Page 48 of Alien Mine

“My spacecraft. I was sent here by…” He glanced at the windows, then shook his head. “I came here to protect Tiny from an unknown threat.”

Fate snorted. “Miguel Ramirez.”

Dyuvad nodded once. “As I discovered.”

“But why her?” Rachel asked. “Who cares what happens to one little girl on a…?” Her eyes widened as the truth hit her, a truth about the universe she’d never suspected, though plenty of others had. “You’re an alien.”

“No,” he said sharply. “I’m as human as you are. But I wasn’t born on Earth.”

“Where you from?” Fate asked.

Dyuvad glanced down at Tiny, still cuddled against his chest. “A planet called Abyw.”

Rachel’s gaze drifted to Tiny and the numbness she’d felt since coming onto Dyuvad’s spaceship slowly morphed into a feeling she couldn’t quite name. “Did you tell Tiny about this Abyw?”

Dyuvad shook his head. “That’s another story.”

Rachel pointed a shaking finger at him. “Start at the beginning and don’t leave nothing out.”

“A long time ago, humans lived in Origin Space. It’s a frontier now, a place where only outlaws and those not integrated with the Net live.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward Earth hovering in the window. “This planet is one of many located within Origin Space.”

Fate settled into a chair behind a console situated near Rachel. “What’s the Net?”

Dyuvad’s mouth firmed into a thin line for a moment. “Something like the Internet, but more. Bigger. It’s run by…”

He glanced at Tiny, then toward Rachel, and she finally identified the unnamed emotion: A mother’s instinct to protect her children. Tiny was wrapped up in this somehow, and Rachel by golly needed to know every detail.

“Go on,” she said.

“Telepaths.”

The word erupted from Dyuvad like a volcano spewing lava, and was followed by Fate’s low whistle.

“Tiny,” Rachel whispered.

Dyuvad nodded. “I don’t know what the Net ‘paths want with her, only that she’s important enough for them to send somebody halfway across the galaxy to protect her.”

A long silence filled the air between them, broken only by Kelly’s soft pats against the window as she shifted her hand and covered one landform on Earth after another. Finally, Rachel said, “You were telling us about Origin Space.”

“We don’t know much about that time in human history,” Dyuvad continued, “only that at some point, humans fled during a short-lived Great Migration and spread out into the galaxy where they settled onto many different worlds.”

“How long ago was that?” Fate asked.

“Millennia. Long enough for human civilization to evolve into many different cultures, and for humans themselves to begin to evolve.” Dyuvad gently patted Tiny’s back and tucked hercloser to him. “No one knows when the ‘paths arose or when they first formed the Net, but a few hundred years ago, they began letting other people into it using technology. It’s become the best way for humans and aliens to communicate across large distances and provides updatable information on the bulk of human knowledge.”

Something occurred to Rachel then, and she nearly laughed in spite of the grave situation she and her tiny family had found themselves in. “You weren’t kidding when you said you could help Kelly learn about space, huh?”

Dyuvad’s lips twitched into a half smile. “I have some knowledge of it.”

Fate barked out a laugh. “That’s gotta be the understatement of the year.”

“Why now, though?” Rachel asked. “Why not when Miguel threatened us before or when Juan killed that man down in Gainesville?”

Dyuvad shrugged. “We learned long ago not to question the Net ‘paths. It doesn’t do any good. They never answer unless doing so furthers their goals.”

Now that she’d asked the question, though, Rachel couldn’t let it go, and she couldn’t keep the other questions from building up inside her. Why Dyuvad and not somebody else? Why a lone man and not a squad of soldiers? Dyuvad was a big guy, tall and muscled, not somebody to be messed with between his strength and that fancy gun of his. But he was just one man. What if something had gone wrong? Shoot, nothad gonewrong. What if somethingdidgo wrong?

She opened her mouth to voice that question, took one look at the dark circles under Dyuvad’s eyes, and closed her mouth. There’d be plenty of time for questions later, after Dyuvad had finished his tale and shown them around his space home and they had, the good Lord willing, returned to her house and had a hearty supper. Later, she’d pester him into answers, but right now, her curiosity and excitement grew apace. She never in a million years would’ve thought she’d make it to outer space, and while shewas here, she was by golly going to take advantage of the opportunity.

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