"Paladanians!! Listen to me; we have to prepare to defend our border!! The invaders are coming to fight us!" I shouted as loud as I could. The people in the square all turned to stare at me, and then back at the Council building as the doors opened.
"We know this, Abigail Shurn." said a Halapatovian, walking out of the building amongst the rest of the Council.
The Halapatovians were the inhabitants of the leading planet of the Staarus System, Halapatov. They and the Paladanians had had an alliance since Halapatov first discovered space travel and there were many Halapatovians living on our planet and leading in our Councils. They were taller than the average Paladanian, had different eyes and nearly pointed ears and chins. As well as being generally wise and skilful, they had many powers such as prophecy and telekinesis, so I wasn't surprised that the leader knew my name or that she knew about the humans intentions.
"We have to prepare to defend." I repeated, with less force this time.
"What do you think we have been doing? My fellow Halapatovians and I are going to combine our powers to make a force field to keep the humans out."
"You can do that?" I asked in surprise, as many in the crowd rolled their eyes, and muttered 'Naïve child....'
Despite my small embarrassment at my stupidity, I thought for a moment and asked a smarter question.
"Will that keep them out indefinitely?"
The leader furrowed her brow, her eyes filled with sadness. "Their technology is unknown to us and besides, we don't want to trap them there forever."
One of the Paladanian leaders stepped forward. "If they do break through we will be ready. We will reason with them and if that does not work then we will just have to fight our way through. The force field will be placed immediately, of course." He was talking to the crowd, assuring them of safety. That was when I remembered Sophie.
"Wait!" I shouted, panicking a little. "My friend is out there, trying to negotiate with the invaders, they're called humans and she was following them. You can't strand her out there; they might try and hurt her!"
The leader raised his eyebrows. "Your friend?"
"Yes, she's one of the humans but she didn't come in the ship. She wants to stop them."
"You're friends... with one of them? Did you check her eyes?" another leader asked worriedly.
"Yes and she was definitely trustworthy, no sign of veiled thoughts at all." I answered immediately. Like all Paladanians, I had been trained at a young age to recognise what people's eyes revealed about their thoughts and especially whether they were hiding their thoughts. It was very important that we understood these things, considering our mental capabilities, and it was even more important for me with my advanced powers.
"Good." the leader said, nodding his head in approval. He turned to the leader beside him. "Reeina, can you see her?"
Reeina, a Paladanian leader, closed her eyes and concentrated. After ten seconds she opened them again.
"Yes, she is skirting the trees in the woods, parallel to the humans. She is waiting for a time to run forward and talk to them. She is about ten minutes away from the edge of town."
The other Paladanian leader nodded again. "We should send someone to bring her over the border before the force field is placed. We don't know what they might do to her if she gets trapped in there with them and is discovered." He turns to me. "Abigail, go to your friend and bring her here. Reeina will follow your actions and inform us once you are out of the force field zone. Now run, quickly."
So I did run, desperately, for the second time in ten minutes, pushing myself to the limit in hope of getting to Sophie and stopping her from engaging the humans. Buildings flashed by, my feet being guided subconsciously, as my whole mind focused on getting there quickly and quietly. When I reached the place where the houses ended and the trees began, I tried to blend in with the forest so that the humans wouldn't see me coming. I looked ahead and saw that they were still a good distance away. I picked up the pace, my breath coming out rapidly as my lungs tried to keep up with my speed. I was fifty paces away from where the marching invaders were when I could see Sophie in the trees ahead, about to step out into view. I ran faster and as she turned her head and noticed me, I slammed into her, placing my hand over her mouth to make sure no sound escaped her. She stared at me with wide eyes and I jerked my head silently to tell her to move away from the tree line. She obeyed and once we were out of earshot I took my hand off of her mouth.
She immediately asked, "Why did you do that?"
"They're putting up a force field." I panted out. "I was sent to make sure you didn't get caught inside it."
Sophie smiled and shook her head. "You didn't need to do that."
"Yeah I did. I couldn't..... couldn't let you get hurt." I was bent over now, with my hands on my knees, trying to recover my breath.
"Well, thank you." she said, her eyes shining." I'm glad I didn't get stuck in there."
"Me too." I replied, still breathing heavily. "We should probably get back to the town now so they can put it up." She nodded.
We went at a slower pace than I'd been running, but still fast enough to be ahead of the humans. When we were about a hundred paces away from the town, we heard the electrical buzz of the force field as it appeared behind us. We kept running though, and soon we were inside the town limits. Sophie started slowing down, and, by the look on her face, I could tell that she was nervous about meeting my people. We passed a couple of other Paladanians on our way to the town square, who thankfully didn't look angry about Sophie's presence. Not that I was expecting them to anyway. When we arrived in the town square we saw that the Halapatovians there were all standing in front of the Council building with their hands outstretched, concentrating all their willpower into the force field until a permanent power source could be established.
The Paladanian Council leaders were all huddled in a circle, conversing quietly. Each settlement on Flauraan, or at least those in my country, was led by the most intelligent of the town. It was complicated choosing leaders as there were three types of settlements; villages, towns and cities. The villages had two council leaders, the towns had seven and the cities had as many as needed. There were all sorts of tests involved for anyone with hopes of becoming a leader, and if you did pass them all, you were bound to being leader for thirty year cycles. Then leaders from the next generation were chosen. My town was one of the most important towns in the country, being the closest to the Capitol city and also being fairly large compared to most other towns. So naturally we had some of the smartest leaders. One of them, Criken, was a descendant of one of the war leaders in the Great War, ove a hundred years ago. That was one of the few times the Paladanians were ever in a fight. Every child in the whole of the Staarus system had heard the stories of the war, and was frightened of them. Especially me.
Anyway, the leaders were looking incredibly worried. I could tell why. This was the first attack of any type on our planet since the War. I mean, occasionally space pirates or something of the like would fly by but they always had quite basic technology scavenged from many different places and so they were easy to ward off. These humans obviously spent a lot of time developing their technology, and despite their lack in numbers, they had weapons filled with powerful energy and all kinds of things that could damage our town and people. Plus, that ship had seemed to appear from nowhere and none of the space stations around the many planets in our system seemed to have noticed it, or at least they hadn't alerted us or come to our aid. The humans also seemed to have bypassed every sensor and defence our planet had. They probably wouldn't be able to defeat us if we did fight them but hundreds, maybe thousands of lives would almost definitely be lost in the process and we didn't know if more were coming. We were stuck.
I could feel Sophie beside me, restless, waiting for action. I knew she wanted to help but I didn't know how she could; I didn't know how anyone could. I figured the next couple of days would be hard, with enemies at our borders and such and there'd be fighting, a big fight probably. I'd never seen a fight before but I knew it wouldn't be good, in any way.
Sophie turned to me. "What's going to happen now?" she asked.
"I don't know." I admitted, shrugging my shoulders. "The humans are inside the force field, for now, and then anything could happen."
Sophie shook her head. "I can't figure out why they'd do this. I mean, my people like power and all but it's not like they just attack random towns to get it or for any other reason. If you don't mind me asking, there isn't anything your people have done to upset mine, is there?" she narrowed her eyes at me in pretended suspicion.
"Nothing that I know of, I'm pretty sure they haven't even met humans before." I told her.
"Eh well, my people are easily upset, there's probably a perfectly good explanation for all this." Sophie said. "I just find it a bit weird that-"
"Abigail, could you please bring your friend over here?" The leaders had finally stopped conversing, and were now looking at us expectantly. Sophie and I walked over.
"Your name, child?" one of the leaders, Criken, addressed Sophie.
"Sophie Lestari." She replied, glancing nervously at me.
"Do not be afraid, Sophie. We won't hurt you." One of the female leaders said kindly.
"I'm not!" Sophie protested.
"Stop confusing the girl." Criken snapped at the leader. "We have more important things to discuss."
"Yes we do." Another leader, Ray, took control of the conversation. "What can you tell us of the... er... human race, Sophie?"
Sophie was startled by the question."What?" she asked.
"We would like to know why your people, the humans, as Abigail has informed us, are trying to attack us." Ray explained. "It is of the most importance."
"Oh, ok." Sophie nodded. "Um, well, what do you want to know?"
"Anything about your people that might help us understand, motives, powers, etcetera."
"Well, humans don't really have powers, er, at all." Sophie began. "But we have heaps of technology; we use it for practically everything."
"Well, that would explain their ship." Said Ray, and the other leaders nodded. "Is war a common thing amongst your people?"
"Yes." Sophie replied. "Er, it's very common actually. I think there's always a war going on somewhere."
The other leaders muttered nervously to each other behind Ray. He glanced towards them before addressing Sophie again.
"So your people are no strangers to fighting?"
"Erm, no." Sophie said. "But most of my people don't actually fight as much as you might think, and half the people on Earth, I mean my planet, well, they haven't held a weapon in their life."
"Oh really?" Ray asked.
"Mm hm." Sophie nodded, and I could tell that she was trying to somehow defend her people from the judgement of these leaders. I placed my hand over my eyes. Sophie was so stubborn. She was still shifting nervously as if afraid of saying something wrong. As the leaders conversed, I glanced at her standing beside me. She caught my gaze and we stared at each other in silence for a moment. She was embarrassed about the fact that her people had come here and attacked. I tried to look reassuring but I knew that Sophie wouldn't be reassured. She was really worried about the damage they might do.
Ray turned back to us.
"Do you know anything of this specific ship or the people who came on it?" he asked Sophie.
After a moment of silence, she looked up with hard eyes. "I know that they're dangerous; and angry. When a human gets angry they don't think, don't wait, don't watch, they lash out and ask questions later. There's not much that can stop them now. They certainly won't listen to negotiation, no matter how logical it is. They can hold a grudge for a long time and if you hold them off they'll just come back with reinforcements and they won't back down until they've got a result."
The leaders looked startled by her sudden dark tones. I saw a few of their faces turn pale as they exchanged looks of concern. Ray seemed to be out of questions for the moment, as he composed himself and turned back to us. The town lights were glowing bright all around us.
"Well, it's getting late now girls." He told us. "Abigail, you should really be getting back to your home. Your parents will be worried."
I nodded, remembering that I'd told my parents I'd be back before the moon rose above Pier mountain, which it usually did a few hours after dark. Now the moon was far overhead; I would be late, and in so much trouble.
"What about Sophie?" I asked.
"Would it be alright if she stayed with you?" Ray answered.
I hesitated. "I'm sure my parents would be fine with it." I said after a moment. "But I'm not sure how they'll react at first."
"I wouldn't be any trouble." Sophie interjected. She was obviously thinking that if she didn't come with me she'd be stuck with the leaders for the night.
I smiled at her. "Alright."
"Thanks Abigail." She said.
"You should probably be getting on now." Ray said. "Try and get a good night's rest. We'll be able to keep the force field in place for at least tonight but anything could happen tomorrow."
Sophie and I nodded.
"Have the humans arrived at the force field yet?" Sophie asked.
"Oh yes." Ray replied sadly. "A force of them is camped out there, while the rest have retired back to the ship."
"Oh." Sophie said, relaxing a little.
"Let's go Sophie." I placed my hand on her arm and pulled her towards the gate again. "Goodnight." I nodded to Ray.
"Goodnight girls." He answered.
"Night." Sophie muttered, as we left the square and started the walk back to my house.
I glanced behind me as we walked off, and I couldn't help the feeling that things around here were about to change forever.