Deep Penetration; Alien Breeders I (11 page)

“
They had to have. There’s
nothing in this system suitable for colonization—nothing close to
the Earth as far as habitability.”
He
glanced toward Emerald when his attention was caught by
movement.
“Do you think she’ll recall
anything?”

Koryn
frowned
. “I don’t know in all honesty.
It’s almost like someone deliberately erased their
memories.”

“
I might have disagreed
with you on that before,”
Tariq said
slowly.
“Now …. We have to consider they
had the technology to do so and I’m guessing they had a strong
motivation. I don’t think they were simply abandoned here when the
others left. I think they were given the task of holding the enemy
so that the others had a chance to escape. If they had the
capability to do so, it would’ve made sense to make certain the
enemy couldn’t find out where the others went. It seems pretty
clear from what we’ve found so far that they made a dangerous
enemy, or their leaders did, and underestimated their strength.
They came to wipe them out, not merely to retaliate.”

“
Gods! How the hell are we
going to figure out how to find them?”

Tariq shook his
head.
“I don’t know, but unless this war
of theirs set them back technologically, I don’t think we’re going
to find the
children
of the Anunnaki. We might well find another war.”

Chapter Five

It took Emerald several moments to
catch her breath and calm her runaway heart. There was nothing
unusual about that. Every time she’d woken from the nightmare she
could never remember once awake, she’d felt as if she’d been
running from something or fighting or both. For the first time
since the nightmares had begun plaguing her sleep, however, they
lingered over her like a weighty mantel and slowly but surely, it
settled inside her that the nightmare was real—a memory, not merely
some imaginary thing that frightened her.

Fragmented images filled her mind
chaotically as she lay staring at the ceiling, trying to sort them
and make sense of them. The emotions came through with far more
clarity, though, than what had actually happened. She felt those
with such an intensity that they peaked once more and she had to
struggle to calm herself down again before she could even try to
piece together what had happened—the details.

She knew what had happened. She’d died
and everyone around her had fallen beneath the heel of their
enemy.

She sat up abruptly on that thought.
“The people in the subway!” she gasped, struggling to get up from
the bed and discovering she was tangled in the covers.

She didn’t even see Tariq until he was
nearly upon her—a huge dark, unrecognizable form that made her
heart nearly lurch out of her chest when he swooped down on her and
gathered her into his arms. For several moments, panic gripped her
and she fought to free herself, convinced that one of the aliens
had caught her.

“
Stop it! You’re
safe.”

Recognition pierced her panic and she
ceased her efforts to break free and gripped him frantically
instead. “They’re coming! We have to go!”

“
They’re gone, Emerald,”
he said soothingly. “They left a long time ago.”

That caught her attention. She pushed
away from him far enough to search his face for the truth and then
reality lurched awkwardly into focus, fitting itself over the
residual memories. She didn’t struggle when he pulled her against
his chest again and began to stroke her soothingly. A shudder went
through her, but she didn’t feel trapped or overwhelmed. She felt …
safe, felt as if she was more sheltered by his bulk than she
would’ve been by a bunker. His warmth filtered into her,
dissipating the cold that had seemed to go bone deep. “There are …
were people in the subway and the sewers. We sent them there to
protect them.”

Tariq lifted her and carried her
across the room. Settling in the chair with her where he’d sat the
night before, teasing her and then sending her away, he arranged
her comfortably across his lap, just as he had then, curling an arm
around her as he tucked her into the crook of one arm. The memory
flickered through her mind, but she was too needy for the comfort
he offered to give any precedence to her wounded pride from that
incident. She snuggled closer, burrowing her face against his
chest, trying to block out the memories she’d been trying so hard
to bring to light.

“
What started it, child?”
he murmured after several moments.

The sudden urge to weep like a child
made her chest tight. She fought that urge just as she had the fear
and the sense of hopelessness that had threatened to engulf her,
struggling to focus on the question and trying to remember. “It was
the new colony,” she said finally. “I don’t really know. We heard
that the colonists met with hostiles shortly after they arrived. We
heard they were trying to negotiate a treaty and then the next
thing we heard was that the aliens had attacked, that there was a
terrible battle and most of the colonists and the military escort
that had accompanied them had been killed. It was shortly after
that that we discovered the aliens had tracked them back to Earth
and were coming.”

She felt silent, trying to remember
more. “We’d heard they were backwards primitives,” she said after a
moment. “Everyone was shocked when they heard the primitives had
wiped out the entire colony. Nobody believed it. And then, when we
heard they were coming after us, we realized it must have been the
colonists that had provoked it—or maybe the military—but nobody
believed the military would’ve acted without orders. Everyone
blamed the government, believed they’d been the aggressors, but we
only knew what we’d been told, what was on the news.

“
We knew when we heard
they had attacked the outer solar bases that we were going to be
overrun. They managed to get a report back before … before we lost
communications. There weren’t enough ships to evacuate
everyone—hardly anyone, actually. We—the military—was ordered to
stay behind and fight, to make sure the ships got away and to try
to protect the civilians who had no way to escape. Our prime
directive, though, was to throw everything we had at them and
engage them so aggressively that they would have to focus on us so
that the evacuees had a chance to escape.”

Tariq’s hand paused when she stopped.
“You were part of the military force?”

Emerald frowned, considering that, and
felt a sudden wave of loss envelop her. It might’ve completely
undermined her efforts to control her emotions except that a sense
of relief and hope was part of it. “I volunteered to stay,” she
said with an effort. “There wasn’t room on the ships for everyone.
Part of the forces were to go with the ships to try to protect
them, but if you volunteered to take part in the Earth defenses,
you could get a ticket. I stayed so I could send my daughter, Cara,
to safety. And because I couldn’t send anyone else and I wanted to
be part of the forces that stayed to try to protect
them.”

A knot of emotion formed in her
throat, making it difficult to swallow. “I saved her,” she
murmured, trying to convince herself. “We held them long enough the
ships got away.”

Tariq gave her a few moments to
compose herself. “Where did they go, Emerald?”

Emerald’s heart skipped
several beats as awareness abruptly descended over her that the man
she was cuddled so trustingly against was an alien—just as those
who’d attacked them had been. Not the same alien race. Those who’d
attacked were horrible creatures that barely looked humanoid—but
still an enemy of humans! She didn’t give a damn whether they
called her child or not, called humans the children of the
Anunnaki! They considered the humans
belonged
to them! She hadn’t died to
protect her daughter just to tell them where to find
her!

She pushed away from him abruptly and
sat up. She would’ve leapt to her feet and put more distance
between them if she hadn’t known it would only result in a useless
struggle. “I couldn’t tell you if I wanted to. I volunteered to
stay and that meant volunteering for a memory erase to keep the
enemy from finding out where they’d gone.”

Tariq studied her speculatively. “And
you wouldn’t tell me if you could,” he said flatly.

Emerald searched his face. “No, I
wouldn’t.”

“
Don’t you want to know
that your daughter’s safe?”

Emerald sent a sharp
glance toward Koryn. She hadn’t even realized he was there until
he’d asked the question. “Not badly enough to let your people
enslave her,” she retorted coldly. At any rate, she
knew
her daughter was
safe! There was more she still didn’t remember than she did, but
the one thing she was completely convinced of was that they’d
halted the invasion at Earth’s doorstep. They’d thrown everything
they had at them and destroyed most of the invading fleet, damaged
them so badly they’d focused on a ground war. The enemy might have
defeated them in the end. She didn’t know. She’d fallen here—at the
city—but she knew they hadn’t succeeded in wiping out mankind, even
though it was abundantly clear that was their intention.

God only knew what they’d
done to provoke it, but she had a very bad feeling that they
had
provoked it. They’d
felt their own needs superseded all other considerations, that they
were
the
most
important species, when they’d set out to colonize and, to an
extent, she’d agreed with the general consensus.

She still thought that they’d allowed
their arrogance to overcome good sense in their dealings with the
aliens that had attacked them, but she didn’t know that for
certain. They might have made an earnest attempt to negotiate. It
might well have been impossible. The aliens who’d attacked had
certainly proven they were vicious, vindictive bastards and maybe
they’d been that way from the start—impossible to deal with without
a fight to the death? To her, they’d seemed like monsters—scarier
than any nightmare. Maybe humans had looked that way to them and
all they’d been able to focus on was eradicating the nightmare
creatures so that they couldn’t be a threat to them?

She could see she’d
angered both of Tariq and Koryn, but that was just too damned bad!
Maybe everything they’d told her was true and they would’ve still
been living in caves and chucking spears if not for the Anunnaki.
She didn’t know, and it didn’t matter. They weren’t children
anymore to be awed by the ‘god-like’ aliens! They certainly
didn’t
owe
the
Anunnaki anything for choosing them as guinea pigs!

Tariq’s eyes narrowed but after a
moment he merely set her on her feet and got up. “Koryn was
thoughtful enough to bring your midday meal. Unfortunately,
although he’d thought to join you, I’m afraid I’ll have to deprive
you of company. We have business to attend to.”

Disconcerted, Emerald frowned uneasily
at the two men as they strode from Tariq’s quarters.

Not that they’d mistreated her since
she’d awoken, but she would’ve expected a more violent reaction
than that from most anyone.

Guilt flickered through her at that
thought. Despite everything, they’d been unfailingly considerate of
her, kind and gentle in spite of their arrogant superiority
complex—which, she supposed, they at least had reason to feel. As
annoying as that was, it would have been far more irritating if she
hadn’t seen them as superior beings herself in most every
way.

It occurred to her that they must
think they had some other way of obtaining the information since
they hadn’t pressured her for it and it was clear that they were
determined to discover whatever remained of the human
race.

Or maybe they were just trying to use
psychology on her, trying to make her think they had another way to
get the information so that she would let her guard
down?

A cold wave washed over her abruptly
as another memory surfaced. They were excavating for the remains of
the people who’d died here and her platoon had been stationed to
defend the entrance to the subway where those who hadn’t had the
chance to flee the city had been sent for safety. She’d told them
when she woke from her nightmare! For several moments, wild ideas
of somehow diverting them chased back and forth across her mind.
Just about the time she acknowledged the futility of trying
anything, however, it dawned on her that no one in the subway was
likely to have the information they were seeking. Everyone knew
they had established colonies on several different planets. She
didn’t doubt that they knew the names that had been given to the
planets. She realized it was highly unlikely that the Anunnaki
would find anyone who knew the star systems where those planets
were, though, or would be able to give them any kind of description
that might help them narrow down the possibilities.

Those who’d remained on Earth after
the exodus had little interest in the other colonies. They’d
considered themselves ‘caretakers’ of the home world and it was
entirely possible that was the real reason many of them had stayed,
to guard human interest in the home world until it’s climate
stabilized again and made it more welcoming. For the most part,
though, those who’d remained hadn’t actually stayed by choice. They
simply hadn’t had the option of going to one of the new worlds
either because they had no skills that made them desirable
colonists or they couldn’t afford to make the trip and often
both.