Page 2 of Saved By the Alien Hybrid (Hybrids of Yulaira #1)
A tiny blip on the screen skated away from Earth and trailed past the elliptical markers for the paths of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn—on and on until they had passed Pluto.
The ship ventured out into the deep, empty space beyond the Solar System.
They watched silently as the little ship marker approached the Hyperion System where Lapillus was located and carried right on past it.
Past the edge of explored space, past anything that their navigation system could make sense of. The replay ended.
Error. Navigation cannot be calibrated.
All three of them sat in stunned silence.
A moment later, the text flickered, and a strange, incomprehensible script began to scrawl across the screen.
“What is that?” Eunha was leaning forward, frowning at the screen.
The ship rattled violently, nearly throwing them all to the floor.
“What the hell!” Nyx cried.
Fear burned through Cordelia’s veins like a lit fuse. “Strap in,” she shouted. “Now, now!”
They fumbled with the straps of their chairs as the ship continued to shudder.
The automated voice that Cordelia dreaded blared over the loudspeakers.
“Warning: extreme turbulence. Please strap in or return to your pod. Warning: extreme turbulence—”
Something else came over the loudspeakers then—a language Cordelia had never heard before, deep and lyrical. There was urgency behind the words, meaningless as they were to her.
“Nyx?” Cordelia barked, flicking a sidelong glance at Nyx as she ran another round of diagnostics.
“They’re splicing into our communications channel,” Nyx said.
“Who is?” Eunha asked, leaning across Cordelia to look at Nyx’s screen.
Nyx laughed, the sound edged with hysteria as she read her screen. “There’s no way!”
“Who is it?” Cordelia echoed, snarling at her screen as it gave her nothing to go off but detected turbulence. It wasn’t coming from the ship itself; as far as the computer was concerned, nothing was acting unusually.
“I have no idea.” Nyx cast her a wild-eyed look. “Commander, I’ve never seen a language like this before. I-I think it might be alien.”
The ringing in Cordelia’s ears grew so loud it drowned out the chaos around her.
“—not possible,” Eunha said as the world came back into focus. “There is no other sentient life in any of the explored galaxy! Everything is still crawling around in the mud!”
A huge shadow fell over them, obstructing the light bouncing off the planet. Nyx’s laughter grew louder, more unhinged.
“Not anymore!” Nyx sat back in her seat and abandoned her attempts to make sense of the communications streaming across her screen.
A ship so big it seemed to go on for miles took over the scene before them.
It was sleek in design, all gleaming, golden metal and geometric black lines.
There was text scrawled along the side in huge, glowing letters in the same incomprehensible alien script that was flowing over their comms screen.
“Fuck this,” Cordelia whispered. She leaned forward and kicked the lever to release the manual flight controls, yanking them toward herself. “Eunha!”
Eunha cast her a startled look, but then her face hardened, and she followed suit.
“Ohh-ho-ho shit!” Nyx cried, gripping the arms of her seat and plastering herself back against it.
There was a rumble and a violent jolt as the thrusters powered up.
“We need to land,” Cordelia said, leading them directly toward the ship that was blocking their path.
Eunha swore under her breath, bringing up all the readings available to them—readings that would have been nothing but superfluous information if they were landing on Lapillus, guided down by the telemetry provided by the settlement and the ship’s AI.
Cordelia dipped the nose of the Cassandra, skimming them along the belly of the larger ship like a pilot fish trailing a shark.
The alien voice over the loudspeakers grew more urgent, biting off something that sounded like a swear before going silent.
They had nearly made it past the nose of the ship when the Cassandra froze, stalling out.
“What’s happening?” Nyx asked over the renewed rumbling of the ship around them.
“It’s like we’re snagged on something,” Eunha answered, flipping quickly through the data. “God damn it, I can’t see what’s going on!”
Cordelia couldn’t tell if they were moving backward or if the ship above them was overtaking them, but the planet drew no closer no matter how hard she pushed the accelerator. She loosed a wordless shriek of frustration, knuckles whitening around the controls.
“Commander, what is that?” Nyx asked, sitting as far forward as her harness would allow.
Cordelia followed her pointed finger, turning her gaze on the planet below as something surged from the surface.
Tense seconds passed before Cordelia realized she was looking at what appeared to be a rapidly growing ball of fire.
It slid soundlessly past their ship, so close that Cordelia could have reached out to touch it if not for the glass.
A moment later, they were surging forward again in an erratic path as the ship rattled violently. The lights flickered briefly.
Warning: damage to the hull. The ship’s AI was thunderous. Integrity at 83%. Please make an emergency landing or return to your pod for evacuation.
“Was that a missile?” Eunha shouted as they struggled to regain control of the Cassandra.
Another ball of fire surged past them, close enough to shake them off course again. They couldn’t see the blast, but it shunted them down, setting off another cascade of alarms.
Nyx cursed and made the sign of the cross over herself.
Integrity at 78%.
Cordelia’s vision was blurring, fear warring with adrenaline, shaking her focus.
It’s going to come apart. It’s going to burn again.
Deep breaths, Cordelia.
“Get in your pods,” she heard herself say in a level tone, just loud enough to be heard over the cacophony.
“Commander…”
“Get in your pods!” she shouted, turning on Nyx.
Nyx’s face hardened, a muscle feathering in her jaw, but she popped the latch on her harness and staggered out of her seat. She was trying to hide it, but Cordelia could see she was relieved. Cordelia turned toward Eunha, who had mutiny in her eyes.
“I’m your copilot,” Eunha said. “You need me here. If something happens to you, there will be no landing this bitch!”
“Get up, Eunha.”
“No!”
“I am your commanding officer, and I am telling you to get out of that chair and get in your fucking pod. This ship is coming apart. No one is landing anything!”
Eunha’s expression turned fraught. Her hand hovered over the release of her harness for a long moment as her eyes flicked from the planet to Cordelia and back again. With a curse, she hit the button and fell to her knees, crawling from the bridge toward her pod.
A strange, numbing calm spread over Cordelia as she turned her attention to the planet rapidly growing before her.
She’d failed six simulations after surviving the attack on the Leto that had claimed the rest of its crew and colonists, with a diagnosis of PTSD from the staff psychologist that ultimately ended her career as an astronaut before she’d ever seen space firsthand.
For years, she had been sure that would be her legacy.
She’d been resigned to it until Lyra had tapped her for this mission and given her a second chance she still wasn’t sure she deserved.
She turned her gaze sidelong at the distant stars stretching out forever in every direction around the planet. This was all she’d ever wanted.
I did it.
A smile stole over her face even as tears tracked down her cheeks. She blinked hard to clear her vision, shaking herself.
It was unlikely that she would successfully land the aircraft with so much damage to the hull and no guidance from the settlement or mission control.
She would get them as close as she could to solid ground, and then she would launch the pods. The preservation systems in the pods would take care of the rest. This was all she could offer them: a chance for their lives at the cost of her own.
There was a sort of symmetry to it, she supposed.
Maybe this was why she had survived the catastrophe on the Leto when no one else had.
After the attack, they had said she was cursed.
That particular rumor had grown in proportion when someone had leaked her mission history.
Maybe they were right—after all, everything was about to go up in flames again.
Or maybe they were wrong. Perhaps fate had only spared her life that day so she could spend it when it would matter. God knew she had thought about wasting it often enough. At least this way, her death would count for something. A strange sense of relief swept over her at the thought.
No more pain, no more guilt. She could finally rest.
She could only pray that they would find some way to survive, that a planet that could host sentient alien life would be hospitable to them, that they wouldn’t be found and captured.
Sentient alien life.
It was too much to think about. She pressed the racing questions in her mind aside, focusing on her flight path.
She punctured the planet’s mesosphere. Flames streaked around the ship as the force of entry flattened her back against her seat.
Every breath was a battle against an elephant sitting on her chest.
They’d practiced this a hundred times before launch, stuffed into a machine that spun them so fast they couldn’t lift their heads off their seats until they could make it out without puking or panicking.
Yet, even knowing she would survive, a part of her mind churned with fear at the strangling force.
The alien voice returned as she struggled to focus through the pressure, repeating the same phrase several times, growing more frantic.
“I get it,” she whispered, watching the planet come hurtling toward her. “I’m about to blow it. I already know.”
She managed to level off somehow as she dropped into the stratosphere, decelerating enough to scope out a place to drop the pods.
They were programmed to try to remain within a kilometer of one another.
If she could find a safe spot for them all to land, the women within should be able to join up afterwards. They would need each other to survive.
The interior of the ship was bright red, alarms blaring, her screen a never-ending scroll of angry red text.
Below her was open ocean, churning with whitecaps.
She pushed the ship further, ignoring the threatening rattle of metal, trying not to wince when something peeled off the nose of the ship and went hurtling overhead.
The ocean gave way to a beach with silver sands—literally silver, gleaming so bright it threatened to blind her.
She squinted, pushing further from the water, wanting to be sure none of the pods would drift into those restless depths.
When a forest began to cover the ground beneath her, she forced her arm out, shoved the plastic cover off the emergency evacuation button, and brought her fist down hard.
There was a loud hiss and a series of clangs as the pods deployed.
The air on the ship was suddenly too thin to breathe.
A mask dropped down from overhead and she pulled it over her face with shaking hands, sucking down what was likely her final breath.
She watched on the screen as the pods descended, her heart in her throat as she waited for something to go wrong.
The alien voice on the intercom turned angry, ranting.
The thrusters were failing. The landing gear was jammed. Even if she’d been able to find a clear strip of land, she wouldn’t have been able to set the Cassandra down in the state she was in.
Cordelia looked over her shoulder at the empty space where her pod had once been.
Too late for regrets.
She turned her gaze back to the window, allowing herself to enjoy her last few moments of existence. It was beautiful, this planet. Soaring mountains of purple stone grew larger in the distance, flanked on all sides by a forest of green and purple trees.
Felix would have loved this. She could imagine the wonder in his dark, twinkling eyes as he took it all in, could imagine the wheels turning in his head as he tried to think of some clever quip to deliver and ruin the moment.
I’m sorry, his voice whispered from deep in her memory.
Her hands slipped from the controls, falling into her lap.
I’m coming, Felix.
The nose of the ship began to dip, and she closed her eyes, tensing, waiting for the release of impact.