Nathan Hystad - The Survivors - Books 1-3

She was holding a knife in her hand, and that’s when I saw the floating tentacles to the right of us. She’d dived in and killed the thing with a blade. The others were calling to us from forty yards away. Mae helped me to them, dragging the creature behind us like a prize kill.

Slate reached down, picking up a limb and pulling the thing onto the ground.

“Dean!” Mary called, her voice strained and tearful. “Are you okay?”

I was out of the water, pushing my body further away from the swamp just in case another of those monsters decided to swing an arm up and grab me.

“I think so,” I said, lying on my back. For a moment, I just stayed still, staring at the strange star clusters overhead. I let my body tell me what, if anything, was wrong with it, and other than a tender abdomen and a pulsing ankle, everything felt normal.

“Mae, that was amazing,” Mary said. “She didn’t wait a second. As soon as Slate lost grip, she dove in, knife in her hand. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

I turned my head and saw Mae’s outline watching the water, still holding the knife. She was soaked like me, her hair hanging long and dripping with mud.

“Looks almost familiar, doesn’t it?” Slate said, poking the dead creature with his heavy boot. It resembled a large octopus, but with six thick tentacles, each at least the length of a human. Beady black orbs sat on either side of its head, and even though the thing almost killed me a minute ago, I felt bad for it lying there dead. It was just doing what nature taught it to do, and we were the invaders.

“Amazing,” Mary said, looking at it now too.

I finally got up, testing my ankle and feeling it take the brunt of my weight. I lumbered over to Mae and put my arm around her waist. “Thank you, Mae,” I said. She was still looking over the swamp, and she leaned her head down against my shoulder. We stood like that side-by-side for a minute before Slate cleared his throat.

“We should keep moving. We’re almost there.” He took the lead, and I stayed back waiting for Mary.

“Dean, I’m so glad you’re all right.” Her fingers slipped between mine, and I squeezed her hand back.

“So am I. Mary, if anything ever does happen to me, just keep going on. We need to finish the mission.” I felt foolish for saying it, but a near-death experience was sure to bring up a couple of unwanted conversations.

She shook her head. “I don’t want to think about that. You’re fine now. A little wet and dirty, and to be honest, stinky… but fine.”

I sniffed, and the putrid swamp water that covered me did make me smell something terrible. A shower was probably out of the question. I laughed and pulled her close. “Now you can smell bad too.” She fought me off, and we were so distracted with each other, we nearly walked into the barn-sized man, Slate. He turned and shushed us like an annoyed parent. His finger went to his lips and he held his hand up, telling us to stay still.

The village was a few hundred yards away, and we were coming up to the first building in the area. A few dim lights were on, a soft yellow glow making me wonder just how different the inhabitants were from humans. It looked like a scene from a hundred years ago. I took comfort in the similarities, but knew it was only right to be cautious at the same time.

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.