Lion Man's Captive by Kaitlyn O'Connor (read full novel .txt) 📕

see how y’all couldmanage that. The flyers, though—a simple message of peace andpromise and then when the robots started rebuilding everything andthey saw your people really meant it …. I think the Grinderianswould be forgiven and that’s important—whatever the governmentdecides.”

She wasn’t sure that Aidan hadunderstood a word of what she said. He looked thoughtful, but thatcould mean anything. Abruptly, he grinned, grabbed her and kissedher soundly on the mouth.

Startled, Anya barely had time to startappreciating the affectionate gesture when he pulled away. “Disgood ting, Ah-na! People hurt. Make tings good wid dem mostimportant. Den govment listen.”

Anya shifted uncomfortably. “Well,government, you know …. Can’t promise that, but I will tell youhonestly that if you don’t win people over it isn’t going to matterwhat the government promises. There won’t really be peace. There’llbe resentment. A lot of people lost a lot of stuff that wasimportant to them—to their comfort and survival. They may even havelost loved ones because of those things. They aren’t going to beeasily won over. Sorry just isn’t going to cut it.”

Sobered, Aidan nodded grimly. “I knowdis. Bad ting. Berry bad ting. I try to stop.”

Anya studied his expression and saw noreason to doubt him. “I believe you. I trust you. I’ll try to helpyou convince everybody else to trust.”

She hoped it wasn’t something she wouldlive to regret!

* * * *

Aidan’s first order of business seemedto be to clear the rubble from the ship. Anya’s was to findsomething recognizable to eat.

Not that the food Aidan had fed herwasn’t good—when she was starving—but at the same time there wasjust enough difference in the taste to make it obvious theingredients were beyond foreign and it didn’t exactly sit right onher stomach. She did her best to convince herself it was all in hermind, but her stomach didn’t agree.

Campfire cooking wasn’t exactly herforte, though, so she was glad when she managed to find a can ofpeaches—either one of the ‘bombs’ she’d used the day before todiscourage the beast from making a meal out of her or another canentirely. The AI helped her get into the can and, once she’d foundsomething to fish the slices out of the can with, she settled at ashort distance from Aidan to watch him work and wrestle with herconscience.

Thankfully the battle wasn’t a long orparticularly complicated one. She did manage to give herself atension headache trying to figure out ‘hidden’ agendas the aliensmight have, but, from a logical standpoint, she managed to reassureherself that it wasn’t actually reasonable to think they might haveevil in mind.

They’d sent terra-formers from acrossthe galaxy if not another galaxy entirely. That technologicalwonder was enough to convince her that the Grinderians had no needto use subterfuge to hide evil designs. They could’ve beencompletely straightforward and there wouldn’t have been a hell of alot the survivors on Earth could do about it.

So she could accept, she thought, witha clear conscience that she wasn’t helping ‘the enemy’. At leastthey didn’t seem to be enemies at this point.

The tricky thing would beto convince everybody else that they weren’t enemies so that theydidn’t become enemies.

She wasn’t completely comfortable withthe idea of tackling world peace even after she’d convinced herselfshe wouldn’t be a traitor to her own kind by actively helping thealiens, mostly because she was nobody really and felt overwhelmedby the sheer magnitude of the task.

Having finished her peaches, she setthe can aside, tucked her eating utensil into a pocket of the suitshe’d ‘borrowed’ from the stores aboard ship, and went to helpAidan with his task. Her mind wasn’t really on that job, though.She followed Aidan’s efforts mechanically while she composed anddiscarded various messages for the people.

Simple would be better, she decidedafter a while. It would, hopefully, be harder to misunderstandsomething short and straightforward plus that had the added benefitthat people might actually read it. The longer it was the morelikely people would be to skim it and misinterpret the entirething.

She finally settled on:

People of Earth:

This is NOT an invasion.The people of Grinderia apologize for their error and want toassure you that they seek peace NOT war. They deeply regret theirmistake and will do everything in their power to repair the damagethey have inadvertently done.

It was still a little longer than shewould’ve liked and, at the same time, didn’t seem to cover theground that needed to be covered, but she decided a series of shortmessages might work better in the long run.

Aidan studied the message with frowningintensity for some moments, consulted his computer and then turnedto study her and finally smiled. “Tank you, Ah-na.”

Anya was warmed both by the smile andhis appreciation. She, Aidan, and the AI worked on a deliverysystem. More of the power grid was down than up and there were onlyspotty—very sketchy—portions of the internet left, but they agreedthat every possible means of communications needed to be used inorder to reach as many people as possible.

Fortunately, they had managed to get acampaign to inform the public launched and well underway by thetime the first supply ships arrived from Grinderia. It was stilltouch and go for a while. Distrust was rampant. Anger was high.Most people had been reduced by circumstances to little more thanrocks as self-defense, but they lobed everything they could layhand to at the drones that buzzed the ground distributingpropaganda/information and supplies.

Thankfully, the governments decided tosettle for a ‘show of force’ rather than attacking. Anya thoughtthey displayed far more wisdom than she would’ve previously giventhem credit for, because the show of force was a lot moreeffective, she was sure, than showing the Grinderians that Earthhad no real defense against them. Soldiers and war machines wereeverywhere, aimed at the alien crafts or circling them like a swarmof angry bees, but there were no ‘incidents’ that she heardof—making it clear that, however angry and/or frightened everyoneprobably was, they were displaying a rare caution/wisdom in dealingwith their visitors that was more likely to have a happy outcomethan trying to attack them and drive them off.

She would’ve far preferred to keep herpart in trying to make peace a deep, dark secret, but,unfortunately, that didn’t seem to be