Alien Warlord’s Miracle

REVEN

The control panel flashed in alarming shades of red as system after system failed.

He mashed a few buttons on the console, sending a distress signal. Backup would arrive too late, that he knew. The shuttle’s engine struggled, and the lights on the drive indicated a malfunction.

No easy escape.

Why had he thought this was a good idea?

Oh, technology without practical application was pointless. That’s right.

If he could go back twenty-four hours and slap some sense into himself, that’d be helpful. Not that he’d have listened. Reven never listened, not when he had his mind made up.

An aging medical shuttle had been chosen for the experiment. Teleportation was an older technology, but the parts were delicate. ‘Fiddly’ was the technical term he and the other engineers used. The teleport drive installed in the shuttle was the same as the machines the Mahdfel had used for generations, just scaled down and small enough to be installed in a single-person spacecraft.

The fiddliness increased inversely with size. The compact machine meant less airflow, and it was a bitch keeping a wrench in there to adjust on the fly. So, the mini-teleport drive was installed in a large, boring, and toothless medical shuttle. Reven had plenty of room in the back of the shuttle to spread out and fiddle with the drive if it acted up. Well, he would have if he weren’t being fired on by a Suhlik fighter.

Sure, the shuttle could take a few direct hits, but it lacked maneuverability, speed, and weaponry.

He was a sitting duck, basically.

Reven always liked that Earth idiom. It made little sense because whenever he saw a duck sitting, it flew away when he approached. Sitting ducks were, in fact, surprisingly agile.

That gave him an idea. Not a great idea, but his mind latched onto it.

Two ideas, actually. First, if the mini-teleport drive ever worked, then medical shuttles would materialize in an active battlefield. They needed to do something other than soak up damage if that happened. He’d mention it to the Warlord if he ever had the chance. Second, the Suhlik on his ass would not let him get away. He could either sit there and let the Suhlik blow him up, or he could press the flashing button on the malfunctioning mini-teleport drive and let that blow him up.

He could die by inaction or his own action.

It wasn’t even really a choice.

Time and distance pulled at him like salt-water taffy.

The confection was the first thing he demanded when he arrived on Earth. Michael had waxed poetic about the sweet for years, ascribing it every virtue and the ability to cure most ailments. With a mouthful of the sticky, gooey, chewy mess, Reven had to agree with his friend.

He wondered if he would ever see Michael again. Friends since childhood and closer than brothers, he had followed Michael to Earth.

Then he wondered why he was so conscious during a teleport. Normally his mind went blank as his molecules were disassembled. To be awake during that seemed unbearable.

The stretched taffy feeling increased.

If he ever came out of this, he didn’t think he could stomach any more taffy, now having been the taffy. Coming out of this meant the teleport would eventually end. Currently, it felt endless. Wrong. Then he had to trust the shuttle to pilot itself. The navigation system would locate the nearest Mahdfel base or craft and head in that direction, if possible. If not, he’d sit and wait.

Finally, pulled to his limit, Reven felt his consciousness snap, and he slipped into oblivion.

ELIZABETH

The golden sun hovered just above the horizon, turning the sky scarlet and marmalade orange. For the first time in nearly two years, Elizabeth wanted to hold a paintbrush and capture it. The sun set too quickly for her to retrieve her watercolors from the house.

Perhaps tomorrow.

Awareness she planned for the future needled her. It felt like a betrayal to David, as though she was leaving him behind while she moved on with her life; she longed to create while he moldered in the ground.

David would be the first to tell her she was being ridiculous. In his last days, he made her promise to find love again, paint her heart’s desire, have children, and live. For him.

She had sworn, tears streaming down her face and sobbing so hard she made herself sick. At the time, she doubted that she had the kind of strength he asked of her. Now after two years, she still doubted.

Living was pain. It was far easier to pack away the untidy emotions and nastiness of life and continue a dull existence in her widow’s weeds.

Mrs. Baldry would be thrilled if Elizabeth painted again, even as she would flutter her hands and worry darkly about Elizabeth exposing herself to the elements. The aging housekeeper would suggest that Elizabeth paint a lovely floral bouquet or a still life with fruit and the curious knickknacks cluttering up the library.

How boring.

If Elizabeth painted again, she’d bring her canvas and box of paints onto the moors and let the December air whip against her cheeks. David would expect nothing less.

The second-year anniversary of David’s death approached, which meant she needed to arrange for a gravestone. Last year she couldn’t manage, and the vicar quietly patted her hand and assured her no one would think less if she waited.

She itched thinking about the trip into the village. Most everything—coal, milk, dry goods, produce—was on a weekly delivery schedule arranged by Mrs. Baldry. She might have starved otherwise. All she had been able to manage was the occasional trip for odds and ends, mostly ink, ribbon, thread or yarn. Small domestic projects had kept her hands and her mind busy.

Briefly, she toyed with the notion of arranging the headstone via correspondence but recalled how her mother’s family had done the same for her parents when the fever took them. Her grandparents acted not out of generosity towards their estranged daughter, but out of cold necessity because how would it look if they let their genteel daughter rest in a pauper’s grave.

She dismissed the idea at once as cowardly and disrespectful to David’s memory. She loved him and could do this last act of devotion for him. Besides, the stonemason was not a fellow inclined to chit-chat.

Elizabeth had not always been antisocial. Once, she had been quite the social butterfly, although that may have been the force of her brother’s outgoing personality. He was forever dragging her along to dinners and dances. Young and easily impressed with fine clothes and glamour, she eagerly accepted every invitation. That is, after all, how she met David.

Emmanuel had introduced his friend from the Academy of the Arts with a smirk on his face. He already knew she’d be enamored of the quiet painter and she was; enamored, smitten and hopelessly devoted by the end of the second course. When the dinner party broke apart and the ladies retreated to the drawing room for coffee, she already knew the names of their future children.

That e had been such a such sweet, innocent dream. Fortunately for her, David returned her affections; they were engaged by the end of the season, and married by the spring.

Initially, the isolation of her and David’s Exmoor home weighed on her. There was nothing here but the wind and sky. She had missed the street noise of London, the people, the carriages, the trains, and the constant sound of life.

The vivacity of London came at a cost, namely crowded housing, congested streets, people piled on top of each other, and poor air. The unpleasant—and often smelly— reality of city living never bothered her, but it also did not adversely affect her health, as it did David’s. The search for good, clean air brought them to the countryside.

David loved the moors. He said the wildness and the unending vistas, those endless horizons inspired him. She had to agree that the stark skies were unlike anything else on Earth, and the sunsets amazed her. The setting sun shrouded the sky in reds and golds, with just a hint of purple at the edges, where night had taken hold.

He could paint that forever.

Except he didn’t. His time on the windswept moors had been cut short.

Elizabeth counted David as a dear friend. She loved his paintings. She knew that with a feverish certainty. He called her his muse. Of course, she married him. His weak chest prevented an intense, passionate relationship, but he had been her husband as much as his health allowed. She had hoped to have children with him, gifted children who would love the arts, and they’d have a house filled with paintings, laughter, and sunshine.

She missed him. Time had eased the pain but the ache remained. She missed seeing him at his easel with a brush in hand, another clenched between his teeth, forgotten as his creation consumed him.

Shamefully, she knew she should have missed his presence in their bed, but she didn’t. Thin-chested and sickly, the man never made her burn with desire. Certainly, she felt an affectionate fondness for him. If he had the energy to do anything, she’d rather he spent it in his studio than in their bedroom.

After he passed, Elizabeth cried when her monthly blood arrived. She knew, logically, that pregnancy was impossible. They had not been together as man and wife for some months, but the bright red blood was another reminder of all that she had lost, another possibility gone.

The doctors advised David to move out of the smoke and fog of London for his health. Clear air would benefit his lungs and, for a short time, he did improve. He sank his fortune into remodeling the old hunting lodge on Exmoor and created the perfect artist’s home with high ceilings and large windows to let in the light. He worked with a bright intensity, filling the open space with color-splashed canvases. He often painted the same vista at different points in the day, to capture the light and shadows. On more than one occasion, Elizabeth modeled for him by standing in the heather, shielding herself from the summer sun with a parasol.

On the days when he did not have the energy and could not catch his breath, she brought bits of the moors to him in bouquets of grass, heather, and wildflowers to sketch while he drank his black coffee or smoked stramonium cigarettes to ease his lungs.

David painted in a colorful, fluid style, unlike anything she had ever seen outside of the galleries of Paris. He deftly used light to capture emotions, and Elizabeth found herself enraptured that a dollop of paint could move her so.

Her own work was more detailed. She cataloged the flora and fauna of the moors, finding endless fascination with the variety of plants and flowers. Naturalists, she found, were more enthused about discovery and had less sensibility towards art. Illustrations, in short, were woefully amateur.

Someday she’d like to tour the Pacific islands, possibly Australia, and catalog the wildlife there. The world was so large and so varied, and she itched to explore, but David’s health would not allow him to travel. She contented herself with exploring the depths of the wilderness around Sweetcombe Lodge.

Then winter arrived.

Elizabeth didn’t know loneliness until she had only the wind and the sound of David’s cough to keep her company. Snow and ice kept them housebound. Even when the weather was clear, it remained abominably cold. The frigid air slapped against her exposed skin and burned in her lungs.

The house proved impossible to heat. Even with heavy drapes, all those windows let in a powerful draft. Wind sliced through the walls like they were nothing. The boiler worked around-the-clock, but the cold clung to the stone walls, worming its way down through layers of clothing to freeze bare skin. David caught pneumonia and died during the first winter in his dream home. Now Elizabeth was left alone with a greatly diminished fortune and only a folly of a house to show for it.

She thought about moving back to London, to familiar comfort if not family. Her only living relative, her brother Emmanuel, worked painting society portraits in Paris. She could join him, even if he did move in far more decadent and boisterous circles than she preferred. Always at the center of gossip or a scandalous affair, she was amazed he found the time to paint at all.

As much as she loved Emmanuel, they were too different now. She had grown accustomed to quiet and solitude. They would be at odds with each other. She’d do better to stay in Exmoor.

She could sell Sweetcombe to Gilbert Stearne, a local farmer who raised sheep, and then, perhaps, he’d stop hinting about courtship.

The man was not the marvel of subtlety he imagined. He wasn’t bad, per se, but he did not appeal to her. He was everything David was not: stoic, practical, lacking in imagination, and healthy. Remarkably healthy, often bragging he never had so much as a sniffle. How unbelievably uncouth to brag about his robust physique while knowing David had struggled for every breath.

Selling the lodge to Gilbert made sense. She’d have enough funds to take a reasonable allowance, enough for a widow, and move somewhere practical, with reliable rail service. Perhaps she could take her voyage to Australia. Widows were expected to exhibit a certain amount of eccentricity.

Staying in David’s empty house served no purpose except to compound her misery. He had been the one to crave solitude.

She knew all that but found herself reluctant to leave. She still felt his presence in the home. When that light left, she would sell up and leave. London, Paris, Australia, or any random spot on the globe. She cared not.

A bright light appeared in the darkening sky, hanging in the heavens like a Christmas star, before falling to the earth. A golden tail stretching across the arriving night. The comet cast an intense glow as bright as day. Elizabeth shielded her eyes from the strong light, feeling hopeful rather than alarmed.

It vanished as quickly as it came.

That had to be David, she decided, a sign he still watched over her.

REVEN

Fans whirled as the shuttle vented the acrid smoke billowing from the damaged drive, pumping fresh air into the cabin.

Earth.

It had to be. No other place had air with quite that scent. The nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and carbon dioxide mix that comprised the atmosphere went to his head. Actually, he always suspected the argon affected him.

He breathed in, deeply. Real air, not the canister oxygen from the ship or the recycled air generated at the Shackleton Crater Lunar Base. Real air, which meant he had a serious problem.

He was going to be late for Mara’s birthday party.

Reven forced his eyes open.

There was no way real air could breach his shuttle, short of a gash in the hull. At best, it meant he faced some difficult work. At worst, he was stuck.

At least he could enjoy the fresh air.

Computer, where are we? Raw and dry, his throat burned with the effort to speak. Water. Then a scan to make sure the teleporter reassembled all his bits-and-bobs in the correct order. He was rather fond of his bits-and-bobs.

Error. Unable to connect to satellite, the computer responded.

Great. Communications had been damaged, rendering the shuttle blind and mute as well as grounded.

Reven unstrapped himself and found the first problem. A piece of shrapnel pierced through his armor and bit into his shoulder. With teeth clenched, he grabbed the jagged metal and pulled it out. Blood gushed but not alarmingly so. Mahdfel healed quick. Even if he did more damage removing the metal, he had enough strength to stagger to the