Page 104 of Blightfall

“Aliens are judgmental too, eh?”

“People are judgmental,” I said. “And aliens are people.”

Dayan nodded. They seemed to be adjusting to that idea pretty well, given that they’d been thrust into our world overnight.

“What do you want out of all this?” Dayan asked.

“Dating?” I asked.

“Being here,” Dayan said. “Making contact with my people. Fighting against your Superiority.”

I thought about that. “I don’t know,” I said. “What about you?”

“I want to survive,” Dayan said. “I was always taught that was the most important thing. We had to work hard, fight hard, train hard, make it to Elysium because all of humanity was counting on us to survive.”

“That’s how I was raised too,” I said. “That was the single goal of my people’s existence for a very long time.” We’d sacrificed everything for it—our pilots, our individuality. Maybe even our humanity, at times.

“Do you ever think maybe it’s not enough?” Dayan asked, looking up at the purple-blue of the sky. “Do you ever think, if the universe really isn’t full of aliens who want to destroy us, if things are better than we always thought they were, that it might be nice to want something else for a change?”

The thought of that made my chest ache, and it took me a moment to understand why. “I’ve been trying to figure that out,” I said. “What I should want, if I’m allowed to want something other than mere survival.” This mission had not helped with that. It was alarming how comfortable it felt to worry only about making it home, bouncing from one terrifying situation to the next. “I used to think I just wanted to fly, but it’s more than that. I want to be a part of something important, you know? I want my life to matter.” And maybe the place I could make the best difference was back in Command with Jorgen, but I hated that idea, and I didn’t know what to do about that dissonance.

Stars, was that why I didn’t want to leave the flight for Command? I was used to the existential terror of knowing I could be wiped out at any moment, so much so that safety felt uncomfortable. Alien, even.

Was I still flying because I didn’t know how to live if I wasn’t constantly fighting to stay alive?

“Again!” Naga said. “Again!”

“Does that mean your strange yellow alien is ready to take us to the rest of your team?” Dayan asked.

“Yeah,” I said, “I think that’s what she’s saying.”

Dayan squinted at Naga. “How do you know it’s a she?”

“I don’t think we do,” I said. “As far as I know, we don’t know how they reproduce. We just assigned them genders the same way we assigned them names. Feels better than saying ‘it,’ I suppose.”

“But not the only option,” Dayan said.

I supposed it wasn’t. “Here,” I said, scooping Naga into the crook of my elbow and reaching a hand out to Dayan. “Naga, take us to Alanik.”

“Are you trying to hold my hand?” Dayan asked, looking at my offered fingers skeptically.

“We have to touch or you’ll get left behind,” I said.

Dayan shrugged. “I guess that gesture does have a lot of meanings.”

I didn’t know what that meant, but Dayan took my hand without explaining, and the forest around us disappeared.

Thirty-Five

Arturo

The woods shifted around us, the trees all changing position. We materialized next to the Dulo, parked beneath the low branches of a hulking tree. Its branches were bent over Alanik where she sat propped in the copilot’s seat, as if protecting her from the sky. Her shoulder was bandaged and her flightsuit stained with dark blood, but she was awake, and she smiled at me.

Stars, it was good to see her. I felt like I could fall over from relief.

“You’re alive,” Gilaf said. He sat in the Dulo’s pilot’s seat, hovering over Alanik. Suki sat on the dash, eating a bit of the rations we’d brought.

Alanik looked sharply at him. “Was this in question?” She’d been unconscious at the end of the fight, and I guessed Gilaf had elected not to fill her in.