I started to panic.
What the Hell, lady?
Did she expect me to give her escape details right in front of my husband?
I looked at him for an answer.
Elentinus had turned smug.
He stared at me with his chin cocked and his eyes narrowed.
It was an expression that said, ‘Well, Maritza?
What are you going to tell them?’
I couldn’t believe he was challenging me like this.
I know he thought he was being funny.
I didn’t appreciate it.
“Can’t say.”
I shrugged.
“Who are these humans, Elen?” Nayjoor asked.
“Why aren’t we getting on with the tour?”
Elentinus leaned close to explain to him.
“Are you happy with him?” Magpie asked me.
I gave a genuine smile.
“Oh, yes.
He’s very kind to me.”
Then I drew my lips into my mouth to wet them.
“Are you happy here?”
Magpie scrutinized me a moment.
“You’re from the future, right?”
“The past.”
“Yeah, right, that’s what I meant.”
She snuffled and looked away from me.
“Presuming that’s true, then you don’t know about everything that happened?
About the war and the parasites and everything?”
Elentinus, Inga, and both servants were now fixed on her with me.
Nayjoor was looking around, bored.
“I know some of it.
What they’ve told me.
I don’t know your side of it though.”
The three representatives exchanged glances.
“I’d like to know what they’ve told you,” Dugan said.
Magpie lifted her hand.
“Later, Dugan.”
She took a deep sigh.
“You girls need to know who you’re standing by.
I had a brother, and I had two sons.
All of them drafted.
All of them killed in Dak-Hiliah attacks.”
She paused to swallow.
“They kept asking us to surrender, and they kept punishing us when we didn’t.
Our governments said we had to keep fighting.
That the Dak-Hiliah would enslave us.
Rape all the women, castrate all the men.
That’s what they kept saying.
So we fought and we fought.
Lowered the draft age.
Dragged all the countries into it.
Every fight was fucking hopeless.
They only ones who survived were the few female soldiers, who all got kidnapped.
Our governments pulled them out of combat pretty early.
Basically the Dak-Hiliah toyed with us.
Toyed with us!
We never did much damage.
If we managed to kill even one soldier they’d come back at us ten times worse in his name.
That shit went on for 25 years.
Millions and millions of people died.
I don’t even know what the totals are.
Every day you’d hear 5,000 killed.
20,000 killed.
We never won a battle.
Hell, we never even fought off an attack.
They just left when they felt they’d killed enough.”
“Your husband was the general.”
Dugan pointed his thumb at Elentinus.
“He was the one sending in all the squadrons.
You know that right?”
I parted my lips to answer, but no words came out.
Had I known?
I thought I did, kind of.
It never sunk in before.
Magpie started up again.
“Do I want to go back to that time?
When we were at war?
When I was worrying for my last son’s life night and day?
No.
I wouldn’t.
But you don’t know the half of it.
The next invaders were even worse than these ones.
Those parasites…like slimy green spiders as big as cats with these…these spiked elephant trunks.
They just rained on us.
Grabbed people by the head.”
Her voice started cracking.
“Jabbed that spiked trunk thing right through people’s foreheads.
Turned them into dead-eyed zombies who just marched and marched and marched to where the ships came and got them.”
She let out a shuddering sigh.
“It happened so fast.
You weren’t safe in your house.
They could get through your roof, your walls.
My group was able to hide in the sewers.
We were down there for months.
We could never go up.
Those things were always crawling around—and there was no way you could kill them.
You sure couldn’t outrun them.
Not even in a jitney.”
She shook her head.
“I spent that year eating rats.
I had mold growing up my legs that itched like Hell.
It was always damp.
Always cold.”
She winced.
“At least five in our group committed suicide.
Manny—when his teeth started falling out—he went insane.”
Esther squeezed her shoulder.
Magpie took a deep breath.
“I’m grateful for every day I get to be out of that hole.
See the sun shining.
Breathe clean air.
So to answer your question, yes.
I’m happy here.
I deserve to be happy after everything we’ve been through.”
“The first…the first year…”
Esther paused to bite her bottom lip.
“It seemed too good to be true.
After what we been told for so long we all sat here holding our breath, waiting for them to show us their true selves.”
She gestured with one hand as she spoke.
“But it’s been, what?
Three years now?”
“Of course your leaders would lie to you,” Elentinus said.
“The soldiers had to believe surrender was worse than death in order to sacrifice themselves.
Your allies reassured your governments time and time again that we were gracious conquerors.
They hid this from you.”
“’Gracious conquerors.’”
Dugan sneered.
“You knew our soldiers were lied to and you still killed them all.”
Whore stepped forward, but Elentinus lifted his hand.
“The only reason you’re not paying a penance now for your prolonged resistance is because of those lies.
We are usually not so
gracious
to stubborn worlds.”
“Was it gracious to sic those parasites on us?”
“Shut your mouth, Dugan, for God’s sake,” Magpie said.
“What’s the point?”
Dugan turned away with his chin quivering.
“Okay, so fine,” Inga said.
“Never mind the past.
How is it for you now?”
“Well, we’ll show you,” Esther said.
Dugan crossed his arms.
“I don’t have to be involved, do I?”
“Leave,” Elentinus said.
Dugan set off straight ahead.
The women led us to the side, toward a row of barracks.
We passed vast gardens that several people were tending to.
A few calico chickens scurried around.
Normally this would have excited me.
The air felt too heavy on my shoulders to enjoy it.
I looked, but all I could think about was Elentinus as the ruthless conqueror.
I knew what the Dak-Hiliah had done to Earth before I got here.
It hadn’t mattered before.
I was a girl kidnapped out of her home and time.
Of course my kidnappers were evil.
I was just glad one was nice to me and that I was going to be able to survive the ordeal.
Now I had to reckon with everything I’d learned.
Inga pushed me out of my safe bystander mode.
I couldn’t justify not helping her out of loyalty to my husband.
My husband was evil.
That thought made my legs weak.
I loved Elentinus.
He was good to me.
We joked together and got wild in bed.
I felt safe with him.
But he was Earth’s conqueror—and completely unrepentant.
“Maritza.”
Elentinus’ voice snapped me out of my daze.
“The only reason we attacked Earth was because we were facing extinction.
If we didn’t conquer them, there was no hope for our survival.”
I looked at him.
If I was paranoid I would have thought he could read minds.
I knew better.
We were on the same wavelength again.
“Do you have as good a reason for all the other worlds the Dak-Hiliah conquered?”
He looked into my eyes a moment, and then turned away.
“No.”
My shoulders rose and fell with a deep sigh.
“Maritza.”
Elentinus took my hand.
“I’m not proud of everything in our history, but I led this war because our existence depended on it.”
I nodded.
In a way I was touched at how badly he wanted my approval.
Elentinus kept proving his love for me was genuine.
He made it hard for me to stand against him.
But it was the right thing to do.
Esther and Magpie led us into the nearest barrack.
We went through a lobby area first which had been converted into a daycare.
Toddlers played together on the floor while several women kept watch.
I saw some cribs along the back wall.
The rest of the building was a gigantic mess hall with long tables.
It was only a quarter full.
I could smell bread baking.
About a thousand people, mostly women, turned to look at us and point.
There were as many people knitting or crafting as there were eating.
Esther was talking about how they milled their grains and how many kilos of produce came out of the gardens, but I was still distracted.
Out the back were open dirt fields that had white lines painted for sports.
I thought it was soccer, but there were four goals instead of two.
A loud group of girls were kicking around a ball in one of the fields.
Elentinus took my arm.
I realized our group had moved on to the next barrack.
We came in the back directly into living quarters.
About 200 double bunk beds stretched out in front of us in two lines.
Most of the top bunks had bare mattresses.
The bottom bunks all had blankets hanging from the top bunks to serve as curtains.
This had obviously been a military barrack once, but all the order was gone.
Personal items were piled high on homemade shelves against the walls.
The beds that were visible were sloppily made.
We walked down the center aisle glancing down each row.
Some of the lower bunks had the beds removed in exchange for three cribs.
The apparent mothers had bunks on either side and above it.
I saw both men and women in the area.
This explained the need for the curtains.