Invaded (Alienated, #2)(67)

Like many of his generation, Larish’s eyes betrayed little emotion, but his posture lifted in tandem with the corners of his mouth. It told Cara she’d hit the bull’s-eye. Academics loved nothing more than discussing their theories—especially with those who agreed with them.

“Please,” he said in meticulous English, indicating the chairs opposite him. “Be my guest.”

Cara thanked the guard for his assistance and took a seat. “I can’t believe I’m sitting across from the Larish. Your work is brilliant.”

He waved her off, his smile widening. “I wouldn’t say that.”

“Thanks for making time for me.”

“Anything to assist an eager young mind.” Larish sat back and crossed his legs at the ankles. “How can I help you?”

Cara didn’t want to alarm him by leading with questions about the Aribol, so she started small. “When did you realize the old legend was wrong—that your ancients were actually human?”

“As soon as we made contact and accessed your electronic databases,” Larish said. “Humans have unearthed fossils of Homo Erectus that date back more than a million years. On L’eihr, we’ve found no remains that predate the ancients. Some of our anthropologists argued that L’eihr’s mild climate and predominant water mass were to blame—”

“Because remains decay faster in warm temperatures,” she interrupted. “Plus, weren’t storms a big problem before you controlled the weather?”

“Yes,” he said, sounding impressed. “Which would have destroyed even more evidence…but surely not all of it.”

“Totally.” She had been on board from the beginning. Now to get to the good stuff. “I’m also curious about the Aribol—you know, the aliens who kidnapped all those ancient soldiers and carried them here?”

“A name I assigned to them based on hearsay, you understand…”

“Of course.”

“What would you like to know?” he asked.

She leaned forward and caught her bottom lip between her teeth for a moment. “I can’t stop thinking about them. I mean, if they had the technology to abduct a whole legion of warriors thousands of years ago, what’s stopping them from doing it again—here or on my planet?”

Larish lifted a shoulder. “Nothing, I suppose. But they haven’t, which is telling.”

“What do you mean?”

He shifted in his seat, pausing for a moment while folding both hands in his lap. “I don’t have any evidence to support this, but I believe the Aribol are tinkerers. Behavioral scientists on an intergalactic scale. They like to seed species across multiple galaxies to see how each one develops uniquely in a new environment. I don’t think they wish us harm. But before I can convince you, I need to explain something about our ancients.”

She nodded for him to go on.

“To say they were merely brutal would be a flagrant understatement,” he told her. “I’ve studied human history, and the ancients who ruled our seas rivaled that of your most savage societies. Men and women fought alongside one another while the injured and elderly remained with the younglings. Even children were trained in combat. I’ve read stories of boys and girls as young as ten doing battle.”

“Wow.”

“Indeed,” he said. “Even rulers occupied the front lines. In fact, one of our most infamous queens died in a bloody battle, along with her consort. It was rumored she was with child at the time of her death, and several years ago, scientists confirmed it.”

“Oh, I heard about that. Their tomb was on the colony, right?”

“Very good.” He gave an approving tip of his head like a proud teacher. “The remains were brought to our genetics labs when I was a youngling, but as my path didn’t follow a scientific bend, I wasn’t able to study the data. Anyway, the queen was in her second trimester when she perished.”

“I had no idea the ancients were so hard-core.”

“And it stands to reason their ancestors were just as savage when they were abducted from Earth. Imagine what the Aribol faced when they teleported these warriors aboard their craft.” He sniffed a dry laugh. “It must have been utter bedlam.”

Cara imagined the scene: dirty, blood-streaked warriors wielding primitive weapons against their kidnappers, fighting to the death to regain their freedom.

“The fact that those ancients survived,” Larish said, “implies the Aribol are not a violent race. Otherwise, they would have simply terminated the legion instead of re-homing them.”

Cara supposed Larish had a point, but just because the Aribol were originally lovers and not fighters didn’t mean they were passive today. Look how much the L’eihrs had changed during that time. “What if they got curious and decided to check up on L’eihr?” she asked. “How do you think they’d go about it?”

Larish let out his version of a hearty laugh, more like a snicker by human standards. “Very carefully, I imagine.”

Cara didn’t want to use the term probe, so she chose her next words carefully. “Do you think they might send a robotic device to gather information about us?”

“Like a probe?” he asked.

So much for avoiding red flags. “Yeah, I guess.” She shrugged casually. “If you want to call it that.”