Page 4 of Bred

“Twenty-five seconds, sir,” the pilot updates.

There’s no time to ask why the shields aren’t working. Maybe they’re malfunctioning. Maybe that shuttle is somehow resistant. It’s about to turn to metallic paste against our hull, so we may never know.

“Any life signs?”

“One female.”

“Bring her aboard.”

Chapter Three

Lyra

One moment I am in my shuttle. The next, my shuttle is gone, the planet beneath me is gone, and I am inside a very small enclosure that can only be described as a cell. The walls feel cool to the touch, and the seat which I am sitting on has a thin pad over hard metal. There is nowhere to relieve myself, which is a pity because the shock makes me feel the need to very much.

I don’t know how I got here. It’s not possible for me to be here. If I’d crashed, I’d be dead, so I know that didn’t happen. I had to have been transported, which means moments before impact my very atoms were taken apart and then reconfigured in their original positioning. We’ve known for centuries that is technically possible, and the debate has raged all that time as to whether the reconstituted person would be the same person as the one who was taken apart. As far as I can tell, the answer to that question is yes.

The problem with what seems to be my new reality is that the technology I’m thinking of doesn’t exist. Not officially, anyway. At this point, I’m considering two options. One is that I’ve been taken into a classified area for some reason. Probably to be heavily censured for deviating from my assigned path and encountering something I shouldn’t. A demotion could be in my very near future.

Or, and this is hardly possible, but somehow I’ve encountered advanced life in Earth’s orbit, a ship ground control has not bothered to tell us about, or doesn’t know is there. That seems to be the less likely of the two options.

I watch as the thin slivers of light at the door are momentarily blocked out by the arrival of someone. My stomach clenches in trepidation as the door slides open and a man fills the space.

No. Not a man. He can’t be a man. No man is that tall. He has to be eight feet tall at least. He has to duck under the doorway, which means he is tall even for his own kind. I am five feet. He would be towering over me even if I were standing, rather than cowering back against the seat. I can’t see his features, they are hidden in shadow, but I am menaced by his mere existence.

He takes a step forward into the dim light coming from above and what I see is very much not human, not in any sense. His eyes are nebula blue, his pupils diamond shaped rather than round. The area where his brows should be are two harsh, serrated dark ridges. His face is handsome, but it is a weapon, much like the rest of him. He has a strong, prominent jaw set in a square head, dark hair cropped close to his scalp. I assume it is hair, who knows. His cheekbones are sharp, slashing down to a hard, dark mouth. His lips are close to black, his skin varying from pale gray at the bridge of his nose and cheekbones to a darker hue around the line of his hair and at the edges of his hard features where his face meets a strong neck. He is an incredible-looking creature, and there is no mistaking him for human. His eyes are deep set, and the orbital bones are angular with a mercenary angle. When he blinks, it is not a soft membrane of flesh that covers his gaze; instead a shutter emerges from the horizontal sides of his eyes and meets vertically in the middle. The lids look hard and plated. If I reached out and touched them, I think they would be rough beneath my fingertips.

I stare at him, drink the details in. He is important. He is alien. If I were not so terrified by the strange circumstances of our meeting, I would be elated at this contact, but I know this is wrong. I am not supposed to be making contact with other species. Nothing in my training or job description allows for this. The protocol for contact situations is clear: don’t.

There are those who meet aliens, but that is a much higher pay grade than mine, higher still than those who get to work on the space stations. They call themselves the intergalactic diplomatic corps. I never dared to aspire to that role. I knew I lacked the grace and the social skills. I’m too awkward for this kind of work. But now I don’t have any choice. Like it or not, I’m making contact. Theoretically, I’m ready for this. I have studied everything they make available on alien species. It’s not a lot, but there is an index of known humanoid lifeforms. Whatever he is, isn’t on it.

“You left your orbital path.”

The first words out of his mouth are ones of censure—and they come in perfect, unaccented English, which shouldn’t be possible.

Hearing him speak in my language only makes the rest of him seem even more intensely strange. It confuses me and keeps me locked in stunned silence. The fact that he’s chiding me for breaking procedure is another point of odd familiarity. My commanding officer would tear strips off me if he could get his hands on me. I’m guessing he didn’t delegate that task to this creature.

---