Book 6: Chapter 2: Conquest |
Dylan sits with a cup of alien tea heating his hands, trying to reconcile the shaggy, skinny, withdrawn dude he knew with the man sitting in front of him.
Grant Hyde is in a crimson uniform with a high, open collar brocaded with intricate onyx and fastened with gleaming obsidian. It’s sleeveless, as everyone’s seems to be, showing his arms, and Skinny Grant has gotten big. His thin face and high cheekbones are filled-out. His hair is shoulder-length and satin-shiny. He’s got an easy smile on as he plays with a tiny brown-eyed alien baby in front of him.
This sort of thing happens. Dylan knows it does. You have a friend in college, you lose touch with them, and then out of the blue you meet, and they’ve gotten DILFy and they’re married with children. It’s just the wife and the children are usually the same species.
It's good tea. It is. But how do you make conversation with the Prince of the Galaxy?
“I don’t know how long you’ve been in space,” he says, “but in case you’re wondering, the Browns still haven’t won shit.”
“God dammit,” says the Prince of the Galaxy, mildly. “I thought perhaps when I was taken by the Taiikari’kiakiam the impossible had been made possible.” His accent is thicker than Xamika’s. How does that work?
“So what—” Dylan pauses as a six-foot-two shark-man enters the room with a smile and a bowl of fruit. Sure, why not? “Uh, thanks.”
“Yor wilqom,” the shark says. He places the bowl on the table, bows to Grant, and departs.
“What have you been up to?” Dylan watches the shark tug the door shut behind him with his thick tail. “How long have you been in space, anyway?”
“Uh, I’ve been okay. I got a dog.” Dylan gestures to the corner of the room, where Xamika is cooing and rubbing Booger’s belly.
Grant grins. “I have been very excited to show dogs to Taiikari.”
“He is such a good boy,” Xamika reports. “Like a throok but so much cuddlier.” Booger snarfs air through his smushed-up nose and lays his head in the purple woman’s lap. Dylan feels a nebulous jealousy.
“I texted you,” he remembers. “Roundabout last year.”
“Oh yes?” Grant is engaged in a light tug-of-war with his giggling son’s tail. “Forgive me. I haven’t been able to find a charger up here.”
Dylan lets out the uncertain beginning of a laugh, and commits when Grant’s encouraging grin tells him that was a joke.
“I missed you, man,” he says. “I meant to reach out a lot of times, but it seemed like you’d dropped off the grid, and I know how it was with you and the family, and you always liked your space, and I dunno. I guess I was waiting for you to reach out first. Which, in retrospect, isn’t exactly fair, I know, but—”
Grant raises his hand. It sparkles with a menagerie of rings. “Sorry. Can you go again a bit slower? This is my first English conversation with a native speaker in years. I am not as fluent again as I hoped I was—would be, I mean.”
“It’s not important. I’m glad to see you, is the main thing.”
“I’m glad to see you, too.” Grant reaches into the fruit bowl and removes a wrinkly purple walnut-shell looking thing. “I was asked who my closest friend was, on Maekyon, and I hope it isn’t odd that I said you.”
He digs his thumb into the shell and pulls it open to reveal a tri-lobed berry. He takes a bite of it and hands the other half to his son, who industriously paints a pulpy mess across his face with it.
“Not odd. I’m… I guess I’m honored.” Dylan finds a shell of his own and pops it open. “Shit, dude. King of the world?”
“Prince of the world,” Grant says. “Well, Mayek is the word. But the Taiikari don’t have kings. It is a… shoot. Complicated word. Matre—thing.”
Dylan deposits the shell with its fellows in an ornate wooden bowl at the table’s center. “Matriarchy.”
Grant snaps his fingers. “Matriarchy! Yes.”
Kiar ceases his face-painting and stares with shocked delight at his father’s fingers. Grant snaps again, and the boy reacts as if he had just discovered fire.
Xamika mouths matriarchy to herself with a focused, faraway expression. Beestung is maybe the word for those lips. Like a soft cartoon heart.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“You are wondering why I have this weird accent,” Grant says. Dylan’s attention snaps back up to him. “And why my English is so ru—rudi—bad.”
“I admit it crossed my mind,” Dylan says. He’s been squeezing the alien fruit in his hand without realizing. He takes a taste. Damn, that’s good. Tart and tangy.
Grant points to his temple. “I have, eh—num’winiki munliaki, Xam?”
“Implant,” Xamika says.
“Viwik, Xam,” Grant says. “Implant in my head. I traded English for Taiikari. I’ve learnt it back, partway. But from old cheap novels, mostly, so… ehhh.” He wiggles his jewel-encrusted hand. “Half or so. I thought I would have more time before I met another Maekyoniz again.”
Xamika coughs politely. “Human.”
“Ki.” Grant smacks his forehead. “Human.”
“You’re doing good, then,” Dylan says. “I did a lot of Spanish on Duolingo and I can still barely order tapas.”
Booger grunts a complaint as the thigh he’s been using as a pillow shifts. Xamika is sitting up suddenly, at urgent attention. Dylan follows the line of her attention to the lounge’s doorway, where two Taiikari are finishing a conversation in their babbling-brook language. One is in thick carapace armor, looking like a cyborg warrior, with a set of scars on her face to match.
The other has to be the Princess. Even if she didn’t have a shapelier, neck-plungier version of Grant’s finery on, Dylan would be able to tell. It’s in her bearing, maybe, her formal, straight-shouldered air of utter commanding confidence. Or maybe it’s the pair of red-eyed babies in her arms.
The scar-faced woman slaps a fist into her chest with a metallic clack and exchanges a brief couple of words with Grant. The Princess turns at the sound of Grant’s voice; the moment she sees him, an alchemical reaction starts in her and melts the regal noblewoman away. It brightens her, spreads a big, unabashed smile across her face, cocks her hip, sends her tail wagging. “Hello, big men.”
The scarred woman makes a bemused sound in her throat and clanks away down the outside hall.
“Mayi’ Sykora.” Xamika is on her feet like her butt was spring-loaded, bowing in a sharp ninety degree angle. “Luaramani’mikawi wianiam—”
“Nek.” Grant’s wife gives an affable shake of her head. “You stay, Xamika. Translate. I not want to use a szikai. Dylan!”
She sways into the room. The bracelets—tail-lets? Dylan doesn’t know what to call them—along the supple, hairless length of her tail jangle as it wags.
“I Sykora.” She bows at a much shallower and more casual incline than Xamika just hit. “Honored. And this Aurora, this Ziavra—”
Grant nudges her. “This is.”
“This is Ziavra.” Sykora’s tail flicks around; its furry end paffs against Grant’s knee. “And this is a nerd. It is right word? Nerd?”
“Oh, yeah,” Dylan says. “Big time.”
The Princess perches in Grant’s lap. He rests a hand on her thigh and says something in Taiikari. She giggles and responds.
Xamika is now the second-most beautiful woman Dylan has ever met in person. Princess Sykora of the Kei’na Terokai is a pint-sized supermodel: pouty little lips, big soulful eyes, a dainty upturned nose. Black hair down to her thick blue ass. Dylan thought maybe Xamika was some kind of exception, but here’s the second Taiikari woman he’s seen with the curves of a woman twice her size, packed into the frame of a pint-sized pantone fertility goddess.
Sykora smiles at his attention and lifts one of her daughters up. “Do you want to hold?”
“Um. Okay.”
Sykora places Aurora on the table. “Neem’lknai, Rory.” She gives the baby an encouraging push. The tiny girl crawls across the table and pauses in front of Dylan, staring with intrigued focus at him.
Dylan holds his hand out. “Hey, Aurora.”
“Gih,” Aurora says, and grabs Dylan’s finger.
“See,” Sykora says. “Your Fresh Man Room Mate has alien babies. Strange, no?”
Dylan carefully lifts the puppy-sized child from the table. He examines her comically serious face and sees it, in her lowered brows. She’ll look as stormy as her father when she’s a little more grown. “They’re yours? Like, biologically?”
Grant nods. “There’s this thing they can do, called nurakami’wekani. It lets you have Taiikari kids.”
“You are first friend of my husband I ever met.” Sykora eagerly leans across the table. Dylan makes a conscious effort not to look at the squish of her chest against it. “I bid you tell me every humiliation of his life, okay? I need—” She mimics a gun firing at Grant and makes a psh sound with her pillowy lips. “Bullet.”
“Ammo?” Dylan asks.
“Ammo!” Sykora snaps her fingers, sending Kiar’s tail wagging again. “English is not so hard, you see?”
“Has he ever told you about the flight jacket?” Dylan grins as he remembers. “And the shopping cart?”
“The flight—oh no.” The memory dawns on Grant, too. His smile is much more rueful. “No, Dylan. I forbid this.”
Sykora lightly smacks her husband’s bicep. “I demand it.”
“You’re still with Rebecca?” Grant asks, in a cavalier attempt to change the subject. “Ought we bring her here? We’d pay her, too.”
Dylan shakes his head. “That ended a while ago.”
“Oh.” Grant’s brows knit. “I’m sorry, brother.”
“It’s okay.” He searches for another fruit in the bowl. “It’s been about a year.” A year and her toothbrush is still in the cup by the sink. He doesn’t mention that. “I’ve been fine being solo dolo for a bit.”
“What is solo dolo?” Xamika asks from the room’s corner. Dylan glances her way, and she reddens, as if she hadn’t been supposed to speak.
“Single,” he says.
Her face locks into careful neutrality. “Oh.”
“Eh, Xam, maybe you can…” Grant switches to the alien language. Dylan watches in numb shock as it flows out of him.
“Tutheam, Mayek.” Xamika bows. “His Majesty and Her Majesty wish to speak with you in private, Dylan. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“I will be just outside. Would you like to keep Booger in here?”
“No, that’s all right. I think he likes you.”
Xamika beams and strokes Booger’s ear as she takes up his leash. Okay, maybe putting her in second is unfair.
“Viwik, Xam. Bye, dog.” Grant raises Kiar’s pudgy little arm in a wave. “Say bye, dog!”
“Baga,” Kiar says.
Grant turns back to Dylan, settling into solemnity. “This I need to tell you,” he says. “Earth is in…” He hesitates.
“Peril,” Sykora finishes.
Grant sighs. “Ki. Peril. No way to soften it. These next few kan—months, these next few months. They will decide the fate of our planet, Dylan.”
“Xam called what you’re doing annexation.” Dylan shifts in his seat. “And, like, I know what that word means. Sort of. But what does it entail, exactly? She wouldn’t say.”
A hardening takes place, then, across Grant. Something in his bearing. The happy dad subsumes into it, and suddenly Dylan is sitting across from a Prince. It sinks into his gut. The millions and millions of miles this man has traveled. The changes, seen and unseen.
“It entails conquest, Dylan,” he says. “I am here to conquer Earth.”
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