Captivate (Alien Cadets Book 2) Read online

  It’s true. I wouldn’t lie to you. I know you thought I was just a computer, but don’t you have some sense of who I am? I’m your friend.

  Claire admitted that this felt true. She did feel like she knew Akemi, and it was shockingly easy to think of her as a teenage girl. The whole story fit her nebulous feeling toward the glasses surprisingly well. But that didn’t mean that she and this girl had the same motivations.

  “What about the Rik?”Claire asked.“I assume they won’t get a free pass?”

  I admit, Basher still has every intention of arresting them. But this isn’t about them. You can come to the embassy on your own. They can do or go wherever they need to, and you can be safe.

  Claire had the feeling that Akemi was being extremely careful in her phrasing.

  I saw what just happened. The Rik rescued you from Faal, and that was amazing. But will they be able to do it the next time? Faal is out to get you. You belong with your own kind. Basher can get you safely back to Earth. Isn’t that what you want?

  Claire thought furiously.“Yes, that is what I want…eventually,”she said slowly.“I just…I have to think about what you’ve said. I’m overwhelmed. And no offense, but I’m going to have to take the glasses off. My friends won’t trust you.”

  Yeah, I get it. But before you go, Basher wanted me to warn you. Faal no doubt left people to watch the restaurant. If you try to get to Upper Selta, they’ll probably try to stop you on the way.

  “Okay, I’ll keep that in mind. I’ll–I guess I’ll talk to you later.”

  Claire quickly folded her glasses and put them under her pillow. She believed that they couldn’t be used to locate the restaurant, but she felt more secure with them safely blinded.

  Downstairs, in the kitchen, Sage was packing a satchel and talking to Francois about various methods of getting to the Chunnel.“Suppose they have watchers ready to trap us; the twelve main thoroughfares offer some options…”

  “But better the mining tunnels,”Francois said.“You are assuming the presence of others will limit their force, but it will not.”

  Claire held up her hand to interrupt.“I have another complication to add.”She explained the conversation she’d just had, repeating it almost word for word at Sage’s insistence. She left out the part about Basher knowing she was human. Plenty of time to think about that. Sage seemed more perturbed at each word as it was.

  “Also, I just remembered. The glasses – uh, warned me about Faal. They told me to run when he came through the door, but it happened so fast that I didn’t realize until now. And then –” She thought of Sage’s kiss, but didn’t say that out loud. “I forgot.”

  “You FORGOT? Your glasses were talking to you and you FORGOT?” Sage said.

  “I’m sorry! They usually only –”

  “USUALLY?”

  Claire bit her lip guiltily. She hadn’t told Sage what her glasses were capable of, because she’d been sure he would overreact. “They had translation software built in, I thought, and it was so helpful! I didn’t want to worry you, but I didn’t want to give them up either. They seemed to have access to some of the files from the embassy, but I never suspected it was more than a clever AI system.”

  Sage took a deep breath. “May I see them?”

  He and the others followed her upstairs where Sage examined the glasses closely. “I don’t see a camera or microphone – but then I’m not familiar with this brand.”

  Sage quickly folded the glasses, examining the joints. “Usually smart glasses automatically shut off when folded... I suppose these have an override.”

  He put them back under her pillow. “I believe that they don’t have a positioning system, but I’m still surprised they haven’t deduced our location.”

  Juliet was looking thoughtful. “Claire was ill the whole way here, and the glasses were put away. And she hasn’t left this café since we arrived, so they have nothing except distance to pinpoint our location.”

  Sage looked puzzled. “But if she even looked out the window...”

  “Not enough,” Juliet said positively. “I know. I was trained in how to pinpoint a location. If someone kidnapped me, you see, and disabled my tracker, I would have to find a way to tell my mother where I was, without giving myself away. There’s things – electrical infrastructure, construction material, even the type of foot traffic – that can help someone fix a location. But this part of Lower Selta is so homogeneous...”

  Sage nodded slowly. “Of course, you’re right.” He laughed unexpectedly and dropped a kiss on Claire’s cheek. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. And thank God you stayed inside.”

  “Do you think it’s true – the part about her being a girl?”

  “It’s possible. I heard rumors that there was some experimental hybrid computer on the space station. The Rik were even experimenting –” He cut off. “It is possible.”

  Athlete frowned. “But she or it knows our plans now. Won’t we be arrested as soon as we get to Upper Selta?”

  Sage shook his head. “If we can get to Upper Selta, I know more than one way out of the train depot. We can disappear.” He pointed at the pillow. “I’m sure they can still hear us though. We’d better leave these here.”

  “No!” Claire said. “Let’s – we might need them.”

  Sage arched an eyebrow, skeptically.

  “You never know – we can control what they, what she,” she corrected herself, “can see from those glasses. That could be useful.”

  She didn’t quite know how to explain it, but she couldn’t bear to leave them behind. The glasses were (wow, Akemi was right)... the glasses were her friend. They’d helped her and guided her and brought her tidbits of real humanity.

  She knew instinctively that she couldn’t explain any of this to Sage, but thankfully she didn’t have too. He nodded thoughtfully and grabbed a thick hand towel from the hook on the wall.

  “That should muffle the sound enough, but let’s all watch what we say.”

  Claire wrapped the glasses and stuffed them in her backpack thankfully.

  ***

  After all that, the start to their trip to the train felt like an anticlimax.

  Claire waited by the door to the café feeling oddly brave. She wasn’t brave at her core, she knew that – too many episodes of ducking under beds and counters to leave that idea in her mind. However, when she was prepared and cognizant, she was developing a certain toughness about facing danger... and that thought pleased her.

  Not to mention, leaving a safe haven (no longer very safe), in the company of Sage and Juliet and Athlete, was a totally different enterprise than escaping from Faal alone. It was also completely different than escaping from the embassy with them, when they were still a bunch of unknown aliens. Now these were her friends, in Sage’s case, possibly more than a friend, and they wouldn’t abandon her.

  Plus, she knew now that there were people on Selta who knew she was human. She didn’t intend to abandon her Rik friends and run back to the embassy, but the knowledge that she could was a guilty comfort.

  Sage slung a heavy backpack on, after checking again that it contained what he wanted, and that the gun he’d taken from Faal’s bodyguard was within easy reach. “Now remember, this is the time of day when a lot of people will be coming and going. There will be crowds and jostling and you need to, uh –” he broke off tactfully, but Claire finished his sentence.

  “Not freak out or have a nervous break down? No worries. I’m ready.” She smiled reassuringly at him.

  They slipped out the front door into the small, slanted alley and went right, following Sage in single file, with Athlete bringing up the rear.

  At first they only passed a few aliens, all (probably) heading home for their nightly meal, and Claire was feeling silly about her weeks of hiding in the café. Was this what she was afraid of?

  She only felt that way until they hit the first major thoroughfare. It was as wide as a twelve-lane highway, and packed with aliens. The traffic ro
ughly flowed in two directions, with the center reserved for vehicles and the edges for pedestrians.

  They edged closer to the middle, where the people seemed to be flowing faster, and Claire was jostled by four-legged Spo and furry Tergre. Paths opened before big Merith and floating Crosspointers. She even saw Renchins which she’d heard of but never seen before. There were decorative trees along the walls and ribbon-like vines draped from branch to branch.

  Claire couldn’t help squinting at each Merith, straining to identify Faal or one of his minions. Unfortunately, she couldn’t see any of the Merith clearly when they got close to her (stupid farsightedness!). She’d just have to trust her friends to spot her enemies.

  They were now in the walking ‘lane’ closest to the vehicles, and Claire’s nose began to run from the smell. None of the vehicles were the ground-cars she was familiar with. Some were wagons pulled by aliens, like the rickshaws she’d seen in pictures of India. Others were like coaches and phaetons, pulled by strange alien animals. The odor was... impressive.

  “Aren’t there ground-cars on Lower Selta?” Claire asked Sage.

  “No. Didn’t you – but, of course, you haven’t been out until now. No, Lower Selta banned ground-cars for general use. They prefer animals.” He wrinkled his nose. “It’s a purist thing. The first colonists here were a throwback group of Tergre. They believed in living simply and naturally. They eschewed the use of technology for personal gain, only using it for the mining process. Now it’s become tradition.”

  Two large, brown animals drew abreast of Claire, reminding her of horses, but with huge membranous wings folded on their backs. They were sleek, with a kind of aerodynamic feel that seemed out of sync with their size and Claire wondered in awe what planet they were from.

  One of them suddenly reared, with a screaming neigh that made Claire clap her hands over her ears. Several other animals responded and the noise in the huge hall, already loud, became deafening. The ceiling, high over their head, made everything echo louder. Someone pushed Claire from behind, and she realized she’d stopped to observe the tumult while the rest of the crowd went on with barely a pause.

  Her next step squelched and she realized in disgust that the animal had urinated on the floor in its distress. Now her whole foot was wet.

  She followed Sage for another half a mile before he guided her away from the center, and towards the slower dregs on the edges of the hall. They went through an archway and Claire gasped. The last thoroughfare had seemed huge, but this one dwarfed it. Easily five times the size of the last hall, this one was partly dedicated to an open air market. Past the market were several huge sunken racing tracks, where she could see Vel and Merith riding large mounts in a fierce competition. Sage skirted the crowds surrounding these tracks, and Claire noticed that he kept looking behind them.

  “What? Do you see something?” Claire asked, looking over her shoulder.

  “Actually, no. It’s making me uneasy. I expected them to be tailing us by now.”

  Sage led them into increasingly smaller caverns, still heading basically in the same direction, Claire sensed, thought they often veered left or right with the natural flow of the warrens of Lower Selta. They were clearly off the ‘roads’ now, Claire thought, as they entered an area lush with greenery that was no bigger than a cathedral.

  False sunlight shone from the false ‘sky,’ and it reminded Claire unpleasantly of Faal’s zoo. Beautiful, no doubt, but unsettling. Many Seltans sat or lay on the rock benches, probably soaking up the UV rays, but Sage led them steadily through. At the far end, he took them under a particularly large branching tree with golden blossoms the size of cabbages. He gestured for Claire to set down her satchel and then drew her back to the path.

  “We’re going to stay here tonight. I didn’t want to tell you before we left, in case the girl in the glasses figured it out.”

  “You mean in case I blabbed it to her? I don’t want to get caught either!”

  “No, I know. I just wanted to be cautious. This way if Basher does happen to be waiting for us up top, he’ll be thrown off. And it won’t hurt to change our schedule in case any of Faal’s soldiers are waiting for us as well.”

  Claire agreed, though dubiously. She didn’t relish the thought of a night in this place, despite Sage’s explanation of its usefulness as a sort of hunting blind.

  In this event, however, her uneasiness was proved wrong. They took turns with the watch during the night (which remained lit in the gardens) and they reached the Chunnel in the morning without further incident, though sweat-stained and dirty.

  CHAPTER 34

  Basher leaned against a wall at the Chunnel station on Upper Selta, waiting for the next train. He held his tablet in his hands, and Akemi wrote on it.

  “I’m sorry,” she said for the third time. “The Rik have been gone from the café more than ten hours. They should have been here hours ago. Perhaps I miscalculated, or we missed them already.”

  Basher knuckled his eyes. He’d been at the station all night, since Akemi’s warning last evening that Claire and the Rik had left the café.

  “I just can’t imagine where they are,” Akemi also said for the third, or possibly fourth, time. “It should have taken them less than ninety minutes to reach the Chunnel, even with traffic. Then the three hour trip. I’m afraid we’ve missed them – or Faal has them.”

  “I don’t think Faal has them,” Basher reassured her. “I reviewed your conversation with her and I’m almost positive she would pull out the glasses if she was caught.” On the other hand, he was willing to swear that no humans, Rik or otherwise, had come from Lower Selta tonight. “Either way, I have to get back to the embassy. Senator Fontley is going to meet with Faal today. I think we can get a sense of Faal’s success.”

  It doesn’t seem right that he should come openly to the embassy when we know he’s trying to kidnap Claire. He doesn’t even pretend otherwise!

  “He doesn’t have to and he knows it. If I arrest him, he has enough clout to begin a war between the Merith and us. It’d be catastrophic.”

  Back at the embassy, Basher made himself some very strong coffee. The coffee grounds had been a gift from his partner on Basher’s birthday. Basher still hadn’t figured out how to reciprocate, as the Spo didn’t celebrate birthdays, but he’d certainly been enjoying the coffee. He hoarded it for special occasions or days when he felt particularly sick of aliens.

  With no sleep and another day of Senator Fontley and Faal ahead of him, Basher figured this qualified as special occasion and a day when he was going to be sick of aliens. He sipped the dark, bitter coffee and groaned unintentionally. So good.

  He made his way stiffly to the negotiation room where he was to meet Senator Fontley, putting his tablet in a large pocket in his jacket.

  He wasn’t the first to arrive.

  There was a small antechamber that opened into the negotiation room. Sam and Nat were leaning against the wall, with a careful amount of space between them.

  Basher wondered in passing if something had happened with them. They'd been affectionate when they first came, but now it seemed like an invisible wall was erected between them.

  Basher turned away and finished his coffee and blinked hard. The night without sleep was getting to him.

  Sam nodded a silent hello to Basher, and tapped his glasses. He probably meant that Akemi had told him about their lost quarry.

  Basher stared hard at Faal when he arrived. The alien had a poker face that was impressive even by Merith standards. He was in the process of hunting down a human on a very personal vendetta, but from his expression, you would never guess he had that much emotion. As still as his face was, Basher had the impression that Faal was coiled tighter than normal this morning. And when he finally made eye contact with Basher there was a feeling of restrained rage that Basher was devoutly thankful for. Faal had not yet captured Claire.

  Senator Fontley arrived then, and immediately greeted Faal in an overdone and somewha
t theatrical way. Basher thought of it as his CNN voice. They had tried to explain to him about the situation with Claire, but he hadn’t taken it as seriously as Basher expected.

  "I have just finished reading the report on the dead Rik,” Fontley said. "Very disturbing to one of my nerves, let me tell you, but very clear. I cannot thank you enough for using your influence to get us a full autopsy. Your help has been most appreciated by the people of Earth.”

  Faal inclined his head, but Basher noted a bit of cynicism in his eye. Senator Fontley would have done better not to mention weak nerves in front of a Merith, who generally despised the admittance of weakness.

  Basher looked hard at Faal. “You may not have had time to look over the reports yourself, please take any time you need to look over them now.”

  Faal waved a clawed hand. “On the contrary, I had plenty of time to peruse the documents during my recent trip to Lower Selta. They are indeed, as Senator Fontley says, clearly damning of the Rik. But then, I cannot believe that their guilt would shock you, as familiar with their vices as you are.”

  Basher opened his mouth to reply, but Senator Fontley broke in. “Their vices, indeed, are well known to us. Their deceptive impulses and violent tendencies are ubiquitous…”

  Basher shrugged and took a chair across from Faal. He pulled out his tablet as Senator Fontley continued to speak. “The evidence of explosive residue in the tissue of the corpses seems most convincing. I admit I was not at all inclined to believe this a Rik plot at the outset, but even I have become convinced.”

  No sign of our Rik yet, Akemi sent to Basher’s tablet. Is Senator Fontley listening to himself talk again?

  Basher knew she didn't really expect a reply. He couldn't speak out loud to her, and it was rather distracting if he tried to type too much. Mostly she just kept up a running commentary on the proceedings, sometimes passing jokes between him and Sam and Nat. Apparently she was feeling better, since she was no longer apologizing about the Rik.

  Yep, the good senator didn't waste any time today, huh? How do you think he gets his teeth to sparkle like that? Maybe you should ask.