Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 66904 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66904 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
I miss the ship already.
I miss the crew.
I cannot wait to get the captains and transport them back to the ship so we can get the hell off this backward planet.
I keep going down the tunnel, following the curves. In spite of the fact I don’t think there’s any surveillance here, I stick to the shadows, keeping my movements slow and crouching down. If there are sensors, and if they are designed to detect saurians, there’s some chance of them not registering me as anything of note.
The more I think about it, the less I think this passage is probably monitored. Shan’s demeanor when he left suggested he didn’t want anybody to know what he was doing. I think this is his private, secret pathway. I am sure he would be absolutely horrified if he knew I had breached it. Angry, even. He does not seem like the sort of saurian you want to be around when he is angry.
Hopefully I won’t run into him again. Hopefully, this tunnel exits out into a populated area, and hopefully, I can make my way to a rendezvous area. I know the Mare will be looking for me, though they’re probably shaken as hell after everything they just barely escaped. It’s not often our cloaking devices fail. It’s even less often we just barely dodge enemy fire while in orbit.
Suddenly, the quality of light in the tunnel changes. There’s a murmuring of voices in the distance. I am getting closer to some someones. I get a little closer, moving even more carefully now. Worst case scenario, I get caught and taken back to that little underground cell for some kind of saurian reckoning.
“Don’t fuck this up, Charlotte,” I tell myself. “Don’t fuck this up. Not like the other times.”
I don’t like to think about the other times. I am good at what I do, but that doesn’t mean I have never failed. A little voice tells me that I always fail when it matters. I’m good, but I’m not good enough.
Many years ago, when I was very, very small…
I’m beneath a long, broad table that acts as the gathering spot for my family and our friends. I am small, and it is large. The room I’m in is familiar. There is the fire burning in the grate, and the floor has been licked clean by the tongues of our six dogs. The tablecloth was embroidered by my mother’s mother, and one day I will spread it out on this very table myself. But for now, I am small.
It is loud in here. That’s not unusual either. My father’s friends are loud. They drink and they smoke and they say things to one another that make each other roar, sometimes in indignation and rage, but more often with laughter. My mother’s thick legs are often clad in comforting beige stockings and her favorite kitchen shoes, the ones without heels but with red and yellow flowers painted on them. They’re cracked a little at the toes where her feet flex. Like everything else, they are well-worn and comfortable.
If I look down at my own feet, I have leather shoes that are very similar. I tried to paint mine too, but I only had chalk, so the flowers I tried to adorn myself with are smeared, and there are pink and orange marks on the floor where I’ve been kneeling. Hiding.
Red sauce splatters on the floor. Great red arcs of it.
My mother spills from time to time, but not that much. That’s too much. That’s a glut of sauce, and it is too red. Too thin in viscosity. It does not smell of tomatoes and rosemary. It smells of iron and copper.
Heavy meat is hitting the floor. Bloodied meat. Meat with clothes on. Meat belonging to people we knew. Friends.
“Traitors will be executed.” An orderly, stern voice cuts through the chaos, through the loud bangs that precede the bright bursts of red staining my mother’s floor. “This colony is built on order and on sacrifice.”
“This colony is built on tyranny!” I hear my father’s voice. It sounds raspy and there is a rattle in his throat, but there’s no fear in his tone. He always said he wasn’t afraid of the soldiers from Galactic Prime. He said they didn’t own us the way they thought they did.
“You’re nothing but animals,” the voice replies. I don’t know who it belongs to, but he has long, shiny boots that rise up past his knee. That’s all I can see. Black boots shining. He steps carefully around the pools of red. He doesn’t want to get his feet dirty with the mess he’s making. My mother is not going to be happy about this. I know she mopped the floor earlier today. She told me to be careful not to get it muddy because all their friends were coming over for a very special conversation.