Page 63 of Stranded with the Alien

She took a breath.

“Look, when we’re rescued, I’ll tell them everything you did for me. That you saved my life and fixed the beacon. I’ll make sure they hold you somewhere nice. It’ll be all right, I promise.”

“I am sure,” he said drily. “But we both know how the mighty machinery of bureaucracy rolls over individual wishes.”

Not mine,she wanted to say.My mother’s the President. She’ll listen to me.

She stayed silent.

Vahn shared out the rest of the meat, stripping it off the bone until the only thing left was the carcass which he tossed into the night. They opened a canister of water each, safe in the knowledge they would both be full again in the morning. Vahn tapped his container against hers.

“To our mystery benefactor. May the gods bless them for the gift of their prey.” He glanced at the rain, now falling heavily. “You may take the tent. I prefer to sleep outside.”

“You know I’m not some weak damsel who needs cossetting, don’t you?”

“You are mistaking me for someone who would cosset a human. I am an evil alien overlord, remember? Take the tent.”

“Is there any use arguing?”

“There is not. Goodnight, Kara.”

She climbed into the tent and kicked off her boots and trousers. Trying to get comfortable, she listened to the steady beat of the rain, hoping it would lull her to sleep. But she couldn’t relax.

She was suddenly afraid for Vahn. About what would happen to him when the rescue party arrived. Would he really be treated humanely as a POW?

It was strange that the idea of Vahn being tormented bothered her. Vraxians were monsters. It didn’t matter that she’d got to know one of them. They were all the same.

She thought about her father again. He’d died in that first brutal encounter with the Vraxians, but he hadn’t died straight away. It had taken some time. It had undoubtedly been painful.

She tried not to think about it but the knowledge was always there, always buried at the back of her mind like a malignant tumor. How he’d suffered.

She wondered why she was thinking about him so much. He’d been gone a long time now. So long that she and her mother had managed to fill the void with a relationship, of sorts.

A relationship where Kara constantly disappointed her mother but hey, at least they spoke now.

She turned onto her side and closed her eyes. She didn’t need a psychoanalyst to tell her what she missed most about her father. It was the thing she didn’t get from her mother.

The feeling of being loved unconditionally.

She drifted into sleep.

Twenty Eight

She dreamt about her father again. But not one of the nice dreams, where he told her stories or showed her his paintings. It was the bad dream. The one she always tried to push away.

They’d found his ship drifting without power. He’d taken out a Vraxian fighter but sustained a missile hit which had sparked a cockpit fire. The automatic extinguishers should have put it out in seconds but they had malfunctioned.

Those early space-jets didn’t have escape pods. And in the cold depths of the galaxy her father couldn’t eject. He’d put out a distress call but by the time the E.S.V. Brixton had reached him, it was too late.

Her mother had been next to her when they’d brought his body back to Earth. It had been covered with the military flag but as the soldiers had carried the stretcher down the ramp his hand had slipped out.

Kara remembered staring at it. It wasn’t a hand anymore. It was a charred lump of blackened flesh. The fingers which had drawn all those beautiful sketches for her were gone. And she knew then that life had changed forever.

The pain was like a physical weight lodged in her chest. She opened her mouth to try and get it out but no matter how much she cried and screamed, the pain wouldn’t go. It was trapped inside her forever.

Her father was dead. Her father was dead. Her father…

“Kalehsha,what is it?”

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