I left as soon as the nurses stopped taking blood and urine samples. The base was filled with more people, and more in pilot suits with golden seams and a phoenix stitched to their back. A myth of the bird that was reborn from its own ashes. And we, humans, took the motivation out of it. To stand up after every defeat. I hurried up to the barracks which were separated between male and female pilots. I followed where the pilots came from, who headed towards their hangars. When I passed by them I noticed the flaring glares from a few pilots, some even gossiped once they saw me. I shook off the uneasiness and kept moving to the barracks.

After all, I should’ve waited for Marlon to escort me to my rooms. They increased the amount of rooms by tenfold and none of them had any signs to tell me where I was supposed to sleep. Blinking into every open door didn’t help when I walked along the corridors. Almost all of them were empty with very few pilots going around here and there.

Before wandering around mindlessly, I headed down the hallway back to the entrance, until a girl in dark skin and crimson waved hair approached me. She stopped in front of me. One head taller than me and wide shoulders complemented with a round face and soft expression.

“Hello, are you a recruit too?” She had an unknown accent, but a soft voice. “You don’t wear a uniform.”

“Yes, who are you assigned to?” I asked. We were given rooms depending on our instructor.

“Instructor Ashford. Is he yours too?”

I nodded.

She added. “Yes, of course. Instructor Mantis is giving up her position to provide support to the commander. Let’s go there –” She pointed at the last room in the far back left. “That is our room.”

I followed her as she paced up. Or she even hopped. She had energy and enthusiasm in every movement, almost like a dancer.

The room had four bunk beds and lockers enough for a room full of pilots. I threw my bag to a lower bed.

The girl sorted her belongings into the locker and climbed up the bed above mine. “I forgot my manners, I’m Tabita. What is your name?”

I slid my bag under my bed and answered. “Amelia.”

“What is your favorite color, Amelia?”

Color? I threw myself back into my bed and stared at the mattress. The heavy lids wouldn’t stay open until I finally gave into the dizziness. “Lavender.” I mumbled right after I woke up at the cliff, watching the starry sky with him again.

He pulled my arm up. I lost hold of the ground as he had enough strength to keep me afloat. “Don’t touch Bezel.”

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It stung on my shoulder. I winced. “I get it, let go.”

He dropped me. I stepped back. No touching the Monoceros. I got it. Yet, I wanted to see how he went through a solid wall. Terrans had a hatch, this one just popped out of the hard crystal, like it was nothing.

I rolled my shoulders as I asked him. “Why didn’t you come out?

“I didn’t want to talk.” He laid down on the ground. His fingers dug into the ground and he picked up a pile of dirt. “What are humans?”

“What are your people?” I returned. I had no answer to that question. “We are mammals with enough intelligence to advance in technology and communication.” I wish it was the best answer, but I was sure someone else could have better answers for him than me.

He turned his head to me. “I’m a Nedé soldier. I came from a planet 1777 light years away. We, Nedés, are tasked to watch over Humans.”

To watch over us, it seemed like they had done it for longer than ten years. Especially with the sour tone he had when he said the last sentence.

“You can call me Gamma.” He continued. “Do you really think humans are mammals?”

I didn’t understand. Of course we were mammals who just got lucky with evolution. If we weren’t just humans then what else would we be? I sat down next to him. I needed answers, more answers. “I don’t know. What are we and what are the Nedés?

His expression matched his tone perfectly. Dark, stiff and wrinkled brows. “Nedés are soldiers. All of us are born as soldiers. And we are making sure that you, humans, won’t start another war.”

I still didn’t get it. War? Didn’t they start one and bring us down to the brink of extinction? “Didn’t you start killing our people?” My body started to tremble.

“We did. Because you people have something that belongs to us. A relic that could cause another galactic conquest.”

“Why should we give it to you when you started the war?”

He hesitated before speaking up. Then his lips twitched as he spouted another weak answer. “We won’t start a galactic conquest unlike you humans.”

That was stupid. I wouldn’t get proper answers from him. I didn’t get it. They had been visiting us for years now. Their technology surpassed ours by millenia. 1777 light years away, they had access to intergalactic travel between stars, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to visit Sagtaris which was 4500 light years away. Nedés had access to fast travel means. But how? Controlled wormholes? Faster than light travel?

“How do you travel between solar systems?”

He sat up and had a very dumbfounded expression, I never expected to see, as he said. “A GarDrive.”

Great answer. That didn’t explain anything. He said it in a self-explanatory way that made me assume that he had no knowledge of how they traveled. “But how? Does it rip open space and time and you slip through it with your ships?”

“The GarDrive has a teleporter.”

“A teleporter?” I asked. And how did that work in theory. If I told a researcher on the base that the invaders use a teleporter to come to our solar system, then I would get scolded and reeducated for my own stupidity. “But how exactly does it work? Or do you not know?”

Gamma looked back up to the sky. As if he watched something happen out of our sight. “Didn’t your people already reach the moon or mars?”

“We did, but we never left our solar system.”

“Your drones did.”

“But we, humans, didn’t.”

“Do you want to?” He asked softly.

As I turned my face to look at him, I was met with his face close up to mine. His nose touched my nose as his eyes pierced through my soul.

“Do you want to visit other stars?” He said.