Nathan Hystad - New Threat

Slate motioned for us to crouch down, and he took a pair of binoculars out. He found something. He passed them to me, pointing in the distance. I scanned the area his finger extended toward and saw it too. Terrance and Leslie’s ship was there. They walked through the field toward a large dwelling built of logs, and smoke poured from a rock chimney in the roof. It looked like quite the quaint scene until I spotted the aliens beside them. One was insectoid in nature, legs bending opposite of ours like a chicken, large black eyes on an oval-shaped head, antennae poking up a foot into the night sky. There was another with it, and I recognized the race instantly. Deltra.

Relief that there were still Deltra out there washed over me, but dread quickly replaced it. The last time I’d seen a Deltra, they were trying to kill us, after convincing us to murder the entire race of the Kraski. It hadn’t ended well for them, and there wasn’t a night I didn’t close my eyes and see the explosion that had snuffed out their lives at our hands.

Mae nudged me, and I handed the binoculars over to her. So the hybrids had stolen a ship, traversed a wormhole, and traveled to a backwater planet. To what end? What did they want there?

“Just what are those bastards doing?” Slate asked, mirroring my thoughts.

“Let’s get in closer,” Mae said.

A voice spoke behind us in an unfamiliar language. My translator shot the words into my ear. “You’re going to be much closer.” We spun around to see two large Deltra holding pulse rifles toward us.

My eyes roamed to Mae’s hand, which looked to be twitching near her holstered gun. She looked toward me and I shook my head, hoping she wouldn’t get us all killed. She grimaced and raised her hands in the air along with the rest of us.

“Come with us,” the translator said.

They marched us straight to the building the hybrids had gone to, and more insectoid aliens and Deltra sentries came out of the surrounding woods. They’d either been waiting for us or were a very cautious colony.

The building was large and looked more like a big house as we neared it.

“Weapons on the ground.” The bigger of the two bald Deltra pointed from us to the ground with his gun. We obliged, even if I saw a second of hesitation from Slate. Every inch of him looked ready to pounce.

The front doors on the side building were large, on rails like a sliding barn door. Inside the garage-like hangar, we saw a ship unlike any we’d seen yet. It was about a quarter the size of our ship and had an insectoid frame, almost like a hornet. I suspected I knew which aliens it belonged to. A Deltra was inside talking with Leslie and Terrance. They stopped and looked toward us, surprise etched on both the hybrids’ faces.

“Terrance, you left your wallet on Earth. I thought you might need it,” I said, hoping a joke would break the tension. It didn’t.

“What do we have here?” the Deltra said in perfect English. The guards walked us further into the room until we were only a few feet from the three inside. The Deltra was tall, very thin, and had markings tattooed on his neck and hands. He stood straight, confident. The energy this guy was pushing out was amazing, and I knew he must be a leader among the Deltra, or at least of the colony there.

“How the hell did you find us?” Terrance asked, shaking his head. He scanned the four of us, eyes stopping on Mae for a moment longer than the rest of us. He wouldn’t have known about the new ships or technology adaptations.

I figured telling them wouldn’t do any harm. “The smart people back home found a way to add a tracking system to our ships.”

Leslie nodded. “I told you they might be able to find us. We were too careless.”

“And you brought them here,” the Deltra said. “What are we going to do with you?” he asked, walking over to Slate. He was as tall as our huge soldier, but about a third as wide, even with the billowing cloak he had on. The contrast was almost comical.

“Why can’t you just let us be?” Leslie asked. “We just remembered hearing rumors of this place and wanted to ask Kareem if we could bring the hybrids who want to leave Earth here to start fresh. Somewhere we can be ourselves and forget about the Kraski and the human blood coursing through us. Live out our days as a free people.”

“And to do this you would kill? You would slice a friend’s throat, and hang another after gutting them? Then attack one of your own, leaving her pummeled on the ground as you stole a ship and killed more guards?” Mary was standing up straight, her voice loud and strained as she attacked them.

“We killed no one!” Terrance yelled. “And we didn’t attack anyone. What do you mean?”

“Mae. You attacked Mae on your way out!” Mary yelled back. The guards got between Terrance and Mary, separating them.

“We didn’t even see Mae. The guard listened to us, and he let us go. We left unseen, and quietly,” Leslie said calmly.

My hands started to shake hearing this. If they didn’t kill those guards on Long Island or fight Mae, then who had killed them? And who had attacked Mae? I turned slowly, looking for Mae so she could fill us in. We needed to hear her side of the story, to bring the truth out, and show these hybrids for the liars they were. But Mae wasn’t there.

“Where’s Mae?” I asked quietly. No one seemed to hear me. “Where is Mae?” I asked louder, and the others stopped talking. We looked around the dim hangar, and she was nowhere to be seen.

“Mae!” Mary called. Silence.

“Go find the missing woman,” Kareem said, his cloak flapping as he pointed to the entrance in haste. The guards raised their guns and started for the doorway.

“It was her the whole time. She must have killed those guards after we slipped out of the University. She killed the guard at the base after we left, beating herself to make it look like there was a fight,” Terrance said, and it all made sense. I couldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t. But the facts lined up. Don’t trust her. The text I’d gotten from that unknown source at the gas station last month flashed through my mind.

We ran to the doors as we heard pulse rifles go off in the distance. Red beams shot toward the forest and moments later, a green light emanated from the area before a ship lifted from the clearing where we’d seen the hybrids’ ship as we’d scoped out the village.

“She’s getting away. And in our ship!” Terrance cried.

What just happened was taking a long time to process. One minute we were all there, and Mae used the moment the guards separated Mary and Terrance to sneak away. She got onto the hybrid ship and stole it.

“I can’t believe it,” Mary whispered. “All this time. All of this time. She gave you blood, Dean. She saved us after the Event. She stayed in our house .” Mary ran her hands through her hair, tears falling down her face. I wiped the tears away with my thumbs and brought her in for a hug. “She was… our friend.”

“What the hell is going on there?” Clare’s voice came through our earpieces. “Are you all okay? Do you need a pickup?” The questions came in frantic succession.

“It was Mae. She ran off, taking their ship,” I said in reply. The words didn’t even make sense to me as they left my mouth.

“Mae. I knew those damned hybrids were going to be the death of us,” Clare said, making my blood boil. Maybe she was right. Janine, Vanessa, Mae… they’d all used us.

“Why are you really here?” I grabbed Terrance by the collar, getting close enough to his face to touch noses. Anger flushed through my body so intensely I thought I might punch someone. As I stood there, waiting for an answer, I wished I was back home. Before any of this. Before the Event, and before Janine. I wanted to just go back in time.