How to Date an Alien (23 page)

"What do you think I'm looking for?" I tilted
the control stick forward as far as it would go, trying to gain
some speed. "I say we shoot them back."

"I guess I should have never doubted that you
would want to fight back." He slid my index finger down to a small
silver button on the control stick. "I'm just hoping that this
still works."

I pressed the button and an intense blue
laser shot from the front of the ship. "I think this means it's
time to kick some evil Caltian butt." I tilted the ship to the left
and started firing as fast as I could in the direction of the other
Caltian ships.

"Bank right and try to avoid anything you see
that looks like a missile," Ace ordered.

"Shouldn't I have some sort of force field
that protects me from this stuff?" I yelled while the ship
sputtered underneath me.

"Alex, this isn't a science fiction movie.
Those things don't happen in real life," Ace yelled back over the
roar of the engine.

I tried to accelerate, pushing toward Circe,
but the ship was older than I was and it took everything that it
had just to make sure we didn't hit any of the other drones that
were attacking us.

"Now, when you see the front of the drone is
close enough that it looks like you can reach out and touch it,
then fire," Ace commanded.

I looked for the nearest ship and spotted one
headed toward us. I gripped harder on the control stick, ready to
fire.

"Not yet, not yet," Ace whispered.

I could feel the sweat as it gathered at my
hairline. The drone was close enough that I swore I could hit it
with a rock, but Ace still hadn't told me to shoot.

"Okay, now," he yelled as two other drones
flanked the one in front of us.

I pressed down hard on the button. The
radiant blue light streamed out of our ship and hit the drone in
front of us. Instantly, the drone reacted to the missile and lit up
in a large black burst of flames that glittered for a brief moment
before it completely disappeared into a cloud of smoke.

"Whoa, is that what happens every time a
Caltian ship gets hit?"

"Not always instantly," Ace said as I
launched a missile at the other two ships, "but you wouldn't want
to have spaceship parts lying around Earth, so something has to
happen to them when they receive a fatal blow."

I had seen a lot of violence and even been a
part of a lot of it, but seeing the way the Caltian ships
disappeared in a cloud of smoke suddenly made me realize how close
I really was to dying. One little missile from a Caltian drone
could make both Ace and me disappear into a cloud of smoke. I
swallowed hard, not wanting to die that way. I felt the fear that
had finally caught up with me and I shivered throughout my
body.

I pushed harder on the control stick, moving
the ship in all directions to attempt to avoid the drones. I tried
my hardest to make sure that none of them were at my back and if
they were I made sure to get out of firing range. I could see the
eyes of the Caltian pilots and their curved smiles as they
approached my ship, ready to kill me without even thinking twice
about it. But I would find a way to dodge out of the way or shoot
them before they could get me. Their smiles disappeared with the
smoke just as quickly as they appeared on their faces. I wanted
nothing more than to get back down to Earth and never see the black
smoke again.

"Look." Ace pointed out of the front of the
ship. "You can see Circe probably about 50,000 feet below us. All
we need to do is get within the mountain range and we should be
able to lose them."

I pushed my glasses up so I could see the
panorama of the Circe mountain range coming into view. It looked
like something you would see in a miniature museum with tiny hills
and tiny airplanes, but it was so real and so close and so much
bigger. I pushed the control stick as far as it would go, sliding
it from side to side and making loops with the plane in hopes to
get the other Caltian ships off our trail

"You're doing great. Not much farther."

I nodded, concentrating on the mountain range
below me and pushing back the thoughts of Ace and I disappearing in
a cloud of black smoke. I swore that I could actually see my old
dorm room and Jen's blond head poking out of the window.

"Alex, look out!"

Before I could hit the button or turn my eyes
to the left, I felt a wave of pressure fall over the ship like a
giant tremor.

"Did we get hit?" I yelled, the ship shaking
ferociously beneath us. As I turned to look toward where my
peripheral vision failed me, I saw another blue missile heading
straight for us.

My life flashed before my eyes. It wasn't
like when Magpie attacked me and I saw visions of my mother and
little brother. This was different. It was the same darkness from
the nightmares, but this time it was calming instead of
threatening. I saw Ace's eyes stealing private glances at me when
he thought I wasn't looking at work. I saw myself comforting my
little brother when he was afraid of the dark. Everything played
through my head like a movie.

I opened my eyes to be blinded by a bright
light. "Am I in heaven?" I murmured, squinting as I held my hand up
to my eyes.

I heard soft laughter and a rumble on my
back. I looked up to see Ace smiling down at me, his teeth
sparkling in the sunlight.

"Are you in heaven, too?"

He shook his head. "Alex, sometimes I wonder
where you come up with this stuff."

I looked down to see that we were floating
down toward the Circe mountain range.

"But how?" I glanced up to see a large, white
parachute floating above us, a harness wrapped around Ace,
connecting him to the parachute while he held me tightly against
him.

"How did you know to do that?" I asked,
pushing my glasses back, which had a new crack in the left
lens.

"Well, my plan was originally just to take
you and leap out of the queen's ship with this parachute, and when
she came up with that bogus offer I knew it was too good to be true
and had to have a plan B."

I smiled up at him. "You're so smart. How the
hell did a lowly human like me end up with an alien like you?"

He laughed and shook his head. He definitely
didn't have the same silvery laugh as his mother or Marsilo, and it
was one that I loved to hear over and over again. "I think I'm the
lucky one to have a human girl that was willing to break into a
Caltian ship and defy the queen for me."

"What can I say?" I pretended to rub some
dirt off my shoulder. "Your girlfriend can be talented when she
wants to be."

He tightened one arm around me and used the
other to lift his hand to my face. He pressed his lips to mine,
locking me in a kiss that took the little breath I had left
away.

"I love you, Alex," he whispered into my
lips. "And no matter what happens—" He let his fingers brush
through my hair before wrapping his arm back around me. "—I always
will."

"I love you, too, Ace." I looked down at the
Circe mountain range only a few feet below us. "And I'm hoping that
nothing else happens to change that."

Ace took me into his arms and carried me as
we landed on the Circe runway. But just as our feet hit the ground,
swarms of Circe guards ran toward us, armed and yelling, "Let the
girl down! Back away from the human!" Ace put me down on the ground
next to him and unbuckled the parachute harness. Slowly, he raised
his arms in the air. A herd of Circe guards circled us with their
guns pointed straight at Ace.

"Step away from the girl!" one guard yelled,
his gun pointed at Ace's head.

"Stop!" I yelled, stepping in front of Ace.
"He didn't hurt me. He's the one that saved me from getting killed
up there!"

"At ease soldiers, at ease!" a deep voice
boomed through the crowd. I caught a glimpse of dad pushing past
everyone until he stood in the middle, directly across from Ace and
me.

"Dad!" I ran toward him and collapsed into
his arms. "I thought I would never see you again," I whispered.

Dad pulled away from me, letting his hands
rest on each side of my shoulders as he studied my face with a
softened gaze. "I was afraid I lost you. You shouldn’t have gone
out on your own like that. You're not trained to do so."

I felt Ace's touch on my shoulder as he
stepped next to me. "She may not be trained, but without your
daughter neither of us would have made it back alive."

"Ace." Dad let go of my shoulders and stepped
back. The softness in his eyes disappeared and was replaced by his
stony gaze.

"Dad…please…" I begged, but my dad put his
arm up to stop me and stepped closer to Ace.

"Any alien that would risk his life and
family to save mine is an alien that I'm happy to have dating my
daughter." He put his hand out toward Ace.

Ace took dad's hand as everyone around us
cheered. I looked from dad out into the crowd to see Jen, Malcolm,
and Justin push their way through before they almost knocked me
down from their exasperated hugs. I tried to hold back my screams
when their hugs pressed right into my broken ribs, but I didn't
care. At that moment I was just happy to be back on Earth and not
being chased by evil Caltians.

"You'd better not do that to me again!" Jen
yelled and enveloped me in her long arms.

"Man, girl, I think you just put the rest of
the pilots up there to shame." Malcolm laughed, patting me on the
back.

I thought I was imagining things at first
when I heard everyone fall into a hushed silence around me, but I
knew I was wrong when Ace whispered in my ear, "You may want to
turn around."

I slowly turned to see Nerses standing there,
her piercing eyes focused on me. She stepped toward me, her heels
clicking on the pavement. "Miss Bianchi, it's good to have you
back."

I swallowed, looking up at her. "Thanks,
Nerses."

"And once you get cleaned up, I'd like to see
you in the board room." She looked over at Ace. "You too." She
didn't wait for our reply but headed down the runway. Maybe
surviving the queen was the least of our worries.

Ace was waiting for me outside of my room.
After a bath in the goo, the doctor gave me a new pair of glasses
and sent me to my room to shower. I kept asking the doctor to give
me a sedative or just to say that I was too hurt to go to the
meeting and have a longer soak, but she kept assuring me that
everything would be fine. From the way that she did everything she
could to avoid my eyes, I knew she wasn't actually sure
herself.

"Well, you know that she won't try and kill
you." Jen tried to console me while I zipped up my suit. "At least
I don't think she would do something like that."

"Gee, that's reassuring."

"I don't exactly know what the procedure is
for something like this. You did break a ton of rules and who knows
if the queen is actually still planning to attack or not."

"Thanks, that really helps." I rolled my
eyes. Just what I wanted to hear, that this really wasn't the end
of the queen's quest to end Ace and my relationship. And that we
would be punished by Nerses on top of it.

I looked back at Jen. "Now if you'll excuse
me, I'm going to go face Nerses." I turned toward the door and
headed out to see Ace, waiting like he had been there for
hours.

"Are you ready for this?" He reached his hand
out toward me.

I placed my hand in his; they weren't their
usual warmth. I thought it was because of his gloves, but I
realized it was because he was just as nervous as I was. The
clamminess from my hands moistened his, but he didn't act like he
minded or was in any way repulsed. I smiled, trying to assure him
that I was just as scared as he was. "I think I've faced a lot of
things that I thought I couldn't handle today, but somehow I
survived them, as long as I knew that you would be there in the
end."

He squeezed my hand. "You're getting pretty
good at this reassuring girlfriend thing."

I shrugged as we got into the elevator. "I
try."

He pressed the button to the thirteenth floor
and looked over at me. "You know we could always just get the
elevator stuck for awhile and make out." He leaned over, nuzzling
his nose against my cheek.

I closed my eyes, inhaling his cool scent and
the feel of his skin on mine. "As much as I'd like to—" I opened my
eyes, meeting his. "—this is something we'd better not be late for.
Nerses scares me almost as much as your mom, I mean, the queen." I
bit my lip at my mistaken choice of words.

Ace slid his hands around my waist and his
fingers trailed to my back. "Alex, she may be my mother and the
queen of Calta, but that doesn't excuse what she did to us. She may
have given birth to me, but that doesn't mean she can control who I
date."

I sighed, looking into his eyes, and wishing
that I could just stay lost in their beautiful darkness
forever.

"Ace, Miss Bianchi." Ace removed his arms
from around me as we looked over to see three guards standing in
the open doorway of the elevator. "Nerses is waiting." I nodded in
their direction and placed my hand back into Ace's.

"We're ready." I tried my best to force a
small smile.

We followed the guards down the hallway to
the steel doors, which had been replaced since I had shot through
them. They looked even sturdier than the last ones. One of the
guards opened them to reveal that it was just Nerses and my dad
sitting together at one end of the large, white table.

"I thought this would be some sort of board
meeting to decide our punishment." Ace looked at all the empty
chairs before we took our seats across from my dad and Nerses.

Nerses sighed, looking down at the table.
"Sadly, with these unprecedented circumstances we've had to take a
different direction on how to handle this situation."