Erin M. Leaf (18 page)

Arnold gaped at them. “What?”

“What exactly is that supposed to
mean?” the man with the shotgun asked.

“I’m not from around here, Arnold,”
Gideon replied. Bea moved up and touched his arm. He gave her a quick smile.
They’d all removed their face masks.

“Not from around here,” shotgun man
repeated slowly. He held his gun more firmly.

“I’m sorry, we couldn’t find any
ammunition for you,” Bea said, smiling. She let go of Gideon and held out her
hand. “I’m Dr. Bea Morgan. I’m an ER trauma surgeon.”

The man’s glare faltered. “A
doctor?”

She nodded. Theo watched, amazed as
she charmed the man into chilling the hell out.

“Do you have injured people?” she
asked, still holding out her hand.

He nodded, then finally shook her
hand. “I’m John Starton. My wife, Jeannette.” He motioned to the woman, who
smiled.

“Why don’t you show me?” Bea asked.

Theo stopped her with a hand on her
arm. “We need to board the ship, Bea.”

She stopped, frowning. “Damn.” She
glanced at the black vessel, then sighed. “Let me do triage first. We have no
idea what’s going to happen once we go in there.”

Theo glanced at Gideon, who nodded.
“Okay. We can’t take too much time, though.” He felt bad telling her this. She
was a doctor. He knew that having to abandon hurt people would be difficult for
her. He knew that without even having the memories of her life from before the
bonding.

“I’ll just do some basic triage, I
promise,” she murmured, following John inside.

Theo waited with Gideon while John
and his wife showed Bea inside. He stared at the Sitnam ship, trying to figure
out what the hell they were going to do.

“What did you mean, you’re not from
around here, Gideon?” Arnold asked.

Gideon went still. Theo moved a
little closer to him. He didn’t want his partner thinking he was all alone in
this, especially not now.

“My parents brought me here when I
was a baby,” Gideon said.

“By here, you mean Earth?” Arnold’s
voice was low, almost disbelieving.

Arnold is being especially
insightful,
Theo thought, frowning.
That’s not like
him.
Of course, an alien invasion had a way of changing people’s perception
of things.

“Yes,” Gideon replied.

“So, you’re not human?” the
dispatcher asked.

Theo stepped in. “He’s as human as
I am,” he said, thinking of their bonding with Bea. It was the truth. If Gideon’s
people could have children with humans, that was human enough to count.

“I don’t understand,” Arnold’s wife
said. “Are there humans on other planets?”

Theo nodded. “There are, sort of.
The universe is a lot bigger than we thought.”

Arnold nodded thoughtfully, then
gestured to the Sitnam ship. “You going to do something about that?”

“We’re going to try,” Gideon said.

****

Bea walked out of the dealership,
relieved that none of the injuries were serious. “I’m done. Mostly lacerations.
One possible concussion,” she told her bond-mates.

Theo smiled at her. “That’s good
news.”

Better news than he realizes,
Bea mused, glancing
apprehensively at the ship.
I’d hate to leave seriously injured patients
behind, especially when we have no idea if we’re coming back.

“We should hurry,” Gideon said,
hands on his hips. He was staring at the black monstrosity as if merely looking
at it would unlock its secrets.

Bea took a deep breath and
straightened her spine. “I’m ready,” she lied. She wasn’t ready. Not when she’d
just found Theo and Gideon. She wanted to run and hide with them somewhere safe
and never come out.

“How do we get in?” Theo asked.

“We bash it in if we have to,”
Gideon said, starting to walk. Theo joined him.

Bea rolled her shoulders and
followed.

“Wait, you guys are really going
inside that thing?” Arnold asked.

Theo turned slightly as he walked. “Yes.
We have to stop them before they eat the rest of the world.”

Arnold shook his head. “God help
you.”

Bea didn’t have the heart to tell
him that she didn’t believe in God anymore. Not since yesterday.

Once they reached the ship, Gideon
paused. He tapped a finger on the surface, frowning. The pitted side was less
damaged than she’d thought.

“Let’s walk around until we get to
the undamaged section,” Gideon suggested.

She nodded. He’d been thinking the
same thing. They walked along the ship, stopping when the damage gave way to
inky smoothness. The surface was some sort of seamless, black material.

Absurd,
this thing sitting in the lot of a car dealership
, Bea thought.
It’s like a giant set from a movie.
She glanced behind them. The
people they’d helped watched them, clustered near the building. Gideon put his
hand on the ship.

“It feels alive,” he whispered,
making a face.

Bea pursed her lips. “Maybe they
make it out of something organic. Like their exoskeletons.”

“If that’s so, the weapon will work
on them,” Theo said, putting his hand next to Gideon’s.

Bea sighed and added her hand.
Gideon was right. The surface felt sticky, or warm, or… something. Something
not good. She activated her armor, craving protection over her face. The mask
covered her completely, hiding her fear behind solid black strength. She tilted
her head, amazed all over again that her vision wasn’t at all affected. She
could feel the armor on her skin, but she couldn’t
see
it. “I’m ready,” she
said aloud, quashing the worry in her gut.
I’ve been through worse,
she
told herself.
Remember?

“Let’s do this,” Gideon murmured as
his mask covered his face, too.

Bea concentrated. Using the armor
was effortless, as if she’d simply thought a second skin into existence. Using
the weapon took more energy. It felt like calling static to her finger and then
pushing the sparks through the tips. She focused until the hum made her arms
burn, letting the energy dance along her forearms. When she released it, instinctively
timing her pulse with Gideon and Theo’s efforts, the side of the ship wavered,
then abruptly disintegrated. She lost her balance and nearly fell into the
hole, but Theo grabbed her and set her upright.

“That wasn’t very difficult,”
Gideon said, edging just inside. The interior of the vessel was only dimly lit.

“Speak for yourself,” Theo
muttered, shaking out his arms.

“We have to go in there, don’t we?”
Bea asked.

“Yeah. Fuck it all to hell,” Theo said
and stepped into the darkness, Gideon on his heels.

“Shit,” she said under her breath,
then followed the men inside.

****

Fifteen minutes later, Bea leaned
over Gideon’s shoulder, peering down at a display that made no sense.
Illuminated green markings scrolled down the black surface, but she couldn’t
tell what any of them said. The pedestal holding the display was the same black
as the exterior of the ship. The same black as the halls and the floors. The
echoing emptiness of the space unnerved her.

“Shouldn’t there be more of them?”
she murmured, afraid to talk too loudly.

Theo nodded as he walked past. “I
thought there would be. I thought there’d be bodies, too.”

Gideon tapped the display. “I think
I can figure this out.”

Bea raised her eyebrows. “Seriously?”

He moved his finger down over the
symbols until one lit up. He tapped it, and another set of symbols began to
scroll.

“What did you just do?” she asked.
Theo was pacing the chamber, watching their backs.

“I pulled up their sonic weapon,”
Gideon said.

“What?” Bea fought to keep her
voice down. “Are you insane?” The back of her scalp prickled.

Gideon tapped another symbol and
the information on the display split in two. “Here’s the interface to the
sonics. I’ve brought up the control panel, not activated it.” He smiled. “I’m
not actually crazy, you know.”

“How do you know that?” Bea wanted
to shake him.

He shrugged helplessly. “I have no
idea. How does one determine one’s own sanity?”

“Oh my God, I’m going to smack
you,” she muttered.

Gideon laughed, then sobered
quickly as he turned back to the display. “I have no idea why I can puzzle out
their language. Maybe it’s yet another thing I forgot.”

Bea’s frustration vanished as
empathy replaced it. Gideon had a way of throwing her off balance.

“What now?” Theo asked, clearly
trusting Gideon to do his part.

“We activate our weapon. Put your
hands on the display,” Gideon said, tapping some more. The display split again.
One portion of the screen went blank. “Here.” He pointed to the blank spot. “That’s
an input now.”

Bea put her hands behind her back. “I
don’t understand how you know what to do. How can you be sure?”

Gideon looked at her, mask down,
his face a featureless black surface not unlike the display at his waist. “Damn.
They stole our technology.”

She frowned, then remembered he
couldn’t see her expressions. “What do you mean?”

He spun around, waving a hand at
the walls. “It’s black. The display looks just like the one I remember my
mother using.” He pointed at the pedestal. “Some of the symbols are runes.
Look, here. It says, ‘Terrene.’” He tapped at the display. “Right here.” The
symbol glowed sickly green beneath his armored finger.

Bea looked at the mess of runes
again and her blood ran cold. Gideon was right. “The other one says ‘Earth.’”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“I still don’t understand.”

Gideon glanced around the room. “I
think they steal technology. Integrate it into their own tech.” He laughed
abruptly. “Look. There’s a cell phone.”

Bea stared in the same direction.
He was right. Attached to the wall was a smartphone, display active. She walked
over to it. It showed a map of the surrounding area. “Dear God,” she breathed.

“Yeah. That means we can interface
much more easily than I expected,” Gideon said.

“If we’re gonna do it, we should
hurry up,” Theo said.

“I think they created a virtual
tesseract rima, too,” Gideon murmured, scrolling down a portion of the screen. “Eran
told us the portals couldn’t be put on ships, but here the Sitnam have controls
for opening one wherever they want.”

Bea wanted to rub her face in
frustration, but she also didn’t want to open her armor in this place. “What
does that have to do with anything?”

Gideon shook his head. “If you open
a portal in midair, without some sort of planet to ground it, it goes wild. You
can’t predict where you’ll end up. Or even if it will stay open long enough to
translate living flesh from one place to another.”

Theo loped
over,
looming above them both. “We should
hurry before more of them come. We’re trapped here in this center chamber.”

“I don’t think so,” Gideon said
slowly, scrolling some more. “I think they destroyed themselves.”

“What?” Bea asked. “That’s
impossible. There were dozens of them here.”

“The Sitnam here on Earth, they’re
the last of them. They stole my people’s technology and killed themselves
unintentionally.” Gideon slid his face mask open and looked at Bea. “The
invasion here was their last chance.”

Theo opened his mask, too. “If that’s
the case, we need to act now.” His face was grim.

Bea wasn’t so sure. “We’d be
destroying a civilization.”

Theo sighed. “They’re trying to kill
us all. Look what they did to the hospital.”

Bea hated him in that moment. “That
doesn’t excuse genocide.”

“Bea, we have no way to tell if
there are any survivors elsewhere. All we can do is use the weapon and destroy
the ships. Some of them very well could live through that, if they’re far
enough away.” Gideon took her hands and turned her away from Theo. “They killed
my entire world. I’m the last of my people. I don’t want that to happen here.”

She took a deep breath. Both men
were right, but she didn’t have to be happy about it. “Okay.”

He nodded, then put his hand on the
display. His armor slid back, baring his palm. “Ready?”

Theo put his hand next to Gideon’s.

Bea hesitated.

“Bea?” Theo asked.

She squared her shoulders and
stepped forward. When she put her hand down, she shivered as the armor slid
back. The input display was cold. “Okay.”

“Activate the weapon,” Gideon said.

She concentrated, letting the
energy flow to the surface once more. It pricked her skin, but she ignored the
pain, even when the burning began to make her uncomfortable. Gideon moved
closer to her, sliding his free arm around her waist as if sensing she needed
the support. She smiled at him gratefully. When he didn’t respond, she realized
she’d left her mask up. Just as she was about to slide it down, the ship gave
an ominous rumble.