Page 105 of Roping Her Alien Ranchers

Vantor pressed a tentacle against the ship, and its entrance revealed itself. Lavender smoke. Bright light. It was beautiful, and part of me wanted to race forward and stowaway inside the vessel. But they needed to finish their mission. They needed to get home and hopefully save their many waters. They did not need a human woman aboard complicating things more than she already had.

One more look.

Sadness passing between us in almost visible waves.

Then they were gone, the doorway sealing seamlessly behind them. The ship hummed with increasing intensity, the sound vibrating through the ground beneath my feet and into my bones. It seemed to skate across the supply barn floor and out the much wider entrance. Then it was lifting upward. Slowly at first, then with gathering speed, it rose into the night sky—a dark shape outlined briefly against the stars.

Then a ripple passed across its surface, and it vanished from sight.

Gone. They were really gone.

I stood alone; my arms wrapped around myself where alien tentacles had been just moments before.

The night sky above Kansas had never seemed so vast or so terribly beautiful. Stars punctured the darkness like countless wounds, their light traveling years, centuries even, just to shine down on this ordinary ranch. That stupid, breathtaking sky made me feel small and unimportant again—feelings that the aliens had erased during their stay. I hugged myself tighter, closing my eyes, trying to center myself back into a reality without three aliens.

The crisp night air carried the scent of prairie grass and sunflowers. The distant nickering of horses reminded me I wasn’t completely alone. It would be okay. I would be okay.

I’d existed before Cyro, Vantor, and Kalith crash-landed; I’d continue existing now.

Opening my eyes again, I took one more look above me. It was a wide, terrifying universe. Maybe it could swallow my grief whole.

“Until currents cross again,” I whispered into the darkness.

39

CYRO, KALITH, & VANTOR

Home planet is where the hearts reside.

CYRO

The belly of the ship felt suffocating now.

I imagined the sensation was worse than if I ventured out into the trench itself to feel a hectare of oceanic pressure crushing down against my boneless body. The interior of our vessel was filled with saltwater, forcing out all air pockets, otherwise the ship (and us with it) would have crumpled the deeper we descended. We were safe. Everything was going smoothly. Still, it felt like the weight of an entire world was pressing against my form… and my hearts.

My brothers and I had spoken very little since leaving Tammy, only flashing communicative lights as necessary. Brief pops of brightness, interrupting the expanses of dull hues washing over our skins. For some reason, we’d all slowly morphed back to a mostly human form as we’d traveled to our mission’s coordinates. It was cumbersome, making our tasks harder, yet it felt right to operate in our ship with arms, and legs, and tentacles.

“Load another vial,” I flashed at Kalith, who’d complied, giving me one quick blink in response.

“Your pressure modulator is not fully charged.” He gurgled at me, bubbles spilling from his mouth, seeming to hover around him like we were far too deep for the pockets of air to know which way was up and which way was down. They’d be snuffed out by the water pressure soon. They couldn’t survive for long.

“I am self-modulating fine,” I blinked back dismissively. Our bodies could handle the depth and descent; the modulators were a precaution. I didn’t care if mine was working. It was very uncharacteristic of me not to follow precise protocol. But it was liberating. Maybe our strong-headed, pitchfork-wielding Omega had rubbed off on me.

Why did I feel like nothing mattered, yet everything mattered too much?

No, all that matters is we finish the mission.

And stop thinking about the human woman. She’s an Earthling. Being together forever was never a possibility.

The sample collection screen bathed my face in cold blue light as I watched the fourteenth, and final, vial fill with inky darkness from Earth’s deepest waters. Tiny particulates swirled within the specimen, dull, red bioluminescent lights that made me think of fiery filaments atop a biped’s skull. I shook myself, trying to focus on the molecular stability readings fluctuating across my display, but my mind kept drifting back to Kansas, to golden sunlight on copper hair, to blue eyes that somehow contained more depth than even this bottomless trench.

A robotic arm moved the newly capped vial out of sight, lowering it into the waiting storage slot below. I squatted, eyes clapping on it again. Sliding one tentacle tip across the relocation bar, I watched as the sample slid to the right, into tubing I could not observe, on its way over to the research station’s preservation locker and the other thirteen vials.

“Sample fourteen acquisition complete,” I light blinked to no one in particular. “Molecular stability at ninety-six percent. Optimal concentration of particulate matter achieved. Full preservation of all samples can commence once they are properly docked.”

This was the mission.

We were finally doing our duty.