Fade Read Free Page B

timing on your holier-than-thou routine.”
    Cynthia rolled her eyes, turned her attention to the man on the ground, then gasped at the sudden, sharp pain just behind her ear.
    “Found one!” They laughed another team laugh and did leave.
    “Freaking jerks,” she said and crouched by the man’s side. “Sorry about that. Evolution let them down.” She waited for a response or movement. “It’s okay now. They’re gone.”
    She stared down at his filthy, ripped coat, and pretended the odor shooting out of him wasn’t as bad as it was. Then she reached out a hand. He rolled onto his back like a fresh wad of dough and stared up at her. Her hand fell away.
    “Don’t hurt,” he said in a child’s pained voice.
    “No, sweetie. You’re okay now.” Compassion overcame any fear of what slimy thing might be caked on his hand, and she took it to help him up. For a moment, Cynthia could feel the man’s weight against hers, making it seem that he understood what she was doing. Then he stiffened. His eyes fixed on hers and he jerked free of her grip, almost pulling her down with him.
    “Danna?” He asked what seemed like a nonsense question to Cynthia and groaned. He then dropped his head and gargled a scream as he began slapping his forehead— Thack-Thack-Thack!
    Cynthia stared unmoving, certain she was watching a man die.
    ***
    Aern, leader of the now defeated Fade, walked up the side of a mountain in which he and a scant battalion hid like frightened prey from the humans. Sweat glistened on his jet black skin, he narrowed his red eyes at the bright sun. But the heat did not bother him. Heat reminded him of home. But home was a place he’d probably never see again. This was one man’s fault. A single human had greedily lapped up the Fade’s hope. It had been pulled, unreachable, over some far-off horizon. Jonas. He’d wrapped their hope around himself like a warm coat and leapt through space with it, chiding them with his circus smile.
    It had been fifteen years since their sure victory over the humans had been ripped from them. Now the Fade were no more than beasts, grazing on what the sparse land gave them, stranded on a strange planet they should have been ruling, knowing that any moment could bring with it the wild yell of a human army, clambering up and over them like a wave, ending them. They had already fallen so far, but Aern had fallen the furthest.
    He held a single raspberry. He had found a sprawling bush of them at the edge of the tree line and collected a handful for the trip up the mountain trail. Rocking it in his large, black fingers, its juices wet the tips. He wondered, as he did almost every afternoon when there was not enough food for his people, and they were no closer to finding a way off this world, what would come of them.
    Aern had held himself up as the greatest apostle to their Queen. For centuries she was worshipped from afar, respected by an ever dwindling few. But he returned deference to the utterance of her name. His planet’s government had even come to fund the research which led to the eventual journeys to find her. But, when Aern’s army had lost, their home planet had ceased communication with them. They did not want Aern’s righteous war spreading to their coward shores. So when they believed Aern’s crusade crushed, his own people had left his bones to bleach on a foreign world. The Queen would not be pleased. But their retribution could wait. It was this world that he would ask that she shattered first. He opened his wide maw and laid the red coal of a berry on his gray tongue and crushed it against the roof of his mouth.
    The horizon dimmed at the end of another day and, once more, it was empty of human armies. The thought occurred to him that they had given up; they no longer thought the Fade enough of a threat to search out. In part, the thought angered him, but it also let him breathe for the moment he let it live.
    For those almost fifteen years he had evaded the