Note: This short-story was inspired by Loving the Alien prompt. It is a part of a larger series that will one-day be available! For now, enjoy “Between the Stars”.
“There’s a lot I never told you,” Demi confessed as she took a seat in front of the old diesel heater.
The sound of the out-of-date contraption droned on in the background of the conversation. It produced only enough heat to keep the bite out of the air, but there was no real warmth to be found in the garage.
Scout sat on a crate, refusing to look at her mother. Demi could see the resentment hanging off her daughter like a thick cloak. She felt guilty for the lies, but there hadn’t been another way, had there?
“I owe you an explanation,” Demi offered softly. “Before I explain it all, I…I just need you to know that this was never meant to hurt you.”
“You knew I was different,” Scout’s voice was low. “And you made me feel crazy anytime I…” She looked up, and her eyes met Demi. They were a shade too vibrant to be considered hazel.
“I’m sorry,” Demi offered again. She ran a hand through her tight curls. “You didn’t deserve it.”
“No shit.”
Demi bit back the gut reaction to correct Scout for using a swear word. “Language,” she wanted to hiss. Considering their circumstances, however, the word ‘shit’ was hardly the biggest problem in the room.
“I just need you to know that it was never meant to hurt you. The…lies were supposed to be a comfort–a better way of explaining the past.” Demi knew her attempt to explain her actions was falling short the moment she said it.
Scout let out a sigh. “I thought it was my fault. I thought there was something…wrong with me.” Her voice broke as she spoke.
“It was never your fault.” Demi fought the desire to rush to her daughter’s side and pull her into an embrace. She knew the movement would only break the peace of the moment.
“Just tell me what happened.” Scout’s voice was cold.
“I joined ESA when I was eighteen.” She began as she looked down at her dirty fingernails. It had been days since either of them had a proper shower.
“I know all about your time with the Agency.”
Demi looked up. “No, you don’t. You know only the parts I was willing to tell.”
Scout sighed again but this time she merely waited for her mother to continue.
“I worked for them for five years. I started as a grunt and slowly made my way into becoming the captain of the starship, Dallas IV. By all accounts, I was good. I followed orders, I worked hard, I questioned nothing. Not all missions worked out the way ESA wanted them too, but that was the nature of things. Only so much in the universe can be controlled.”
“What happened on Akol?” Scout asked in an attempt to get to the point.
Demi gave her an exasperated look. “I was getting there.”
“No, you’re avoiding it…you’re…just tell me. Is it really so bad?”
“I was sent alone to Akol. I was conducting a routine inspection of the facility when a storm hit. Snowstorms on Akol are more common than water in the sea, so I…stayed put. I wasn’t worried about it. I contacted my crew and told them to wait in orbit for my return.”
“Why were you alone?”
“It was what my commander asked of me, and I didn’t question it.”
“But it’s strange to send a captain to a planet alone, right?”
Demi shrugged. “Yeah, probably. But as I said, I didn’t question it.”
“Then what happened?”
The warmth from the heater was slowly beginning to fill the garage. The chill on Demi’s skin slowly faded away. Despite this, the memory of Akol’s frigid temperatures resurfaced in her mind.
“The facility was clear. There was nothing else for me to do while the storm raged. So, I found a cot in one of the rooms and took a nap. When I awoke, a pinkfire was pointed at my head.”
Scout waited. Slowly, she leaned forward.
“He should have killed me, but he hesitated long enough for me to disarm him.”
“Who was he?”
“A Lorrokian deserter named Dekril.” Demi ran her hands over her face as if the memory was something that could be wiped off her skin.
Demi had the pinkfire pointed at the Lorrokian man. In the darkness, his green skin looked a sickly shade of gray. She knew she should take the opportunity to kill him, but her hand shook as she held the weapon. She willed herself to hold it steady. With a deep breath, she told herself that it was the right thing to do–to kill him.
“Are you hungry?”
The question stopped her from firing the weapon. “What?” Demi asked.
“Hungry…do you want food?” He seemed unbothered by the pinkfire pointed at his face. “Do you understand? Food? Am I not saying it right? I have a lot of Earthen friends, you know.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Fleeing.”
“Who?”
“The Lorrokian Federation.”
“Why?”
He paused and took a steadying breath. “No one is allowed to just quit the Federation. So, I ran.”
“You’re a deserter.”
“You could say that.”
“Why didn’t you just shoot me when I was asleep?”
“That doesn’t seem very nice,” he replied. His golden eyes flickered from the gun up to Demi’s face. “My name is Dekril.”
Demi said nothing.
“I know you’re a part of ESA. I’m sure they have some protocol about finding former Federation soldiers on frozen planets, but I-”
“I should kill you.”
His eyes returned to the pinkfire. “But you haven’t yet. Why not?”
Demi didn’t have an answer–not a real one. “I…”
“The storm is going to last a couple of days,” Dekril pressed on.
He shifted slightly, and Demi noticed he was injured. Black blood dripped slowly onto the floor of the facility. Suddenly, it made sense that she had been able to overpower him. Lorrokians were, after all, significantly stronger than Earthens.
“There’s no food here. I just inspected the entire facility,” Demi explained.
“You didn’t check everywhere.”
Below the facility was a basement that Demi had not been told about. It was here that Dekril took her. Sure enough, there was food. And warmth. The small space was far warmer than the rest of the facility. Demi bit back the desire to smile at the sudden burst of warmth.
Demi knew it was foolish to take Dekril at his word. He was a Lorrokian and a defector, at that. However, she was hungry, and it would be days before she could return to her ship. Against her better judgment, she allowed him to make her a plate of hot food and a mug of spiced, warm wine.
Sitting across from Dekril at a fold-out table in the secret basement of the facility, Demi wondered just how foolish she was being. Her reservations were short-lived when she took the first bite of food. It was like nothing she had ever tasted—savory, rich, and seasoned with spices she had never tried.
“What is this?”
Dekril looked up, surprised by the question. “The food left behind was odd—I didn’t know how to cook it. So, I mixed it in with some of the instant meals I had brought with me. This is something called Mac and Cheese mixed with a Lorrokian meal, Vichetil.”
“It’s...good. Thank you.”
“Can I ask you something?”
Demi nodded as she shoveled another forkful into her mouth.
“What’s Mac?”
“I think it’s the noodles,” she offered. “Mac and Cheese is a really popular Earthen meal. It’s easy to make, so often facilities like this will have boxes in the pantry. It stays shelf-stable for a while.”
“When you return to your ship, can you do me a favor?” He raised a dark eyebrow.
“Maybe. What do you need?” Because of the warm food and the spiced wine, Demi was fairly sure she would agree to anything.
“I’ll leave when you do, but will you avoid mentioning me when you see your crew?”
“I can’t...That’s not protocol.”
“It’s also not protocol for an ESA Captain to share a meal with a Federation defector.”
She bit her lip. “I can’t just pretend you weren’t here.”
“Then can you pretend you never got my name?”
“You agreed to that?” Scout asked.
“I did,” Demi admitted.
“So, you became friends?”
She laughed. “Not quite. We just…weren’t enemies. At least for those short few days, we didn’t try to kill each other. He thought I was uptight–a rule-following grunt. It was the first time anyone had ever said that to my face. I think that was…when I all started.”
“What started?”
“A change in me,” Demi’s dark eyes met Scout. “When the storm finally cleared, I should have arrested Dekril and taken him back to my ship. Instead, I let him go. I told my crew that I was suspicious that someone had been camping out there, but I revealed nothing else.”
Scout gaped. “You lied to ESA?”
“For the first time, yes.”
“Did you ever see him again?”
She let out a sigh. “The next time I saw Dekril, he had joined Galali.”
“Galali?”
“Galactic Liberation Army.”
“I’ve never heard of that,” Scout replied.
“I wouldn’t have expected you to. The ESA keeps a pretty tight lid on any information about Galali.” Demi felt a wave of bitterness towards the Earthen Space Agency. Once, she had felt nothing but admiration. It was strange to think how much could change in such a short amount of time.
“So he became a…raider?”
“A rebel. The next time I saw him, Dekril was helping a group of criminals escape from ESA custody.”
L’moria was a beautiful planet. It was known for its pink-sand beaches and deep violet tides. As Demi stood on the outskirts of a resort town, she liked to imagine that in another life, she could have been the kind of person to vacation to such a planet. She tried to picture herself lying on the beach with a drink in her hand. Something about the image didn’t quite fit.
Instead of flying to L’moria for a week on the sandy beaches, Demi was there to arrest a criminal known as Syn. There was little known about Syn, other than the fact that he was a terrorist. Demi’s ship had been the closest to L’moria when a call had been made—the terrorist had been sighted.
The arrest was easy. What followed was not.
Just as Demi was loading Syn onto her solo-ship, she noticed a ship descending onto the planet. Across its hull were the words “Vrai Cala”. All at once, the world slowed.
Before Vrai Cala even landed, laser blasts rained down onto Demi. She took cover, attempting to pull Syn with her beneath the ship. Syn fought against her, unwilling to be pulled along any longer.
A blast caught the inside of Demi’s arm. Unable to do much else, she hid alone under her ship. Crouched on all fours, she watched as Vrai Cala landed. The cargo doors opened, and Dekril stepped out into the warm sunlight.
Syn walked quickly towards Dekril. The two spoke in hushed tones that Demi couldn’t make out. Part of her wanted to rush the ship–attack the rebels. However, the reality of the situation was too much to ignore.
Demi was alone.
Vria Cala was full of Galali rebels.
Syn stepped aboard the ship. Just before the door closed, Demi caught Dekril’s eyes. A smirk tugged at his lips. He winked, and the doors shut.
“You didn’t even talk to him?” Scout asked.
Demi gave a small, tired laugh. “Not a word.”
“But you saw him again?”
Slowly, she nodded. “By year eight, I was having some reservations about ESA and the so-called values they held. Often, I found myself on missions without proper information about what I was getting myself into. Other times, I knew what I was doing was…wrong. Eventually, it all came to a head during a skirmish on Len Paski.”
“What happened?”
“I was sent there to gather information about a criminal who was gaining quite a bit of notoriety. It should have been a simple reconnaissance mission. However, things went sideways fast, and my cover was blown. I tried to get back to my ship but…I was captured by a gang.”
Scout looked terrified. Demi looked away from her daughter. There was an entire life that she lived before Scout came into existence. Sometimes, it hurts to think about.
“I was under the impression that ESA was coming for me. The gang imprisoned me–tried to get information from me.”
“Did they…hurt you?”
“I never told them what they wanted. I followed my training, and I stayed quiet. But it didn’t do me any good. ESA was never going to come for me. The moment I was captured, they wrote me off as a casualty and hoped I’d die before I gave away too much information. I…I think I would have died if not for Dekril.”
Demi was tossed unceremoniously into a dirty room. Likely, it had once been a motel room. Now, however, it has been transformed into a makeshift prison cell. The windows were reinforced with bars, and the door had been replaced with steel. Even the walls were made of sturdy brick.
“No, no, no,” Demi whispered to herself. She sat stiffly on the floor with her back to the door. Her face felt sticky with a combination of blood, sweat, and tears.
It was dark enough in the room that Demi didn’t immediately notice her cellmate. A shifting shadow on the bed was what first caught her eye. Outside, a neon sign advertised a drink called Vulith. Violet neon cast a new light into the room.
Green skin. Dark hair. Long claws. Her cellmate was Lorrokian, but she couldn’t see much more than that.
“Eis,” she uttered the Lorrokian word for ‘hello’. Even the singular word was not meant for Earthen tongues. She wondered idly if it was more insulting to try than to speak in her own language.
Her cellmate didn’t answer.
“Yt calit eo Demeter Felix,” she introduced herself. “I don’t know much Lorrokian,” she admitted. “But maybe...maybe you know some Earthen?”
Again, there was no response. Demi rested her head against the back of the door and let out a long sigh. “Can you even hear me?”
“Yes,” replied a familiar. “And you’re right, you don’t know much Lorrokian.”
“Dekril?”
Slowly, the shadow on the bed moved. He sat. The neon light flashed over his features. He seemed just as surprised to see her as she was to see him.
“I’m almost tempted to ask if you’re stalking me,” he retorted.
Despite her situation, Demi laughed. The laugh spiraled into something stranger–wilder. Everything in her life had been turned on its head. Yet, here, on the planet of crime, was Dekril. After a moment, her laughter subsided. The movement had hurt her bruised face.
“Why are you here?” She asked.
“I was captured by Viryli’s gang,” he shrugged and stood up. Slowly, he made his way across the room.
“So was I,” she spoke quietly.
Dekril sat down beside her. Demi didn’t care enough to move away from him.
“Well,” he offered, “at least you’ve got people coming to save you. I’m not so sure if Galali is going to bail me out again.”
She looked over at the alien beside her. In the purple glow of the city lights, it was hard to see the green tone to his skin. However, the scales near his eyes glistened slightly in the light.
“They’re not coming for me,” she replied.
“What?”
Demi looked away from his golden gaze. “They’re not coming for me. Not this time.”
For a moment, the two were silent.
“I’m sorry,” Dekril offered at last. “I figured…”
“Me too.”
Demi watched the lights outside flash between different advertisements. Some were written in Earthen, others were in various languages she only somewhat recognised. All at once, the universe felt impossibly large and unpredictable. She was just a grain of sand in a vast expanse of cold, nothingness.
The universe didn’t care that she had gotten good grades at the Academy. It didn’t care that she had worked hard and showed up to work on time. It didn’t care that she followed all the rules. In the end, it seemed content to have her die alongside a deserter and a rebel.
“Where are you from, Demi?” Dekril asked after a long pause of silence.
“Earth. I figured that easy-”
“No, where on Earth?”
“Oh, I’ve lived in Angel’s Landing for the past twelve years, but I’m from a small town.”
“What is it called?”
“Wilsburo. It’s a farming town.”
“Tell me about it.” There was something desperate about the way he was asking for information.
Demi gave a halfhearted shrug. “There isn’t much there but farms and factories. It’s…nice, though. There’s a little river that divides the town into two. When I was little, I used to go fishing with my sister.”
“You have a sister?”
“Yeah,” Demi’s voice was small. “Last I heard, she’s on a mining ship headed to M’orak.”
Silence returned.
“Do you have kids?”
Demi scoffed. “No. You?”
“No.”
“I…wanted them.”
“And now?”
“I’m going to die in this armpit of a planet, so it’s a good thing I don’t.”
“But if you got out of this, would you return to Wilsburo to raise a family?”
Demi gave a small smile. “Maybe. I used to think that sounded like the worst thing in the world. Now? Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to buy a hobby farm and raise a couple of kids.”
“And tigers.”
“People don’t really raise those on farms,” Demi smirked. “Maybe some housecats?”
Dekril shrugged. “Sure. And snakes?”
“Sure,” Demi agreed. “But a lot of people are afraid of snakes.”
“All the better. I’m not really big on social interactions.”
“Oh? So you’re joining me on this farm, huh?” Despite herself, she laughed again at the thought of it.
“Why not?” He faked a look of hurt. “Do I not strike you as a farmer?”
“Are there farms on N’ok?”
Dekril considered the question for a moment. “Not really. We have large sections of the station that are essentially greenhouses, but…all the plants grow in water.”
“Hydroponics.”
“Semantics. There’s no dirt on N’ok, it’s just a star station. Not like Earth.”
“Alright, well, I guess you can join me,” she smirked. “But what about my kids? Who are you to them?”
“I was hoping I’d be their father.”
Demi gasped, appalled at the suggestion.
Dekril laughed. It was a loud bark of a laugh.
“That’s a bit presumptuous,” she remarked after a moment of pause.
He shrugged, his shoulder rubbing up against hers. “In Lorrokian culture, there’s a belief that some people are linked together through space and time. No matter what we do, where we go, we are linked between the stars.”
“And you think that’s…us?”
Again, he shrugged. “I never really believed in the concept, but we do run into each other quite a bit. It’s a big universe and yet…here we are.”
“I’m too tired to know if that’s insane or…incredibly…sweet.”
He flashed a grin. “Can’t it be both?”
“Dekril is…” Scout struggled to articulate her thoughts.
Demi felt warmth rise to her face. She had never told anyone about what happened on Len Paski. Sometimes, she even lied to herself about the details. She would say they were muddy or focus instead on the fact that she escaped.
“Dekril is your father,” Demi replied. The words hung in the dusty air of the garage for longer than she would have liked.
“I…why did you lie?”
Demi pulled herself off the crate and stepped up to her daughter. She knelt on the cold cement and grabbed Scout’s hands in her own. “What you are is… unprecedented. According to everything I’ve found-”
“I shouldn’t exist.”
Demi winced. “The possibility of an Earthen and a Lorrok reproducing is-”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is he alive?”
“I don’t know.” Demi sighed. “It was Galali who broke us out of the cell. Apparently, Dekril had information they refused to let fall into the wrong hands.”
“So, he never went back to Earth with you?”
Demi looked down at their hands. She often wondered if her daughter’s skin were lighter, would green shine through? Were there any traces of Dekril in her?
“He was never going to go to Earth with me. We were never going to have a hobby farm.” She offered Scout a sad smile. “We were scared, and sometimes telling a little story is all we can do to keep ourselves sane.”
Read more that takes place in the “Galactic Liberation Archive” universe! “A Deckhand’s Guide to Avoiding Arrest” is now available! It updates every week!
Don’t forget to check out Jacinta Palmer’s work on February 4th!
Mac and Cheese, here in Canada we call it Kraft Dinner. True story, when I lived in Fort Erie, Ontario I lived right beside Kraft road where James Lewis Kraft began to build his cheese business before winning a patent for one in 1916.
Anyways, Good Story.
Wait a min....Scout's father isn't BRUCE?!?!?!!
😁😉