“Yes, you have.” The Envoy pushed buttons and shifted through the displays as he continued. “The seedlings are the first forms of your enemies. They are uniquely suited to change the environment for their larger species, the space-faring colonists.
The cycle of rain is the key, you see— But I’ve already said that.
Ah!”
The images came to a stop to display a tiny test tube held by what looked to be a human hand. The tube bridged the distance between thumb and first finger. Inside it was a miniature, translucent thing of evil.
Even knowing it was an image didn’t muffle the rage that swept though Mike’s heart. Just one glimpse, just one set of eyes, and that was all his people needed to storm forward, weapons blazing.
“Behold, ladies and gentlemen,” said the Envoy, “the face of your enemy. In Australia, it’s known as Irukandji.”
A brittle moment passed as everyone took in the image of the tiny creature. The Urilqii didn’t need to wait long for a response. A lone, timid voice spoke from the rear of the chamber.
“Uh, that’s a jellyfish.”
CHAPTER 2
Two years later…
The festivities were in full swing, but Liam Sinclair decided that he’d had enough. Well, for the moment, at least. It was the hottest days of summer, just a few days after the equinox, and the sun’s rays had blazed into the beautiful Gorge Amphitheater.
That was when he’d started dancing. Now it was full dark.
Lights played their neon messages across the sable sky. Stars flickered like distant fireflies. The sweaty mire of twenty thousand bodies grooving to the music had replaced the perfume of daylight wildflowers and river fecundity.
The event was happening inside “The Gorge at the George,” and the twenty-thousand-seat venue looked to be filled to capacity…okay, more than capacity if he counted the inevitable gate-jumpers who’d snuck in.
Everyone danced. It was awesome.
Considered one of the most scenic outdoor concert venues, probably helped along by the natural beauty of the Columbia Gorge at one border, the annual Paradiso Festival pulsed its annual event of electronic dance music into the air. More, it wasn’t expected to end for some time yet. Like, late tomorrow night.
Yeah, he was up to it. He just needed to catch his breath.
Actually, he could use a swim. In beer.
Liam headed over to the vending booths, where the smells of garlic and spice and whatever-else-was-on-the-grill wafted on the breeze, and purchased two bottles of water. The first he chugged immediately and tossed the empty container into a recycling bin.
The second bottle he drank from at a more moderate pace as he wandered back toward the stage-front crowd.
He checked his placement against lights and equipment, banners and talent, and concluded, yeah, he was in the right place.
He scanned the crowd to locate his friends. Just where he’d left them and happily banging to the beat.
He spotted something else, something unusual enough to warrant a second glance. A group of Urilqii.
Newcomers to this planet— jeez, how amazing is that? —the visitors were active in oceanic reclamation, temperature stability, and ozone layer reparation. They also, creepily enough, watched the skies for something they called the Targolt.
Endlessly, unrelentingly, obsessively they watched…except when they danced. The Urilqii, faultless pieces of eye candy the lot of them, loved to dance on their days off. Go figure.
They also loved tattoo shops, which was amusing because they each wore a piece of art on their right pectoral, applied before they’d made landfall on Earth. Humanity had learned the art identified the separate divisions of the battalion based on Earth.
There were six on this rock, and the ones in the Pacific Northwest area wore designs that looked like a bug. Camel spiders actually, except that the camel spiders walking their planet were the size of station wagons. Complete badasses, he speculated, which would explain the military icon.
Liam sipped his water and studied the Urilqii. They danced among the crowd like an island of bright colors highlighted by stage lights. They swayed to the electronic beats, draped in colorful and merry garments, looking like rare blooms amid a forest of Earth flowers, like orchids amid tracts of wildflowers.
Then there were the hairstyles. Tonight, for whatever reason, they wore mohawks. Each alien’s hair had been spiked into a palm frond crest along the middle of his skull. Blues, Reds, Greens, and colors he’d never seen before…they reminded him of pictures he’d seen of nebulae found in the dark reaches of space.
Except for the one guy who stood apart a small distance.
His military cut hadn’t been formed into a mohawk and, while he was dressed in merry, festive colors, it seemed to Liam that he’d cloaked himself in darkness. He was gorgeous, though, like the others of his kind. Dark-haired and light-skinned, a powerful build, and muscles both men and women would dream about.
During spacewalk or underwater, those colors blended into the darkness. Insta-camo. Like a great white shark or one of those peregrine falcons…or even the gray-and-white tomcat he’d had as a teen.
Like everyone else, Liam had been glued to the television and computer the first year of the alien arrival. He’d stuck to his couch while he watched the recorded ocean dives for data and spacewalks.
Any and all videos of the Urilqii had gone instantly viral.
YouTube had turned them into instant Internet superstars, whether they’d wanted to be or not.
The guy must have felt him watching because he turned his head, followed by the rest of that sculpted body, and faced him.
Their gazes met…and held.
The bottom of Liam’s stomach dropped away and he found himself restless. Not worried or afraid, no, just hot and antsy, like he stood too close to a stove. A charge filled the atmosphere, like the presence of an oncoming thunderstorm.
He glanced up. Not a cloud marred the starry sky. That fast, the sensation was gone. Its absence felt like a blast of artic air. He dropped his
