Pangs of hunger ground at Davidar's insides. Mother, I don't know if I can control this urge to tear into their flesh.
Keep peaceful thoughts in your soul, and love in your heart for all beings. Trust in your internal you. Do these things and you'll be able to control your hunger. Besides, if you decide to attack, I'll stop you.
He forgot about the power of his mother's mind. The words calmed him. And the intoxicating lure of human blood—dissipated.
Tarisha grasped Davidar's shoulder. This group does not smell of fear as the ones behind them. I don't think they pose a threat to us.
One of the male humans had his hand out for a formal Nasferian greeting. He took the boy by the wrist and waited for him to do the same.
The kid's eyes questioned Davidar's intentions. After a moment, he sighed and finished the clasp. "My name's, Matt."
"Davidar." His English didn't sound like the boys.
"Hello," a slender blonde girl said. "You speak English?"
"Yes, dear, we do." Tarisha's accent sounded a bit more refined than his. Her voice came across in her usual motherly tone. Soft. Gentle. Pure.
"See ... I told you they weren't hostile. I'm Katelyn ... this is Eve." She pointed to a smaller, yet more robust human female.
Eve curtsied. "You have interesting accents. Where'd you guys come from? Is everyone okay? Your ship is a mess."
I think we should play along, Mother.
Agreed.
"We are British." Davidar looked around. "Our navigation went out. Where have we landed?"
Another male scurried out from the bushes. "You're in Southern Oregon."
"Brett! Put your gun on the ground!" Katelyn stepped between Davidar and Brett. "They're human. Best of all, they're British."
The perplexed kid lowered his weapon and placed it on the ground at Katelyn's feet.
A mental image of a globe came into Davidar's mind. It ripped in half and spread out before him like a hologram. On the left side of the United States, he located Oregon near the Pacific Ocean.
"Are you Astronauts?" Brett asked.
The map appeared again. He found Great Britain. In the same breath, the entire British Space Program's history was collected in his mind. This side effect from Moroo's external internet download surprised him.
"I've read about this," Brett said. He started walking toward the Zylo One. "Is that the newest version of the Skylon Spaceplane?"
In a blur, Tarisha cut the boy off from his path to the ship.
Brett jumped back. "What the ..."
"You are correct," she said. "This is the new Skylon prototype. But don't venture too close as there are some leaks we are investigating."
"Is everyone, okay?" Katelyn stepped onto a rock and looked at Davidar's family members.
Tarisha sighed. "Unfortunately, we lost two in the accident."
Katelyn gasped, burst forward, and wrapped her arms around Tarisha. "I'm so, so, sorry. We already called 9-1-1."
Davidar knew emergency services would already have been dispatched. In the distance, he heard a faint sound.
Do you hear that, Mother?
A faint whap ... whap ... whap ... became more clear.
Tarisha tilted her head so her right ear faced East. It's another one of their modes of transportation.
A helicopter, Davidar thought.
The sound became deafening. Davidar had to dial back his oversensitive hearing. Murmurs came from the opposite side of the field.
"Looks like search and rescue is here guys." Matt pointed over the hill.
"Should be the Coast Guard," Brett said. "We're closer to them than we are to OHSU."
"Ain't no damn search and rescue," the man concealed in a patch of tall grass some fifty feet away said. He'd left his perch behind the stump and had been slowly creeping through the brush behind the kids.
Davidar had thought nothing of it.
"It's a stealth gunship."
The helicopter swept over the hill, twirling snowdrifts, leaves, and pine needles into a psychotic frenzy. Its lights beamed over the area and settled on Davidar's family members on the landing ramp. Two larger dark-green spotlights blazed into the crowd. All at once, his family dropped like weights, plastering them to the ramp.
"What's going on, Mother? What's happening to them?" Davidar's heart flipped in his chest. What kind of laser beam could hurt an entire family?
"She's your Mom?" Eve asked.
Davidar ignored the question. He needed to help his family, but those lights had incapacitated them.
I cannot hear them anymore, Tarisha thought.
A man in black armor jumped from the helicopter and another followed suit. They didn't quite hit the ground before they whipped back up to the helicopter, carrying his family members.
"They're taking our family," Tarisha said. "We have to help!"
The man in the bushes stood. "I gather those people ain't with y'all?"
"No. And whatever's in those lights, it's hurting our family," Davidar said, his voice riddled with concern and fear.
More men in black suits dropped from the helicopter. This time, they landed next to the family with automatic weapons in hand. The lights from the helicopter didn't seem to bother them.
"I can help," the camouflaged man said. He'd gotten up and walked over to join the small group. He raised his rifle into the air.
"Jimmy Boy knows what he's doing." Eve patted him on the back.
Tarisha turned to look at the man, Jimmy Boy. "We'd be eternally grateful for your assistance."
Davidar had never seen such a twisted look of despair on his mother's face.
Jimmy Boy nodded, aimed the rifle at the helicopter, and shot twice. Both times his weapon went off, one of the lights exploded, scattering sparks through the air.
"That should silence their weapon." Jimmy Boy put two more bullets into his rifle.
A red-headed girl emerged from the dark. "Who are they, Jimmy?"
"Nancy. I told you to stay with Jason."
She scowled. "Just answer the question."
"Dunno. Never seen this group before. These soldiers are specialists. I'd say it's a private tactical group. Someone doesn't want the British space program to take off."
What Jimmy Boy said made sense to Davidar, though, the outfits these soldiers wore looked familiar to him. Not the hard armor, but the suit underneath.
Family members stirred. And with their movement, the armed men raised their weapons. One of them grunted.
"No!" Davidar shouted.
The men opened fire.
Agonal screams punched Davidar in the chest. In a haze of speed and fury, he slammed into one of the assailants. On impact, the man's armor crunched in on his chest and he shot through the air. His body smashed into a tree, snapping the aged pine in two.
A second later, Davidar had one of the other men by the throat. Under the black-tinted facemask, coarse hair prickled against his hand. The man let out a gut-wrenching howl as he squeezed. Skin ripped and cartilage popped. With one last gasp, the assailant went limp.
The helicopter tilted, flew over the field, and hovered above Davidar's mother and the teens. Another armed man leaped from the helicopter. He grabbed the girl Katelyn around the waist and disappeared back up his bungee cord.
A blast of plasma from inside the Zylo One cut through the light snowfall. It hit one of the soldiers, melted a hole through his chest armor, and erupted out his back.
The rest of the militants bounced back into the helicopter which screamed with power and shot straight up, whirring out of sight.
Davidar's stomach lurched at the carnage. Nauseated, he fell to his knees. Tears streamed down his face. In one brutal act, most of his family had been wiped from existence.
"We should have stayed on Nasferas and let the Gnam vaporize us. Anything would've been better than this." He forced himself to crawl over to the nearest family member. His hands shook as he rolled over the bullet-riddled body of his baby brother.
"Dram!"
He shook his brother's lifeless body. Blood soaked the front of his flight suit in irregular patterns across his chest. The blood flowed in a thick stream down the ramp, pooling in the grass below.
Davidar's eyes twitched from one body to the next, searching for the one person in the family he could not live without.
"Where's Ralia?"
A muffled cry came from several feet away. Davidar crawled over and rolled a blood-soaked body off the pile. When he turned it over, he saw Treylor's eyes, his pupils fixed and dilated. The bullets had only hit his back with no exit wounds. Beneath the massive force of a man, he found Aleese. She moaned and spat up blood. He pulled her into his lap.
"You're going to be okay, Aleese. I've got you."
She cried and grabbed her stomach. Three bullets had hit her in the lower abdomen. Again, he couldn't find any exit wounds. She'd need surgery, but the one person who could help her wasn't there to do so.
Maybe the humans could help?
A shadow fell over him. He followed it with his eyes and saw Ranloo standing at the top of the ramp. For a moment, he disappeared from existence. He wiped his eyes and ran down the ramp, scooped Aleese out of Davidar's arms, and jogged back to the Transfer Room.
A quiet sob came from behind. Tarisha knelt with Dram, and Alek pulled into her lap. Tears raced down her porcelain skin.
"Dead." Tarisha sobbed.
In one word, Davidar's spirit and heart fractured forever.
"My baby boys are dead."
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