Alien Freak - Calista Skye Page 0,62

Star Marshals are beaming as they show us to the ship, giving us an honor guard and everything.

The ship is cleaner than before, and on the inside they’ve even tidied up and put the weapons back in their racks.

In the control room, for the first time I see every console lighting up, and the hum from the engines is both louder and more regular now.

Koyanara’s casing is where we left it on the control console.

“Everything okay, grandson?” she asks when we sit in our seats. “You both look so happy and glowing.”

“We had a good night’s sleep,” Zaroc says and flies the ship out of the Star Marshal cruiser. “That’s what you’re seeing.”

“And, unless my intuition betrays me, maybe a good nights… well, it’s none of my concern.”

Zaroc looks around the flight deck. “How true. Am I still dreaming? Or did they actually fill the tank of this barge?”

“There was some activity in here,” Koyanara says. “Aliens moving to and fro, working and repairing things for hours. What do we do now?”

“Now we’ll sell some Elder artifacts,” Zaroc informs her, “get supplies, and then decide what to do with them.”

He pulls levers, and then the hyperspace swirls are back outside the windshield.

I lean back in my seat. “Koyanara, how big is the Star Marshal force? Sorry, I know you don’t like answering my questions.”

“I actually don’t mind at all now, Averie,” the little computer says. “Zaroc obviously likes you, so I do, too. The Star Marshals are about seventeen million officers with eight hundred thousand spaceships. Most of them are smaller than the one we were just on, but many are the same size and some are bigger. They have no authority except their own, and are actually not much of force compared to the big armies. But they’re known for being tenacious.”

Zaroc stands up. “I’ll check the engine, see if they missed any obvious repairs.” He disappears down at the elevator squares.

“What happened to him?” Koyanara asks. “He’s almost talkative now. And he looks… alive.”

“I think he enjoyed being totally safe for a whole night,” I make a guess. “He was able to relax. And the Star Marshals didn’t hand him over to the Gurandu, which I think was a relief. Koyanara, I heard how you died. And… well, everything. I just want to say I’m sorry.”

The computer sighs. “I was there. On the ground, four paces away. Seeing yourself die is weird enough. Seeing yourself die as gruesomely as that… I don’t know, Averie. It was bad. Hey, at least I died well. There was no begging or crying. I cursed that bastard for as long as I could, right to his face.”

“You must have been desperate,” I say softly. “You uploaded yourself to a computer, just to be able to make some kind of an escape.”

“Desperate is not the word, Averie. It was worse than that. Total despair. Total hopelessness. I looked at my two remaining grandchildren and thought, ‘we’ll upload our personalities to computers, so after we’re dead, maybe we can have huge robotic bodies built, upload our personalities to them, and get revenge on the Gurandu’. That was the best I could do for them. Because I could plainly not protect them from IruBex much longer.”

“I didn’t know the Gurandu were that bad.”

“Nobody believes it before they see it themselves. It’s a game to them. They’re just collecting points. And escaping them is hopeless. Nobody has ever done it. Are you giving Zaroc hope, Averie?”

I look out at the hypnotic swirls as the ship passes above real space and travels faster than light. “I try to. There’s no other way to live, is there?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t been alive for years. But to imagine hope where there is none… it may not be the best idea.”

“I actually would have thought so, too, not long ago,” I reply thoughtfully. “But it turns out that being optimistic about things helps you see ways out of a tough situation.”

“Perhaps. Did he breed you yet?”

That takes me by surprise. “Breed me? Well, I’m not sure if… I mean, is that even possible? We’re different species. I know aliens buy Earth girls to breed them, but I think there’s usually some chemicals involved in the actual conception.”

“I don’t know if it’s possible. Just asking. What will you do now? You should know that Zaroc doesn’t think of you as his captive. I don’t know what he’s told you, of course. But what with the cage and the abduction and