We’d been told they were evil, and that they would destroy us, but could we trust the hybrids or Deltra after all they’d done to us?
“Dean, what the hell is going on down there?” Mary asked again, this time not so cordially.
“Mary, we’re okay. It’s done.”
“What about Mae?” she asked.
I’d nearly forgotten about her. “Slate, are you okay?” I asked, moving to his slouched form.
He got up, dusting his uniform off. “I tripped on something, but no worse for the wear. Just a twisted ankle, and my arm’s still tender. We have to find Mae, and quickly.”
We entered the hall, stepping over the melted forms of the unarmored Bhlat, Slate hardly noticing them at all.
“I’ll go left, you go the way we came,” I said, taking the lead.
Slate’s large frame moved quickly down the hall as the sunken corridor lights flared red, alarms still blaring along the way. I tried to not look at the corpses spread around the floor. Some might have been children; most were unarmed.
“Mary, we’re searching for Mae. Is her ship still docked?” I asked.
“She’s still down there. Do you need assistance?” Mary asked through my earpiece.
We probably did, but the last thing I wanted was the doctor or my injured fiancée to be running around the outpost, looking for our missing hybrid.
“We got this. Whatever happens, don’t let that ship get away.”
“Affirmative,” came the stiff reply.
The outpost had wide corridors, probably enough room for three of the large aliens to walk side by side, and the ceilings were at least ten feet. The sound of a sliding door down the hall caused my heart to race, and I slowly moved toward it, firmly holding my rifle. The door was closed, and I stepped forward, letting it slide open as I moved to the side, trying to catch a glimpse of what was inside. It looked like a classroom of some soft, but I didn’t see anyone inside from that quick glance.
This time, I raised the rifle, moving through the entrance, spinning to the left and then to the right, before suddenly getting kicked in the knee as Mae came into view from the near corner of the room. My blaster went off, hitting the ground in a smoldering beam.
“Mae, listen,” I tried to say before getting kicked in the stomach. I was down on the ground in an instant, knee aching and breath torn from my lungs.
“No, you listen.” She kicked my gun away, stepping on my hand. It pinned my fingers and palm against the cold hard metal grate floor. “I came here to help you. To tell them you were all gone, dead in the war with the Kraski. This would have bought you a few years. You could have moved to Proxima. But you came here and killed them!”
Anger coursed through me. So she did know them and had left us to meet with them. It all sounded like lies over lies, and if there was a truth left in the story, it was so convoluted and buried, it would be almost impossible to uncover.
“Mae, I believe you,” I lied, hoping she would get off my pained hand. Her foot pressure lessened, and my training from Slate took over. I lifted her foot with all my strength, sending her small frame back a yard while I quickly got to my feet.
She wasn’t holding a weapon, probably not expecting a fight when she’d landed on the Bhlat outpost. We both eyed my rifle on the ground a few feet away, and when she lunged for it, I made my move. I swung my leg toward her body, connecting to her side, sending her sprawling away. She still managed to grip the barrel of the rifle, and while she tried to turn it around at me, I covered the distance and grabbed the rifle as well. We struggled with each other, her back on the ground, me bent over her.
Her injuries had healed nicely. “We found out your injuries at the base on Earth were fake. How did you do it? Hit yourself with a two-by-four?”
“It was the only way to ensure you guys left. I didn’t know where the base and ships were being held, and they would never tell a hybrid. I did it all for your kind. I did it for you.” The last words hung in the air as we struggled for the weapon. She tried to kick out, but Slate had taught me how to prevent that when grappling. The wind was starting to lessen from her sails.
“For me?” Realization came over me. “If you lied about Leslie and Terrance, and needed to find the base… then… it was you.” I couldn’t believe it. I fought in my mind, looking at the face of my close friend Mae, the woman who wore my dead wife’s expression as she started to cry. “You killed that guard Clendening and the other one in the garage.” Images of Clendening, sticky red blood soaked into his bed, and the bloated face of the woman hanging in the office nearly caused me to vomit on Mae right there.
“I had to. It was the only way for you to focus on them. I knew they were making a move to get off-planet. I knew everything that happened at that damned prison in Long Island.”
It all made sense. They just wanted to get to a ship to see if Kareem would take them in, and Mae used it against us, used our hatred of hybrids to fuel their capture, even though they wanted to get caught. They fed off each other, even if the pair hadn’t known it.
“You had to kill them in cold blood?” I asked.
“The ends justify the means. Just look around down the hall at all the innocent Bhlat you killed. Or the race of Kraski you ended to protect your own. We’ve both done terrible things, Dean, but I did them for you.”
She stopped struggling then, letting me take the rifle from her. She was right, but I still didn’t put those in the same category. I supposed it was a matter of perspective.
Mae looked so small on the floor as I raised the pulse rifle. She was far from helpless.
“You killed those guards to perpetuate our hatred, so we would follow them when they escaped?”
She nodded.
“And then made us think they assaulted you as they escaped? Did you have anything to do with them getting out?”
She nodded again. “They didn’t know it was me, though.”
“What were you doing here? For real? Why not just tell us you knew them, and that you could help us? Didn’t you trust us? Didn’t you trust me?” I asked. Her eyes welled up with tears.
“You wouldn’t have believed my story. I was turned by them years ago. I had so much anger, and nowhere to focus it. The Bhlat didn’t ask for much. They offered me a place with them when it was all over, but they really just wanted information. The Kraski were just a nuisance to them, but they were intrigued by their cloning ability, and we hybrids were something of a legend to them. At first, I thought they would dissect me, or throw me in a lab, but they treated me with respect and honor. It was the first time anyone had shown me respect, knowing I was the hybrid of a dying race and a human. The whole mission sparked their interest.” Mae slid over, sitting up so her back was against the wall.
“Go on,” I said, gun still raised.
“I hated the Kraski.”
They had wronged the hybrids, creating them to sacrifice themselves to convince humans to shut down the Deltra Shield, but there had to be more to the story.
“I feel like I’m missing something.”
“You are, babycakes,” she said, tears falling down her face. The pet name Janine had called me when we first started dating, but seemed to grow away from, hit me like a brick wall. Why had Janine’s phrase for me been uttered by Mae?
Looking at her curled up in the dim room, hair in her face, tears streaming down her cheeks, I suddenly understood. The pulse rifle fell from my hands, clanging on the ground. I knelt before the crying woman, my own eyes watering without control at that point.
“It’s you,” I said, hardly believing it.
She nodded.
“How?”
I was holding her wet face in my hand. “They were pissed at me for choosing you instead of that beefed-up military guy. They almost killed us both, but I convinced them I was right in choosing you. They let me stay with you that first year. You proposed, and it was so sweet. One day I went for a run, and they picked me up, told me I was being replaced, and that I was now named Mae. No one was to know. I met the other Janine, and they beat me when I wouldn’t cooperate by telling them intel on you. I guess they had enough, because they gave her my clothes and sent my replacement back to you.”