Page 31 of Alien in the Attic

Arccoo tilted his head, curious. “How so?”

“I could almost swear that you’ve gotten… shorter since I last saw you, little brother.” With that, the visage of ceremony dissipated. Rocco’s face brightened with a wide, enthusiastic grin. He laughed and threw his arms around the second prince.

The brothers embraced with genuine warmth.

“Come now,” Rocco said, breaking the hug. “Mother is beside herself with excitement. Even Father is having trouble concealing his pleasure behind that monstrous mustache of his.”

“I hope you didn’t plan a celebration,” Arccoo said, almost one hundred percent sure a celebration was waiting for him at the annex.

Rocco made a show of denying any such plans. “Of course not. What do you take me for? I know how much you hate it when we make a fuss.” He threw an arm around his younger brother’s shoulders and began escorting him to the transport shuttle waiting beyond the platform. “We’ll just have a nice, quiet dinner as a family.”

“That sounds nice, thank you,” Arccoo said.

“But first, there will be a parade in front of hundreds of thousands of subjects all waiting with bated breath to welcome you back.” He slapped Arccoo on the back, and the pair entered the shuttle to head home.

The parade wasn’t nearly as extensive as Rocco made it out to be. The streets were lined with citizens. Many of them were happy to see the royal siblings together again, but a gloom hung over everyone’s faces.

Arccoo interpreted this as part of the toll being paid for suffering through a devastating plague. Many of these people lost the most important people in the world to them. Even with the promise of a cure, that was not something his people would soon get over.

The annex was buzzing with revelry. Ambassadors from a dozen planets were present to meet the returning prince. Ornate flags chronicling the history of the Thryan people were hung from steepled rafters. Servants lined the corridors, bowing and touching their forehead in reverence to their hero. Arccoo took their adulation in stride although he wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of the day in his quarters mourning Carmen.

His parents were ecstatic, in their own regal way. The queen beamed from her throne beside the confident king, who, as Rocco pointed out, did seem to be smiling below that massive band of bristles growing from his upper lip.

They dined for hours, catching Arccoo up on all of the news he’d missed while away. They asked about his time away, but he claimed to be too tired to go into any detail. He was tired, of course, but his hesitation came more from not wanting to relive those painful moments in public.

Before dropping onto his bed and passing out for the next several hours, Arccoo removed the lockbox he’d been given by the daughter of the Frunish emissary several years ago. Punching a passcode, the box sealed so tightly as to appear seamless. He’d never found a reason to use it before now. Lucky for him, the box was the perfect size for the staff.

Unable to sleep due to all the thoughts spinning through his head, the prince commandeered a single passenger transport shuttle and flew out to the rolling mountains on the horizon. He landed on the tallest plateau and watched the day sky begin to fade to night.

His mind wandered back to Carmen. How he would have loved to show her where he grew up, just as she had done for him in Hollowbrook. He knew her stunning face would glow with awe if she could take in the splendor of his world.

You’re not helping anyone by brooding, he reminded himself.Carmen is gone. It’s time to accept that and get to work.

Arccoo set a course back to the annex. Still a little wired, he would ask one of the doctors in the medical tower for a sedative and begin the next day with a fresh outlook. The shuttle transport lifted itself off of the ground, and the alarms started blaring at him.

A flying object was seconds from crashing directly into him.

Moving entirely on instinct, the prince swerved the shuttle and dove away from the hills, pulling up just in time to prevent himself from crashing into a statue of his ancestor. The shuttle rolled backward, flipping around completely to begin his chase of the mystery object that nearly killed him.

The shuttle scanned the object, which was now plummeting out of control, and its findings came up as a digital readout on the screen ahead of him.

Arccoo’s heart refused to beat.

“No,” he whispered. “How can it be?”

Switching off unnecessary functions to increase speed, Arccoo was able to catch up to the object, which was actually a spacecraft, and nudge it away from the city to the emerald lake. Moments later, the spacecraft crashed into the water’s surface.

Arccoo brought his shuttle down on the stony beach bordering the wide body of water, and nearly leaped outside. As he ran to the water, the thought repeated.It can’t be. It can’t be. It can’t be. Then he jumped into the icy water and swam out to the smoking craft.

He was able to climb up the side and open the emergency hatch that he’d used when he’d landed on Earth. His heart slammed in his chest as hope threatened to strangle him. The one thing he wanted could be waiting for him. Dropping inside, he found Carmen, Sofia, and Elena hunched over in their seats, unconscious from the impact.

He rushed to Carmen’s side, turning her face to look at him. Bringing his own face closer to hers, he felt her breathing, and his heart began to beat once again. Carmen had literally fallen out of the sky, and to his disbelief, she was still alive.

The doctors were able to get Carmen and her sisters back to the annex and monitor their vitals with ease. There, they also installed a chip behind each girl’s ear that would automatically translate speech into the girl’s native English. Though Arccoo could speak to them without problem, now that they were on his home planet, a translator would save them from a lot of problems.

The doctors were certain that they’d sustained no serious damage and simply needed to rest. Arccoo wanted to be by Carmen’s side, but the doctors outranked him on this matter. He was forced to wait until he was given the okay to return.

A full day passed. During that time, Arccoo met with his parents to explain the situation. “It looks like they were able to repair the craft I left behind. Based on the readings in the navigational database, the autopilot took them through a wormhole that cut their travel time down significantly.”

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