Free Alien Avatar: An Alien Sci-Fi Romance by Mika Tarkin Page A

her sudden arrival make any difference?
    “How old are you?” she asked.
    “I’m four and three quarters. How old are you?”
    “Four?” she asked, wondering if Hala used a different measurement of time. “You seem so much older.”
    “That’s what Marko said. He said that Hala children grow up fast. You didn’t answer my question.”
    “I’m…” she had to stop and think about it. Another sign that the last few years had really gotten the better of her. Her age wasn’t the only thing that had gotten away from her over the last few years. She’d lost track of everything that mattered. Forgotten everything that had ever been important. “Forty six, I think.”
    “You think?” Kiran laughed.
    “When you get old, sometimes you forget things,” she said.

Chapter Sixteen
    Marko had his doubts about making it back to the Dynasty compound. The way he figured, it was a two-week journey, best case scenario. They didn’t have a real map - the only one they did have was one that Naeesha had brought and was set to a planetary scale. They’d have to navigate based off rough guesses at lakes and mountain ranges.
    If the jungle around the compound was as thick as it had been twenty-eight years ago, then they wouldn’t have a hard time walking right past it even with a good map.
    And that wasn’t the least of his concerns. Getting there was. He took stock of all the things that their rag-tag group had to worry about.
    1)   The Alderoccan military.
    2)   Halians who’d given in to the Wild.
    3)   Animals, assorted.
    4)   Exhaustion, dehydration, starvation, exposure, heat stroke, etc.
    5)   Despair
    It was by no means a complete list, but Marko was confident that if anything was going to kill him over the next two weeks, it would be on that list.
    If they did make it to the compound, their odds of survival were a complete mystery. Well, not a complete mystery. Everything that he’d heard of the Halian homeworld suggested that it was a splendidly dangerous world. So the odds of survival remained low. The difference, he thought, was not when, but how.
    But for all the ways that he and everyone else in the city could ie, he sure as hell wasn’t going to let it be standing around here.
    The group would need to move efficiently. That meant no doubling back, no getting turned around. And resting every minute that they weren’t moving. The majority of the survivors were very old or very young. The more able bodied Halians had helped them to a hiding space before going back to help others. Most of them never made it back out of the chaos.
    Marko discussed this with the group, and it was decided that he and Naeesha would scout ahead of the group. They would blaze a trail, and the group would follow their markers. That would ensure that when the group was finally ready to move, they’d already be headed somewhere safe.
    That was, of course, provided that Marko and Naeesha could find somewhere safe. They’d only be able to cover about ten miles a day, and there were more than a handful of stretches where safe places were a hell of a lot further apart than that.
    Anyway, “safe” was a relative term, and anywhere that that wasn’t an active battleground was safe enough.
    He found Naeesha, still sitting with Kiran, and told her about the plan. She was all for it, and was up with her pack before Marko had even thought about getting ready to head out.
    “I just don’t want to sit around anymore. I feel useless here.”
    “You’re being a good friend to people who need one. There’s nothing more important than that,” Marko said.
    Naeesha blushed. She’d never been good at taking compliments, even when she deserved them as much as she did now.
    The change that she’d gone through in just a couple of days was astounding. When he’d first run into her, she’d been just like every warmongering, xenophobic Watcher in the capital. And now she was getting antsy because she felt like she wasn’t doing enough to help