CHAPTER FOUR: DANOVAN tel’DARIAN

I slept inside of her, like she could keep me safe, like she really could save me. Maybe, in all of the ways that were important, she already had.

In space, there is no dawn breaking, so I woke with a start when I heard a door slamming at the far end of the corridor. “Ara,” I whispered, rising however reluctantly and tugging on my pants before she, sleep-addled, sat up. I helped her with her clothes, hoisted her up onto her feet, and positioned myself between her and the door. The darker part of my brain thought that our enemies might come in guns blazing. But perhaps that was just the movie version of this story.

Instead, it was Christian. He had a sheen of sweat on his face, which had soaked through the collar of his shirt. His eyes were sunken from lack of sleep, but he held himself with the confidence and poise I had known from my former employer. I eyed him, my body tensing in silent warning, but he approached us directly and whispered, “Come with me. We don’t have much time.”

“Where are you taking us?” Ara demanded, peeking out from behind my arm.

“Off the ship,” He turned to go, but when we did not immediately follow, he whipped around again. “If you want to live and preserve the life of your bastard alien hybrid spawn, then I suggest you follow me. And with a quickness, darling. What we’re doing here isn’t exactly above board.”

Ara and I shared a concerned glance but, barring a better plan, we darted out behind him and into the hallway. Ara’s wrists were still tied, so I moved her in front of me so that I could keep a hand extended to steady her as she traipsed quietly through the empty corridor.

“Christian—” she began, but he shot around and made a slicing gesture across his neck which I gathered meant if you know what’s good for you, you’ll shut the hell up right this instant.

We crept on our toes silently down the hall until we reached the far door. Christian swiped his keycard past a sensor, and we found ourselves in yet another well-light, starkly appointed corridor.

We followed silently until we reached the hangar bay, where the shuttle we’d taken the previous day was waiting, unattended, at the far end of the deck. It was a standard passenger shuttle, able to transport about fifty people and their luggage from the surface of a planet to the Carpathian and back again. It was a tarnished silver in color with bulbous eye-like windows at the front and a narrow nose. We darted toward it, following Christian’s lead as he ducked behind crates of cargo. We stole like thieves through the hangar bay until we reached the shuttle, onto which Christian’s Key Card granted us admittance.

“Sit down and stay silent until we’ve cleared the Carpathian,” he said, taking a seat in the pilot’s chair as Ara and I sat behind him. The shuttle was an older model, but sturdy. I helped Ara into her bucket seat and strapped her into her harness, before I sat beside her and did the same.

Christian keyed in his coordinates and started the engine of the shuttle before turning around and pressing a finger to his lips to silence us. Then, he hit the com button and was connected to the flight coordinators.

“This is Christian Ward in Shuttle 879, requesting clearance for launch.”

The static-riddled voice of the flight coordinator buzzed throughout the shuttle: Thank you, Mr. Ward. We don’t see a passenger log—

“It’s just me, mate.”

Understood, sir. Please hold for clearance.

Christian heaved a long-suffering sigh and swallowed hard, before launching into an all-too-familiar diatribe. “Listen, I’m running terribly late for this interview. And if I miss it, it’ll reflect poorly on all of GenOriens. With whom am I speaking?”

Uh…Airman First Class Armeson.

“Thank you, Airman. If I miss this meeting, I promise that I will personally destroy you if you don’t open the bloody hangar bay doors right this fucking second, so help me God—”

Yes sir, right away sir. Shuttle 879, you are a go for launch.

I hadn’t decided to trust Ward completely, but to see him wield his power like this in our favor was enough to bolster my spirits, at least a little. We took off through the hangar bay doors and shot away from the Carpathian; I wondered vaguely how long it would be before all of the military units aboard the ship started looking for us, their missing prisoners.

After a while, Christian switched on the autopilot and leaned back in his chair, staring out into the vast and empty black above the horizon of the planet.

“Why did you do it?” Araceli asked in the ensuing silence. “Why did you decide to help us?”

He didn’t answer her right away, just drummed his fingertips atop the control console, the rhythm echoing throughout the enclosed space. “My mother is a force to be reckoned with,” he began, inclining his head to the side so that I could see him in profile. “She built GenOriens into the multibillion-dollar corporation that it is, and she did it with vision and singularity of purpose. She got into this business to help people, and she has always asserted that she would act on behalf of the greater good. It was like a mantra to her, an oath almost: the greater good.” He exhaled sharply through his nostrils and lifted a hand to rub at his eyes. “But what the ‘greater good’ sometimes undermines is the individual. I’m not strong like my mother; I cannot sacrifice an individual love in the name of the greater good.”

“You really love her,” I said. Ara was silent.

But Christian just smiled. “Of course,” he said. “It’s the easiest thing I’ve ever done.” He crossed his leg in his captain’s chair so that his ankle rested on his knee. “But my mother didn’t bother to tell me that she had joined forces with what is, essentially, an intergalactic terrorist organization, whose mission is to murder innocent women and children. She knew better than to bring me into that decision. She knew I would have fought her. Sure, I helped her undermine Nova Genus, but that was because I thought…” another sigh. “I don’t know.”

“What?” Ara urged, riveted.

“I thought that once we got away from Earth, she’d have less reach. And I knew the project would be successful here, and we could just…” He turned around in his seat then and looked at Araceli. “I believe in your talent, Ara. I thought once you got past this, once we started to usher in the age of the hybrid, we could focus on eradicating the issues that would inevitably arise in the blending of two different species. I thought of how exciting it would be for you, and I thought…it would be us, together.”

He turned around again, not able to look at her any longer. I couldn’t blame him: she was a radiant ray of light in this whole messy business. “But now,” Christian continued, “I know I’ve lost you. But I won’t make you live your life in a lie at my side. I won’t tether myself to someone who hates me. I won’t do that to you, or to myself. So, I did the only thing I could: I absconded with the prisoners, and I am going to drop you in a remote location, and I am going to tell you to disappear.”

“We can’t do that, Christian,” Ara said quietly, her tone gentle and lulling. “You know we can’t do that.”

“Well,” Christian intoned, resigned, “I’m going to tell you to disappear. I suppose what you do after that is on you.”

“Can you drop us near the communications hub?” I asked, perhaps trying to take advantage of Christian Ward’s surprising streak of sentimentality.

“What do you think this is?” He rejoined. “A taxi service?”

“Please, Christian,” Ara said, and I could hear him emit a groan of frustration. He shook his head as he leaned forward in the chair, preparing to bring the shuttle into the Galatean atmosphere.

“I’ll be touching down near to my own personal quarters,” he said. “The communications hub is a few hundred yards due north from there. What you do after we touch down is no longer my concern.”

“Thank you,” Ara said, “Thank you, Christian. Really.”

“Prepare for landing,” was his only reply.

~ * ~

When we touched down, Christian powered down the shuttle and came over to where Ara was sitting, a knife in his hands. I unstrapped myself and jumped to my feet, but he was simply slicing the zip ties from Ara’s wrists. She cradled them, rubbing each gently with the opposite hand, and unstrapped herself from her seat.

“All right,” Christian said at length, “you wait here for a spell while I—”

But a fist pounding on the door of the shuttle cut the conversation short, and Christian held up his hands to keep us quiet.

More pounding. We glanced amongst ourselves, and Ara’s face flushed with panic. I searched around and saw a hatch that led to the cargo hold, and I gave it a tug. It gave way with a riotous bang, and I cringed at the sound.

“Ah, just a moment!” Christian called, as I gestured for Ara to climb into the cargo hold. “The bloody door is jammed!”

Ara dove into the hold, and I crawled in after her as Christian made a pretend show of trying to force the shuttle door open. Once he saw that we were safely inside, he opened it with ease, and a few of his armed guards came tromping onto the shuttle.

“Sir,” said one through the protective visor, “there’s been an escape aboard the Carpathian. Your mother radioed to us personally that all shuttles are to be searched entering or exiting Galatean orbit.”

“Well, obviously she didn’t mean mine,” he said, ever the smooth politician. I peered through the grating in the door of the cargo hold and saw him cross his arms over the expanse of his chest as he stared down the guard. “That’s my mother we’re talking about.”

“Yes, sir,” the guard said, “but—”

“Name and rank,” Christian demanded.

“Sir…?”

“Give me your name and your rank,” he repeated, “so that when I file my complaint with your commanding officer, I can have the right insubordinate soldier thrown into the brig.”

The soldier hesitated. But just as with flight control aboard the Carpathian, I expected that he would give way.

“I’m sorry sir,” the soldier said, “but I have my orders. I will have to search the vessel.”

Hell and damnation. I looked back at Ara who had her hands clamped over her mouth to keep herself from breathing too loudly, and I wondered how we’d find a way out of this particular mess. We hadn’t had a moment to plan—I had spent the night between her milk white thighs instead of using my head to come up with a way out of this. I silently admonished myself but kept my eye on the soldier as he and his partner traipsed through the cabin of the shuttle, searching for any signs of the two fugitives.

Finding nothing, they approached Christian again, who bore an expression of a deeply inconvenienced man. “We’ll have to check the cargo hold.”

“There isn’t anything in the cargo hold,” Christian said plainly. “I didn’t bring anything with me—”

“It’s standard procedure, sir,” the soldier said, and stepped out of the cabin. I imagined that they were circling around to the back of the shuttle, so I opened the hold door as quietly as possible, and shimmied out, reaching a hand out to Ara to help her through.

No sooner had our hands made contact did the back of the cargo hold open up.

“There!” one soldier shouted to the other. “I see her!”

Fortunately for us, it wasn’t exactly a wide-open space, and the soldiers were struggling to wriggle their way in to get to us.

“Run!” Christian shouted to us as we darted past, heading out the door of the shuttle as Christian closed the cargo bay doors, and jumped into the passenger seat of the shuttle. Just as we were clearing the threshold of the shuttle door, it began to hover in the air a few feet off the ground. One of the guards managed to tumble out of the back and hit the dirt with a thud, but the other hesitated, and moments later, he was too high up to safely jump. So he did the only thing he could: secure the cargo bay door and go along with Christian for a little ride.

I took the opportunity to descend upon the guard and relieve him of his weapon while he was trying to stand upright in the dirt. I tore the visor from his face and looked into his pale green eyes before I socked him hard enough to knock him out. He dropped again like a sack of grain into the dirt.

“Come on,” I said to Ara, and grabbed her hand, darting past Christian’s hab toward what I thought was the communications hub. We ran, though no one was chasing us; we ran, and we went in through the airlock of the communications hub and were admitted into a calm, serene space buzzing with the familiar hum of electronics.

“Do you know how to use this stuff?” I asked, and Ara nodded her head, sitting down in front of a computer console and keying in her identification. She glanced around before pointing to a stool.

“Sit there,” she said, and keyed in a few command strokes that lit the space with bright broadcasting light.

I did as she bid me, wiping at my face with my hands in a lame attempt to make myself more presentable. For all of my love of movies, I had never been on this side of the camera before. I peered into the wide-angle lens and saw a little red light go on above it.

“All right,” Ara said, turning to face me, “we are live.”

I swallowed hard and cleared my throat and tried to think of what I should say. “My name is Danovan tel’Darian,” I began, “and I am…” at a total loss for words. The story was so large and convoluted, I had no idea where to begin. I looked desperately over at Ara, whose eyes were wide with concern. She looked around as though there might be someone there to help us, someone who knew what they were doing. But there was no one. It was just us, standing between the great GenOriens conspiracy, led by the inimitable Lucille Ward, and the rest of civilization. “Uh…I am…” what? I am what?

Finally Ara rose to her feet and joined me on camera. I smiled faintly, relieved, and said, “And I am joined today by Dr. Araceli Cross, of the Nova Genus project at GenOriens. We are here to tell you who is to be held responsible for the attacks on the Leviathan, the GenOriens base, and villages across the continent of Galatea, including the village of Hiropass.”

Araceli stood by my side and took my hand in hers, giving it a squeeze. Then she took in a deep breath and spoke the truth of our story. He poured out of her, and I held her hand the whole time.