Leo had never seen the race of creatures surrounding them before, but he recognized this new one immediately. The stretched, sloping head affixed atop the lithe and long-limbed frame. The pale blue skin and matching eyes, which glowed as if there were miniature stars burning behind them. The way its tongueless mouth opened and closed like a dilating pupil. Though it wasn’t dressed in either the radiant layered gowns of shimmering gold or the hardened silver battle armor that Leo was used to, there was no mistaking what it was. The first alien species Leo had ever laid eyes on. The first to ever make contact with Earth.

He knew an Aykari when he saw one.

So did Baz, who drew both of his pistols in a flash, pointing them in the stranger’s direction.

The alien didn’t seem fazed by the captain’s sudden act of aggression. Its eyes didn’t even flash orange. It simply crossed its long, spindly arms behind it.

“Greetings, wayfarers,” it said in the first language Leo’s translator had ever been programmed with, its eyes fixed on the weapons pointed its way. “I hope you come in peace.”

How could you say no?

That was the question Leo overheard as he stood outside the circle of grown-ups sipping lemonade, milling about with plates of hummus-covered crackers balanced in their hands.

“Seriously. Given the situation, with everything that was at stake—how could you?”

His parents were hosting a small get-together in the backyard to help kick off the new semester—summery drinks and appetizers—exclusively attended by members of the university’s physics department. Gareth and a couple of his friends were hogging the VR simulator in the basement (no dweebs allowed—or so they said), so Leo spent the evening outside, circling his parents like a small moon, a bottled Coke Overcharge in hand, eavesdropping on conversations. That’s when he heard one of his dad’s colleagues, a young, bearded man Leo knew only as Dr. Regland, pose his question to the small group that had gathered around the cheese tray.

Leo’s father was among those nibbling slices of Gouda—that’s some gooda Gouda, he would say. Now he was engaged in a version of a conversation that Leo had heard a hundred times before. A conversation he’d even had himself with his schoolmates standing around the slide at recess.

A conversation about the Aykari and their arrival.

And their intentions.

“I mean, it’s ancient history by this point, but we really didn’t have a choice in the matter,” Dr. Regland continued. “Our weapons were vastly inferior. And though we probably had the numbers to repel the first wave, they simply would have come back with the full might of their armies and taken the planet by force.”

“But they didn’t,” Leo’s father countered. “Even if they could have. They came bearing an olive branch—an entire olive tree. Technological advances. Cures for disease. The keys to faster-than-light travel. It was a negotiation. A mutually beneficial agreement. There was no threat ever implied.”

Leo took a sip of his soda and hung on the edge of the conversation, not far from his dad but not close enough to get noticed.