“Get on, get out of here,” I said softly. “Go be free.”
The arjath cast a single look at us before taking off over the endless rolling hills. He didn’t need to be told twice. I hoped he would live a good, long life.
Maddy yawned with her whole face.
“We should get to the ship,” she said. “It might fade away like a mirage.”
I smiled and hugged her close. I kissed her on the forehead.
“We’re okay,” I said. “No one knows we’re here. We’ll be away before you know it.”
“Where will we go?” she asked. “Earth is too far to travel in such a small ship.”
“We could go to my home planet,” I said. “Then we can plan what we’ll do from there. You’ll love it there. It’s so beautiful. Especially early in the morning like this.”
I considered my next words very carefully.
“And when we get there… there’s something I need to tell you,” I said. “Something about me and the things I’ve done. I wasn’t sure before but now we’re about to leave, I know it’s the right thing to do.”
She tried to gauge my expression and figure out what I needed to say. But she could never guess. Not in a million years.
“Will I like it?” she said.
“Hopefully it won’t matter to you,” I said. “With time.”
“You’re not married, are you?” she said.
I chuckled and hugged her closer.
“No, I’m not married,” I said.
I had no idea how she would react. But I needed to tell her. I didn’t want to lie to the woman I loved.
We jogged down the embankment toward the shuttlecraft.
The closer we got to it, the deeper the twisting sensation became in the pit of my gut.
I always got nervous when I got this close to getting what I wanted. There was always the fear it might get taken away from me at the last moment.
At the last moment.
Why did that ring a bell?
The call Klang had with whoever was in charge of this shitshow they called television. They were going to kill me in the barn roof and have Maddy get close to the shuttlecraft before killing her too.
But we’d managed to ruin their plans.
Or had we?
Was the reason I felt sick to my stomach because my senses picked up on something my brain hadn’t?
We got within half a dozen yards of the ship when I froze. I held out a hand to stop Maddy in her tracks.
She turned to me with a frown on her face.
That’s when we both heard the noise.
A high-pitched whistling sound that began far with distance but rapidly approached.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard it before, but due to where we found ourselves and how close we were to achieving our goal and leaving this place, it couldn’t be anything good.
I grabbed Maddy by the arm and pulled her toward me.
The noise roared past us and slammed into the shuttlecraft’s hull. It boomed with a terrifying explosion. A huge fireball blossomed like a new flower and reached for the heavens.
I felt the heat on my arms and face. Molten metal rained down and singed the grassy dew.
I wrapped my arms around Maddy to protect her from the worst of the onslaught, turning her away from the explosion and blocking it with my back. Already I could smell the thin material of my suit burning.
A tall figure stood on a lip of raised earth, just a few yards from where we’d crested a moment ago.
“There’s no escaping Iron Hoof,” Iron Hoof said.
He pulled another grenade from his costume and slapped it in the launcher. He favored his uninjured leg as he took aim and fired another grenade at the ship.
“We should run!” Maddy said. “We can still get out of here!”
“No, we can’t,” I said calmly. “The Changelings always win. Always. They’ve got us surrounded and they intend on getting the big climax for this episode they’ve promised their viewers.”
The Changelings would be sitting in their homes now, or watching on their devices at work, as yet another pair of aliens failed to overcome the might of Changeling power.
They were never going to let us go. Our fate had already been written into the script.
Us escaping wasn’t what the Changeling audience wanted.
Failure was the order of the day.
And we had to be the ones to pay the price.
Shrapnel from the second explosion stabbed me in the back. My blood ran in hot rivulets from the wounds.
Already, the ship’s core was rupturing. Any second now it would explode. At least it was a quick way to go. At least I was in my darling love’s embracing arms.
I brushed her hair back from her face.
“I love you,” I whispered in her ear.
Her body was so warm and soft, I wished I could enjoy it one last time.
“I will love you until the end of time,” I said.
“I love you, my Titan,” she said.
It broke my heart to hear the tears in her voice.
We kissed as the ship’s core erupted in a fiery ball and tore through my body.
I heard a distant volley of what sounded like blaster pistol fire but dismissed it. No one was coming for us. No one was coming to save us.
Maddy screamed. I feared it would be the sound I’d hear forever in my afterlife.
The fire raged and consumed us both.
Maddy
My ears rang and my vision was blurry. Concerned green faces pass in and out of view. My skin was numb and felt nothing. Not even the object I was lying on. I might have been floating on a cloud. My tongue could have been made from plastic and I couldn’t taste a thing.
My senses were in revolt. They didn’t know what was happening.
I faded in and out of consciousness. Images and sounds were stitched together like a patchwork quilt.
None of it made sense.
Chax shouted. His words were indistinct and fuzzy. A warning?
A man with green skin and a white mask over his mouth bent over
