Dinosaur World 6 Chapter 8

“H-Hold on,” I stammered as my mouth went dry. “You said… you said this machine… the matter maker… sent you a signal of war? That’s impossible.”

“Do. Not. Lie.” Adhara said in a low and threatening tone, and her gills hummed.

She looked close to biting my head off, and I could see she genuinely thought I was playing dumb right now, but I couldn’t even imagine what to say to this.

The wind howled outside, and the glass of the windows rattled, but neither of us spoke, and my limbs gradually prickled all over before my knees started going numb.

What the fuck had our planet gotten into?

“Oi, Jason!” Becka called from the bottom of the attic stairs. “You up there?”

“Uh-huh,” I replied with my eyes still fixed on Adhara.

“I told you he would be,” Hae-won said. “We’re all clean and shiny now, and Kat finished her lesson.”

“No, I didn’t,” Kat sighed as the girls clomped up the stairs. “One of the locals fainted when they held the gun, and everyone started to make a fuss. It was disappointing, but I thought I should give them a break.”

The three girls arrived at the top of landing, but then they all stood in my peripheral vision while Adhara kept glaring at me with her arms crossed. I was probably three shades paler and just staring back at her, and my girls all came directly to my side in a matter of seconds.

“Jason?” Becka said.

“What’s wrong?” Kat asked, and she stood partially between me and the alien with a suspicious glance. “What happened?”

“Well… Adhara was just starting to tell me about why she came to Earth,” I said in a monotone. “I think we have a problem.”

“What is it?” Hae-won stepped closer to my side and glanced between me and the alien.

“I’m pretty sure the Hadron Collider sent her people a signal of war,” I answered.

“What the fuck?” Becka asked. “The Hadron Collider? What the hell has that got to do with war?”

“Yeah, it’s a science experiment,” Hae-won told Adhara. “It doesn’t send signals to other planets.”

The alien looked anxious now that all four of us were here, and she took a small step back as her incredibly intelligent eyes flicked between all of us rapidly.

“You tell lies,” Adhara said in a strained tone. “You are all part of it?”

“Part of what?” Hae-won asked.

“This war signal?” I guessed.

“Okay, I promise we are not,” Becka snorted. “The dinos are enough to take on, thanks. We’re not about to go picking fights with aliens who could probably evaporate us with their space guns.”

“Yeah, nobody has sent any war signal out,” Kat agreed. “I think the only ‘message’ we’ve sent into space was that time-capsule years ago. It carried random information about Earth incase aliens ever found it.”

“There was a map sent out in the seventies, I think,” I added.

“A map?” Becka scoffed. “Well that was bloody brilliant. Here’s a map to our vulnerable little planet that can’t even create magical spacesuits yet.”

“It was not a capsule or a map that you sent,” Adhara said more firmly. “It was a call to war. We know because it was the same as last time. It is your weapon preparing to attack us again.”

“Last time?” I asked, and I could hear my voice getting higher. “What do you mean, last time? This has never happened before, we’ve never made contact with an alien race.”

I looked at the girls, and they seemed just as confused as I felt.

“No, this is just like before,” Adhara insisted. “We told the alakerik that if it was activated again, we would not hesitate to attack. We warned you. Three million Alakerinician years may have passed, but we have not forgotten. And you have not forgotten.”

“I genuinely feel high,” Becka mumbled. “Did Mum slip something into our soup?”

“What is an alakerik?” Hae-won asked.

“Fuuuck,” I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. “I think… holy shit.”

“What is it?” Kat asked as her hazel eyes darted to mine.

“She called me an alakerik earlier, I thought that was just her word for ‘human,’ but now I’m not so sure,” I admitted. “Adhara… humans, which is what we are, were not walking around three million years ago, and we sure as hell didn’t have Hadron Colliders around. Or matter makers, as you called it.”

“You did,” the alien objected. “The colony on planet four attacked us with their matter maker, and we battled with them for too many years. There was much blood spilled, but we defeated them at last.”

None of us moved or spoke, and Adhara shifted her stance impatiently as she continued to try and spell things out for us.

“The war forced your people to surrender,” Adhara snarled. “We warned you to never activate the weapon again, or we would destroy you for good. It was a warning we thought was taken seriously.”

“What colony?” Kat asked as she rubbed her forehead. “What do you mean planet four? You had a war with another planet here?”

“Like the fourth planet from the sun?” Hae-won asked.

“My very educated mother just served us noodles,” Becka said, and we all turned to stare at her.

“Pardon?” Hae-won asked.

“That’s how I was taught to remember the planets.” Becka shrugged. “I still use it. So the fourth word is mother, and that means Mars.”

“Stop making this more confusing,” Kat groaned with a shake of her curly head, and then she turned to Adhara. “Is that what you mean? A colony on Mars fought you three million years ago?”

“Also impossible,” I countered. “Mars couldn’t have even been inhabited then. We’d have to be talking about like… four and a half billion years ago. Adhara, I need you to answer a few questions very clearly for me.”

The alien’s jaw tensed as she scowled at me.

“The Alakerenician Sector,” I began. “Are you certain you’re in it right now?”

“Of course I am certain!” she snapped, and her gills flared.

“Fine, what is it?” I asked. “Tell me exactly what this sector encompasses to you.”

“This solar plain and the seven hundred surrounding it,” Adhara said through clenched teeth.

“Wait, if we’re talking Alakerinician years… those are not Earth years,” Kat pointed out, and I nodded in agreement. “She’s basing her timetable on a fucking huge area of the galaxy.”

“So, she could be referencing Mars at a habitable time,” I concluded.

“Planet four,” Adhara said with a deeply confused crease between her eyebrows. “The alakerik colony. I remember the day they attacked us.”

“You what?” Becka belted out. “How old are you? You have to be ancient to remember that much!”

My head threatened to explode from the storm of information, and Kat’s eyes were narrowed into skeptical slits. Hae-won looked ready to burst with excitement all of a sudden while her electric blue eyes popped open wide, but Becka was gaping with disbelief.

“It is not my own memory,” Adhara growled. “It is my ancestors,’ which is why I know you are lying. You know this, too!”

The lilac woman turned her back on us and started angrily pacing the full length of the attic, and her strange, silverish boots didn’t even make a sound no matter how hard she stomped. Her silver hair flipped through the air every time she abruptly changed direction, but as frustrated as she looked, I was still completely confused as to why.

She seemed to expect us to know everything she said was inherently true, but whatever history books she had on her shelves seemed to be older than life itself on our planet.

“Look,” I said as calmly as possible. “I get that you’re frustrated, but we’re fucking lost in this conversation. We’re trying to understand you. If you will explain things slowly, I’m sure we’ll catch up.”

“Yeah, it’s not like we’re playing stupid,” Becka snorted, and she looped her arm in mine. “We’re confused, Adhara, I’m sure even you can relate. We don’t have the same name for things as you.”

Adhara sighed loudly and stopped pacing, and then she turned around to face us. Her sharp green eyes flicked down to where Becka was hitched to my arm, and then she glanced at Kat. The pretty soldier still stood in a protective stance just to the side of me, and Hae-won sent the alien an eager smile.

“Yes,” Adhara suddenly said, and she strode straight toward us with a determined set to her jaw. “The words are not working. I will say it clearer.”

“Thank you,” I said with a nod.

“The memory of the ones who came before,” Adhara said in a calmer tone. “The ones you came from.”

“Yeah, ancestors,” I agreed. “I know that word.”

“You know their memories,” the alien concluded. “The things they saw.”

“Yeah history,” Hae-won tried. “You write it down in books, or record it in videos. The stuff that’s told from one generation to the next. We understand that--”

“No, you do not!” Adhara blinked rapidly several times. “Why are you not understanding? Ancestors. Memory. The seeing of them through the eyes. You know these words?”

“Yes, we do,” I said and a bewildered chuckle escaped me. “It sounds like you’re talking about something like generational memory, though. Is that what you mean?”

“Woahhhh shitttt,” Hae-won gasped. “Adhara, can you actually remember everything that has ever happened in your bloodline? They’re your own memories, too?”

We all stared at the lilac-skinned woman, and the atmosphere was drenched with anticipation as we waited for an answer. Adhara seemed to have frozen up all of a sudden, though, and she’d stopped blinking. Something like panic was overtaking her features, and her gills hummed as she breathed faster and faster.

“You do not have this?” Adhara asked at last. “Your kind cannot remember your elders’ memories? Not even from recent times?”

“No.” I frowned. “We can’t. That’s fucking awesome that you can, but our species is nothing like that. Human minds are brand new when we’re born. We make our own memories, and then they die with us.”

“Yeah, we can only remember what’s happened to us, and the things we’ve seen and heard for ourselves.” Hae-won added. “Even then, we don’t remember everything, especially not from when we were kids.”

“Which is like, barely a couple decades ago,” Becka snorted. “So… yeah. Definitely can’t vouch for this alien war you’re talking about.”

The pretty alien’s mouth hung open slightly as she stared at each of us in turn. She shook her head as her eyes met mine, and her frame was trembling a bit like her nerves were getting the best of her.

“Which brings us back to the Mars thing,” Kat led. “Humans have never lived on mars. Even if our minds were capable of remembering what the previous generations experienced, it wouldn’t change that fact. Humans didn’t exist that long ago, so if you remember some sort of war with the fourth planet in our solar system, it couldn’t have been a war with us. Earth is the only home we’ve ever had, and humans have only been around for like three hundred thousand years or something. Not millions or billions.”

“You are not descended from the fourth planet colony?” Adhara asked, and her words flew from her mouth so quickly, I almost didn’t catch them.

All of us shook our heads, and then Adhara shook hers.

“No. Show me,” she demanded and pointed at my stomach. “Move the clothing and show me.”

“Excuse me?” Becka said and tensed her hold on my arm. “Back the fuck off, alien.”

“Yeah, he’s ours,” Hae-won agreed.

“No, show me,” Adhara demanded again. “The markings are there, I am sure of it.”

“Look, you’re interesting, alright?” Becka said. “And yeah, you’re gorgeous in an intergalactic way, but there’s no way in hell we’re just showing you Jason’s--”

“She’s not pointing at his dick,” Kat sighed, and she turned around, grabbed my shirt, and yanked it up to expose my abs. “There. Like that?”

“Hey,” I hissed, but then I realized Adhara’s expression.

She looked fucking horrified as she stared at my abs, and I instinctively double checked to make sure there wasn’t anything weird going on down there. Other than some added dino-slaying and sex muscle, nothing stood out to me, and we all waited for the alien to recover from the view.

“You… you are not alakerik,” she breathed after staring at me for nearly a minute.

“Yeah, I’m thinking the same thing,” I snorted.

“The markings are not there,” Adhara croaked.

“What markings?” Hae-won asked.

“These!” Adhara pointed desperately to the gills on her neck. “They should be there on the stomach! But… but you activated your weapon! You have regrown on a new planet! You have to be alakerik! You seek war again!”

“We really don’t,” Becka said in a much gentler tone. “Adhara, how could we? We don’t remember shit about this, we don’t have spacecrafts like yours, and you’re not even impressed with our weapons.”

“We built the Hadron Collider for scientific experiments,” I explained. “We wanted to smash atoms together to see what happens. We probably still don’t even understand the extent of possibilities that machine brings to light, but we’re not using it for war. We don’t even know your people exist.”

“Shit,” Kat suddenly cursed and dropped my shirt, and she turned on the alien. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You fucking sent the dinos here to wipe us out. For something we didn’t even intend to do.”

The alien took a step back, and her cheeks flushed a darker shade of purple as she watched Kat. Although I felt bad for her, fury rushed through my gut at the thought of how much death and destruction had taken place in the last few weeks. I decided to walk around the attic a little so I’d stay as calm as possible, but all of us held our tongues while we waited for Adhara to answer the question.

“The signal,” the alien said in a shaky voice. “It was sent before… the fourth planet war lasted for hundreds of years.”

“But not with our kind,” Hae-won argued.

“I understand.” Adhara wrung her hands. “Our people could not win a war like this again. We are so scared. We had no choice but to send the ommati to save ourselves.”

“So many people have died,” Kat said. “Did you even look into this place before you just unleashed your fucking dinosaurs?”

I stopped near the window and glanced over at Adhara, and she looked like she wanted to sink into the floorboards. Nothing about her seemed hostile now, and her soft purple lips quivered under Kat’s gaze.

“We sensed you activated your weapon,” she insisted. “We saw how many alakerik… how many humas your planet produced, and so rapidly. We knew we could not fight such an army. When you activated the weapon, we knew we would die in a second war against the alakerik if they had regrown so much as this.”

“But your planet must have way more than us,” Hae-won pointed out. “The ship you came here in is so advanced, and the weapons you have told us about… It is all so much more complicated than what we have here on Earth.”

“Our technology is much more advanced, I see that now.” Adhara nodded. “But our planet is dying. The food is running out, and my people are not producing young as much as needed. A war like the last would be the end of us. The only way to survive was the doors through the universe.”

“The portals?” I asked and came over to her again. “That was your planet’s doing, right?”

“It was the only way we would survive,” Adhara insisted, and her green eyes shimmered nervously when she managed to hold my gaze. “I did not imagine your kind would be so easily defeated by them, but when I see your weapons, I-I understand. We thought this would be a long battle against our hated enemy.”

It was too much to take in, and I rifled my hair as I continued walking around the room again. Then I leaned my back against the wall as I looked over at the girls.

Hae-won twirled her raven-black hair absentmindedly while her brow stayed furrowed deeply in thought. Kat’s arms were crossed while her fingers drummed against one elbow, but Becka just stared at Adhara with her lips a little slack.

I had a million more questions. I didn’t even know which subject to examine first, or if Adhara was even telling the truth, but judging by how completely shaken she seemed now, I had a feeling I could trust her word. The way she gaped in shock at my abs was probably the moment it all finally computed for her, and now, we could only stand around in a tense silence while we all tried to process.

Adhara was the first one to break the silence.

“I am sorry,” the alien said softly, and I glanced up to see her looking directly at me with her glistening green eyes. “I did not know. You have all been kind to me and made sure I did not die. Our people have been scared of the entire Alekarinician Sector ever since our last war. We won, but at such a high cost of life. We thought the time would come when they wanted their revenge. We thought we were protecting ourselves, and that if we destroyed you with the ommati, we could in turn save our race. We could gain an entire planet of resources and rebuild.”

“Hold the fuck on,” Becka cut in. “Your people seriously think you could claim Earth after this? What the hell good will it be when it's overrun with dinosaurs?”

“The ommati are not a problem to us,” the alien replied. “We live well among them.”

“Cool,” Hae-won chuckled, and I couldn’t help smirking at how impressed she looked.

“But we knew they could cause trouble for the alakerik if we used them well,” Adhara continued. “Our scientists started to open doors everywhere, all at once. More and more doors every day. They keep increasing the doors, and they program the ommati to adapt as we have always done.”

“Holy shit,” I groaned, and I had to brace my weight on my knees. “These fuckers are only going to get smarter.”

“We’re so fucking dead,” Becka groaned.

“How do we stop this?” Kat asked the alien. “Putting all the reasons why this happened to the side, what can we do to tell your people that we have never sent a signal of war. How do we make it clear we are not your enemies and put an end to this before there’s nobody left?”

“I need to alert my superiors,” Adhara said, and she pulled her silver hair. “I need to fix the radio on the ship. It might be too late.”

“Too late?” Becka gasped.

“What does that mean?” Hae-won frowned. “Is there an entire fleet of yours just floating outside our atmosphere?”

“Is that why you’re here?” I asked. “You’re leading them?”

“No, I am only a scout,” the alien explained. “There were four of us sent.”

“Then what did you mean by ‘too late?’” Kat clarified.

“I mean the rest of my people are on course to this place,” Adhara replied, and Becka’s eyes bulged. “They expected to engage in the final war with the alakerik once the ommati thinned out your defenses. They took the bigger ships.”

“They’re all coming here already?” Becka blurted out.

“Yes, I must tell them to stop,” the alien said with a hasty nod.

“How long until they arrive?” I demanded.

“I cannot know,” Adhara admitted. “Without contact with my crew, I have no answer.”

I looked out of the window at the crashed spaceship, and the invisible force field that surrounded it. If Adhara didn’t get that message to her people in time, then we could have a full on alien war on our hands, and I had a feeling the humans would not be on the winning team in a fight like this.

“Then we need to get to work,” I said. “We can discuss all of this as we help you fix the radio. Every second counts, and I think you might be in danger here, too, Adhara.”

“I am in danger?” the alien asked as she took a few quick steps back. “Why is this? I am sorry! I did not know--”

“Not with us,” I said. “But what I said before is true. Spacecrafts don’t just fucking show up in our atmosphere daily around here, and they sure as hell don’t crash down in England. Someone will come searching. Unless every single governmental headquarter in the country has been destroyed, then there has to be someone who tracked your ship as it came into our atmosphere. If they see that spaceship outside, they’ll tear this place apart looking for you.”

“Wait, if they take her and lock her in a lab, and confiscate her ship…” Becka said as she went pale. “Then how the hell are we going to stop her fucking army from arriving?”

“Exactly.” I nodded.

“Shit,” Hae-won squeaked.

“Hey, we’ve got this,” I told the girls, and I came over to pull them into my arms. Both Hae-won and Becka immediately latched themselves against me with their arms locked around my waist, and I left a couple kisses in both their hair. “We’ve handled everything else that came our way, and we’ll handle this, alright? We’ll just take it one step at a time.”

“True.” Hae-won looked up at me with electric blue eyes. “We’ve protected each other and Raven Hall so far.”

“Yeah, alright,” Becka sighed, but she held me tighter. “May as well save the fucking world while we’re at it.”

“Then let’s get to work,” Kat said at once.

As I looked at the faces of the women I loved, I felt a renewed sense of urgency, and I knew we had no choice but to figure this shitstorm out. Dinos were bad enough, but it was clear now that they’d only get much, much worse thanks to how adaptable they were.

Even if we did survive a dino apocalypse, we had an army of highly advanced aliens on their way to finish the job.

“I am sorry,” Adhara said again as she looked at me and my women. “If I knew beings like you were here, I would have told them not to open any doors. We thought you were our enemies preparing their weapon. If we had known that you aren’t the same, that you do not remember, we would have left you alone. We do not want to fight. We are peaceful people. We wanted to defend ourselves.”

“We can’t change what’s already been done,” I said. “We have a clock to beat, and we need to go fix that radio and save the world.”

Kat immediately headed for the staircase, and I shifted myself out of Becka and Hae-won’s hold to nudge them in her direction.

“Shoot, you know… I don’t think I brought my alien spacecraft tools,” Becka sighed. “I knew I forgot something in my dorm. But I’m pretty sure if we just leave Hae-won in the ship for five minutes, she’ll be able to tamper with the wires and get her running in no time.”

“I think this may be harder than hot wiring a motorbike.” The Korean grinned. “But way more exciting! I cannot believe we are getting to see the workings of it all up close.”

“Let’s get those butts moving,” Kat yelled from the bottom of the staircase. “We’re on a tight schedule, people. People and alien, I mean. Sorry, Adhara”

“Yeah, let’s move.” I jogged down the steps with Adhara right ahead of me. “Also, I can’t believe I was right back when I first suggested this whole thing was some sort of History Channel alien invasion bullshit.”

“Yeah, you did call it,” Becka agreed. “It sounded so insane back then, even with blood-thirsty dinos running around.”

“Somehow, the shock of this alien shit is already wearing off,” Kat chuckled as we hurried toward the next staircase. “I’m just going to roll with this.”

“Look who’s the adaptable species, now!” Hae-won laughed, and from behind Adhara’s shoulder, I could see her actually smiling.

“Should we tell the others?” Kat asked while we thundered down the steps.

“Maybe not yet,” I said. “I don’t know how helpful that would be, it could just cause a mass panic.”

“Because of the imminent threat of an alien invasion during a dino apocalypse?” Becka asked. “Surely nobody would panic over something so trivial as that, Jason.”

The girls snickered as we rounded the next flight of stairs, but a mixture of adrenaline and anxiety coursed through me. I had so much to protect and fight for now, and the thought of our family being destroyed over a misunderstanding was not something I could let happen. The loves of my life were beside me, and we finally had somewhere safe to build a community amongst all the madness of the world.

And Becka wanted to have a baby with me more than anything.

As far as I was concerned, any child of ours would live a long and fucking incredible life on this planet, no matter what it took.

Adhara shot me nervous glances more than once as we made our way downstairs, and I noticed her fingers wiggling anxiously. The fifth time I caught her checking my expression, I forced a reassuring smile, but she still seemed to sense how tense I’d become since everything with this Hadron Collider came to light.

The lobby smelled like lavender when we reached the ground floor, and I nodded at Gerald as he lit some scented candles on the reception desk. Then we hurried into the pantry, and we found that Mikey and his buddies had done a great job of securing the door. There were metal panels covering the wood, and two freezers stood in front of the entrance just in case. Someone had even used the power drill to install a swing lock.

There was also a young man on a chair beside the freezers, and when we came in, he looked up from reading one of the thriller books Hae-won delivered from the bookstore. He had long, dark hair tied back with a band and dark stubble on his thin face.

“Hiya,” he said. “Oh… got the alien out, eh?”

“Yeah, what are you doing here?” Becka asked a little defensively.

“Debbie’s given me door duty,” the guy said with a shrug.

“Door duty?” Hae-won asked.

“Yeah.” The young man got up and started to push the freezers aside. “She reckoned you lot might be going in and out, and she didn’t want to leave the door unblocked. So, she’s got us on shifts. Just give a knock when you want it open again.”

“Nice.” I grinned. “What’s your name?”

“Owen,” he replied. “Be careful out there, guys.”

“We will, thanks,” I said as Owen pulled the newly built door open, and I was glad to see he wasn’t glaring at Adhara.

Maybe Debbie’s scolding had woken a few of the locals up.

I swung my rifle to my front as I peered out across the courtyard. It was still cloudy and windy, and the rustle of the trees nearby almost sounded like the shuffle of dino feet, so it was hard to tell what was waiting out there or not. I took a minute to make sure I felt confident the coast was clear, and then I signaled for the girls to follow me out onto the gravel.

Owen closed the door behind us, and I heard the lock being secured as we started to walk over the gravel.

The waves by the cliffside were loud and gray and crashed against the land angrily. We were all on high alert after the sneaky attack of the herd, and my eyes darted from side to side as we quickly walked out of the courtyard and started to make our way down the hillside.

Nobody spoke as we hurried down toward the space craft, and I couldn’t help checking over my shoulder every few steps. When we reached the ship, we stood and looked at the hazy forcefield, and it glistened under the dull light afternoon.

“How do we get in?” I asked as I examined the shield. From up close I could actually see the barrier, and it looked like it had pale colors that changed in waves, and pastel pinks and greens seemed to disappear as soon as I looked at them.

“You cannot step through,” Adhara said. “This will make you very injured if you touch it from the outside. It does not harm me in my suit, so I go switch it off.”

Without another word, the alien stepped through the forcefield. It was the first time that Adhara had been somewhere out of our control, and I briefly wondered if she had just taken her chance to escape for good. I wondered if all those anxious looks she was sending me on the stairs were because she planned to make a run for it, but there wasn’t much I could do now.

A fucking alien forcefield stood between us and her.

“Anyone else ready for this thing to suddenly blast off?” Kat muttered as she warily looked at the ship. “This is the first time she’s been alone inside it since she crashed. What if all this was just to bullshit her way back inside without us?”

“And now she’s going to report back,” Becka added in a whisper. “And tell her pals that we are in no way prepared for war, and they could basically stroll in and take over the planet.”

“But I want to see more of the spaceship.” Hae-won frowned.

Then there was a brief buzzing sound, and the forcefield suddenly vanished and left the ship the way we had found it.

“It is safe for human now!” Adhara called down the sleek corridor.

“Stay armed.” Kat ordered in a low voice. “If she’s set up some kind of trap, we could end up melted the second we--”

“I trust her,” I said, and I took a step off the grass and into the spaceship. I looked back at the girls and grinned, and they were clearly satisfied with the results as they started to pile in behind me.

As soon as Kat stepped over the threshold, the forcefield buzzed back into place, and we were protected inside the craft.

We slowly made our way forward while I kept my hands on my rifle, but when we reached the control room, we found Adhara sitting on the floor with her long legs crossed as she inspected some wires in an open silver box.

“Hi,” I said as I shifted my rifle to my shoulder.

“Hello, I have begun to study the damage,” Adhara said without looking up.

“Any idea how long it will take to get your radio fixed?” I asked

“It is hard to say,” Adhara replied. “It is a complicated process.”

“What happens if you can’t fix it?” Becka asked as she leaned against the wall.

“My people will come in many fleets,” the lilac-skinned woman said. “And it will not be a good thing for your kind. You are not alakerik, but we do not know and will not talk to you before we begin to bomb. You will be easily destroyed if the ommati do not kill you all first.”

“Lovely,” Becka snorted.

I sat down in the pilot’s chair and looked out onto the gray countryside. Having Adhara’s trust was vital, but if she couldn’t fix her radio in time then it would be useless. If we couldn’t stop the rest of her kind from coming then we would have a much bigger problem on our hands than the dinos.

“So, the dinosaurs,” I said. “Or the ommati. Do they walk around your planet freely? Or are they in a sanctuary of some kind?”

“A sanctuary?” Adhara asked as she looked up from her work. “What is this?”

“Like a zoo,” Kat offered. “Keeping the animals contained in a restricted area.”

“Oh.” The alien went back to rearranging a few brightly colored wires. “No, the ommati roam where they want. They do not care about us, and we do not care about them.”

“They don’t try to eat you?” Hae-won asked as she crouched next to Adhara to inspect the wire box. “How come?”

“We are not interesting to them.” The alien shrugged. “Sometimes they will cause harm by accident, if they step on something. But maybe we do not taste nice. They eat each other, like your wildlife here.”

“Plenty of our wildlife would make a meal out of a human if they wanted to,” Becka snorted. “You’re telling me you just have t-rexs wandering about, and they wander past you, and nobody cares?”

“The largest ommati don’t live where our homes are built,” Adhara replied as she pulled at a blue wire and fed it into a different socket. “They can be dangerous if they were in a bad mood, but we don’t see those ones very much.”

“So, kind of like lions?” Kat asked. “Big animals that could hurt you, but you don’t really cross paths with?”

“I don’t think of them.” Adhara nodded. “I am not a talker, so I do not have much time with the ommati.”

“Uhh, I don’t think that word translated properly,” I said and furrowed my brow. “A talker?”

“Yes,” the alien said, and her green eyes darted up to me. “A talker can talk to the ommati. I cannot do this.”

She blindly reached up and twisted a dial on the control panel as she went back to frowning at the wires, and seemed to not realize how bizarre her last statement sounded.

“Talk to them?” Hae-won asked. “Some of your people can talk to the dinosaurs?”

“Yes,” Adhara said. “But not many, only the ones who are in talker families.”

“Are you serious?” Kat asked, and she leaned on the back of my chair with wide eyes. “There’s people on your planet who can have full on conversation with dinosaurs?”

“They aren’t conversations,” Adhara replied, and she seemed almost amused at the question. “But they communicate. This is to discuss the intent of the ommati, or to get it to go to a different place.”

“Holy shit,” I laughed. “That’s incredible.”

“Yeah, where are those people when we need them?” Becka snorted.

“They are assisting the door scientists in programming the ommati who are attacking your planet,” Adhara replied.

There was a distant roar, and we all looked out of the front window into the gray fields, but there were no dinos in sight yet.

Adhara had pulled a small pair of miniature pliers with a light purple handle from her flight suit. They seemed too delicate to even use, but the alien nimbly pried some of the wires apart with the device and started to carefully thread them into different sockets inside the box.

“So… how many of your people will be coming exactly?” Becka asked as she peered out of the window. “You said that Earth has way more people than you planet?”

“Maybe not anymore,” Adhara said. “The amount of destroying the ommati have done is changing things. It could mean there are equal numbers between us, now.”

“And they’ll spread all over the world?” Kat asked as she drummed her fingers on the cool metal of the chair.

“Everywhere the ommati have begun their work.” Adhara nodded.

“But you said other scouts came with you?” I asked. “Where are they now?”

“We stayed quite close together, but I do not know where they are now,” Adhara said. “My ship malfunctioned in storm, and I lost contact when I dropped to surface. I won’t be able to contact my fleet until the radio is back on.”

“What exactly were you coming here to scout?” Kat asked. “You were checking if the dinos had done their work?”

“Yes,” the alien replied. “We had to make sure that the alakerik here were weakened enough for us to approach and defeat them.”

“Smart strategy,” I muttered, and my girls all looked at me. “I’m just saying. It is smart, even if we’re the wrong targets. This dino shit is working.”

We watched Adhara work for a while while she rerouted wires and turned dials, but her expression remained stoic, and it seemed like whatever was meant to happen was still a long way off.

Hae-won gave me some worried glances now and then, and Becka leaned against the wall and stared out of the window. Kat paced slowly up and down the craft while her eyes roved over every dial and door, there was so much to take in that I found myself doing the same from where I sat in the pilot’s chair. The sleek metal under me was cold, but it was somehow incredibly comfortable and felt cushioned. When I pressed my fingers into it, it gave way just the slightest bit, and I wondered if it was some spacey cross between metal and memory foam.

Before I could ask Adhara, another roar shook through the sky in the distance, and when I glanced out the window, something was there.

I didn’t recognize it from this distance, but it was definitely headed this way.

“We’ve got something incoming,” I warned the others.

The girls all gathered near the window while Adhara looked up at us from her work.

“What is that?” Kat asked and squinted.

“Pterodactyl?” Hae-won guessed.

“This forcefield makes everything too hazy,” Becka grumbled.

“I’m gonna step outside,” I said.

“No, stay!” Hae-won insisted. “Jason, a pterodactyl could just keep passing on, you know. We’re safe in here.”

“Uh-huh,” I muttered and brought my rifle around. “But whatever that is doesn’t look like it has pterodactyl wings.”

I got up and headed directly for the sleek corridor of the craft, and my three girls hurried after me. Then we carefully exited the ship, and we passed through the forcefield, but we stayed as close as we could to the craft so we wouldn’t be out in the open.

As soon as we crept around the side of the crashed ship, we peered up at the sky, and it became obvious that the object couldn’t be a dino.

“It’s coming right toward us,” Becka whispered. “Do you think it’s another spaceship?”

“It’s not moving very fast,” Hae-won said.

“We don’t know how fast these ships move,” Kat pointed out.

“Shh…” I muttered. “Do you hear that?”

It was hard to tell with the wind blowing, and a distant dinosaur roaring ever closer, but as the object approached the cliffs surrounding Raven Hall, I recognized the distinct roar of the engine. Then I finally saw the blades spinning above it.

“It's a helicopter,” I said.

“More survivors,” Hae-won said hopefully. “It’s probably some military dropping more bombs on the dinos, right?”

“That’s not a military chopper,” Kat said. “It looks sleek as hell, and it’s all black.”

A chill ran down my spine as we stared up at the approaching helicopter, and as I considered its sleek black and unmarked exterior, I had a sinking feeling I knew what kind of organization would own a vehicle like that.

“Yeah, they’re not military,” I muttered. “They’re fucking governmental.”