Chapter 18
SUSANNA
“Look, look!” Xilvo elbowed his way closer to the window of the large aircraft that we took to fly to the frontier. “There’s Dad’s crozan!”
Xavran didn’t want us to travel such a long distance in his small family aircraft. Instead, he’d arranged for tickets on the cargo airship that delivered supplies to his crozan. We had the entire passenger lounge to ourselves here, which made for a very comfortable trip.
“Are you talking about his truck?” Mara stepped to the window too.
She’d come with us after deciding that it couldn’t be any worse than sitting in the “garden patch” of Xavran’s home all by herself.
“Where’s his tractor?” She pressed her forehead to the window, staring at the ground below.
“You’re looking at it, silly!” Xilvo laughed.
He pointed at the huge piece of machinery in the desert below the airship.
I knew crozans were huge, but even after watching a few videos about them, I wasn’t prepared for how enormous they were in real life. It was the size of a large apartment complex that sprawled for a few city blocks.
“What? That whole thing?” Mara pointed at the brown-red body of the machinery. “I thought that was a town!”
From this distance, the crozan appeared to crawl along the vast desert, but I’d read their speed could match that of our cars on the highway.
To the right of it lay the reddish sand of the Aldraian desert. The crests of wind-swept dunes appeared to smoke from the tendrils of sand curling around them.
To the left and directly behind the giant machine, the ground was a much darker shade of brown. The dirt appeared heavier there too. Instead of the dunes, it’d been combed into neat rows by the crozan.
“My dad is turning the desert into a garden,” Ene announced proudly.
Mara arched an eyebrow. “That dirt doesn’t look much like a garden to me.”
“It will be. In ten to twenty years,” Ivex said.
Illal stirred eagerly. “And in another fifty years or so, people will be living here. Kids may be playing right in this very spot.”
“Fifty years!” Mara gasped.
“It takes time to change the world,” Xilvo observed with a wisdom beyond his years. “That’s what my teacher says.”
“Dad works on the very edge of the desert,” Ivex explained. “His crozan does the very first step of terraforming, but there are many more.”
“Like what?” Mara appeared genuinely interested.
“After Dad’s crozan,” the boy said, “they need to modify the climate in the area. Or else the dry desert would just take over again.”
“So, they introduce microorganisms to the soil,” Xilvo chimed in. “And a whole bunch of bugs. They also bring the groundwater up, for irritation—”
“Irrigation,”Illal corrected, rolling her eyes at her brother.
“That’s what I said.”
“No, you dummy. You said irritation. Which is the definition of what you’re making me feel right now.”
To my ear, the two words appeared almost identical. In Aldraian, they seemed to be even closer in pronunciation than in English.
“All right, all right,” I stepped into the role of a peacekeeper, which I often had to play with these four. “All of you are very smart. It’s nice to see you’re paying attention in school. Thank you for filling Mara in on the Aldraian process of terraforming. Now, we need to get back in our seats and buckle in. We’re going to be landing very soon.”
* * *
“THIS THING IS HUGE,” Mara muttered under her breath, setting her designer heels on the landing deck of the crozan. “Bigger than a cruise ship.”
“Much bigger,” I agreed, glancing around the top deck where the cargo aircraft had landed.
The air felt dry and hot here, despite the strong breeze blowing over the deck. The midday sun seemed to hang right over our heads, blasting down heat.
A trickle of sweat quickly formed along my spine under my yellow sundress. For once, I envied Mara for wearing a high-brimmed hat and a pair of huge sunglasses with her outfit of white slacks and a sleeveless blouse.
“Listen, is the alien in charge of this entire thing?” she enquired. “He’s the captain. Does it mean he’s the head guy here?”
I opened my mouth to remind her once again that “the alien” had a name and that he wasn’t an alien on his own planet.
However, I was interrupted by a group of Aldraians who climbed the stairs to the landing deck and headed our way.
My heart skidded and flipped when I spotted Xavran among them.
“Daddy!” Ivex took off first.
“Dad!” The other three kids ran after the boy to their father.
Dressed in a white uniform with elegant gray accents, he looked rather dashing. Though, he’d long become the most handsome man in the Universe for me, regardless of what he wore.
He hugged his children all at once. I wished so badly to be in the middle of that pile of hugs and happy giggles, with his arms around all of us. Afraid that joining them might be deemed inappropriate, I held back.
His gaze crossed with mine, and his face split with a wide smile.
“Susanna,” he said my name in that deep, low voice of his, making me weak in the knees.
Flanked by two kids on each side, he strolled to me.
It took all I had not to run into his arms. Instead, I just smiled back at him, willing my feet to remain planted in the metal of the deck.
“Well, we made it,” I said, spreading my arms.
“Xavran!” Mara rushed by me. Wedging a hip between him and Ivex, she got hold of Xavran’s arm. “It’s nice to see you, honey. This place is amazing! Tell me, how many people are on this...um, ship of yours?”
He blinked, looking utterly bewildered by the sudden attention from his “wife.” I was shocked by the fact that she actually remembered his name.
A man from the group who came with Xavran stepped forward.
“Our core crew consists of seven hundred and eighty people, Madam,” the man said. “But we also house a few hundred of the crew’s family members and visitors on any given day.”
“It’s very impressive,” Mara cooed approvingly.
“Susanna, Mara, this is First Officer Qhax,” Xavran introduced the man. “He is my Second-in-Command.”
First Officer Qhax beamed at us. “Nice to meet you—”
Mara offered him a hand before I could even blink. “I’m the wife. She’s the nanny. So...” She gestured around. “This place is huge. What do you do for fun?”
Xavran tried to free his arm discreetly, but she dug her nails into his bicep, not giving him an inch.
First Officer Qhax looked pleased by her interest. “Oh, you can only see a very small part of our empire from here, Madam Rax. The crozan is a small city, entirely self-contained. We have several gardens here, a gym with a running track, a dance hall, a swimming pool with slides—”
“A swimming pool!” The kids bounced with excitement. “Can we go swimming? Please, Susanna?”
I sure could use a nice cool dip. Sticky sweat plastered my dress to my back under the burning sun. Besides, I had no desire to watch Mara publicly claim her wife status all of a sudden.
“You can go.” Mara waved us away.
“Susanna.” Xavran turned after me and the children. “Wait.”
“Come on.” Gripping his arm, Mara placed her other hand in the crook of the elbow of First Officer Qhax. “Why don’t you give me a tour, boys?” she murmured. “Then, you can show me our bedroom, Xavran.”
* * *