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“Very well! They were excited to see me. Some even jumped in the air… they weren’t afraid when I explained that I’m a protector!” she informed him.

Khoth simply nodded, not trusting himself to speak out loud.

“But I wanted to be here for the moment when the civilians step out of the dropship.” She clanked her hands together again. “The military people already knew about aliens, AIs and the Osiris, but these people don’t. I mean other than what we’ve told them. This is the moment when we get to see true joy.”

“Gehenna, you’ve got that right!” Jace’s voice rose up from behind them.

Jace and his parents came over to Khoth. Khoth gave the Pilot a nod. Oh, how he wished to hug and kiss Jace, but they were truly on duty now. Jace’s cheeks flushed delightfully so he must have wanted those things to, but restrained himself. But the grin on his face was not at all hidden.

“C’mon, Khoth,” Jace said, “let’s see these people’s dreams come true.”

Believe

Dr. Daraja Isa pressed her nose to the plasti-glas of the drop ship’s window as the spacecraft rose up and up and up into the sky leaving the desert town of Sunrise, Arizona far beneath her. She wondered if she could truly say she’d been in Arizona or if the hour in the hot desert really counted. At her home, she’d had a map of the world with pushpins in green stuck where she had visited and ones in red for those places she wanted to. Now that she was going to be leaving Earth altogether, she’d need a map that represented the worlds she had been to and the ones she especially wanted to visit.

A smile bloomed on her face. She found she could hardly stop grinning whenever she thought about what was happening to her. Her heart was beating as fast as a beetle’s wings. She stroked her throat to relieve some of the pressure there that her excitement caused.

I am going into space. I will be a doctor to astronauts and aliens. I will be part of the fight against an invidious species. Oh, the things I will learn and see and feel and experience!

A squeal of delight--one a little girl, not a mature woman should give--wanted to escape her and that need to cry out in sheer joy was growing by the second. She imagined what her companions would do if she suddenly yelled. She’d heard dozens of languages from the people who filed into the dropship with her. Some might speak English as well, but she imagined a scream would be hard to explain even if they could understand her. She bit her inner cheek to stop the urge or, at least, hold the scream back.

She felt her seat row companion shift, too, as he turned to look outside as well. She moved over a little so that he could see out the window with her, but she knew she was hogging the view. The truth was that she couldn’t drag her gaze away, couldn’t bear to give up the inches necessary to let him see equally as her.

She supposed that he was another person that would be part of the Osiris’ crew like herself. She wondered briefly what he did and why he was chosen. The people in the dropship were a myriad of races, from different countries and all ages. Though she was just guessing from their outward appearances, they were professors, mechanics, doctors, lawyers, scientists and more. She’d flown only with military personnel--or that was what they appeared to be in their black uniforms--from Gombe to Sunrise so this was the first time she’d met the people she would be serving with. She would get to know them. But not right then. She had to see the sunlight skittering across the Osiris’ surface.

She wasn’t sure she’d be altogether sociable in any case. She’d hardly slept since receiving the original email and it wasn’t just because of the excitement--and suspicion--that she’d been feeling. Once she had met up with the stern-faced woman all in black, she’d been given a tablet that was loaded with information she needed to know about the Khul, the Osiris, the Alliance and more. She’d devoured the information, her head swirling with the possibilities of what she was reading. And all the while she had been flying in the military plane, she’d oscillated between believing all of it and thinking it was an elaborate hoax.

But what would be the point of such a hoax? Some experiment to see how civilians from all walks of life would react to the existence of alien life? Perhaps. The money that was behind this exercise was clearly vast. She supposed that governments could wrangle such funds for an experiment, but this was such a distinct scenario. There was too much detail, too much singularity, that it didn’t seem general enough to get true reactions to a general alien incident.

Then they’d landed in Sunrise and she’d seen the Osiris in the sky and her doubts had skittered away. She’d landed in the early morning and the sun blazed down from a peerless blue sky. There was no darkness that could hide a human craft and make it appear otherworldly with strategically placed lights. The sunlight exposed everything. It showed the shimmering metal skin and the graceful, massive lines of the spaceship. The ship cast a shadow that encompassed the whole city. Not that there was much to see in the city, because it appeared deserted and, like too many cities she’d traveled to, it appeared that great violence had happened there.

The Khul…

As terrible as the things humans did to one another, the Khul’s actions were monstrous on another level. She knew that some would caution her to not judge an alien species by human mores. The people in this dropship would likely have different ideas of what was right and wrong as compared to her, but she knew in her bones that if what was reported about the Khul was true--and she would investigate this--it meant that destroying humanity was a goal--a feature rather than a bug--of their society.

And that meant they must be stopped.

Her wonder--and that squeal--at the Osiris floating above them was only increased by the dropship. She’d run her hands along the almost-silky metallic covering that was like nothing on Earth. She’d walked up the gangway and smelled the ozone-tinted air. She’d sat in this seat where the harness snicked around her of its own accord. And now she was seeing the Earth below them and they were moving into the Osiris. She no longer doubted. She believed.

“It’s real,” the man beside her breathed. He had a quick, staccato like delivery of English words in what she thought might be a Spanish accent, but that might not be right as she’d only heard that accent in films. “I didn’t think… I mean… I thought because I got on that plane and left my whole life behind--except for Chili--but to see is to believe.”

She turned her head briefly to glance at him, but she didn’t want to miss a second of the ride. He had dark hair that waved down to his shoulders, a broad nose, and expressive lips. His sculpted jaw and chin was covered in a light beard. He scratched at it absently as he stared out the window with stunning blue-green eyes. He had on khakis and an olive green, loose-cut shirt. A rawhigh cord was tied around his neck with a simple green stone pressing against his throat. He likely was in his late 20s or early 30s, as old her son. A son she’d sent cryptic email to before she, too, left everything behind.

“So you thought it might be a scam as well?” she asked as the hanger bay slid open to the Osiris and her stomach quivered in excitement. She was pleased she could speak as her throat continued to be tight with emotion.

“How could I not? I run a veterinarian clinic in Mendoza, Argentina,” he said and she checked in her mind that he had an Argentinian accent, not Spanish from Spain. “What would they want with me on a spaceship?”

Her lips curled into another smile. “What’s your name?”

“Matias Torres. And you?”

“Daraja Isa.”

“Beautiful name and accent! African? I’m not sure where...” His eyes sparkled at her.

“Nigerian.”

“Like me, you’ve come a long way,” he said.