Transmission Lost

by Stefan Mazzara

  Jack held the jump for ten long, brutal, agonizing seconds, and then he could bear it no longer. He deactivated his hyperdrive, bringing his ship back into the plane of reality. As soon as he did, the Star's Eye was rocked by two large explosions and the cockpit lights flickered before becoming steady again. Groaning, Jack pulled up shipboard status on his computer. All of his engines, shields, and most of his weapons were useless now, and he was steadily losing life support. Reacting quickly, Jack got out of the pilot's chair and ran to an emergency locker just aft of the cockpit. He pulled on a vacuum suit and grabbed three spare air canisters for the attached breathing mask, ensuring that if life support did go completely he'd at least be able to breathe long enough to try to get it started back up again.

  Returning to the cockpit, Jack sat down and checked to see what systems he still had available. As far as weaponry was concerned, all he had was one functional launch tube of micro-missiles. He also had his maneuvering jets and hyperspace engines. As well, his computer systems were completely unharmed. Jack knew that with a little finagling he could convert one of the hyperspace engines to operate like a regular one, but he couldn't do anything about the weapons, the disabled engines, and the shields without a place to set the Star's Eye down.

  “Well,” Jack sighed, “I guess I'm not going to make my destination in time.”

  Leaning back in his chair, Jack finally looked out the cockpit windows. He was surprised to find himself in very close proximity to a planet, close enough that only a few minutes of travel would get him to it. If he'd had engines to travel with, that is. Jack pulled up his charts, wondering where exactly his current position was. After several minutes of work the computer pulled up his location on the screen, and Jack was bewildered. According to his charts he wasn't in Ailian or human territory, and the planet in front of him was not labeled.

  “Jesus, I didn't think any uncharted planets were left out there.”

  Jack took another look at the planet. It wasn't a large planet by any standards, maybe two-thirds as big as Earth. Of the surface that Jack could see, roughly half of it was covered by blue oceans. The rest was one large continent of brown and green, with several small patches of what looked like desert here and there.

  Not a bad planet to be stranded near, Jack thought. He sighed, cracking his knuckles, the adrenaline from his little dogfight starting to bleed off. Well, guess I'd better get to w-

  With a flash and a shockwave that jostled his ship, the Ailian vessel emerged from hyperspace next to Jack, smoke trailing from numerous areas on its hull. He had no idea how it had happened, but somehow the enemy ship had followed him through his blind jump. Even so, the Ailian had evidently not fared as well as he had, and seemed to have had a glancing collision with something while in hyperspace. As Jack watched, the ship began to drift, the largest trails of smoke coming from the area of its engines.

  But as damaged as the patrol vessel might have been, it was anything but completely disabled. Jack felt a hammer blow to the side of Star's Eye as a beam of laser fire lanced out at him. A hissing noise and a sudden rush of wind blowing aft told Jack that his hull had been breached, and his hand automatically grabbed the breath mask and slapped it to his face. More of his status lights went from yellow to red.

  “I'm not going out like this...,” he muttered behind the mask. He was really angry now. His headache was back, he'd only had five hours of sleep in the last two days, and to top it off he was most definitely not going to make his destination on time, which meant he could kiss his paycheck goodbye. Jack pulled up his weapons display and selected his last functioning missile tube.

  Jack pulled the trigger, and a salvo of the micro-missiles lit off and made straight for the Ailian patrol ship. He watched the missiles' path, watched as they streaked towards the enemy. There was a sputtering of fire from the Ailian's maneuvering jets as it tried to evade, but without functioning engines there wasn't any way it could avoid them. The line of missiles rippled along the side of the patrol ship, blossoming explosions along its hull. Jack watched, triumphant, as the ship began losing altitude relative to the planet and got caught in the gravity well.

  His triumph was short-lived, however. The Ailian ship fired a second salvo of laser beams at Jack, and he was thrown forward against the controls. Alarms began sounding through his ship as he felt an almost imperceptible tug, and he knew that he too had been caught in the planet's gravity well.

  “Damn, damn...,” Jack hissed. His hands danced around the controls, trying to find something that he could do to arrest his fall. But he didn't have anything left. The crash was inevitable, and all Jack could do was try to ensure that he would survive it.

  As Jack watched the planet rush up, he saw fire starting to lick across his viewports as he hit the atmosphere. The same was happening to the Ailian ship, slightly ahead of him. The distance between the two ships increased as the shape of the patrol vessel tugged on the air, changing its trajectory. Jack's ship, more aerodynamic for atmosphere, kept on a more or less straight course. Jack unstrapped himself from his seat, having watched enough. He flipped a few switches on the console in front of him, hoping that the automatic crash landing functions of the Star's Eye would still work well enough. His last view of the planet was of clouds rushing past his windows.

  Running back towards the rear of the ship as steadily as he could manage with the jostling of the doomed ship, Jack found the crash room. The crash room was a small compartment, big enough for a person to just fit inside, housing a jump seat suspended by large sturdy springs on the top, bottom, and sides. Jack sat in the seat, strapping himself in tightly. He pulled the door shut and sealed it, listening as the wind of the atmosphere rushed past his hull and whistled through the breaches in the skin of the ship.

  Not much longer..., Jack thought to himself. Not much longer at all...

  He closed his eyes, rested his head against the back of the jump seat, and waited for the crash.

  ******

  The smell of smoke burned Jack's nose, finally rousing him from his stupor. He jerked upright, blinking, then wincing against the throbbing headache and soreness that washed over him. Flexing his arms, he felt himself over, checking for injuries. Besides torn clothing, sore ribs, and a wicked cut across his chest from where one of the jump seat straps had dug into his skin, he seemed to be unhurt. A little late, Jack checked the gauge on his breath mask.

  Ran out...fifteen hours ago? Damn...Well, at least that means the atmosphere here isn't poisonous...probably. Jack unfastened the straps holding him in his seat and stood up, feeling the stiffness in his legs that was to be expected from sitting in one place for half a day. First things first...

  Jack exited the crash room, thankful that there was still enough power left in the ship to operate the doors. A thin haze of smoke hung in the passageway outside. Jack wasn't sure what the source of the smoke might be, but he felt no heat at all as he walked through the ship, so he was pretty sure that whatever had burned wasn't actively burning anymore. He made his way to his cabin in the aft section of the ship, picking his way around fallen sections of ceiling and buckled plating. Once he got there, he grabbed a first aid kit and set to work on his minor injuries. A disinfectant wipe and a generous strip of artificial flesh took care of the cut across his chest, and three aspirin tablets got to work on the headache and the soreness.

  Jack pulled off the ripped vacuum suit and flight uniform he'd been wearing. He tossed them in a corner of the cabin and opened a drawer in a side wall for some fresh clothes, of which he hadn't brought many since he'd expected the voyage to only last four days. What he did have was some dusky-blue-patterned camouflage fatigues that he'd kept from his time in the military, which still fit snugly but comfortably on his body. He pulled on a pair of high-topped black boots and grabbed a ballcap to cover his head with.

  “Right, then...,” Jack muttered to himself, sitting down on the bed. He was quiet for a moment, trying to decide what to do next. He'd made it through th
e crash in one piece, which meant the automatic crash landing function of the ship must have at least partially worked. The likelihood that the ship was still flyable, however, was slim. Definitely the Star's Eye was not spaceworthy. And unless a miracle of truly biblical proportions had occurred in the time between when Jack had passed out and when he'd woken up, his long-range communications would still be disabled from the earlier fight. Jack knew he wasn't a skilled enough programmer to be able to undo the work of a military override, at least not without a lot of trial and error.

  “Okay,” he said, standing up. “Guess I'll go outside and have a look around. It's getting stuffy in here, anywhere.” Jack went for the door that led out of the ship, which was just outside of the door to his cabin. His hand paused over the control mechanism. “Better safe than sorry...”

  Jack returned to his cabin, opening a locked compartment underneath the bed. Reaching inside, he drew out a belt made of military-spec webbed material. Attached to it was a holster, magazine pouches, a flashlight, and a small fixed-blade knife. Jack checked the holster out of habit. Fitted snugly inside was a matte-black .45 semiautomatic. The same one, in fact, that he'd carried as a pilot in the Navy. Jack enjoyed shooting and he'd kept up with it after retiring from the military. With ten shots in the magazine, one in the chamber, and four spare magazines on his belt, Jack would feel quite a bit safer stepping out onto an unfamiliar planet with it than he would have without it. He strapped the belt around his waist, and went back to the door.

  “Alright, world...Let's see what you got.” He pressed the door release, and with a strained groan the hatch opened. Jack stood there, looking out, feeling a certain sense of awe. “Yeah, that's...That's something, alright.”

  Light from the sun of whatever solar system he was in warmed his face. The light was filtering down through thick trees all around the crashed ship, tall broad-leafed trees of purple, dark green, and iridescent blue. The alien forest around him was thick enough that he couldn't see very far, but not thick enough to make it dark. Jack looked down at the forest floor, and found the source of the smoke inside the ship. When the Star's Eye had come down, heat from the hull had set fallen leaves afire, and the smoke had seeped into the ship through the breached armor plating. Where the forest floor had not burned, Jack saw short green grass covered in a layer of dead brown leaves. He wasn't sure how the crash hadn't set off a huge forest fire, but from the smell of the air it seemed that he was in a rainforest type of environment. Perhaps the heavy moisture of the area had prevented the fire from spreading.

  Sitting down on the edge of the hatch, Jack hopped the short distance down to the ground. He landed lightly, his boots squelching slightly against the soil, which was damp. It seemed as though rain had fallen recently, perhaps even since the ship had crashed. Jack stood there for a minute or two, listening and looking around.

  The air smelled not too different from the air on Earth, but it was fresher and more...something. Flavorful would be the word he would have used to describe it. Whether the freshness was from lack of pollution or a higher oxygen content, Jack couldn't tell yet. A number of trees lay fallen around him, knocked over by the crash. He looked straight up, and saw a pale blue sky smeared here and there with white clouds. All around him was a constant noise that sounded like birds calling.

  Jack looked back at the ship, and started walking around it. The damage from outside seemed a whole lot worse than he'd imagined from inside. His engines were almost completely wrecked, and the hull was crumpled in numerous places, with several gashes in the armor plating showing through into the inside of the ship. Dusk was starting to set in once Jack completed his evaluation of the Star's Eye, and he shook his head as he came to his conclusion.

  “There's no way this ship is flying again,” he said. “Not without at least a month to make repairs. And I don't know if I can cannibalize enough non-essential parts from the rest of the ship to make the repairs I need to get back into space with.”

  That said, though, Jack had to admit that it could have been much, much worse. He was alive, after all, and that was step number one in repairing any ship after a crash. His main problem, of course, was patching the hull to make it airtight and getting the main engines back online. His hyperdrive engines had been protected inside the main engine block, and hyperspace travel wouldn't be any worry at all. Parts to make the repairs he did need to worry about, however, was the big problem.

  Jack's head jerked around as he heard a low, loud roar somewhere off in the distance. “Damn...Guess I should have expected there might be some big wildlife here.” He looked back at the ship again. “At least I have plenty of supplies. The cargo compartments are packed with guns, ammo, and preserved food.”

  With darkness falling, Jack knew he needed to take shelter. He didn't feel much like going back into the wrecked ship, though, so he opened an exterior hatch into the cargo hold. Most of the cargo he'd been carrying was still intact, surprisingly enough. He rummaged around until he got to the general military supplies, and dug around in them until he found what he was looking for: encamping materials. Grabbing one of the crates, he pulled it out of the ship and into the clearing the crash had created. Jack knew he had precious little daylight left, so he had to work fast.

  A rustle in the trees nearby, however, made him pause and straighten up to look around. Whatever had made the noise had seemed very close, and larger than a bird. Jack peered into the trees, waiting for the noise to repeat itself, but he heard nothing else. Neither did he see any movement. He shrugged and turned back to the supply crate, but he couldn't shake the feeling that something was watching him. He told himself that the very next thing he would do after setting up camp was to grab a rifle out of the cargo hold.

  ******

  Hours later, darkness had completely fallen over the alien forest, and stars twinkled in the sky overhead as Jack sat in his encampment. He'd been able to dig a fire pit, and there was plenty of wood scattered about for him to build a fire with and keep it going for a while. He'd also managed to set up a fairly large tent that had plenty of room inside for a bedroll and a store of preserved food. True to his promise to himself, Jack had gone back into the cargo hold and retrieved an automatic rifle, along with a hefty supply of ammunition.

  Jack sat next to the fire, shivering a little despite the warmth from the flames. This planet was a little chilly at night. At least he'd been able to eat a meal, though it had only been canned meat and dried fruits, cooked over the fire. That was better than nothing, but not much better. He still couldn't shake the feeling of unease, the paranoid sense that someone or something was watching him from the trees. In the hours since he'd heard that strange noise, though, he hadn't been able to spot anything in his surroundings. But still...

  “Fuck it,” he said suddenly. He stood up, grabbing the rifle from where it lay beside him. He yanked the charging handle, slamming a round into the chamber and taking the safety off. Taking the flashlight from his belt, he clipped it onto a holder on the side of the rifle and switched it on. “If I don't have a look around, I won't be able to sleep, anyway.”

  Jack walked to the edge of his encampment, directing the rifle and the light into the trees around the clearing. He searched more or less methodically, creeping around the perimeter of the crash site, peering into the forest for any signs of movement. After getting back around to where his tent was set up, he hadn't found anything. Jack felt better, even though he did feel a little foolish for being so paranoid. He walked back to the fire, setting his rifle down.

  His head jerked around as he heard the snap of a breaking twig. Suddenly frantic, his hands went down to grab for the weapon again, but he stopped at a sound that hissed through the night air.

  “Sala!”

  Jack froze, his hands mere inches away from the rifle on the ground, bent over as he looked through the darkness towards the source of the familiar voice. Leaves rustled as it moved closer, and finally the speaker emerged from the trees into the light cas
t by the campfire.

  Three meters tall. Pale orange, black-striped fur. A long tail, nearly half as long as the body was tall. Bipedal, two arms, carrying a rifle only vaguely similar to Jack's own. Clad in a singed red flight suit, bright yellow eyes reflecting the firelight. Female.

  Jack straightened up, trying to fight the urge to panic. He turned towards the figure walking his way, staring right down the barrel of her weapon. He raised his hands, staring.

  The Ailian bared her predator's teeth, and tightened her grip on her rifle, staring right back at him with pure, unadulterated hatred in her eyes.

  - 2 -

  Jack stood there, shaking slightly, facing down the Ailian female who had her rifle aimed straight at his face. She was even larger in person than he had imagined an Ailian would be. He estimated that she was at least three meters tall, putting her height at about three feet above his. The rifle she was holding was pretty big, too, and he didn't really want to imagine the size of the holes it could make through his body. He looked down on the ground where his own rifle lay. For a split second he considered making a go for it, but he wisely thought better of that idea.

  Her long tail twitched, and a breeze ruffled the orange and black-striped fur that was exposed outside of her red flight uniform. “Seresh te a'krai,” she growled, jerking her weapon at him. “Suri te seresh te a'krai.”

  Jack raised his hands higher, confused. He had no idea what she was saying to him, but her eyes were flashing in the firelight, and he had a pretty intense desire to do whatever it was she wanted him to do. He opened his mouth, which was almost completely dry.

  “I don't...I don't, ah...”