath felt like ice in my lungs. I’d broken into another sweat, one that came from my bones instead of my muscles. “Waves? What waves?” I let my stick hang loose by my side…

Adil didn’t notice the change in me, that he’d nearly stopped my heart with the word “kill.” They’d started passing water bottles down the rows. He handed me one, fingers lingering a little too long, brushing against my own. “The person who left all those marks on you…” Adil gestured with his bottle toward my body, and I crossed my arms over my chest, even though my dri-fit and uniform coveralls hid all the bites and bruises. I’d begged for each of those marks, and I’d left marks of my own on Zaeth’s marble skin, the daylight proof of what he and I shared during the night. Proof that no ordinary dream had visited me, spirited me away. “Is it serious between the two of you?” Adil’s dark eyes dropped, his fingers moved to clasp and unclasp the top to his water bottle. “Did I wait too long?” Tilting his head and smiling up at me with the same gentle curve to his lips. “I should have said something earlier. Before the Hush captured you.” Whatever he saw on my face made him sigh, look away.

Yulia had guessed right, that before my capture, I would have jumped at any of the openings Adil gave me since my return. But Zaeth had numbed all my interest in Adil or any other good looking guy in the station pubs or gym. Somewhere between the dome on Mars and a dreamed cup of tea, I had fallen in love. With one of the aliens I now trained to hit with a fighting staff so that a “second wave” of soldiers could kill him.

Jab — the final move we practiced, a stabbing motion at the neck. Designed to break the seal on the mirrored helmet. Something Yulia had accomplished with a lucky shot. That move…I couldn’t just dismiss that move. It might work.

I tapped at the laser mark with my stick as an instructor passed me. “Adil, how did you know about the battle plans? About the waves?”

* * *

In the back of the enormous docking bay, I found Mekhi standing around with a group of other squad leaders. They cleared out when I approached, something I’d gotten used to. All my life, people had paid attention to me because my size, but now they avoided me because of my status as a returned prisoner. Distrust, curiosity, embarrassment battled on their faces. Why had the Hush returned me? Was it true that I could speak to the Sorg, that they had accepted me as one of them after my capture? What had the aliens done to me?

Mekhi rolled his eyes at them, took a swig from his water bottle and then chucked it 10 feet into a recycle bin. “Didn’t know you were so famous, Evans.”

“I’m used to it. Hey, I need to know about the different waves of attack on the Hush. What does that—”

He cut me off with a chopping motion of his right hand. “Keep it down. They don’t want you all knowing this yet.” Mekhi tilted his head toward a cylindric grav beam loader, still half inside a shadowy launch tube. We both pretended to stretch, look around, and got lucky that the next training session started so everyone looked back to the front of the room where Yulia and the other leaders again demonstrated the three essential moves. Mekhi and I stepped into the launch tube. “We just found out, the Hush landed a ship on Earth… Northern Canada—somewhere cold and isolated, just like you said they would.”

“They did…” Goosebumps ran up my arms. It had started, the end of the war and Earth’s victory or defeat. I’d thought we had more time. That all of us had more time. “Then…?”

“We’ll go back to Earth and face them. But now we have the Sorg and can defeat this fizz weapon you described. We have knowledge of the suits, even if we don’t understand the tech in them.” Mekhi gave me a friendly punch to my arm. “And thanks to you, we know their weakness is their numbers. We’ll swarm them and kill them. All of them.”

“In the second wave… Adil said. How do I get in that wave?”

A dark laugh that matched the shadowy launch tube. “I know you might have a grudge with the Hush, but you’re not a good enough gunner to be—”

“Then what about the first wave?”

Mekhi turned, put a hand on my shoulder and pushed me to face the mouth of the tunnel. “Get good with that stick, and they’ll put you in front.”

I would get good with the stick. When I took a spot in the front of the room, Yulia raised her blonde eyebrows at me. I straightened my posture, feet braced apart, hands loose on the staff in a mimicry of the Hush ready-position. The two lead instructors looked my way. Good. This time, I wanted to stand out.

“Jab!”

My staff shot out, farther, harder than anyone in my row. An instructor pointed a finger my direction. “Evans— good!”

Yulia gave me a thumbs up, but her face looked puzzled. I’d never tried to do well before this.

That night I dragged her aside and had her reteach me all three moves. Her muscles bunched and stretched, and when I imitated the attacks, I copied not just what she did but how she did it. When she used force, when she used speed, every subtle reach and release. “Enough!” Yulia shoved out of the Bungee’s dojo and trudged toward the steam room. “I’m tired, and you stink. The one night you don’t go to bed like little baby, and we still do nothing fun!”

Under cover of the steam, she took my hand. “Mysha, I know you want revenge at suky. They take you, make you prisoner. …but this is not Mysha I remember. This is not you.”

I drew my hand away and stretched, but not because I needed to. I didn’t want all her questions, all her suspicions. “It could be me. People change.”

Steam clouded between us, so I couldn’t see her face. But her sigh sounded wet and tremulous. “No my Mysha. I don’t want you to change. I need you to not change from my Landon. My Mysha. You are … probnyy kamin?. My touchstone.”

My shoulder paused on the heavy steam showers door. “Touchstone. What does that even mean?” But I didn’t wait for her to finish. Allied Defense prized Yulia as the example of every soldier’s potential. She had become what every authority figure had always wanted from me. What they hoped to mold me into. And me? I was in love with the enemy. “I can’t be your touchstone, Yulia. Not anymore.”

When the Hush attacked, Zaeth would be in front, where Allied Defense troops would swarm him in a kamikaze wave of fighters with staffs, then a second wave armed with laser guns would kill him. But some might survive, escape…I had to give Zaeth that chance. I would throw my life in front of his to protect him. But I needed to make first wave.

In both the waking world and dream world, my shoulders and back ached from all the effort I’d put into training. Zaeth walked across my spine, his feet like ice at first, then warmer as he slid from my back to sit beside me on the pallet.

“I found out one of the beehives landed. Are you in that ship? Are you on Earth?”

Zaeth shook his head, dark hair fell over his bare chest, his face, his eyes. “Do not ask me.”

I reached up and touched my fingers to his sculpted lips, the curve of his cupid’s bow. “Sorry. I’m not asking because of… It’s just I miss you when I’m awake.”

Light shattered from his eyes, mirror shards that caught both the glow of the fire and the black of the darkness outside its reach. “I miss you too.”

Soldier

On the second morning in Omega Bay, the lead training commander pulled me up front to demonstrate the knee sweep and down strike. Fighting with a stick, where strength, height and limb length made a difference, I had an edge over every other soldier in the room. I could hit the laser mark no matter where the commanders flashed it.

“Stay up here, Evans. You can demonstrate the helmet jab too.”

A holo-Hush appeared in front of me. “Go through the full sequence,” the commander ordered.

Cross down. Sweep. I’d done two moves before I realized that I recognized the holo. The curve of muscle in his arms. The shape of his legs. My staff clattered to the ground, acid boiled up into my throat. That’s not really him. The most detailed pictures and motions that we had of Hush came from the attack on Orbit 3. Of course they would use holos from that attack for training holos.

“Everything okay, soldier?” The instructor backed up a step like I might explode…or spray him with vomit, more likely.

You’re screwing up, Landon. Get it together. The staff had only dropped a few inches from my feet. I stretched out one leg and rolled it under my foot. Kicked it up. A cool trick that any bored farm boy could do. In one motion, I had the fighting staff back in my grip. Jab— my staff hit under the helmet’s headpiece. Red light flashed and the enemy’s head soared over the middle row of soldiers before it vanished. Around me, the other soldiers cheered. That rolling stomp move must have looked even more impressive than I realized. But, my heart still pounded and spit filled my mouth. It wasn’t him.

The instructor smacked me on the back. “Excellent job, soldier.”

“Thank you, Commander.” De Luca, his name floated back from my memories. In our training dome, he’d made me do 100 pushups every time I missed a laser target, singled me out at every practice to berate me. I’d hated his guts then, but seeing the blatant respect in his eyes washed away my grudge. And, I smiled.

When my eyes met Yulia's, she had that squinty look about her. Trying to figure out my sudden enthusiasm for fighting, the reason behind all the effort I put in. Like everyone else, she assumed I burned for a chance at revenge. But as the person who knew me best, she couldn’t reconcile the new revenge-seeking Landon with the peace-loving boy she’d known before my capture. I could read the questions on her face: Had he changed that much? Can a person change that much?

By the third day of training, I had more friends than I’d ever known in my life. People sidled up next to me on water breaks and followed me to the cafeteria or gym. I had to wade through invitations and small talk like a mucky field whenever I wanted to go anywhere. Not even Bungee squad treated me the same. Riggs sought me out to train with. Tory stopped explaining things to me and started asking my opinion. Mekhi wanted me to report on the strengths and weaknesses of the rest of the squad, the way he used to only do with Yulia.

He leaned in and covered his mouth to keep our conversation private. “Got word from Command that it doesn’t matter how Belle does in fight training. She’s one of the best scouts we’ve got, and they won’t waste her on the ground.”

“I didn’t know she was that good.”The little pub module where Mekhi and I met up projected out the bottom of the Orbit 1 prism. The blue of Earth filled one window. From our table in the corner it looked almost like a cloudless Kansas sky. I had a hard time not daydreaming.

“We suspend her over every skirmish and she never once got hit. Of course she’s good.”

“Oh…yeah I never thought—”

“How are the others doing in staff training?”

I had no idea because I’d only focused on myself. How would Yulia answer him? She would have paid attention. Like a leader. “I think Adil did pretty well?”

“That’s all you got, Evans? How about Riggs and Tory? Have you even checked up on your teammates or just focused on yourself?”

Yulia appeared beside our table, startled both of us. “Hey country mouse, Adil tell me I find you here. I think I might catch you with secret vampire boyfriend giving you so many bites.” She raised an eyebrow at Mekhi. “Something for you to confess, boss?”

Our squad leader gave her a flat look. “We were just going over where the rest of Bungee squad might end up.”

As she pulled out her chair, Yulia leaned her weight on it, made it scrape on the floor loud enough to turn heads our way. “And no one think of bring me into this conversation?”

“Sit down and stop acting like a jealous brat.” Mekhi rapped his knuckles on the table. “You’d already taken off with Alain when I went looking for you.”

Jealous? I tried to sneak a look at Yulia, but I couldn’t tell. She had her game face on— like we’d met up in the launch room for a grav beam drop and not at a shitty little space station pub. And she had all the answers that I didn’t.

“Tory don’t show any muscle. Big bosses not going to want him for either wave.” Yulia looked only at Mekhi when she spoke, ignored me. “Riggs, too much in head, too slow.” She rubbed at her chin as she analyzed the team. “Not many soldiers can work a long-range laser for hunt and pick the blyat’ Hush, so Adil for sure Wave Two.”

Mekhi took a long drink of his beer before setting it back down. “Landon said he was doing well.”

“Ah, did he?”

The ice in Yulia's voice made my eyes bug out. What the hell was her problem? For once, I’d become more than just the big lurking shadow behind her. And that made her mad?

“Alain tell me to have pick of field command I want. And they probably take Evans here too, now he is big shot khuy with staff. You will be left with Riggs, Tory, and no scout over them. You need find replacements, boss.”

“I’m on it.” Another knuckle rap to the table and Mekhi stood up. “Good work guys. Let me know if anything changes.” He obviously left me and Yulia behind so we could work out whatever issue had developed between us.

I thought of just following him out, but I made myself stay seated. “Okay what’s your problem with me, Yulia? Is Mekhi right and you just can’t stand that I’m getting more attention than you? Missing the old Landon? The pathetic loser that always made you look better?”

When her eyes met mine, anger pulsed between us with as much strength as anything a Hush could produce. Yulia didn’t need flashing lights to let me know I’d pissed her off. “I will pretend you didn’t say that. Okay, druh? In few days coming up, you or me, or maybe both, could be dead. I don’t want remember you say some nasty korva that show you don’t know me at all… my best friend.” She scratched her chair back with same force she’d used to pull it out, and I could feel everyone stare in the quieting of the pub. My cheeks heated up.

“Yulia…” Even though she paused, waited for me to apologize, to stop her from leaving, I couldn’t make myself say the words. She threw a nasty look over her shoulder and stormed out. I’d never felt so off balance, wrong footed… I buried my head in my hands. Dammit! Command only gave us one break per day, and I might have started it all puffed up and important, headed to grab a couple beers in a confidential meeting with my squad leader, but I’d ended it rattled and embarrassed. The beer sloshed in my stomach, so I found a stand selling chips and candy. The guy working the kiosk huffed and rolled his eyes when I just kept picking up the bags and bars to read ingredients. “Buddy, just choose something. You on a diet or what?”

“Anything in here got sage in it?”

“Sage? Like what the Hush eat?” The kid practically shouted, and I had to fight not to look around me, worried about who heard and what they might think about the connection between my capture and my eating habits.

“It’s just an herb. It grows on Earth, you know.” And…aha! Found one… crackers with sage and cheese filling. I slapped it onto the counter. “And the Hush don’t just eat it… they… Just forget it!” As soon as he took my money, I ripped open the packet with my teeth and shoved the crackers in my mouth to keep from shouting at anyone else.

* * *

I’d gotten myself good and worked up by the end of the lunch break. For once I’d done everything expected of me, lived up to my potential and all that bullshit. But Mekhi calls me self-centered. Yulia gets pissed I’m stealing her spotlight. My biggest support came from the instructors and commanders who had pointed me out as a failure for years. Screw all of them! A path opened up in my march toward my new spot in the front row. Everyone hopping out of my way, like I… carried a disease… contamination from the enemy. I didn’t ask to be taken—No one gave me a choice!

Anger. I’d never realized how focused and clean it could make a fight. All the times I’d taken a punch, a kick, gotten knocked around and I’d only ever felt dejected…pitiful. Why couldn’t people like me? Why did someone always have to hurt? Why did we have to go to war? But anger washed away all the questions and made fighting instinctual. When we lined up next, the instructors split us into teams for mock battles. “This will be the final test for Wave One,” De Luca’s voice echoed over the entire hanger. Some of the Governing Council members had come in to watch. A lot of their faces turned toward me, suspicious eyes checking me out, reminding me of my squire days back on the beehive. “Attempt each of the attack moves at least once. Tackle and hold the other team’s best fighters.”

Ten against ten, they matched us up. We wore helmets and drop suits fitted with sensors, metal clubs held in front of us like swords. During our cadet training, Yulia always saw that the two of us made the same team, but now she wouldn’t even look my way. Either she respected I could make it on my own this time, or she resented me enough that she no longer cared if I did. Well, to hell with her, I would make it on my own.

“Good luck, soldiers.”

A whistle blew, and both teams charged.

I reached the opposing line first. Cross down— I nailed a wrist sensor, then another. They flashed and whistled as both opponents dropped their staffs. I hurdled over one of them but my boot caught on the second. My leg slid out from under me. Don’t drop the staff! Seeing me down, a soldier rushed me, aiming for my helmet sensor. Get up! My sprawl became a lunge and I swung the staff at his thigh. Swipe— I caught the sensor.

One more move to go— but I couldn’t get up fast enough. Two bodies hit me from behind, knocked me flat. Keep hold of the staff — I still needed to complete the last move, the jab on the helmet seal. Bodies piled on top of me. No! I needed to make Wave One. I would! The buzzers and shouting faded. I got my hands under my body, my knees on the ground, and heaved as if climbing for oxygen after a dive into deep water. The bodies of those who had tackled me, piled on top of me, flew back into the air. Metal staff in one hand, I reached my arms up—over the heads of all the soldiers surrounding me. Jab. Jab. Jab. The sensors flared and hummed under my staff. Another whistle blew— the test ended.

The men and women I’d sent flying behind me staggered back up and then broke into cheers. The gray haired commander who had questioned me during the meeting with Alain, who had looked at me like she wanted to pick up wherever Brenchley left off, came forward. Her hand outstretched. “I was wrong about you, Soldier.”

* * *

For the big meeting, Governing Council had all of us come one last time to Omega. Then they officially announced what all of us had whispered about for the last 48 hours. The Hush had landed a ship on Earth.

A holo erupted over our heads. Snaking lines of cars, people, fleeing from the midnight shadows of a towering Hush beehive. In Earth’s atmosphere the frost and crystal look of the alien spacecraft took on the same cold mirrored surface as the soldiers. Anyone who refused to leave the Arctic Circle would die…

Did die.

Greenland. Northern Canada and Russia. The tips of Finland. An island off of Iceland. Blue and white lasers—sharper and hotter than what we knew from drop skirmishes— fried the civilians too slow or unlucky to leave. Allied Defense drones captured their terror. A group of men running for their lives. An old couple embracing. A wide-eyed pair of children clinging to their mother. The blue lasers incinerated all of them as they screamed in agony from the fizz. Norway. Sweden. Half of Alaska.

The entire hanger went silent as the images played. I struggled to breathe, panic seizing my chest. Then Faesosh appeared, brilliant white clothes and a crown of white jewels that beamed like stars. “This territory now belongs to the Hush,” his voice swollen with triumph. “Until we have determined what use humans can serve us, there will be no—”

A roar of anger and grief drowned out the rest of his words. We didn’t need to hear them, because we already knew… enslaved or exterminated. The Hush would take our place on Earth.

No one could sleep that night. Especially me. What would I find when I traveled back to the warmth of Zaeth’s firepit? Back to the vaulted stone ceilings and turbulent icy seas of his home… Would he be flush with conquest, a new jewel on display for the innocent lives he had taken? I pictured those pale green beads dangling from his neck that I’d cut into my palm. Had he carved those from the sea green jewel he’d won for the raid on Orbit 3? All the jewels he wore, the liquid metal adornments, the sharp black gemstone that I’d carried in my pocket for weeks in the Mars dome— they’d all represented a conquest by the Hush. He might have spared the soldiers on Orbit 3, but he’d killed without mercy before I’d known him. Those sea green stones…had he mocked me by wearing them? Had he duped me into loving him? He’d described how the Hush females sometimes took Sorg as lovers, bore their children to experience motherhood…as amusement…as diversion. Zaeth had never needed me to protect him. He had lasers to cut through our forces, the fizz to torment defenseless human civilians, and those mirrored suits to rule our world.

Four new squad members crowded on board with us, making the Bungee feel stuffed for the trip back to Earth. The new crew were all either Space Force or Air Force. Guys who only had experience patrolling, looking for Hush activity from Earth bases, or who worked in ship maintenance on one of the Orbit space stations.

“Friends of Riggs,” Mekhi had said. I dreaded meeting anyone who Riggs liked hanging out with.

Adil took my arm once I’d boarded, like he sensed the nervous apprehension in me. “Landon, come and eat. We won’t get another chance before the drop outside of Nunavut.”

I’d already headed that way. “Yeah, okay.”

Mekhi ordered us all to the galley for introductions, even though Belle, Adil, me, and Yulia wouldn’t be sticking around for long. The names of the new guys all flew by me. Crewcuts, bland faces, lots of muscles. Tory slid a ration pack toward an empty seat and nodded at me.

“No women?” Yulia's voice boomed over my head as she passed by me and took a seat near Mekhi. We’d sat together for every meal since our first days as recruits, but now she ignored me. I flinched away from the question on Adil’s face. No, I don’t want to talk about it. I’d screwed up accusing Yulia of all that petty crap. Maybe I didn’t know why she’d gotten so mad at me, but jealousy didn’t fit. I should have never said that to her.

“Riggs doesn’t know any women!” The crew cuts all laughed and Riggs’ freckled face turned red. No one but me noticed that Yulia didn’t find that answer at all funny.

When I peeled back the ration foil a gust of steamy sage hit me in the face. Potato soup. Tory winked like he’d brought my favorite. Damn. But I was way too hungry not to eat it. Still angry and suspicious of Zaeth, I’d stayed up all last night, avoiding the dream travel…the phase. But I would have to sleep eventually. Maybe if I didn’t eat all of it, I wouldn’t go traveling. Zaeth said the connection didn’t make the nights I didn’t have the herb in my system.

Riggs threw an arm around my shoulders to reintroduce me to his station buddies as “The Guy Who Saved My Life on Mars, Landon. We Were Friends Back in Kansas.”

Somehow I managed to shake hands and accept their compliments on making Wave One, still without learning any of their names. I guess I was too bowled over from that, “friends back in Kansas” bullshit.

On the way to Bungee’s docking port, I’d run into another one of the instructors I’d trained under as a cadet. He’d squeezed my shoulder, the way every instructor, every coach did when they first tried to mold me into something I refused to become. “I’m proud of you, son,” he said. Like he’d always known I had the potential to become a badass fighter. After he’d walked away, the memory of his spittle hitting me in the face floated back to me. “Evans, whoever recruited you should get charged with treason. That’s how much of a failure you are as a soldier. All the aptitude you show, and you don’t have the drive to make training you worth my time.”

I hadn’t made Wave One for him, and not to get admiration from people who never liked me, still wouldn’t if they knew I hadn’t really changed at all.

Dammit! I ate the soup, and one of the rolls and cheese dotted green with sage. We wouldn’t get a chance to sleep again until after the drop to Earth. But if a Hush laser cut me down in the morning, at least I wanted to tell Zaeth goodbye.

As a scout, Belle wouldn’t drop until the morning to hover over the battle. But Adil, Yulia, and I all suited up to wait out our drop orders. We joked around in the launch room with Mekhi and Tory until Adil had to drop, gallows humor that brought out in the open all our petty grievances from living squashed together for two years in the Bungee. Now all the same habits and eccentricities in each other that had annoyed us already had the patina of fond memories.

Tory threw an arm around Adil. “I really hope you don’t make it, so I can finally throw that damn Oud out an airlock. No… wait… I’ll keep it until after the war, then burn it.”

“I will haunt you with my music.”

Mekhi tried to hide his laughter with a cough, but then gave up. “No. Haunt him with Belle singing along to your music,” he said. Yulia groaned and Belle mimed stabbing Tory with her fingernails.

Then I kicked everyone else out so I could talk alone with Yulia. “I’m sorry. All that stuff I said was wrong. It was stupid and I didn’t mean it. I don’t know exactly why you’re mad at me, but if you don’t want to tell… then that’s fine. I just want to be friends again before we have to go face the Hush.”

Yulia held her gloves and helmet, stared down at them to avoid looking at me. “I’m not the one keeping secrets, Mysha.” A sigh that made my stomach hurt with how shaky, how not like Yulia it sounded. If I ever made her cry, I think it would destroy me. When she finally looked up, her face and eyes were dry though. “But I don’t want face suky Hush without you as friend. Country mouse and city mouse, yeah? We both might die down there… Ha, we both die for certain…”

It shocked me to hear her say it aloud. Every time we’d done a drop to one the dirty fast surface battles she’d acted like she thought she was invincible. No, like all of us were. “Cheer up — at least we get to fight something. Boredom is the real killer in this war!”

“You can’t die, Yulia.” It came out so sincere, a truth expelled from inside my soul. “ You’re the best fighter in the Allied Defense.”

“Huh…” and she let the familiar super-watt smile crack the gloom on her face. “I guess you make good point.” Then the alarm sounded so we had to scramble into our helmets and gloves for the drop.

I hadn’t done an Earth drop in a long time, so I landed dizzy and confused. And in a rush of so much activity and noise that I wondered if the battle had already started. Where was my staff? Where was Yulia? The Hush? Somehow I stayed on my feet while my head cleared and my stomach stopped rolling. Shaky fingers undid the helmet seal and I gulped fresh, real air. Oh my God, I’d forgotten how good that could feel, could smell, could taste. Cold. Dust, Water, Heather, Exhaust, Ash…. So many scents, both natural and artificial. Lingering, raw, unfiltered.

Yulia tapped my cheek. “Okay babe? Looking rough there. Like throw up. Cry?” It took her a minute and then she cleared her throat. “Oh… I forget. Country mouse first time back to Earth since suky Hush … Sorry.”

Not that our drop site looked or felt like coming home. We’d landed into a large-scale military operation just outside the Canadian portion of the Arctic Circle. Old-style military helicopters landed. Main battle tanks rolled in. The newer hover vehicles zipped around us. In the distance, prefab buildings lined up in rows. And crawling over the entire thing, soldiers in the new winter-camo drop suits like mine. Yulia pointed behind us. “Take a look at this.”

A standard red-glow fence marked the barrier between Hush lands and ours. With a nod of understanding, Yulia and I agreed to take a closer look at it. The thin red web of beams came up to my waist, but invisible hair-thin shafts probably climbed into the sky. My hair and eyebrows prickled when we leaned closer to check out if we could see up to how high the web went. “Did they put that up or did we?”

“We did!” Someone yelled behind us. “Not that it will stop any of those little mirrored bastards from coming out” Yulia and I turned to see a familiar chubby face and red afro. A chipped tooth smile.

“Doctor Finn!”

“Landon Evans, good to see you still up and causing trouble.” Finn grabbed my hand and shook it between both of his. “I got your drop coordinates from Command. Good to see you, really good.” He cocked a thumb at the red-glow barrier fence. “Yep, we put it up. I think Command has the idea they’ll eventually starve to death or something in there.”

“They won’t. Hush is mostly rock, ice, and water. They probably think the North Pole is a garden paradise.”

Finn laughed. “Well that’s what they told you anyway. Who knows what Hush is really like.”

I twisted my gloves in my hands. “Um… yeah. Who knows.”

“Anyway, Yulia… Councilor Aubert wanted me to find you. I’m going to be part of the unit you’re leading into the contested territory.”

As part of Yulia's task force, both Finn and I got outfitted with camping gear. Special boots, cool looking bio-tents with clear tops. Heat rods. He showed me how to pack it all up to lay tight against my back. Yulia already knew how to work everything and didn’t need Finn’s help, so we made plans to meet up again outside Aubert’s office in one of the pre-fab buildings. After I’d gotten completely outfitted, nerves started to eat away at my newfound confidence. Could I survive this? If I did, could I find Zaeth? Could I protect him? My original plan seemed flimsy and ridiculous, and I didn’t even know if Zaeth deserved my help. But it’s not about deserving, is it? It’s about desire. I needed to try and protect him because I loved him and no other reason.

A beam would push us past the red-glow fence and into Hush territory to lay low in the rubble surrounding the beehive. Aubert acted awfully nervous when he explained the horizontal beam maneuver. “We haven’t actually tried a horizontal beam before, and you won’t be able to contact us once you are within the circle.” Alain took Yulia by the shoulders, tipped his forehead down to meet hers. “You must promise me to survive this.” Even if I didn’t know how deep Yulia had fallen for him, Alain Aubert’s feelings looked sincere.

She stepped back to meet his eyes. “No one can promise this, lover. You have to trust I am badass enough to do job.” Same old cocky jut of the chin and white toothed grin. “I will do great, naybilʹshyy. You bet on me.” Field Commander Yulia Melnik commanded a fifty-soldier platoon of the best ground fighters. Wave One soldiers who would wait in place three miles from the towering Hush vessel, the most we could hope to embed without drawing attention to ourselves. Once the initial attack began, the horizontal beams would deliver twenty times that to swarm.

Alain turned to me then, “The ship that landed is as you described, a hive shape more complex and possibly greater in size than Orbit 1.”

Zaeth’s ship. Impossible to hide my reaction. Like he’d slapped me when he’d said it. “That’s…where I was held.”

“It is how you said, Landon. They cannot patrol the entire circle on their own. And we will keep them fully occupied on the Russian side while you attack. Many have volunteered outside the Russian border. Even the civilians do not wait peacefully for the return of their land.” Alain mistook where my worried brain had gone. He grasped my shoulder. “Have courage, Landon. Yulia will be relying on you.”

“Yeah, I know.” But the worry in his eyes toned down my indignation. “Don’t worry, Alain. We got this. She’s got this.”

Wintery thirty-degree temperatures and frozen ground equaled a beautiful spring day in Nunavut. But it would only get colder when the horizontal beam thrust us out, deeper into the Arctic Circle, behind enemy lines. “Don’t detach your helmet after you emerge from the beam.” Officers yelled directions over the comm as we lined up to ride the horizontal beam. We all wore the new drop suits camouflaged especially for the frozen tundra in gray and beige. And we would need to wear our helmets to protect us from frostbite. “You won’t slide down the beam like you did from your drop ships. Instead you’ll have to jump and tuck. Keep your face down, arms against your body.”

When it came my turn, I did my best. The horizontal pull didn’t really allow a tuck position, it drew my legs out from under me and I rolled out of the beam like a log spinning and then skidding across the bumpy tundra. Teeth clattering, knees and elbows grinding. If not for the drop suit, my skin would have shredded off my body. At last, I thudded to a stop.

When I found my feet again, I blinked in confusion like I’d gotten knocked out or missed time, impossible to know for sure in the persistent May Arctic twilight. “Yulia?”

Oh, there she was. “Okay Evans? Head good?” Yulia had to treat me like the rest of the troops, but even behind the helmet visor I could see her concern, that it verged on panic.

“I’m good, Commander.” She didn’t look convinced, but she left my side to check in on the others. The Wave One units had scattered in random pockets, only three miles from where the Hush ship had landed. She needed to break us into smaller units so that the Hush couldn’t detect us.

I’d always admired Yulia, had depended on her strength and her upbeat personality to get me through recruitment and training, those early miserable and frightening days of service on a drop ship. But she had always just been Yulia… my friend. Now I watched her address each of her soldiers. Her helmet off so they could see the determination in her eyes and the confidence she radiated when she spoke. We would all be communicating on helmet comms as soon as we got our shit together and moved out. “I got only one chance for letting them put a face to my orders. Lyudy I send, maybe to their death. They can see real person, fellow soldier behind words from comm.” Frost tinged her brows and lashes, made a sparkling cap from the buzz cut on her head. She was an impressive sight… No, something better than that… awe-invoking. A hero.

We all felt it when she walked between us, divided us up in pairs and trios to creep closer to the mirrored ship. “Evans, come. You stay with me.”

As I trudged over the rugged terrain behind her, it occurred to me that Yulia must have declined promotions before this one to stay on the Bungee. To wait for me while I was captured. Guilt twisted in my gut. I’d lied and kept secrets from her, my best friend. I hated myself for it. But I’d made my choice and it was way too late to change it. When we came nearer to the bubbled tower on the horizon, my spine bristled with nerves and heart ached. Zaeth’s ship…so close…right there, only 500 feet west in the eery partial light of the Arctic sky. Somewhere inside that mirrored fortress was someone who meant more to me than this war, than fighting for my own survival. Wasn’t there anywhere the two of us could be together and not be enemies?

Yulia stopped us near one of the towns that the Hush had destroyed. Its ruins would provide cover. Baker Lake had been home to nearly 3,000 Inuit people. Families. Children. Memories of the screaming faces from the holos made me wince. Faesosh and Vareech had given a death sentence to the Sorg stationed in my prison dome for uprooting pea and leek seedlings, but an endangered culture and people like the Inuit meant nothing to them. How could the Hush only see the plants as worth saving? I pitched the little bio bubble tent while Yulia checked in with everyone. We whispered on the comm, unsure what kind of noise the beehive could pick out. “You should sleep,” I told her once she got her helmet off and her boots unsnapped.

“Both of us. I put Garces and Manny on first watch. Besides, you know I don’t sleep so good when other person next to me awake.” Yulia lay back on the padded floor of the bio tent, crooked an arm under her head and studied the twilight sky through the clear top. “No black space. No stars. Bozhe mir. That’s weird, isn’t it? Like this place not Earth.”

I settled down beside her. “Which ones are Garces and Manny?”

She made a hiccuping laugh. “Why am I friends with you, Zhopa? You are biggest recluse, introvert… standoff zhopa that I ever meet.”

“What are you talking about? I’m friendly. It’s just that other people don’t like me.”

“Yeah? I like you. And I’m pissed off you got sudden urge to try impress everyone right before suicide mission. Ebanashka, volunteer for fight with most tech superior aliens in two universes and we armed with… metal pole.”

“Fighting staff! And it’s a good plan. We might actually… “ The smile dropped off my face and I didn’t feel like joking anymore.

Yulia sobered up too. “Yeah. We might. Pizdets.”

* * *

When I opened my eyes next, the air felt heavy in my lungs, filled with water. I lay alone in a cavernous room of stone. Waves crashed against the towering uneven pane of a window, chunks of ice tossed by the water hitting the glass…crystal… or maybe something unnamable and foreign to Earth.

“Are you angry with me?”

“Zaeth?” Oh… there. A small folded green-gray figure under the damp black stone eaves. He wore the silky sleep pants, chest and feet bare. Smooth thin arms clasping his knees, dark hair pooling on the frosted rock floor. “Come here. It’s cold.”

“Not to me, human.” Right. Not to him.

I had my drop suit on, which I hoped didn’t give anything away, that the Hush didn’t know we bivouacked outside their craft. But I undid the fastenings. Peeled the sleeves and top half down to just my usual t-shirt. The room didn’t feel warm, but I’d come to on a bulbous sofa with the pallet tech inside. A sigh came out before I could stifle it. “So… you’re on Earth.”

“I am.” Zaeth turned toward me, liquid light dripping from his eyes and onto his chest. When he crossed the room, his bare feet left prints in the frost coated stone floor.

I took his hand. Pulled him down beside me. “I was angry. Maybe I still am? The people killed were defenseless. Some were children.”

Color and light filled Zaeth’s eyes. The dark light of anger, but he stared down at our clasped hands, refused to meet my own eyes. “I tried to stop them. Faesosh was furious with me for refusing to follow what he demanded.” The dark light filled the space between us and I could see his fury in the quick squint, the minuscule tick of a snarl. “I will only kill soldiers, not those who cannot fight back. Only Vareech defended me, my purpose is to command and not to fight, he said I belong for greater battles.”

Without realizing it, I’d risen and taken Zaeth into my arms. “You didn’t do it? That wasn’t you on the holos?”

“Can you not recognize me in uniform?” Zaeth pulled back.

Laughter and relief fought in my stomach. I could recognize him, the shape of his legs, his arms, the slope of his neck, but I hadn’t dared to search for those markers, couldn’t bear to find them in the mirrored suits lasering through civilians.

“Faesosh’s plans become more fantastical since our arrival here. I fear that Vareech will openly challenge him, and if he eliminates Vareech then my purpose has ended.”

My heart clenched. “Then don’t challenge him…”

“Landon. I must do as Vareech demands. He created me to take his place, even if that place is in exile or death. I am thankful you will be far from this.” His cool hands slid down the bumpy white material of my drop suit. “Your job as… sweeper…yes? This will keep you far from battle.”

“Zaeth, I’m not a sweeper any longer. I gave up that position to become a fighter, one of the first to fight. I’m going to protect—”

The punch hurt. Zaeth looked small and delicate, but he packed a lot of strength in that hard lean frame. I could feel blood trickle from the corner of my eye. He’d cut me with a jeweled ring on his index finger. The black jewel I’d kept in my pocket all those months ago on Mars.

“How could you be so foolish? We will kill you!” The flash of his eyes left me seeing spots. He tried to back away from me, but I grabbed and held him close.

“I can protect you. I have to. I have to!”

“Protect me—” Zaeth scoffed. “You are the one who will need protecting. Faesosh is determined to bring you back, to make you his… pet.”

It took a beat for me to understand his words. No, that still didn’t make sense. “His pet?”

“Of course — this would be yet another insult to me. That he can subdue the human, who escaped my service.”

“I won’t let that happen.” I would die first. “Never.”

“Then abandon this foolish plan. Do not report to the front.”

“I… It’s done. It can’t be undone. Zaeth, can’t anyone challenge Faesosh? Can Vareech?”

Zaeth trembled and the rise and fall of his naked ribs pressing against mine felt shallow. “Vareech cannot. Not Vareech…” The slim arms circled my waist and Zaeth buried his face in my chest. “I apologize for striking you. This is not how I wanted to spend our last time together. Can we not…” Zaeth’s mouth latched onto my Adam’s apple, but he didn’t bite down, just held his lips and tongue there as his mouth warmed to the temperature of my skin.

“There isn’t time. I can’t sleep for long. I need to return soon.” My fingers raked through the long heavy fall of his hair. “Zaeth, whatever happens, I love you. I don’t know if that means anything to you… if you express that emotion…” My throat closed up and I couldn’t say more.

“We do not, but I understand. I believe that I can understand…” His lips met mine, the temperature of mine. That transferred heat had become part of our intimacy, and the only thing that we could share in that moment. He blurred, and his body lost substance against my own, under my hands, his breath cooling and vanishing. The cold tunnel took me back, Zaeth’s perfect chiseled features at the other end, watching me go.

I woke with a gasp, my stomach cramped, and I slid up to sitting. The tent roof caught the ends of my hair in static, tugged my scalp.

Yulia also sat up, the startled whites of her eyes glowing. “What the hell was that? Korva blyat !” The back of her hand wiped the blood from my eye. She looked at the smear on her skin as if it would answer her question. Then she gave me a harder face. “You were… dead… in trance…something. And I see you, float into body. Your soul. I see your soul, Mysha!”

I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t lie to her again.

“Tell me, but no more lie. No more secret,” Yulia said. “Suka Hush do something on ice ship, change you. Tell me!” She crossed her arms in front of her, muscles bulging inside her drop suit. “Those marks…” she nodded toward my chest. “Always I see more when you wake up…” Yulia gritted her teeth and turned away, keeping her anger in check. “Explain for me one thing, country mouse. Do you work for enemy? Have you turn to suka Hush.”

“No. Never. Yulia, you have to trust me. I… There was a Hush on the ship…” Yulia nodded, stony faced but listening. “He’s special to me…that thing you saw is called the phase. You can’t tell anyone, no one else would believe I wasn’t being a spy or… you’re the only one who knows that I couldn’t…I wouldn’t.”

She laughed, small and bitter, “Oh yes – this is why you explain to me from start, from back on Orbit 3 after I rescue you from Brenchley. Because you trust me so much. Make me think you are same Mysha, same boy I know.” Her tone changed, turned softer.”Well, I do know you. I figure it out, after all. Figure there is something wrong, even if I don’t know what. Tell me this – do we walk into ambush tomorrow? Did you give Hush information when in trance…suka phase?”

“No…no! Yulia, please.”

And she must have remembered the bruises on my neck and chest, that I’d just said good-bye, and that she did know me and could recognize anguish on my face and in my voice. She did that eyebrow lift that only Yulia could pull off without looking like an idiot. “Okay. Tell me name. The one gives you all the hickies every night?”

My face heated. “Zaeth. He’s… He’s a soldier. He’ll probably be there tomorrow.”

“He will.” Her blonde brows scrunched lower over her dark squinting eyes. “Then why do you work so hard to be first Wave? Why so hell bent on…” Yulia's words trailed off and she hung her head. “ Landon… my Landon… of course, of course. You want to protect lover Hush? You think … my Mysha….will sacrifice self to save his suka Hush.” Yulia started laughing then, but not like I’d ever heard before. Wet, gulping laughter. She rubbed her eyes. “Bozhe mir. Okay… okay. I will help you.”

“You will?”

“Yes. Yes. Of course I help you.”

Sacrifice

A guy my size can’t easily hide against a terrain as bleak and open as the Arctic Plains. Yulia left me at dawn, and I hid in a draw obscured by snarls of budding dwarf birch. I picked out boulders and dents in the ground ahead of me for when it came time to move closer. But for now, I’d come as near as I dared to the mirrored, honeycombed tower of the Hush ship. I guess everyone else had as well.

“Garces in place.”

“Kramer in place.”

“Lang in place…”

We whispered over the comms, uncertain what the monolithic beehive could pick up. Maybe they could hear everything we said — we were desperate enough to let the Hush pick us off to find out. Allied Defense had determined that as close as we hid, sending communication to and from our bases outside the circle presented the greatest danger. Only Yulia received transmissions from beyond enemy territory. Command didn’t want any of the regular ground soldiers embedded within the occupied Arctic Circle leaking their plans. I’d gotten used to Belle’s commentary giving me updates during battles. The broadcast silence felt a little like wearing a blindfold, or the way I’d cowered in my bed as a little kid. Waited for monsters to jump out of the dark.

After a long quiet, a whisper trickled into my helmet, “How will we know when the attack begins?”

“Because I tell you when, suka. Now get off comm.” Manny sounded terrified to me. Well, that made sense, of course he was terrified. All of us were scared shitless. The short blip sounded that let me know Yulia tapped privately into my comm. “He get on nerves.”

“He’s just afraid.” Yulia kept me on her command channel, even though she’d get called on the carpet if anyone knew.

“Well, he need to toughen up. We not have time for scared tselka.” I could hear static and huffing like she’d started moving. “And you get down more. I see you from here. Be mouse, not giant farm animal.”

“How do you know when the attack starts? Are they going to comm you? ‘Cause you should take me off the channel.” Now that she’d tapped me in, I changed my mind about hating the silence. “I’d rather not hear the whole operation moving forward.” As a drop soldier, I’d gotten used to my squad’s voices in my head during a fight, but add a bunch of commanders and coordinators to that and I don’t think I would be able to remember my own name.

“Aw fuck. Get down!” I thought she meant me. Just me.

Then the sky lit up with sparking fire, as the beehive’s mirrored exterior radiated light and wind. Around me, the air swirled with debris: crumbling arctic heather, frost, and snow, the charred remains of Baker Lake. All I knew about the start of our attack, Alain had summed up for Yulia and me on the short walk toward the horizontal beam. But I could picture it happening now. Earth forces gathered all along the rim of the Arctic Circle had begun marching forward, into the territory the Hush had claimed for themselves. Overhead, the Sorg had moved to confront the Hush ship above the Earth. And then we rush them. Relying on the one strength we had over our enemy— our fearsome numbers. Zaeth had compared humans’ lack of technology to ants, but ants became deadly when they swarmed.

The top of the towering Hush ship opened, a skyscraper unfurling like the tip of a flower. From that open flower, small reflective ships emerged. Flat mirrored bottoms with rounded silver blister-tops. They darted across the plain at the height of tall trees. They moved like lightning in the sky, zipping up and down, then flashing away in a streak of silver. Hover-ships— a technology they’d shared with us, but only in its crudest form. Of course! Our own bloated machinery didn’t have the speed or height of these little ships. Thousands of them in all directions to push back at the humans closing around them. The sky overhead darkened as they blotted out the thin Arctic sun. A maelstrom of wind and grit pounded against us from the combined thrusters from all those reflective ships. Pressing myself into the frozen ground, I let it beat against my back, disoriented and blinded — like traveling a second horizontal beam across the Arctic. Those crafts… Which one was Zaeth? Which direction did he go? I hoped not the Canada side, where Alain waited behind the boundary in his prefab office. And not near Greenland either, where the Bungee would drop down. Horror choked me to think that he might kill my friends, that they might kill him.

Yulia tapped into my comm again and I could hear shouting in the background of her words. “Fall back! Fall back now!” She’d opened the frequency to let me listen in again, and I could hear the panicked command to “Fall back!” spreading out like a shock wave through our forces. “Back! Back!” Yulia echoed to her unit.

“What’s happening?”

Yulia ignored me on the comm. After that windstorm from the beehive, I had to reassess where I might hide, and behind me I could only see open tundra.

“Mysha—” Yulia tugged my arm. She’d come back for me. Her strong hand gripped mine.

“Yulia?”

“Run! Now!”

She’d made such a big deal about staying low to the ground, crawling instead of walking. But now both of us ran upright, a dead sprint in the opposite direction of the Hush ship. “Run! Run!” The entire platoon bolted from hiding, every position we’d held now revealed, as we raced across the tundra. Not toward the tower as planned, but away. “Fall back! Fall back!”

At our backs, the beehive still blasted us with wind strong enough to send the ruins of the town of Baker Lake— metal siding, piping, fencing— careening our way. It was worse than the most insane obstacle course we ever encountered in any of our training. I’d never considered myself much of a sprinter, but I managed not to lose sight of Yulia or the others. When she decided that we’d run far enough, Yulia dropped to the ground. “Stop —Tuck in! Tuck in!” We learned this position as cadets in the event that a grav beam blew out. Head bowed, knees pulled up, arms and legs tucked down under your body just like a roly-poly. My body responded to the command, but I just couldn’t keep my head down. “What the hell is going on?”

“Zhopa idiot Sorg are making dive!”

“A what?”

“A kamikaze dive!” And like she’d summoned it, the black capsule ship appeared above us.

A speck.

A balloon. “Head down!”

Like an enormous, black, howling missile shooting down toward us.

“Mysha, put your damn—” The missile slammed to Earth. A deafening boom followed by screeching metal. I grabbed at my helmet like I could protect my skull from the force of that sound. The enormous black capsule had tried to pound down into the beehive like a fat iron spike. But that liquid tech must have fought back. The Sorg had only crushed the top half of the Hush ship then slid off to make a long smoking furrow in the frozen ground. Beside me, Yulia uncurled from her tuck position. Smoke shrouded us and then blew back like a flickering old movie.

The honeycomb cells of the ship had popped loose, dense hexagonal blocks as big as the entire Bungee. One rolled over the tundra toward us like a freight train barreling off a track, crystal shards digging through the ground, frozen earth shoveling loose and flying into the air. White suits popped from their “tuck in” positions and we all ran in whatever direction got us out of the way of those mirrored projectiles. I followed Yulia to a crater in the uneven tundra, and we both slid down into it. While— if she needed to—she could pop out of the hole and take off in a sprint, I didn’t have those hair trigger reflexes.

But my life as a Kansas farmer had given me plenty of experience as a lone speck of resistance to unstoppable forces. “Yulia, lay flat—” Just like I would if caught out in the fields during a tornado, I shifted deeper in the pit, kept myself as low as possible. Slivers of foreign metals, chunks of sharp ice grazed over my prone form. My drop suit protected me from most of it, but anything big and heavy would turn our tiny refuge into a grave. My fingers sought out Yulia’s hand again and she pressed the our gloved palms together.

Just as the largest pieces of the ship lay still, another shock wave flew over. An explosion of heat that knocked both of Yulia and I from our little crater. Her hand ripped from mine as I flew backward in the flaming breath of an explosion.

I couldn’t remember landing or the fall from cartwheeling through the air to lying face down on the scrubby ground. Inside my helmet the comm shrieked. We could all hear each other. Sixty voices screaming, gasping, cursing. I climbed from my crater up to an inferno.

The Hush ship had caught fire, burned hotter than anything from Earth could with violet flames leaping into the sky. Those ice tunnels running all throughout the Hush ship had the same blue and purple colors as Uranus and its frozen seas of methane. They didn’t melt, they blasted apart like giant bombs.That strange liquid metal pooled everywhere. Crystal pieces of the beehive’s windows and floors dotted the landscape like abstract ice sculptures. “What—”

A laser sliced the edge of my left arm, cut through the suit and into my skin. Blue, hot, sharp, the weapon of a mirror suited Hush. I ran. My staff! Where was it?

In my hand. Still in my hand!

Over the comm, men and women screamed in pain, the sound of Hush lasers cutting into metal, searing the ground. Through the waves of heat and rolling smoke I could see mirrored suits, hands gripping their wrists, bolts of energy pulsing. A crackling sensation moved over my arms and legs, the fizz rendered impotent as the netting in my suit deflected it. Where was Yulia? She’d been right next to me — we’d held hands…

“Yulia!” My voice echoed back to me through the comm. Another white laser darted through the smoke out toward my hip. I spun away from it. Focus. Focus. “Yulia!” I didn’t sound like a soldier calling for their comrade, I sounded like a distraught friend. “Yulia — Yulia, where are you?”

The blue and white beams grew thicker, a maze of deadly light I jumped over, ducked under. The Hush faced too many of us and couldn’t focus on a single combatant. I might have pummeled any of them with my staff, if I wanted to fight. But I’d come for something else. “Zaeth…” I ran through the mirror suits, looking for a certain set of shoulders, a curve in a waist…a stance, a walk that I knew…that I loved. I couldn’t find him. My head whipped around. Maybe he wasn’t here?

Zaeth must have left in one of the blister craft. To me, that seemed like the more important role, more fitting to Vareech’s progeny than any foot soldier. My plan to protect him depended upon so many things…things that I couldn’t count on. Who knew what orders Faesosh had given him? We might never even meet on this battlefield. God, I’d been such a fool. An idiot. My jaw set. Still, even without the opportunity to protect Zaeth, I had another reason to be here, to stay alive. I’d realized that last night, lying in the tent next to Yulia. Somewhere on the smoking chaotic tundra, another person I loved fought for her life. I needed to find Yulia.

“This is Field Commander Miguel Ángel, replacing Yulia Melnik. Wave One, continue forward. Wave Two is right behind you.”

“Ángel, this is Landon Evans — what happened to—”

“Yulia’s alive. She lost communication though, said her helmet cracked.”

Thank God. Thank Fucking God. The ground in front of me exploded, knocking me back on my ass. In front of me, a six foot crater steamed, frozen ground now hot with laser blast. That same large weapon from Everest, discharging against our push forward.

“Ángel, it’s Landon. You know—”

“I know who you are. What can you tell me, Evans?”

“Order everyone to get thicker into the fighting. That weapon isn’t as precise as it seems, and they won’t fire if we’re close to their own soldiers.”

“Got it.” Like Yulia, Ángel had a voice filled with authority. “Troops advance. All waves, advance. Get close to the ship. Stay together. Stay near the Hush.”

I sprinted toward the wreckage of the Hush and Sorg ships. If I located Yulia, if the exploding beehive missed her, I though I might find her up front. Acting the hero, of course.

The black Sorg capsule had cracked open in the middle, still able to deploy its warriors. They crawled through the flames and smoke, triple joints moving like insect limbs over the broken Hush ship cells, their own crumpled black capsule. Allied Defense hadn’t planned for that insane dive — no way in hell. And with the second Hush ship hovering over Earth, the Sorg left us vulnerable to the blast weapon. How many times could the Hush fire it? What a worthless spy I’d made aboard their ship.

There! About 20 feet ahead, near a broken chunk of cells, a white suit, blond hair. Yulia. No helmet, no staff and just a C Flow laser gun. She ran all out toward two mirrored suits. Her muscled legs pumping, ready to take them on herself.

I sprinted after her.

The Hush must have thought they had all of us on the run from the blast weapon… well they did have all of us on the run…

Only one the guards stationed outside the entrance even bothered to look toward the destruction littering the Arctic tundra. The other bent toward his companion, as if speaking to him.

Yulia leaped into the air, one leg extended in a perfect flying kick that bashed into the reflective shoulder of the Hush with his back to her. She’d have tagged him right on the helmet seal, but he flinched away just in time. They both crashed down, but the Hush sprang back up in that nimble way of all Hush. In unison, the mirrored soldiers curled their left hands over their right wrists, and crisscrossed their lasers. The maneuver would have sliced Yulia in half if she hadn’t done another leap into the Hush on her right. Her arms circled his body, pinning him in place, locking him to her chest.

Still engaged, the Hush’s wrist laser bounced wildly. It nicked the thigh of his own mirrored suit releasing a puff of gray smoke and a stripe of green blood. The other soldier ducked, then leapt back so focused on the path of searing white energy that he didn’t see me come from behind him. My metal staff pointed to the sloped juncture of the mirrored helmet. Arms tensed. I released in a forceful jab just like the one that impressed everyone in training. But the mirrored helmet didn’t fly into a cheering audience. It didn’t come off at all. The Hush slumped to the ground in front of me, his neck at a hard right angle. Broken. I’d killed him.

The slim body lay at my feet, a heap of mirrored limbs. Faceless. It shouldn’t have bothered me, but my stomach rolled over. I’d killed him. The small collapsed body filled my entire field of vision. I’d killed him.

“Landon!” Strength tech must have activated in the other Hush’s suit. He broke free from Yulia's grip and threw her in the air like a toy.

“No!” I lunged forward, raised the staff again, took a swipe toward the wrist control— that the Hush twisted away from. A sizzling yellow beam from Yulia's C Flow hit his left wrist. The reflective surface of the suit wavered to white, to black, then back to mirror. And the thigh wound he’d given himself still smoked from the burning tech. He’d taken damage. But not enough. The Hush spun and pointed his right fist at Yulia.

Cross Down—Again I had the detached sensation of my body operating on its own, performing the actions the instructors had trained into me without any decision on my part. My staff crashed against his wrist. My shoulders, my arms ached with the force against the iron hard strength of the suit tech. The mirrored suit flashed again, white, black, back to silver. The Hush retreated a step, stumbled, right hand still locked in a fist. He pointed it at me. White light touched the metal staff and it lit up like a bolt of lightning, fusing my drop gloves to its molten surface. My hands seared with pain.

Yulia leapt back toward the mirrored Hush, threw her entire body weight against him, and tackled him backward. The staff still glowed hot with whatever the Hush had done, my drop suit gloves melded into it.

The Hush rolled and slammed a hand down on Yulia's chest. Pinned her to the ground.

“No— Please!” I screamed.

All the devoted training I’d done the last two weeks had given me better flexibility. I got a boot up and stomped the glowing staff to the ground, my ruined gloves in tatters— my burned hands exposed to the air. The stinging cold on them felt like relief for just a second, then agony.

Yulia and the Hush grappled on the ground. She’d slid herself loose—or he’d let her go?

I threw myself on top of him and the Hush scrabbled like a panicked bug underneath me as I crushed him. Impotent fizz crackled over my body. Why didn’t he engage the strength feature again? Something had gone wrong in his suit, it flashed through the white-black-silver cycle like a strobe light.

His mirrored fingers curled into his palm to make the fist weapon. I rolled over, smashed his right arm to the frozen ground. The hand stayed flat underneath me. Yulia held down the left. She’d scraped her naked head against the ground and dirt, sweat and blood had smeared across her face.

Yulia's C Flow wouldn’t penetrate the suit beyond knocking some tech loose, and we didn’t know what other weapons he had stashed in the workings of his mirrored shell. How much longer did we have until someone inside the crushed beehive came looking for these two? The Sorg dive had damaged his ship, but the Hush still had one in the sky. Just one functional suit could make easy work of both Yulia and me. She must have thought the same thing, because she elbowed up toward the helmet. That wouldn’t work. Even my staff hadn’t dislodged the other one.

Underneath me, the struggling Hush went lax for a second, then twisted his hip. A charge released from the left side of the suit, something I felt like an itchy climb up and down my body. But Yulia screamed, her eyes bulging, her teeth gritting in a way I’d learned to recognize during my time in the Mars dome— the fizz. Her arms and legs clamped down harder, refusing to let go of her capture. But the fizz worked inside your head too, blocking everything else out but its hissing sear. Yulia shivered, until she fell limp and the Hush twisted free and sprang up— faster than I could think up a next move. Exhaustion weighed down every muscle. And even Yulia's bold fighting moves couldn’t defeat a mirrored suit.

And I didn’t want to fight. Behind me in a heap lay the mirrored Hush I had killed. Fragile bones and dusky green skin, long green hair under that suit. Maybe one of the wide-eyed faces who had stood beside me in the beehive’s training dojo, another squire. Another soldier. All of them at least a little bit afraid of me, how I towered over them, filled the ice tunnels with my bulk. I’d never wanted to become the thing that war tried so hard to make me. I’d never even wanted to be a soldier.

I stayed down… Enough. My hands and fingers scrabbled at my helmet, found the clasp and snapped it up and off. I wanted to breathe real Earth air one last time. Even if it had strange chemical smoke wafting through it. Heavy with the fried electric scent of laser. The rusty scent of blood. Sweat froze in my hair, and I had to squint against the stinging smoke in my eyes. Why didn’t he kill me?

The Hush stood over me, arms and legs tight with suspicion, but not moving to engage any weapon against me. The slim fingers ticked at his neck, and the helmet swiped aside like a veil. Their tech. It was amazing… miraculous…

Zaeth’s eyes flashed with black anger. “What did you hope to accomplish here, human?” Pointed shards of light, like black jewels, danced between us. “You killed a Hush. One of my clan.”

Zaeth. Zaeth… I didn’t think I would see him again. I couldn’t believe he stood in front of me now. Not a dream. He made a sound of disgust, a coughing curse in his own language.

Shaky and weak, I rose from my hands and knees to follow him as he knelt beside the fallen Hush.

Behind Zaeth, Yulia writhed in tortured pain from the fizz. “She’s my friend. That’s Yulia, I told you about her. Please… please don’t—”

“You made a lot of pretty words about peace and protecting me and I find you here with weapons to kill us.” But, he waved his fingers and cut the fizz weapon gripping Yulia. She collapsed, panting and limp.

Zaeth released the helmet from the other Hush… a pudgy elfin face. Familiar… Clatuk — a name like wooden beads spilling onto the floor. “I’m sorry… Zaeth…” Like a child crying over a word I couldn’t unspeak, a shove I couldn’t take back, a punch I couldn’t erase, I stared at the broken Hush. Hot tears burned in my eyes and throat. “I’m so sorry…” I hid my face in my hands, my shameful weeping. I had no business, no aptitude for war. When I got the recruitment orders, I should have run.

“I will ask again, human. What did you hope to accomplish here?”

“I thought you’d left in one of those little ships. That you didn’t need my protection. So…I decided to fight. I wanted to kill Faesosh.”

At my words, he reared back. “Kill? Then you lied. You lied to me.”

“I didn’t… but Zaeth, you would live in peace with us. You would be willing…maybe the others. Only Faesosh—”

“Stop speaking!” Zaeth held his fist out again, a deadly weapon at the end of his trembling arm.

Without me noticing, mirrored suits had surrounded us and Zaeth whistled commands at them that made me think of bird calls and cat cries. They used a grav beam device to drag Yulia behind us, she couldn’t keep her eyes open, her limbs had turned floppy. Inside the ship, huge chunks of ice and twisted metal formed a passageway. That liquid tech already stitching the beehive back together with what it had left.

Zaeth led us to the command room I remembered from my time onboard. I’d thought clear ice formed the floor of their operations room with a view of whatever the beehive hovered over. But with the tech engaged, it now showed the entirety of the Arctic Circle, the battle going on inside it. Hissing, whistled commands would cause an area to become enlarged and sometimes to become holo projections in front of us.

Humans swarming closer and closer to the ship where we stood— then the silver blister craft mowed them down with laser fire. A volley of Allied Defense missiles streaked from ground targeted at a single ship and it seesawed in the air. Then plunged down. Winter camo bodies rushed over it, ripped it apart. A victory for our side, but I had to look away.

Across the room I could see Faesosh, not looking as immaculate as always, his white robe torn down the right side. The jewels in his hair, the braid and loops on that same side hung loose, snarled. His dishevelment, provided the only indication that the Hush did not have this battle under their control. The watchful faces all had that same placid beauty, and silver fill hid the light that might reveal what they felt. Beside the chieftain, Zaeth stood straight and alert, long hair tucked into the neck of his mirrored suit, helmet under his arm, at the ready. Any doubt he might have had about fighting this war, I must have erased by killing his young clansman… Clatuk. Clatuk. Someone Zaeth knew and spoke to just moments before I’d broken his neck. My mouth filled with spit, but I swallowed it down. Faesosh issued an order so high pitched and shrill that my ears ached with it.

From behind me came a gasp and then Yulia's arms encircled my waist. The entire vast room had turned into a holo theater with panicked human soldiers in chaotic retreat. Huge fireballs fell from the sky, too fast, too hot. They crashed onto the tundra in smoking metal heaps. The drop ships! Above us, the remaining undamaged Hush ship started targeting our ships with their powerful grav tech and hurling them into the battle.

“The Bungee,” Yulia whispered. And, yes, I could recognize the red stripe on the five lobed ship as it fell in a bath of fire toward Earth. My eyes shut against the impact… Mekhi. Tory. Riggs. The four eager new replacements — finally assigned to a drop ship after years of space station service. I hadn’t bothered to learn their names. I forced my eyes back open. The Bungee’s titanium walls crumpled in on themselves, the wreckage looked compressed, and the interior leaked red flame and smoke. Some of the Sorg had survived the kamikaze dive into the Hush ship… maybe… maybe… But no human could have survived that crash. The holo focus moved out to take in the whole of the battle. Downed drop ships scattered across the field of tanks and foot soldiers. A shield weapon I’d never seen before blew Allied Defense’s jets and missiles back past the circle boundary. The silver blisters picked off the retreating humans. We were getting slaughtered.

Yulia slumped against me, still dizzy and nauseous from the fizz. I knew those effects well, but I could also feel her body tense. Her muscles contracted and released as she tested their efficacy. My Yulia, she would fight to her last breath.

“Don’t, Yulia. Don’t,” I whispered.

But she didn’t listen to me, and leapt from my side. Yulia dashed across the room toward Faesosh. A foolhardy, desperate run that only lasted until one of the Hush command noticed. An inconsequential human captive had broken free? An easy problem to solve…the flick of a wrist… a tap to the waist. Yulia writhed on the ground and then didn’t, another fallen human in the holo battle tableau.

“Yulia?” My voice came out cracked and wheezing, sounding more like the Hush language than my own. “Yulia!”

A Hush in silky gray robes stepped over her inert body. “Calm yourself, human.”

I lunged toward where my friend lay, but mirrored-handed guards stopped me in their steel grip. Vareech stood in front of me in his flowing gray robes and sparkling gray jewels, the long wizard hair that flowed to his knees. But I didn’t care about him. About anything he might say to me.

“Yulia!” I thought I saw movement, the rise and fall of breathing. “Please!” My plea meant for for my friend, not the indifferent Hush. Don’t die, Yulia. Don’t leave me behind. But Vareech hissed a reply and the mirrored hands released me so I could stumble to her, pull her into my arms.

Yulia's eyes slitted open. “Hey, babe. You okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah… if you are.” My arms locked around her with all the strength I had. “You stay with me.”

Our commotion, now that their victory seemed assured, had finally captured Faesosh’s attention. He glided toward where I sat crumpled on the floor holding my friend. The other Hush parted and hung back, mirror-suited soldiers and uniformed operations personnel. Zaeth followed in his chieftain’s wake, not looking down. I’d angered and disappointed him. He wouldn’t try to defend me or make me his squire this time. But, even if he could not forgive me, I would die thankful that he had survived. And even if the Hush chieftain’s plans came to pass, with Zaeth as his tool, I would die loving him still.

“Vareech, you have proven correct in the amalgamation of your progeny.” Faesosh spoke in English, instead of Hush, his words meant for me. “In his actions today, Zaeth has proven a loyal replacement.” Faesosh made a sweeping hand gesture, eyebrows raised, unlike any self-respecting Hush should look, not with their trained severity, the paucity of their emotional displays. He meant the gesture to take in the battle, their victory, but also me, slumped on the floor holding Yulia in my arms. “He has even returned my favorite… pet.”

“No.”

Faesosh’s eyes lost their silver fill and charcoal light danced over my head. “You still defy us? I allowed you the honor of becoming our soldier, serving me beside Zaeth. Yet you chose to fight against us with the rest of your inferior species.” He made a pouting frown that looked like mockery, but I think he meant it as play. He believed me fully under his control, his creature, his thing. Victory had made him giddy. “I will even allow you to keep your companion there. She appears quite the human specimen, what tenacity! And I suppose I should keep some of the females alive for…breeding.” Then Faesosh tittered at just the mention of human reproduction methods. That wind chime laughter sounded tinny and harsh from his throat.

I pulled Yulia to my chest and heaved both of us up. She got her arms around my neck to pull herself straight.”Poshel na huy,” she spat at him. “Go to hell!”

Now, Faesosh grimaced in that horrible approximation of a human smile. Forced and awful looking. “Hell? We Hush do not subscribe to your human after-life mythos.” He looked around the room, that unHush grin on his face. Hands on his hips —a thorough imitation of human expression, even as he mocked us.

The motionless placid elfin faces stared back, silver filled eyes disguising their own humor or disgust, I couldn’t tell. Zaeth continued staring forward, not meeting my eyes, not looking my way. An automaton. The piece of my heart that I had lost forever.

Vareech stepped forward to command Faesosh’s attention. “My progeny has indeed readied himself for his purpose. Only this last connection to the humans remains to be dealt with… Landon Evans, the grower of plants…” Knowing their beliefs, this title sounded nearly honorific, but Vareech followed it with a severe proclamation. “He is unfortunately also a human soldier. He has revealed himself as such when he slayed a Hush of our clan. There is no purpose for him here. If our clan hopes to subdue this planet, to take the resources here and to end the human parasite infestation, we can have no purposeless humans.”

The silver filled eyes surrounding us then showed approval. Light leaking out that Faesosh could not ignore. “Very well, we will kill these two and find others to breed into soldiers.” A raised hand with a prominent white jeweled ring pointed my way.

But Vareech raised his own weathered hand and placed it over his leader’s. “Then, Chieftain, allow me to offer my guidance. As a last act in his training, I believe that we should give my progeny the task of ending these two unimportant human lives. Zaeth allowed the human to escape the first time, something he has now demonstrated regret for.” Vareech turned to face his creation, and Zaeth’s eyes nearly lost the silver fill to a shifting kaleidoscope of light underneath. “Kill them here. In front of us. Make your final choice to accept the role for which you were created.”

Zaeth stepped forward. At last his eyes met mine. I expected fear to numb me, terror at facing my death, but it didn’t come. Sorrow at losing him clouded over any other feeling. And also, sorrow at Zaeth losing himself to this purpose. Zaeth lifted his arms, left wrist in front, right hand hovered over. Yulia buried her face against my shoulder. I closed my eyes.

The flash of the blue laser, that camera shutter sound it made. How did I hear it, but not… My eyes opened.

Faesosh lay dead on the floor at Zaeth’s feet. The white robes smoldering under the cooling laser fire. His eyes open, colorless. His chest a blackened hole, showing the floor beneath it, the battle playing out in the floor’s tech.

None of the Hush moved to arrest or restrain Zaeth. And I wondered if they could, they had never touched or talked to him before. The royal genes in his makeup had always prevented them. They didn’t tackle him to the ground or point weapons at him, the way human troops would at the murder of their commander. The placid looks remained, although the silver fill in many eyes fought to cover flashes of color. Deep charcoal, blinding white, and every shade between the two.

A long moment passed where Vareech and Zaeth watched each other, Zaeth’s left hand still poised over his right wrist. The wrist that I’d thought I had disabled with my staff. Zaeth had faked it, hadn’t killed Yulia even after I’d murdered his clan brother.

And then I saw what Zaeth saw. Vareech let the silver fill slip, just a little, just for Zaeth, without caring what the human prisoners could see. Dappled sunlight… then the flat silver blocked it out again. Oh… those royal genes…Vareech hadn’t created a replacement for himself, he’d created one for Faesosh.

“Explain yourself.” Vareech’s voice didn’t command this time, he used the same respectful low tones he had with his clan leader.

Zaeth gave a quick nod of understanding. He turned to the other Hush and his voice rang out like wind chimes, like ice against a window pane and water rushing over stones. Then he dipped down and pulled one of the white jewels from Faesosh’s dead body and pinned it in his own dark hair, the new Hush Chieftain.

Veteran

On the battlefield no one knew whether to retreat, to fight on. The coordination fell apart on the comms and even behind the lines. The chunks of the ice ship reacted to Earth’s air in unexpected ways— gusts of colored gasses, with stinging droplets of foreign liquid surging through the air.

“When the drop ships started going down, Commander De Luca released my beam. I landed in the middle of everything, no weapon, no idea what had happened and… “ Belle dragged her wild frazzled braids up off her neck. Retelling the story had made nervous sweat dampen her temples. She’d met Yulia, Adil, and me at the enlisted club. Well, just outside the enlisted club at one of the rickety picnic tables. Everyone drank way too much in the nights following the battle against the Hush, and the club overflowed with people as soon as it opened its doors in the afternoon. Yulia paid way too much for a bottle of Suntory Toki Whisky for us to pass around under monstrous heat blowers.

“Did De Luca make it?” I asked Belle.

“Who?” With the blowers cranked up, we had to lean in to say or hear anything.

“Commander De Luca!”

“Oh.” Belle sat back with her forehead scrunched. “I don’t know? He saved my life and I forgot all about him…” In the last three days, she hadn’t once removed Rigg’s half burnt up orange and black football jersey. My stomach squeezed every time I saw that Colby Eagles logo, its swooping black bird so prominent in my past. Now charred and stained with Belle’s tears, the familiar mascot reflected back to me as if in a funhouse mirror. Belle tied her unruly hair in a top knot, took a tremulous breath. “I just remember fire coming down from the sky and… trying to run.” She waved a hand in front of her face, she’d finished as much of the story as she could or would tell. Yulia shook the bottle in front of her and she knocked back another swig, then offered it to Adil who waved it away.

He never drank with us, but he always sat and talked or listened when we needed him. That was just Adil’s way. “I saw the Bungee, a part of it as it fell.” Adil picked up Belle’s hand, clasped it between both of his. “They died in space, I believe. They did not suffer the entire fall.”

God, I hated trying to imagine the battle from inside the Bungee, all the drop ships getting picked off one by one with that devastating Hush pulse laser. “Give me the bottle,” I said. I used to hate the stuff— flavored whisky, fucking disgusting. But the burn felt good, felt right, a little pain to go with the numbing effects of the booze.

Yulia, always so big in her loyalty, her gusto for the fight, also mourned with full abandon. Big round tears rolling down her sunburnt cheeks, she wiped her nose against her sleeve and made an unabashed shuddering sob. “Mekhi knew. He have to know. He try to engage grav beam in last seconds before pulse. He try to save crew.”

Squad Leader Mekhi Porter, Scout Jensen Brown, Chief Gun Arnie Richt, Gunners Chu Lin and Glen Helkum, and Sweeper Reginald “Riggs” Hotson had all died on impact.

Only Yulia, Adil, Belle and I gathered for a makeshift funeral at the crash site. In one of the hospital bio bubbles, Tory recovered from gas poisoning and burns. I thought he’d died with the others, but he’d already dropped into the battle, Wave 7, and gotten caught by the wreckage of another drop ship when it came down. We’d taken shifts to sit at his bedside, held his hand, read to him, shook him awake when nightmares made him cry in his sleep. He’d have a lot of scars, but the doctors assured us that Tory would live. His brother and sister had arrived from Orbit 3 and Orbit 2 the second evening, so we could rest. But the four of us remaining couldn’t sleep and had decided to say some words over the smelted wreck of the Bungee. Which meant that Adil, Belle, and I had waited for Yulia to say them.

She’d cleared her throat. Cleared it again. “Everything I want to say… Bozhe moy, too much anger and… Adil, maybe you should sing prayer? Like for Ding.”

I didn’t understand the words, but the song had trailed out like the smoke, winding its way through the eery stillness of a place that just two days earlier had erupted with violence and death.

When a recovery team dropped nearby to drag out the corpses, we decided to get the Japanese whisky. “So the new leader, this Zaeth,” Belle slurred. “He just let you both go?”

Yulia had one hell of a poker face. She’d kept all the parts of the story that pointed to my relationship with Zaeth a secret. Even from Alain. “Yep. Not typical suka Hush. New boss want peace.”

Belle blew her nose on the hem of her t-shirt. “I hate them all. We should pretend to accept the Hush terms and then kill the rest of them.”

I took the whisky bottle from her again and set it back on the table. “No. We shouldn’t. The fighting is over, and we should want it to stay over.”

Yulia grabbed the neck of the bottle and raised it up before taking a deep swig. “Amen to that. War over.”

Adil cocked his head at her. Despite not drinking, exhaustion rolled over him like one of the tanks outside, and he seemed as woozy as the rest of us. “Yulia, I am surprised to hear that from you. You were always so eager to go into battle.”

“I just want to fight for friends… planet.” She swirled the amber liquid at the bottom of the bottle, threatening to bring it to her lips yet again.

“Is that so?” Only Adil could ask that question and have it sound like genuine curiosity instead of sarcasm.

“No…Eh, in start of war I was little bit zhopa… I think fighting…” Yulia shrugged instead of saying the word… Fun. She’d had a good time fighting those drop skirmishes, even if she would never admit it now. “Shit change. Everything is pizdets after they take Landon.” She glanced at me with a grim expression that reminded me of my first days back and how changed I’d found her. “But they give him back, so… Make more sense to stop. That battle…they could demolish us, no problem, and keep going. Truce is better.” Yulia pushed away from the picnic table with both hands and arched her back, even muffled under her camo and a parka, I could hear her spine crack. “Damn that feel good.”

“So what are you doing next?” I realized I hadn’t yet asked her. Too worried about how she might take my own news I guess.

“I’m staying with Allied Defense, what else? Korva! I can’t think of what else to do. And now I am commander…” Yulia decided not to take another drink. Instead slamming the bottle onto the table and pushed it away from her. She slumped forward and rested her chin on her fists. “Alain say I should apply to Counsel.” Her face crumpled, she let loose a long morose sigh.

“But that’s good isn’t it?” I hiccuped.

Yulia did that eyebrow-raise thing at me. “Only if good mean the same thing as boring.”

We all laughed because damn it felt great to be alive. And drunk. Even with the raw hole left by Mekhi and Riggs and the others. The aching worry for Tory.

And, for me, the secret anxiety for Zaeth. I would see him tomorrow at the official signing of the truce between all three planets, Hush, Sorg, and Earth. Alain wanted both Yulia and me there. I think he sensed we played a bigger part in the way things ended than just observers to the switch of power from Faesosh to Zaeth.

I’d eaten as much sage as I could get my hands for the last several days but my sleep, when I could sleep, remained dreamless. I woke up unmarked, but with a nervous pit in my stomach.

The next morning, Yulia threw herself on my bunk inside the barracks. She had a nice cushy room to herself as an officer, plus access to the even nicer suite where Alain stayed, but she still ended up taking naps or spending the night on my flat squeaky mattress. “Anything? Dream lover take more bite of you,” She spoke from the side of her mouth, a stab at subtlety.

I sat on top of her legs to tie my drop boots up. “Nope. And keep your voice down.” Dirt and black soot had made them unrecognizable as the white and beige camo set issued to me before the battle. I missed the old work boots I’d left back home. I missed the person those work boots had belonged to.

“Why that face?” Yulia pointed at me.

“What face?”

She scooted free of where my butt pinned her down to sit cross-legged on the bunk. “You look like when I first met you, big homesick country mouse wanting his mama. Or when we first join up with Bungee and you need to puke after drop. Is this… is this because of him?”

“He hates me now, probably. I killed one of his clansmen. But no, it’s not just him.”

“Pfft. Don’t be stupid suka. He don’t hate you. He stop whole war for you. Then what else—” Yulia's eyes got big and shiny, and she sucked her lips in like she wanted to stop herself from saying the words.

“I want out, Yulia. Killing that …His name was Clatuk. He was a kid…their version of a kid. Killing him was the end for me. I talked with one of those annoying holo-doctors and she recommended my ‘compassionate dismissal.’” I kept my eyes on my hands, not wanting to see the anger or hurt that I’d caused her, my best friend. A better friend than I deserved.

Her pale hands covered mine. “Ahh… there you are my Mysha. My touchstone. You finally come back to me.”

My head shot up. “You aren’t…” and now I could hear tears in my own voice while Yulia remained stoic and brave like always. “I’m going to miss you so much, Yulia…” a truly embarrassing hitch cut off my words.

“You think I let you? Now with end of world not coming, I will get some actual leave. Country mouse better have place ready for me at farm paradise.”

“You’ll have your own room, ready for whenever you want it. Okay?” I didn’t wait for her to answer and wrapped her in my arms, squeezing until she grunted.

“Gah —too tight! Too tight!” But she squashed me against her just as much. I’d always wondered how I would have made it through the training and everything else if I hadn’t had her friendship, and maybe I’d given something back to her too. Maybe, I’d filled the role of touchstone after all.

Allied Defense erected a white tent on the circle’s border as the meeting place to officially finalize the truce. Governing Council would have agreed to almost anything to broker peace. But the Hush didn’t ask for much, not as much as Alain predicted they would. I got the impression Alain no longer trusted me, if he ever really had. He’d sniffed out that Yulia and I weren’t telling the whole truth and he didn’t like it. But either he couldn’t prove anything or he really did love Yulia and decided to let her have her secrets. Alain explained that the Hush and Council leaders would both ratify their terms with palm prints, although I don’t think leaving a palm print had any meaning to a Hush.

Alain frowned when I told him that. “The entire concept of a truce seemed very foreign to them?”

After withdrawing from the battle and escorting Yulia and me back outside the circle, the Hush broadcast their demands over a direct channel that Allied Defense had believed secure. “In regard to the cessation of warfare and Hush willingness to spare human life…” Typical arrogant Hush speak, but also the truth. They’d accepted our surrender without us asking for one. Allied Defense lucked out in the wording, that Hush considered any compromise at all, any show of mercy, to be a concession.

The Hush intended to keep the territory inside the circle, and expected all neighboring lands and occupants surrounding it to uphold Hush beliefs on the sanctity of plant life, on the purity of water, the untampered continuance of the natural world.

Alain looked at me. “Is there some other way to mark the end of war and commencement of cooperation?”

“Well, now there is.” In all Zaeth’s stories, the winners wiped out the losers completely, then grew plants in the soil of their bodies.

“Ah. We will proceed with palm prints.”

Yulia and I stood behind Alain, the gray haired councilwoman and two other men, delegates from Russia and Norway. Outside the tent, another thirty soldiers stood at attention. We all wore drop suits, but not helmets and my nose and cheeks ached with the cold.

My mixed-blood Sorg commander had survived, and he appeared in the tent with three other Sorg as retinue or guards. In deference to the cold, they’d added a layer of patched leaves and wool to their white wrappings, although they still shivered and growled in the freezing Nunavut spring. In all the business of negotiations and recovery, no one remembered that the chieftain and I had history. But I pretended not to recognize him. And after the initial baring of teeth in my direction, he pretended not to notice me. Really, the Sorg had no role in the tent. Once the Hush ship knitted back together by the liquid metal tech, the Hush expelled the Sorg from the circle along with their broken, still burning capsule. Then refused to contact the Sorg home world to rescue them. And, Allied Defense didn’t want them either, not after that Kamikaze dive and complete disregard for the battle plans. But we all had to deal with their presence until another capsule vessel could make the journey across two galaxies. It gave the chieftain a nice long time to put a spin on the truce and work it into a suitable legend of his valor.

The Hush arrived by grav beam. Five mirrored suits in the standard diamond formation. Inside the tent, even the Sorg balked at a meeting with those faceless reflective suits. Alain recovered before anyone else and tapped the gray-haired councilwoman on the arm. “The prisoner?” he whispered.

“Oh, of course.” She pressed something on her handheld, and Allied Defense soldiers led a frail looking Hush forward. They’d put him in one of our white and beige camo drop suits and he swam inside the loose fabric. When the humans released him, the diamond opened to make a spot for him and he stood in place with the others, Zaeth at the front of the formation. How had I not recognized him by the destroyed beehive? My certainty that he’d led the charge of blister craft perhaps had a human bias. He would never need to prove himself in battle like a human, nor work his way up the ranks. Vareech had created him for command. My heart sped up, but I tried not to show my nervousness, or my heartbreak. He had ordered Yulia and I removed from his presence and returned to Allied Defense. We were to explain the change in Hush leadership, that the new clan chieftain had commanded a truce.

Both Zaeth and Vareech removed the mirrored helmets before entering the tent. On Zaeth’s brow, a circlet of white crystal glowed. Even with his eyes cold, blank, and filled with flat silver, I thought him beautiful, ethereal. Like brokering terms with a fairy prince and not a soldier clansman. He set his palm against the treaty without expression or comment. The picture of Hush dignity in his detachment. Vareech caught my eye in that moment and light rimmed the silver hiding his eyes. A message of satisfaction that I had served as unwitting accomplice in bringing his plan to fruition.

I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to think I’d worked to use Zaeth in any scheme or helped the aged Hush with his. A huge burden had fallen on Zaeth’s shoulders as leader. The welfare of his clan, the envy and plots of others, the need to present the ideal that his role demanded. He didn’t look my way, but I didn’t expect him to either. In the Hush operations room, he’d acted on my wishes, my begging him to end the war. He couldn’t afford to appear susceptible to the whims of love again.

Alain bowed as I had instructed him to do, chin touching his neck. Then, Zaeth turned and disappeared inside the knot of mirrored suits and a shimmering blue beam sucked them all away. The war had ended.

Grower

“We kept the back fields up, kept ‘em planted.” Buck tipped his chin to indicate the long stretch of leafy green okra plants. I remembered the barley I’d seen from the beehive. Faesosh’s creepy faked smile. His manic plans. I couldn’t hide the shiver that wracked my body, and Buck saw it too. He still wanted the those back fields of my farm adjacent to his land. He didn’t even bother to hide his shit-eating certainty that I’d just let him take them.

Both of them, Buck and Tonia had come over as soon as I got home, insisted I get in their work truck so they could show me around my own farm, like I might have forgotten my home, the land that I’d worked all my life. I’d left the black of space and fighting aliens to walk right back into the war against my half-siblings. My sister and her husband trying to take possession of the farm that Mom and I called home. And Rhett, who worked in town, but still wanted Mom to move in with him and his wife and kids. For my siblings, I would always just be an unwanted product of Mom’s second marriage.

“I don’t think my mother even came out on this field once in the last three years,” Tonia added. I’d forgotten how she always said, “my mother” — like I didn’t belong in the family at all because I had a different father. Usually I let it slide.

“She’s my mother too, Tonia.”

My sister’s cheeks flushed. Most likely from anger rather than embarrassment. “It’s just a way of saying it, Landon. Don’t be such a baby about everything.”

Why had I ever confused the holo-therapist program with her? My sister would never ask how I felt or how I experienced a situation. She only looked for ways to poke at whatever vulnerability she saw in me. Both she and Rhett would never get over our mother’s loving Marcus Evans more than their father, the audacity of her to have another child. I had come so long after them, and grew up an interloper in their childhood home — and now I owned that home and claimed it for myself. I understood their resentment, but not their taking it out on me. And I wouldn’t allow it any longer.

“Now that I’m home, I’ll be taking the farm back.” I crossed my arms over my chest, let my old flannel pull tight against all the extra bulky muscles I’d grown in three years of training and combat. I did the chin tip back at Buck. The one he made toward my back field. “All of it.”

My sister let out a hard bark of laughter that had nothing to do with humor. “You could barely keep up the place before taking a four year break from it. How do you expect—”

“Four year break? I fought in a war, Tonia. I spent that time trying to save lives. Your life, the lives of your boys.”

Now Tonia’s whole face reddened with angry blood. The local news made a big deal about me coming back home — a hero of Nunavut. A former prisoner of war. A witness to the signing of the Milky Way Truce. It must have eaten her up after all the times she predicted how I would fail at everything I ever tried.

“You and Rhett are always welcome here, Tonia. But the farm is mine…and Mom’s. You and Buck can keep what the back fields pull in this harvest. But, this is the last time you’ll plant on my land.”

“You…Your land!”she sputtered. “It’s my home. I grew up here, and you stole it!”

Buck had gone real quiet since taking in my new stronger, older physique. A lifetime of struggle against the land, back-breaking work, had given him an appreciation for strength, both mental and physical. “Tonia, Landon grew up here too. Your ma put the deed in his name.” He turned from his wife to me. “Hell, she refused to change it, even when they told us you died up there.” He gave the blue sky above us a squinted consideration. Then gave me the same critical eye. He must have decided to treat me like a man instead of a kid, because he put his calloused hand out for me to shake.

I would always see him as a bully, and he’d probably always act like one. But, that handshake felt like the one Riggs had given me when I first came back to the Bungee — respect stripped of all affection or acceptance. An unspoken agreement to stay out of each other’s way. I let them take the truck back themselves, with Tonia talking loud and heated about how I robbed her of her childhood home and my dad and I had ruined her life. It didn’t bother me at all to hear how much she hated me. To have Buck’s indifferent respect. But the way the boys had hid behind their parents, stayed scrunched down in the truck bed instead of tugging at me for attention the way they would have before I left. I’d left on that rocket three, almost four, years ago. That’s a long time for a little kid. Well, it’s a long time for anyone, but especially a little kid. Half their entire lives. Little Harold peeked his head out the truck bed as they drove away, his wiry fingers poking up beside him in a sort of wave goodbye. Then, I walked the 60 acres back toward home by myself.

Spending time on my own would still take some getting used to, even though I used to prefer it. Since boarding the rocket as a new recruit, I’d spent every moment with other people. And mostly in close quarters. I’d forgotten how solitary I’d led my normal life, long hours on a tractor, tromping though fields. Even my downtime I’d spent alone, reading usually. Since getting back, I’d decided to go through all my old favorites, and a stack of books sat beside my bed and another near the back door — I liked to take one down with me and read it in the shade of the cottonwoods beside Mom. A little brook meandered through the ravine between the white bark trees, and I’d watch tadpoles and minnows dancing over the rocky stream bed. Their busy lives happening oblivious to the drama on dry land— family, alien invasion.

When I got home, I found Mom in the kitchen with a smudge of flour on her cheek as she rolled out dough for a pizza. She paused the rolling pin and put a hand to her mouth. Whenever I entered a room with her in it, she misted over like I’d just stepped off the train from Canada. “Oh, Landon…”

I came and kissed her on the top of her graying head. “When you gonna cut that out, Mom? I just went out to the back field, not Mars.” She’d gotten thinner and shakier in our time apart. Older than just three and half years would have made her. She said that without me to cook for, she just hadn’t felt like eating. I made sure to ask for all the foods I’d missed the most so I could fatten her up again. “Oh man, pizza! I want ham and three cheese…and green pepper…” I reached past her to pluck some of the mozzarella from a bowl and she slapped my hand away.

“Wait ‘til it’s done. You’ll ruin your dinner!”

“Has that ever happened, Mom? Even one time?”

Between the two of us, we ate the entire pizza. Mom pulled a peach pie out of the fridge. “Still hungry?”

“Always.” Dusk had settled over the yard and fields, and I still had to do a last check on the animals that night. “I can go into town tomorrow, if you want anything.”

“Hmmm,” she said. “We still need a new seed drill.” She cut me a huge slice of the pie and a smaller one for herself. She caught my smile and smiled back. “You could stop in at Hotson’s.”

“Hmm…yeah maybe…”

“You’ll have to go in there eventually, kiddo. It’ll be easier after the first time,” Mom said. She reached her hand out to squeeze mine.

“Okay… Yeah. I guess so.”

I would have to face Riggs’ dad there at Hotson’s Farm and Hardware. Mom and I hadn’t talked at all about the weeks that Allied Defense had declared me killed in action. I dreaded the grief behind those misty looks. Even if she could handle that discussion, I didn’t feel ready to talk about it. My heart couldn’t take it.

The next day, I parked my truck in front of the store, steeled myself to go inside. The little bell over the door rang, but Gene Hotson didn’t look up from his bookkeeping. Guess he’d noticed me already after I sat for so long in my truck like a coward.

“Your ma called ahead.” Mr. Hotson pulled a farm catalogue out from under the counter. “She said you’re needing a new seed drill. “ He had that familiar pinched expression on his face. “Heard from Buck that she ran it into the mud and busted two of the blades.” Like Mom, he’d gotten thinner, grown faded-looking since I’d last seen him. His hair had turned wispy and the fluorescent lights reflected off his shiny head. “Should have just let your brother-in-law take over the whole place, in my opinion.”

I gritted my teeth and flipped the catalogue open. “It wasn’t a big deal. The seed drill is older than I am. We should have—”

“You mean you should have replaced it before galavanting off to space. You left your mother to handle that entire farm herself, and didn’t even…she wasn’t ready for that.” Mr. Hotson threw his notebook inside the register drawer and slammed it shut. “Kids are selfish these days, more selfish than they were back in my day. You all want excitement and…” he waved one hand in the air, a spiral of circles that didn’t mean anything I could decipher.

Excitement? If he thought I’d gone looking for… I stabbed a finger on the counter. “I got recruited, Mr. Hotson. They came for me. It wasn’t my choice to go!” Riggs had wanted to go, had joined up. But not me. They’d drafted me.

Mr. Hotson had gotten on a roll and acted like he didn’t even hear me. “Back in my day — we knew to take care of our families. We saw to it they were never just left high and dry—” Mr. Hotson ripped the catalogue out from under my hands and rolled it up like he wanted to swat me with it.

“I never wanted to leave. I never wanted to fight. They made me.”

Mr. Hotson blew air out his nostrils like an angry bull and smacked the rolled catalogue on the counter.

We both just stared at each other, mad as hell at the same damn thing. Just not each other. “Sorry,” I mumbled.

Mr. Hotson cleared his throat. “I think Dan Wellis is thinking of selling his seeder come fall. He’s gettin a bigger one, damn fool with too much money. You oughta just buy his. It’s a good machine.”

I nodded. “Sounds alright.”

“You’re gonna need replacements for the busted blades though. Let me check in back.”

“Yeah.” I wiped my sweaty palms against my jeans. It took a lot of deep breaths and willpower to stand around waiting on those blades, but I made myself do it. Mom had said coming here would get easier after the first time. I just hoped she was right.

The ride home didn’t take long, and my mind had drifted to fall crops… Spinach and kale always sold well. I could plant winter wheat in the back fields once Buck cleared out of them. Mom would plan better than me. The physicality of farming drew me in more than the planning. I liked readying the land and planting, tending to the crops to help them thrive. I liked the translated Hush word for farmer, “grower” because it highlighted those caretaking parts of the job.

My near-ancient Ford kicked up a lot of dust on the gravel turn-off from Route 24, clouds of it in a dry summer like this. And, as I said, my mind had already strayed to crops and chores. So I didn’t even notice the bright blue uniforms guarding the wooden gate to our drive.

I slowed my truck, but they didn’t approach me. Unfamiliar faces showed through the visors of blue helmets. Not uniforms then, drop suits. Heavy laser guns in their arms. And when I got closer, the charred meat scent of space and laser wafted into my open windows. “What—”

“Just proceed, sir.”

“Oh-kay…” I kept the truck at a noisy crawl as I neared the farmhouse. What the hell was going on? My heart beat in my throat as I imagined all the different types of bad news that would necessitate a drop soldier escort. Where was Yulia right now? Had Tory’s health reversed? Did Alain decide to reverse my discharge orders? Then something whited out my vision like a camera flash. The sun had just crested the roof of our house to beat down full-strength into the scraggly yard. And it reflected hot and blinding from a mirrored blister craft.

“What the… “ I drove right up to the kitchen door before I killed the engine, and leapt from the truck to the ground. “Mom? Mom, are you—”

Inside the kitchen I found Mom…and Zaeth… on opposite sides of the kitchen, facing off with tense bodies and strangled expressions. Two glasses of ice tea sweated on the little kitchen table, as if my mother had tried to offer them to the Hush Chieftain, unaware that the idea of sitting at the same table with a human woman, a mother, must have horrified him.

And Zaeth had that silver fill in his eyes, giving him the look of an animated statue, something regular people only saw in horror holos or nightmares. At least he’d left behind his reflective suit. Instead he wore white pants and a thin white tunic, the white circlet on his brow. My mother wouldn’t recognize the white color as denoting a leader, but that circlet couldn’t be anything besides a stand-in for a crown.

“Landon, you have a visitor,” Mom squeaked.

“I can see that.” And there would be no hiding what that visitor meant to me. Not from Mom. All the air had left my lungs and I couldn’t have ripped my eyes from Zaeth’s perfect face even if the entire farmhouse suddenly burst into flames. He had come. For me. As Hush Chieftain, he had no reason to visit a lowly human ground soldier. But I was no inconsequential human to Zaeth. He’d come to see me because he missed me. Because I meant something to him, even though Hush had no word for love.

“Hello, Landon.” His low musical voice, free of blame and full of relief had me swiping at my face, worried about tears or sweat. “May I speak with you privately?”

My reaction had softened Mom’s shock. “Honey, why don’t you take your friend down to the cottonwoods? The shade by the brook is so nice this time of day,” she said.

I must have agreed because the two of us had walked half the way across the yard and down into the sweet corn before I noticed my surroundings again. The cluster of green leafed trees peeked out of the long ravine on the edge of the field.

“You are well, Landon?”

“Yes…You?” He let the silver slip away and flickering curious light took its place.

I wanted to take his hand, but I didn’t know if he’d allow it outside a dream. “I’ve imagined showing you this place so many times.” A self conscious laugh bubbled out. “It’s special to me. My favorite spot on our land.”

He followed me down the tree root steps to the shaded bank of the stream. My feet sunk into the boggy ground. A chunk of flat limestone jetted out from the water, my favorite place to sit. Without thinking, I turned to offer him my hand to step up. He froze, light from his eyes traveling from my outstretched hand to my face.

Zaeth might have come from a different planet, a different galaxy, but he looked like he belonged in that dappled sanctuary more than I did as he stood among the tall fissured trunks and bright green foliage, the shimmering brook water and spiky cinnamon fern. In his white clothing and long flowing hair, he looked like a fairy prince at the threshold of his kingdom. He placed his hand in mine. “It is… beautiful. More beautiful to stand here with you now than when I saw it from the ship.”

“I’m glad you came,” I blurted out. “That you still…care. And I’m… I’m so sorry about Clatuk. I didn’t mean to kill him, but I did. I’ll never forgive myself for it.”

“I have killed too, Landon. War means killing. But now I am in a position to keep us from war.”

“Because you’re chieftain now.”

“It is my purpose. Now, it is my purpose.” The little furrow appeared between his sculpted brows and the light of his eyes turned a shade darker. I wanted to ask about Vareech, about who would replace the old Hush now. About who Zaeth could trust…As the chieftain, he would have no need for a squire. And that meant he was more alone than ever.

Anything I might ask felt personal, felt like an insult to his Hush stoicism.

“I have come to see if you are well, Landon. But I also wish to ask… if I may visit you again…”

“Here?”

“Yes, but also…” He didn’t say anything about dreams, and I would have bet every acre of the farm that I was the only human who knew about the phase, what the Hush could do. Or who knew why the Hush really wanted sage.

“Of course. Yeah, I would like that very much.” I couldn’t resist and my free hand crossed the space between us, fingers traced the long line of forest green hair from the glowing circlet to his waist. He closed his eyes and swayed under my touch.

“Sage,” he whispered. “You will need sage.”

“I’ll plant a field of the stuff.” But Mom also had jars of it dried and stacked in the cellar. All the stock we couldn’t sell once the war started. I hadn’t dared to open any of the jars, to swallow the dried herb. The phase relied on Zaeth coming for me, not just eating sage on my end. It would break my heart to take it and just wake up in the morning without having traveled. And I hadn’t trusted that he still wanted me. “I’ll take some tonight.”

“Yes. Then I will come for you.”

He left in the blister craft before the grav beam arrived to scoop away the Allied Defense soldiers. Mom had brought them down a tray of iced tea that they’d ignored with the same determination as the Hush chieftain. And they’d given me a lot of suspicious glances that reminded me of Cricket and Inya’s faces back in the Mars dome. But I still had my status as a hero of Nunavut, so they didn’t give voice to any of their opinions.

As the beam took them out, Mom twisted an arm around my waist and hugged me into her side like she’d done for most of my life…ever since I got too big to pick up and carry. “It’s good to have you home,” she said, and she patted my curling hair. I felt the coils spring when her hand drew back. “You belong here, with me… with the cottonwoods.” And I knew that she meant with her and my dad. His ashes that had blown through the leaves, had settled at the tree roots and grown up into the trunks and branches.

“Yeah.” I hugged her back, and I think I pulled her a little off her feet when I did it. “It’s good to be home.”

About the Author

Alex Timothy writes urban science fiction and fantasy stories, YA and angst. An ex-dancer with a sugar addiction and an over-active imagination, Alex spends a lot of time drinking coffee and pacing the room while muttering. It’s hard to find what matters in this chaotic world.

Acknowledgements

Thank you, thank you, thank you so much James and Lesley-Ann for reading this book line by line at least twice. I also want to thank my biggest cheerleaders, Robbie and Nina for all the support and encouragement. And special thanks to Alicia for all the advice and hand-holding.