Page 11 of Sawyer’s Mistake

The last thread of hope in his mind died at the sound of the almost-silent alien hovercraft. A thought came to him unbidden: he hoped his sisters were okay and that, somehow, they knew he’d tried to make it back to them.

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Saoirse

She knew what fear smelled and tasted like. She’d lived with fear every day since the aliens had landed, which seemed a long time ago. And yet she’d never been as afraid as she was at this very moment.

Her stupidity was going to kill her and Sawyer. She wished there was something she could do to spare his life, at least. She wanted to yell, to ask Paul not to punish Sawyer for her stupidity. But she knew that wasn’t how things worked. The concept of fair didn’t really apply.

Sawyer had given up trying to free his wrists. Blood pooled down his arms to his elbows, a sign of how hard he’d struggled before she came to.

“I’m sorry, Jake,” she said softly. She hoped he could hear her through the noise of the wind and the alien hovercraft coming towards them.

“Saoirse, I … I’m the one who needs to apologize. I’m sorry I failed you.”

“Failed me? You didn’t fail me … Could you do something for me, though?”

“Anything,” he said. His green eyes looked so sincere she wanted to cry.

“Can you tell me everything’s going to be alright?”

He hesitated. “At this point, that might be a lie.”

She chuckled grimly. Trust him to be such a stickler for honesty. “That’s okay. You have my permission to lie to me.”

He pondered this for a second, finally settling on, “Saoirse, I swear I’ll do everything in my power to make this right.”

“I promise I’ll do the same, Jake,” she replied, smiling sadly. The aliens were climbing the ladder onto the boat. They were agile for their size, though the metal creaked under the enormous weight.

As they got closer, any resemblance to a human disappeared. Illuminated only by the soft glow of the lanterns, the three figures that climbed on board were terrifying. They were large, all of them over six foot three, and incredibly muscular. They made Sawyer, who was no lightweight, seem almost slim by comparison.

She wanted to close her eyes, like a child hiding under her blanket, but knew they’d still be there when she opened them again, so she kept them open and looked at Sawyer instead. He stood tall, seemingly unfazed by the huge figures coming towards him.

The aliens grunted excitedly at each other, pointing at her. Sawyer didn’t seem to like this at all.

“Hey, you assholes!” he roared. “Let me go and I’ll give you something to grunt about!”

The Remur in front cocked his head to the side and considered Sawyer carefully. Strange how much that made him look like a prehistoric bird. If one could imagine a huge, dark gray, three hundred pound bird. He grunted something to the alien behind him. They had no lips, so their gray skin stretched taught at the mouth area, around their light gray teeth. Their expressions remained remote but, if Saoirse had learned anything about the aliens since she’d been imprisoned a few weeks earlier, it was that they could kill without changing their expression.

The Remur turned away from her and faced Sawyer. The alien’s left arm came up. Unlike his right arm, which ended in a humanoid hand, the Remur’s left arm ended in an enormous claw. She knew how sharp those claws were, had seen a Remur slice a woman’s belly open from navel to pubic bone in one smooth move. She swallowed bile. She couldn’t bear the thought of Sawyer dying like this.

She tugged against her bonds.

“No! Please don’t hurt him! Please …” she cried, but the Remur were not paying any attention to her. She saw the claw come up, as if in slow motion. It was inches away from Sawyer’s belly.

The panic in her mind cleared and crystallized into a single sound. She was unsure her throat could produce such a sound, but she grunted it out loudly before she could second-guess herself.

The three aliens stopped in mid-stride and turned to stare at her. The claw froze in midair.

“What the fuck did you just say to them, Saoirse?” Jake asked in a gravelly voice. He was tugging at his restraints once again.

“No kill … That’s what I said … at least, that’s what I hope I said.” She swallowed thickly.

“How did you …”

“I don’t know, Jake, I don’t know!” Her mind was in a panic. She’d spent so long studying their few recordings of the Remur language and trying to get the black box to work, it looked like at least some sounds had crystallized in her mind. She struggled to find more words, anything she could use to communicate with them, but the fear wasn’t letting her think.

She saw how calm Jake was and wished she could be brave like that, but she was not a soldier. She was a linguist, most comfortable in her lab, not made for this scary new world. She cried out again.