Grounded | The Trapped Trilogy

Eight

Eight

PERATT

"Erit."

He looks up at me for a moment, but returns to his screen right after. He and I have been friends all of our lives. It's astonishing to think that he is now Third in Command, as I am First. That's how it's always been, anyway. He would do what I say, no matter how absurd the request was. This is one of those times.

"Mmm?" He sits down on the little couch and taps on the clear tablet, his eyes focused on it completely.

"I need you to set that down for a moment, Erit."

He does so.

"What is it you wanted to talk, you wanted to talk to me about?"

"As you know, our population is small, due to the large amount of years we can live up to. Now that we have the humans on our side, we have a small amount of advantage toward this mysterious enemy approaching."

"Yes," Erit nods his head once and glances at his tablet sitting next to him. "I'm, I'm aware, Peratt."

"I know what species is trying to take us down, and why."

I can see the wheels turning in his head as he tries to understand what I am saying. A few long moments of silence pass as he stares at my face. I take it he's trying to read the expression on my face to give him clues to what I'm telling him, and to decipher if he should ask who they are or not.

"Who?"

So he decided to ask.

"They are numerous, and are seeming to grow in numbers as they get closer to us and come into the scopes of our radar systems. I had received the message as well as a video when I acquired the Declaration of War."

"You told us it was only a message," He stands up and rings his claws around each other, pacing the room. He's getting nervous now, which is good for me, because when he is nervous I get what I want. When he is nervous, he works better.

"I lied. The video showed them and their species behind them boarding their ships. They have ten ships, Erit."

Erit paces the room faster, the sound of his talons scraping the tile floor bouncing off of the white walls around us. I can feel his nervousness increase with each passing second as he processes the information I feed to him word by word.

"Ten, ten, ten... ten ships?"

"Erit, there is something else I need you to do, and I would not ask you to this unless I knew we would lose this battle."

He stops pacing and looks at me, his night-black eyes shining with worry, with sadness and with anxiousness. That look seals the deal for me. I know he believes me.

"You-you think we're going to lose?"

I nod slowly, something I had picked up from the humans that I have come across over the years. "That's why I need you to do this. We need all the help we can get from everyone."

He picks up his tablet hesitantly and looks at it through new eyes, through worried eyes. I hear him gulp down his saliva and take a deep breath. Gripping the tablet firmly, he finally looks up at me, his long mouth pressed into a straight line and his eyes almost unfamiliar to me. Those bright, knowledgeable eyes have lost their shine, and I stare into hard, grave eyes.

"What is it that you need me to do?"

I smile slightly and make my way to the center of the room, running my long claws over the monitors of the computers in Erit's office. These are his prized possessions. He almost never leaves this room because of these holographic, floating computers he created with his own two hands.

"How long would it take for you to replicate and to download the same information you put inside the Domespeople into all of the Halflings on the planet?"