Page 74 of Stripped By the Alien

The question catches me off guard. For a moment I wonder whether the translation flower has made a mistake. "Yes."

The Queen remains silent. Her gaze moves over me from head to toe. "You appear physically fragile."

The impulse arrives before I can stop it. Instead I glance behind me, towards Krix'vorr. "Compared to him, most species probably do."

Several antennae twitch throughout the chamber. The Queen gives no visible response, though I get the impression I've become more interesting than I was a few seconds ago.

Then she asks her next question. "How many of you are there?"

Okay. I have two options here: refuse to say anything or make up some lie that makes Earth seem as unattractive as possible to a space locust. Staying silent will almost certainly be taken as a sign of defiance, and I can’t imagine that will go down well with these guys.

But if I lie, I have to think fast and commit to it.

“There are very few left,” I state. “A few thousand on all of Earth, we think. There may be as many as a hundred thousand in all. The number keeps going down.”

“Why so few?” the Queen asks. “In this Royal section of my Nest, we are at least a hundred thousand. In the whole Nest, infinitely more.”

“There was a war,” I make up on the spot. “The weapons were terrible. Nearly everyone died. The land… the planet was ruined. Nothing can grow there now. We’re dying.”

An alien murmur goes through the room.

“Your kind destroyed themselves?” the Queen creaks. “In a war? The whole planet?”

“The war…” I try to remember what I’ve heard about what could happen if there was a nuclear war on Earth. “The weapons created so much dust. Everything went dark. The sunlight didn’t reach the surface. It got so cold! Everything froze. Those we weren’t dead already starved.”

“They starved,” the Queen echoes, sounding almost thoughtful. “I see. And yet, here you are.”

“Not everyone was on the planet,” I say, still thinking fast and deciding where I’m going with this. “Some of us were in space, on stations in orbit or on missions to other planets nearby. But the other planets are barren and we can’t survive without our home world.”

Well, that’s it. If they don’t go for this, I don’t have a backup story. One major risk is if Sophia is found and her story doesn’t match mine.

“But you went into space,” the Queen says. “You had the resources for that, at least. And you reached that cursed minefield. Despite coming from a dying world, as you claim.”

I’m not sure how she knows that, but of course the crew of the Beast would know and they’ve probably been talking.

I guess I’ll have to extend the bluff. “Scouts were sent out into space. We were sent to find other worlds and plead for help. We were so few that even female scouts had to be sent. Nearly all our males died in the war.”

The chamber goes quiet again.

That should help convince them. While the locusts are ruled by a queen, my guess is that most of the leaders and soldiers are male. I haven’t really seen any females apart from the queen, as far as I know.

In the old days on Earth, nations could be totally sexist although ruled by queens. I think the same is going on here.

But now, my story is becoming so elaborate that Sophia’s certainly won’t match it unless I coach her somehow. That means I have to find her first, before the locusts.

The queen looks away from me and focuses on Krix’vorr. “Chief Harrower Krix’vorr. Is this true, what the alien female is telling us?”

Damn. Krix’vorr has seen the wreckage of my ship, and the wreckage of Sophia’s. He knows they were made by a sophisticated civilization. And this is the first he’s ever heard about a war and starvation and me being sent out to get help.

All eyes are on him, except mine. I keep looking at the queen.

The chamber is silent for too long before he speaks.

“I have not seen her world, Your Majesty. But I have also seen nothing to contradict what she says.”

A wave of coldness goes through me. He just lied to his queen. Maybe. I’m not even sure, but he got really close to it. And everyone in the chamber seems to understand something I don’t.

“Nothing to contradict,” the Queen finally echoes. “Hardly persuasive, Chief Harrower. You seemed quite attached to this alien. Indeed you were seen holding hands with her. Have you found yourself in the center of small thunderstorms recently?”