Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

ALINA

A lina decided she had to get back to work two days after the invasion.

Invasion.

It was a big word that should have felt weightier when it came to her mind, but Alina found it difficult to feel the gravity of the situation. Part of her thought it still couldn't be real… Uhyre were the stuff of legends and nightmares. Scary stories their parents told them in the dark. It was hard to process that this was happening. Colossal , her home, was the greatest and best-armed colony ship in existence. The thought that it could not only be breached but by actual monsters seemed too far removed from reality to internalize.

Alina had spent the entire day prior cooped up in her cabin, bundled defensively in her mother's old rainbow quilt. She binged Old Earth sitcoms while waiting for a knock on the door to escort her down to the CRD. The chime never came, which for Alina was a sign that Kaia either forgot about her or still wanted her services after all.

It was the one glimmer of light in this entire situation. The glimmer only lasted a moment as Alina remembered she still had no idea what Threxin's decision on their fate would be. Had he decided? When would they know? When the aliens came to take them away for slaughter?

But for now Kaia had chosen to keep her around, so Alina was determined to keep her head down and do her job to the best of her ability. That started with bringing Kaia her breakfast for their morning triage.

Alina came face to face with an uhyre guard patrolling her hallway just as her cabin door hissed open. The sudden proximity of the armed and armored monster made her breath hitch and her spine go rigid.

"I… I need to get to work," she said as the uhyre glared at her—she couldn't quite tell this one's gender.

The glowing yellow skin slits running along its face and neck, disappearing into the neckline of its bulky armor, narrowed.

"I'm assistant to Kaia Halena, the com… Orion Halen's wife," she pressed. "I've got to bring her breakfast. She needs me."

A stretch, but what else was she supposed to say?

"You are her food fetcher?" the uhyre gurgled.

"Well, that's just one of the things I do for her. It's more of a triage, " Alina huffed. Or it would be, if Kaia ever let her do anything else. She hadn't really done much for Kaia since first getting her acclimatized to colony life. She'd tried, of course, but Kaia… Well, Kaia was Kaia.

The uhyre let out a little snort that Alina didn't like, but it stepped aside. There was something chilling about the way the alien motioned her past with its gun so casually. "Go fetch then, human."

Alina tried to just be happy with being allowed to do her job and see Kaia, forcing down the defensiveness at her work being minimized like that by one of the invaders. It didn't matter.

The inability to check where Kaia was or communicate with her made Alina feel blind. The invader would probably have taken the commander's quarters for himself and relegated Kaia and Orion elsewhere… But where? The only way to find them was to look, but how far would the uhyre let her get?

She slinked past more uhyre patrolling barely lit halls to the nearest canteen. The hallway lighting, usually bright and clinical, was now dim and sporadic. Maybe the uhyre saw in the dark, or maybe the eerie glow of their apertures was enough to light their way.

Alina retrieved Kaia's breakfast box and headed toward what used to be their quarters. Each step filled her with dread at the likely possibility that she'd come across the invader—the cyan one—instead. The uhyre were like beacons in the near empty halls, burning slits of different colors shifting in the shadows as Alina crept with her head ducked to the floor. Each sighting sent a shiver down her spine and arms. They tracked her steps with glowing eyes and tightened skin slits as she passed, disdain roiling off their bodies as if they were looking at an Old Earth bug under their boots.

Alina clenched the box in her hand more tightly, resisting the urge to pick at the coral polish flaking on her index finger as she navigated their glares. She tried to focus on her breathing. But Dr. Pertin's calming strategies weren't exactly designed to deal with the realities of being surrounded by uhyre. Living, breathing uhyre.

Shit. They're really real. This is really happening.

Alina's insides were numb, but her skin was pins and needles. Her heart hammered through her chest, leaving little space for breathing. She didn't even feel herself putting one foot in front of the other anymore, all she felt was her pulse and the growing pit in her stomach.

Alina turned into the main passage past the command center, which she had to cross in order to reach the commander's residential wing. She jumped, stifling a yelp when another uhyre stopped her as she turned the corner. It smacked the length of its rifle across her chest so hard that it knocked the air out of her.

" Pakt asti kasth, " it barked.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand," Alina whimpered, holding out the box. "I need to bring this to Kaia. It's food. Do you know where she is?"

" Shoq asti t'tor ," the alien snarled.

Alina opened her mouth and closed it, trying to find words.

"Alina?"

Kaia. She turned toward the familiar voice. Kaia was walking down the hall with Orion beside her, two uhyre shadowing them.

"What are you doing?" Kaia asked.

Alina peered at the barrel of the gun still pressed flat across her chest.

"Just bringing you breakfast," she tried to keep her voice level.

"I already ate."

"Oh."

Of course . She hadn't shown up yesterday, so Kaia probably had to make other arrangements. Damn it.

Kaia started to turn into the command center, but Alina tried again. "Mrs. Halena, do you… do you need anything?"

"What do you mean?" Kaia frowned.

"Well, you kept me on the list of essentials. I thought…"

"Oh, right. You'll be assigned to the rear dock. They're down maintenance crew and need help degreasing the Ariels," Kaia said.

A job. Alina's shoulders slumped with relief. She hadn't been on that particular post before, but she'd seen the workers scrubbing Ariel vessels with degreasing powder and then working it off. It looked like exactly the kind of task that would help take her mind off things. Things like the glowing uhyre monsters loitering all around them .

"Got it. I'll report to the dockmaster right away," Alina nodded.

"Not yet," Kaia murmured, shooting a furtive look at Orion. "Come with me," she jerked her head toward the entrance to the command center.

"In there?" Alina squeaked. She glanced at the uhyre guard looming over the conversation, its weapon still blocking her way.

"She's with us." Kaia craned her neck up at him. "My assistant. She brings food. See? Food." She grabbed the box from Alina's hand and waved it up at the alien, who bared his fangs but took a reluctant step back. Clearly Kaia and Orion still had some sort of say in things here, even with the uhyre… A good sign, Alina hoped.

Still, she hesitated. Alina was prepared to take on whatever it was that made her so essential. She'd just hoped it wouldn't involve reentering the place where she just got knocked out and kicked around while witnessing a hostile alien takeover.

"We need to normalize your presence," Kaia muttered low in her ear as they entered the command center and toward the observation pit.

Normalize?

What was that supposed to mean? Either way, it seemed like Kaia was finally including her in something, and Alina was not about to screw it up.

It had been an hour, and Alina learned some things as she listened to the conversation from a shadowy corner of the command center. Orion Halen sat in the copilot's seat, debating the deal with the light blue uhyre that Alina deduced was named Traeggsin.

At least she thought that was his name. That was the word the alien's red companion kept using when addressing him. They were talking in guttural intonations now, looking skeptical about the course Orion had plotted for them. They could not seem to believe that Colossal really needed to jump back to known space before proceeding to Orion's final destination: a new planet… a New Earth , only not for them but for the aliens who snatched the opportunity from their hands.

Alina's attention was drawn once more to the uhyre's hands. They had no nails, the tips of their fingers morphing seamlessly into sharp talons that glinted in the dim overhead lights. A human throat would be no match for a slice with one of those things. A visceral shudder passed between Alina's shoulder blades at the thought.

She focused instead on the ongoing debate. Alina wasn't brushed up on all the intricacies of the ship's subspace jump drive, but Orion's explanation sounded confident enough, so it must make sense.

"Look," Orion was saying, throwing schematics onto the thermaview projection, "to get to X1s?—"

"It is called Apth ," the uhyre corrected for the fifth time, and at that point Alina felt the urge to say it with him because how many repetitions does it take to remember? Orion clenched his jaw.

"To reach Apth, we had to get to the edge of our known space and make a jump to a location we'd tunneled for years. Then drift in this direction for two more years, because we couldn't tunnel far enough."

So far, so good. The alien didn't seem to take issue with this part of the reasoning.

"To reach… the new planet, we have to get to the other side of human-explored space. Because we've already plotted the route, we can jump straight to our closest edge soon as the drive's prepped in half a month."

"Then why you cannot jump to the other edge of your human territory directly? You plotted that as well. "

Orion shook his head. "Too much interference, like I said. It's not safe to jump through inhabited space. We'll collide with something in subspace and never come out."

"Something."

"Other ships. Manmade habitats. Anything emitting an electronic signal is like a magnet—or rather, Colossal is the bigger magnet. This ship will attract all that junk in subspace."

The two uhyre exchanged looks that Alina interpreted as skeptical.

"So," Orion continued, agitated, "we jump to the edge of human space. Then navigate manually."

The red one piped up with a series of guttural intonations. Traeggsin grunted and turned to Orion. "Can you jump not several times around edges of human territory, to other side?"

Alina had wondered the same thing, but she didn't know anything about any of this.

Orion looked like he was going to lose his cool any second. His hand clapped to the spikes at the back of his neck—shorter and more subtle than those of the full-blooded uhyre—for the tenth time, smoothing them furiously.

He'd had enough, and Kaia, standing behind him, was right there with him. Someone needed to de-escalate this situation or it would go nowhere. And considering the skeleton crew at the panels all around was busy pretending they weren't listening to every word of the exchange, that someone would have to be her.

Alina cleared her throat and stepped out of her shadow. "Umm, excuse me. Mr. Traeggsin?"

She regretted her decision just as soon as the uhyre's glowing spikes twitched atop his scalp as he turned to face her. His ears drew back a few millimeters, hooded brows lifting slightly with the movement. His gaze was unnerving as he looked at her. "What did you call me?"

"Sorry, I thought… Isn't that your name? "

"My name is Traeggsin."

Alina blinked.

"That's what I said. Traeggsin."

The red one coughed, and though it was by no stretch human to Alina, the sound resembled a chortle.

The alien's canines flashed as he exaggerated his mouth movements. "Thr-aekhhs-in."

"Threkhthin?"

"Cease hissing," the uhyre snapped, and Alina realized this was the first time she'd seen any real emotion from one of them at all. This was notable, considering uhyre were supposed to be very emotional—undesirably, uncontrollably so. What was up with them?

She persevered and tried again. "Threksin. Thr—Threxin?"

The red one perked up, slapping a huge hand on his brother's shoulder and emitting a series of bubbling gurgles.

"I say," Threxin said, though whether to the red one or to her, Alina wasn't sure. Either way, he looked pleased enough with that last effort.

"Now that you've got introductions out of the way, do you want me to get you to your goddamn planet or what?" Orion snapped from his seat, where he'd been observing the exchange. His palpable fury was a contrast to that of his alien relative. How were they related anyway?

Alina winced at the glare Orion threw toward her. "I just wanted to suggest that… that I can fetch some material of ours about subspace jumps. Old data that couldn't have been tampered with. And it can prove to Trae… Threxin that what you're saying is true."

The cyan uhyre didn't trust Orion Halen, and why would he? Orion had every reason to mislead the invaders. Existing material on the technicalities of subspace drives might placate his suspicions.

Threxin narrowed his eyes, considering .

"I say. Do it this day," he said finally, then turned back to Orion. "You continue. For now."

Orion took a deep breath and rubbed his temples. "We jump to human space in fifteen days. We travel through the densest portion of it, attracting no attention. We'll need to arrange supply transports, but we can worry about that later. That traversal will take one year. This works, because Colossal needs a year to recharge its jump drive and restock anyway."

"One ship year?"

"Each jump overheats the core and burns through ten tons of plasma fuel. We synthesize it here, but it takes a damn long time. In a year we'll be on the other edge of human-occupied space. We can start tunneling about three months before that, with scouts."

"Scouts?"

"Ships that go out to map obstacles and plot out as much of the space ahead as they can."

"Human scouts."

"Unless your uhyre know how to plot a subspace jump, yeah. Human scouts," Orion said flatly.

"Your human scouts will teach. No human leaves this ship."

"You realize we'll have to leave eventually, right?" Kaia jumped in then. "Once you're done with this little hostage situation, we'll need to get back to our people."

"Your humans will alert other humans, and like pests they will come and compromise my mission."

"So what do you expect us to do then? We follow you to New Ea…" Kaia cut herself off. "To this new planet, on a ship only you can control, and then what? How do we get home? We can't very well pilot Colossal back, can we? You're the only one who can."

Threxin looked at Orion, and Alina did not like that look. Apparently neither did Orion .

"You said my people would live." The lack of emotion in Orion's voice made Alina's stomach drop. This was bad.

"They will, if this planet is big enough for two species."

Kaia balked. "What? Live on the same fucking planet? Again? "

The red uhyre seemed just as displeased about this as Kaia was, gurgling something in unison. Threxin gurgled back.

"Two hundred uhyre joined me on my Clossal . There are seven thousand of you humans, and you barely breed. Schematics your male has shown me suggest this place may host both of us. I will permit you one third of my new planet. You will cut your population in half to fit, with maintenance culls as needed."

"Fuck off." Kaia clenched red-painted fingers. "You already destroyed Earth!"

The two uhyre frowned at each other. "Destroyed?"

"You're the fucking reason we need to find another Earth," Kaia raked her hand through her curls, and Alina wasn't prepared to try to mitigate the situation a second time. Not to mention she was all out of ideas. "You're unhinged. You're violent. You're fucking… you're fucking addictive." She glanced at Orion.

"You seem to have no problem with that." Threxin's lip curled in what could only be interpreted as disgust as he looked between Kaia and Orion. "We will impose strict quarantine between our species. I suggest you keep it. Recognize I want nothing to do with you either. And my kind was not the reason your planet was destroyed."

Alina failed to choke down a scoff at that, drawing Threxin's gaze to her at the worst possible moment. Lucky for her, Kaia was on a roll.

"I don't know what they taught you in monster history class, but it's not fucking happening," she growled.

Threxin lifted his chin in his version of a nod, the glow beneath his facial cracks fading somewhat. "Very well. "

Kaia released a hissing breath. "Very. Fucking. Well."

Threxin turned to Orion. "Would you like to be vented with your population deck, or have you another preference?"

Wait, what?

"No one's getting vented. Let's all goddamn think for a second." Orion rose from the copilot's seat to stand between them, the voice of reason they desperately needed. In the tense seconds of silence, Alina's heart continued to sink into her body.

"Let us Upload," Kaia blurted out, avoiding her husband's gaze. "Let us all Upload once we get back to known territory. Or at least those who don't want to join you on your little cohabiting suicide mission."

It was not a thought that had even crossed Alina's mind. Upload had always been an entirely commercial endeavor, reserved for those who could afford an afterlife. The thought of them just letting anyone Upload was so far out of the norm as to not even be flagged as a possibility.

"Kaia, we don't have the resources to Upload seven thousand people," Orion muttered.

But we have a rig.

"We have a rig," Kaia argued, reading Alina's mind.

"The rig is rated for five thousand uses, and we've already used a thousand of them."

"Then we can take four thousand. Make it a lottery. The rest will just need to…" She glanced back at the uhyre watching her through narrowed eyes. "The rest will take you up on your offer of a sliver of the planet. That cuts the population, just like you said."

Threxin was silent, hopefully thinking. But somehow, when he finally straightened his shoulders and opened his mouth to speak, Alina knew what he was about to say.

"No."

"Why the fuck not ?" Kaia burst out. "There's no two-way communication, if that's what you're worried about. We can't snitch on you from Heaven."

"Because I command it, female." Threxin flicked his talons at Kaia. "You are lucky I keep you alive. Do not test it."

After getting out of the command center, Alina was escorted straight to the library at gunpoint. The physical library, since with the network disabled she had no access to the virtual filesystem through her NS. She was almost getting used to not feeling anyone there when she instinctively reached out for the thread of comms flying through the ship. News bulletins, orders, people broadcasting into the ether—now that was all replaced by deafening silence.

When the uhyre marching behind her shoved her to walk faster with the butt of his gun between her shoulders, Alina stumbled forward. She winced but stayed quiet as the rough contact aggravated her bruises from the other day.

At the library, she scanned the ancient yellowed shelves while her escort leaned against the synthwood wall near the door, slinging his gun over his shoulder. Alina had no idea how subspace drives worked, but at least she had an idea of where to start looking for information. The older the better, she figured, so she extracted two thick binders of Old Earth design document copies. The originals were long lost—either that or in the Celestial Archive under armed guard. But these copies were so old that they may as well have been as fragile.

Yellow and brown pages with faded ink required delicate handling. Alina had considered scanning them and presenting a chip with the files, but she had a feeling the uhyre wouldn't trust that. She needed something as original as it got. Old and untampered. Something Threxin could believe.

She also dug up a copy of an Old Earth textbook on deep space navigator design, which she noticed contained a theory on jump drives. Alina skimmed the pages, but only closely enough to see that they had discussed range and caveats of jumping. She didn't have the head for this science stuff. But Orion Halen had to know what he was talking about, so all she had to do was get Threxin the facts and those would do the job for her.

Satisfied, Alina took the stack of materials to the uhyre waiting for her: "I'm ready to deliver these to the commander."

"I take," the big male grunted, holding out a callused hand for the stack.

"No," Alina shook her head. "These are… delicate. They're important. I'd rather do it my?—"

She pursed her lips when the uhyre yanked the books and papers out of her hands, shoving them beneath a massive arm. She winced at the sight of page corners getting bent and crinkled. "I take."

Knowing better than to argue, Alina walked briskly behind him as the uhyre escorted her back to her cabin.