Damn alien strength.
“Let me go!” I balled my hands into fists and tried to punch him, but he had me held in such a way that I couldn’t even land a solid hit on him. “You’re not like most caveman-minded Xalanites, N’kal. You should understand.”
“While I understand your desire to be with your mate, I also understand his desire to keep you safe.”
“I don’t want to be safe if it means being away from him!” I managed to get one foot free long enough to kick him square in thegaak—sorry, Timber!—but he didn’t budge.
Damn. One more way that Xalanite men were superior to humans.
A loud, shrill whine suddenly filled the air as a strong wind picked up, whipping my hair into my eyes. N’kal cursed in Xalanite, and a moment later he went limp.
Shit! Did Timber’s husband get shot? I scrambled out from under him and checked for wounds, but all I could find with my hair in the way was a tiny pinprick on his neck. It was way too small for any Earth bullet I was familiar with. I rolled him onto his stomach and found the culprit: a miniscule metallic dart of some sort. Definitely not a human design, so I bet that a Xalanite weapon fired it.
Sure enough, as soon as the wind died down, I brushed the hair out of my eyes and saw a sleek Xalanite ship about the size of a compact car land next to Dad’s barn. My heart soared for amoment, but disappointment tamped it back down as H’rran got out, not T’raat.
The Xalanite woman held a small weapon in one slender hand as she waved at me to join her. “Hurry, Leigh! I do not have enough projectiles for all of them.”
I whipped back around towards the farmhouse and saw that the others were still chasing after me. N’kal’d had an edge on them in the speed department as a Xalanite, and I guess my own adrenaline had given me more of a boost than I’d realized. Dad, Timber, and Marcus were still several dozen yards away.
Plenty far enough away for me to climb into a Xalanite ship and book it to New York.
Not one to look a gift alien in the mouth, I ran to H’rran and jumped in. She shut the door and started punching buttons on the control panel. The ship lifted off the ground, and we left the others back in Wisconsin as we shot eastwards.
Towards the intake center. Towards total chaos.
Towards mytyr’il.
“Thank you,” I said as I fought to regain my breath. Between the crying, the screaming, and the running, my lungs were very, very angry with me.
H’rran grunted acknowledgement but seemed focused on her controls. After a few minutes, when the farm was no longer even a speck in the rear windshield, she sighed and sat back. “You are welcome, though I doubt T’raat will ever forgive me.”
“Is he okay?”
She nodded. “He and Director Ann were in the process of evacuating the intake center when I snuck away and stole this vessel. Something about using an old, submerged locomotive pathway to get the residents to safety? I did not understand how that could be beneficial, but it gave me an opportunity to retrieve you.”
“Locomotive …?” Realization blossomed within me, and suddenly the devastation at the intake center on the news didn’t seem quite so bad. “Oh, my God, the Underground Railroad?”
“That is what I said.”
I smacked the console, careful not to hit any buttons on accident, and let out a celebratory whoop. “Yes! Aunt Ann is a genius!”
“This will help?”
I nodded and started rifling through the ship for some kind of armor or weaponry that I could borrow. “Yep. She probably had the intake center built there for that very reason. Human slaves used the Railroad over a hundred years ago, during the Civil War, to escape captivity.”
“Your species was enslaved by another in the past?”
“Huh?” I stopped buckling on the weird, rigid vest I’d found. It must’ve been made for a Xalanite woman, because there were three extra cups in the chest area, making for an awkward fit. “No. We enslaved each other.”
H’rran gaped at me. “How barbaric!”
“Yeah, well, that’s humans for you.” Since time was of the essence, I didn’t bother with any more of a history lesson. We could save that for later, after T’raat and Aunt Ann were rescued.
The only thing that mattered now was getting back in time.
Chapter 23
T’raat
