“Look,” Maria said. “All this doesn’t change anything, does it? Evolve, adapt or not, it doesn’t matter. All that matters right now is that Charlie could be alive and we have a rogue community of aliens and humans to deal with. We have to manage the threat.”
“Do we?” Khan said. “This is partly what I’m talking about. Though don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to come along to help, but at some point humanity has to come to terms with the fact that it’s a flawed species, seeing wars and conflict ahead of an alternative approach.”
“And what would that be?” Layla asked. Though from her expression, Maria could see she’d heard this argument plenty of times before.
“Coexist. Live and let live.”
“You’re unreal,” Layla said. “Were you even around when the aliens first came up? They weren’t exactly bringing chocolates and sweets with them in an act of peace.”
“Maybe not,” Khan said. “But they’d spent tens of thousands of years observing us. You have to wonder what they learned about us during all that time.”
“Guys, let’s not argue. This situation is bad enough already without us bickering over stuff in the past,” Maria said. She stood and poured the tea onto the ground and walked off, wanting to get some space before tensions got any higher.
She stepped past the fire and Khan and headed for the trees. She got to a few meters before the small camp finished and the dense trees started when the sound of twig and branch displacement made her stop in her tracks.
The alien they had caught earlier came through first. Ropes and shackles around its wrists and ankles led back into the gloom—until Gregor appeared. He grinned wide when he saw Maria.
“Ah, how sweet. A welcoming committee.”
Great, that’s all she needed—another instigator. “Where’s Denver?” she asked, trying to absolve the guilt of forgetting about him earlier.
“Fuck knows,” Gregor said. “But our friend here decided to start talking. We’ve got plans to make.”
A long, slow hour passed. Maria stood with her back against a tree, not wanting to be within the group right now, with Gregor staring at her at every possible opportunity. His leering grin made her skin crawl now that Layla had explained the truth about Gregor and he’d failed to convince her with regards to his position as an elder.
The farther she could be away from him, the better. Even more so when he was crowing about his achievements with the alien and the possible demise of Denver. The radio silenced bothered her greatly.
Even if Denver had gone off on his own, he wouldn’t stay in complete silence like this just for the sake of it. At the very least he would keep in touch with Layla. She’d tried the radio every few minutes since Gregor got back and received no answer.
“I’m telling you,” Gregor said, pointing a finger at Layla, “if we act now and stick to the plan, we’ll be able to take out key positions of the settlement. Meglain here would be perfect bait for this. They have a community now. These aliens aren’t just mindless resources, they have a free will and a desire for survival—we can use that to our advantage.”
Khan remained passive throughout Gregor’s frenzied plan-making and grand ideas of overwhelming a settlement. It was as if he was trying to convince himself it was doable, perhaps remembering his old days when he used to have power and influence.
But at this precise moment, Maria saw a sad old man trying to relive his youth at the expense of everyone else. Maybe Khan had a point about humanity? Being so new to the world outside of the harvester, Maria didn’t have the history like Layla to disprove his hypothesis.
It put her in a strange situation as she looked upon the others from both a metaphorical and literal outside position. Who were these people, really? Who were humans, and what did they stand for? She couldn’t imagine they were all like Gregor, or even all like Layla, for that matter.
From Mike to Denver to Charlie and Layla, everyone she had come across so far were so driven, so sure of themselves—until Khan. She questioned her role in all this. Was she really a part of this group? At times she felt she had more in common with the croatoans than the humans, despite her actual biological race.
Gregor stood up and kicked dirt onto the fire. “Right, everyone, get your gear ready, and check your weapons. We move out in five.”
Was that a smile she saw on Meglain’s face? It was hard to tell, but Maria was sure she saw the alien’s expression changed for a moment. It looked away into the woods before slowly raising its head to stare above.
Maria traced his gaze up.
She saw them before she heard them. And she heard them too late.
A group of five hover-bikes flew overhead. Gregor, Layla and Khan jumped up, but it was too late to do anything. The bikes descended like stones, moving agilely under the controls of a mixed group of human and croatoans. Within seconds, they were surrounded. Gregor struggled to reach his rifle propped up by a tree.
Two croatoans wearing rags and denims fired over his head with their triangular pistols. The rounds splintered the trunk, making Gregor freeze on the spot. He raised his hands and turned around with a sneer on his face.
“No one move,” a female human said. She held a long spearlike weapon. A metal prong on the end crackled with electricity. Eight others, mixed species, circled them, aiming their weapons. Two young men untied Meglain and checked him over. They said something to each other using words Maria didn’t understand.
“In the middle,” a croatoan behind her said, pressing a rifle barrel against her back.
Gregor and the others were encouraged into the middle of the circle until they were standing back to back.
“Well?” Gregor said to the woman with the crackling spear. “What now, eh? Gonna butcher us like you did the others?”
“No,” she said. “We’re taking you to speak with Aimee. You’ve kidnapped one of our kind. You’ve some explaining to do. Take them away,” she said.
“Wait,” Maria cried out. “We can explain. Let’s talk about this.”
The barrel pushed harder into her spine. The woman, a blonde with piercing green eyes and wearing a patched-up set of army fatigues, stepped to her. “You should have thought about that before you sent a spy. Say another word and you all die right here, right now.”
Maria pressed her lips together and tried to stop herself from shaking with fear.
“Tie ’em up and take ’em,” the blonde said. “Shoot ’em if they speak again.”
With that, the group reversed the roles on them. Maria and the others became the captured and shackled as they were led onto the hover-bikes, their legs cuffed to steel rods on the sides of the bikes and their hands tied down to small handlebars, pinning them in place.
Maria strained her neck to look to her right to see Layla. Layla gave her an encouraging smile, but it didn’t help, Maria could still see the fear in her eyes. Her legs shook as she gripped the bike tight. The rider in front fired the engines, and they lifted up into the air with a sudden jolt. Her stomach knotted with the sudden movement. She closed her eyes and held on as they sped off toward the settlement. Maria thought this was likely it. She doubted they would keep them alive if the video of that battle was anything to go by.
She tried to make peace with the situation, that her life was rapidly coming to an end, but she couldn’t do it. She wanted to live. She wanted to survive, and that’s when she realized that it was this thinking that made her human—and vulnerable.
And she didn’t like it.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN