“You bastard. You brought me here to test me like some goddamned lab rat.”
“We needed to know for sure. You survived. This bodes well.”
“And if I didn’t?”
Hagellan didn’t respond and turned away.
Mike looked up at the screens. Outside he saw vast tracks of ocean.
“Where are we? How fast did we just travel?”
“We travelled five hundred and fifty-three of your human miles in five of your seconds. Now we return.”
“Wait,” Mike said, shocked at the numbers and wanting to prepare himself, but it was too late. Hagellan flipped the craft nose over tail and barrel rolled on its axis until they were pointing the other way, almost as if defying the laws of momentum.
Mike couldn’t handle it a second time. Before they were fully leveled out, he passed out in his chair, the blur of the world on the displays the last thing he saw.
When he came around, the craft was cruising low over a dense patch of forest.
“You’re still alive?” Hagellan said.
“I guess so,” Mike said, squinting against the light and the throbbing in his head. For a brief moment he had forgotten where he was, but the display screens brought it all back.
Hagellan grunted and returned his attentions to the control, sending the craft down through a wide clearing in the trees until they were flying over Unity. Once they reached the edge of the dried-out lake basin, he spun the craft and lowered it.
But the landing didn’t go quite to plan. The craft seemed to lose its balance and rocked to and fro and finally hit the ground hard, sending up a shudder that jolted Mike’s spine and clattered his teeth together.
“Soft landing much?” he said, rubbing his jaw. “What the hell was that?”
A stream of data flowed down the central screen.
The two aliens approached Hagellan, and they all huddled around the tablet and scanned the screen.
“What’s wrong? Did the new parts fail?”
“Small calibration issue,” Hagellan said. “It will delay us, unfortunately.”
“We’ve still got time for that, though, right?”
Now Mike could definitely tell the alien was worried. There was no hiding that even on an unfamiliar face. Seeing concern in something so ancient and powerful brought a new kind of unease to Mike. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“The jump gate,” Hagellan said. “We received a response.”
“And? Are your friends there? Are we too late?”
“Worse,” Hagellan said. “The gate is compromised. I only received emergency codes, which are sent automatically from the system.”
“Compromised? How exactly? What does this mean for the mission?”
“It means we have no time to waste. We have to go now. Get your friends; we leave within the hour.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
High on the east side of town, a cool wind nipped at the edges of Denver’s ears. He pulled up the collar of his coat and trudged through the field until he finally saw his father. Charlie was standing with his back to Denver. Maria and Layla flanked him, their heads bent low.
A small mound of dirt lay at their feet. Charlie leaned against a shovel, sweat creating a sheen on his stubbled face. He wore a tired expression like one of the many old buildings that had crumbled and become a gray artifact in the undergrowth.
“What happened?” Denver asked after a while, keeping his voice low so as not to break the somber mood.
Charlie grunt-sighed. “It’s Gregor.”
“Oh,” Denver said. A mix of emotions battled for supremacy. Relief, joy, justice, a hint of remorse. But mostly an acceptance that the world was lighter of one less psychopathic nut-job. “How’d it happen.”
Maria looked up at him with neutral eyes. “Charlie, in the arena,” she said, conveying little emotion. Layla had barely looked up at Denver. He wanted to go to her, but she seemed focused on Gregor’s shallow grave, her body tense and bent over.
Denver wondered if she did have more feelings for Gregor than she had previously let on. They certainly had history together on the farm, and before. Despite her misgivings of him, Denver could understand that she might, underneath it all, have some feelings of grief.
“You killed him?” Denver asked his father.
“Yeah. I had little choice. He wanted it.”
“And you didn’t? After everything he’s done. After what he did to—”
“He didn’t,” Charlie said, turning to his son. “I saw it in his eyes at the end. It wasn’t him. He used it to make me end him. His time was coming, whether it was from my hand or one of Aimee’s pets. He goaded me, but in that final moment, I saw the truth in him. He didn’t kill Pippa.”
“Are you sure?”
“Certain.”
Denver looked down at the shallow grave with a new vision. All this time, Gregor had been like the bogeyman. All those years when Denver and Charlie were raiding against the farm and the croatoans, all that time surviving out in the wilderness, Denver had pictured Gregor as this great evil. Charlie’s nemesis.
Denver’s nemesis.
And yet, now, he was just another body in the ground. Another victim of the new world, the new struggle.
“We were more alike than I realized,” Charlie said.
“No,” Layla interjected, her first words since Denver had arrived. “You two were nothing alike. So what, he wasn’t your great enemy that you thought, but he had few redeeming qualities, and he won’t be missed.”
“He did help us take down the mother ship,” Charlie reminded her.
“And he also perpetuated enslaving humans on the farm for cattle,” Maria shot back.
“As did I,” Layla said. “What this shows us is that none of us are perfect. We’re a terribly flawed species, our own worst enemy. If there’s one thing the croatoans have shown us, it’s that we’re not terribly different to them. We’re all just animals doing our best to survive.”
The group fell silent. Denver tried to pay at least some respect to Gregor for the good things he did, but knew deep down, he was different, he was not a friend of humanity, despite him helping out against the aliens toward the end. One good deed doesn’t make up for a lifetime of evil.
“We need to go,” Denver said after a few minutes. “I’ve come to deliver a message from Mike. We’re leaving within the hour. There’s something wrong at the jump gate on Tredeya. Hagellan isn’t receiving the right kind of return message, and he’s lost track of the destroyer.”
“The old ship is ready to go?” Charlie asked, his voice grave.
“Yeah, you didn’t see it?”
“I did, looks good. I just hope it’s as good as it looks.”
“Time will tell,” Denver said. “And if not… there’s always the bomb.”
Maria made a small choking noise at that and looked up at Denver.
They shared a brief but intense expression before Layla caught Denver’s eye. He felt like a boy being caught stealing. He looked away from Maria and tried to smile, but Layla was already turning away.
She had seen the truth of it.
Denver wanted to go to her, assure her that he still felt the same for her, despite never really communicating what he did feel; that wasn’t something he’d ever really had the words for. He found it all so unnecessary, especially at this time, in these circumstances. It was a complication, too, for him when he didn’t understand what he felt or how to act on it. He was always just his own man, surviving in the wilderness, hunting with his father.
A part of him wished he could go back to that time. Go back to stalking deer or rabbits with his dog, eating by the fire at night, planning their next sabotage on the harvesters. Their life was simple then, their goals clear.