by Lucy Snow
Melissa sighed. “And life support?”
I tapped a panel nearby. “That is holding strong, actually. As long as we can stay in one piece-“
“-We’ll stay in one piece, is that it?” Melissa finished my sentence.
“Yes.”
“Earth is close by, we should at least head in that direction.”
I almost laughed. “No chance of that. The Admiral needs help. We go back to the Kreossian fleet.”
“How far is that?” Melissa sounded skeptical, and I knew she did not want to go to be around my kind, but there was no way I was going to take Kaalax to a backward planet like Earth when he needed medical care.
“As far as your Earth.” She looked doubtful. “This is not a discussion or a negotiation, Melissa Crane of Earth. We are going back to my fleet.”
Just then I heard a sound coming from the back, and I knew it was Kaalax. I stood up and pushed Melissa out of the way in my haste to get back to see my mentor.
Kaalax lay still on the floor, but had propped himself up to look at a nearby panel. “We are in trouble, Ark,” he said, grimly, not looking at me.
“Yes, Admiral. Let me get you up.”
I leaned over to help the Admiral into an extended seat at the wall, but he waved me away. “We do not have time for that. You need to get this ship to-“
I didn’t hear the rest over the sound of the siren that went off right that moment, cutting the Admiral off. I whirled around and ran back to the cockpit, seeing warning signs all over the place. Melissa was sitting in the copilot’s chair. “I don’t know what’s going wrong!” she shouted at me, the fear clear in her voice, and her face matching that fear. “I can’t read any of this stuff!”
As I sat down the panels reoriented to show me what I needed to know. “Energy reserves. We were hit, and it didn’t register on the diagnostics because the leak was too slow at first. It has gotten a lot faster now.”
Melissa gulped. “What do we do?”
I looked forward, tapping the necessary buttons on the panels. “We land.”
“Land? What? We’re barely holding it together in space! How are we going to land this bucket in this shape?”
I grimaced. “Either very carefully or not at all.”
“I sure hope you know what you’re doing.”
“Why start now?” I tried to wink at her.
Melissa grinned. “So you do have a sense of humor after all.”
“Kreossian humor is something a human wouldn’t-“
“Understand, right, right, I’ve heard that one before. It was about something else, though.”
“You are mocking me again.” I didn’t turn to look at her, I was busy reorienting the ship. The nearest planet, a virtually unexplored one, loomed in the view screen in front of us, getting bigger by the second.
“Me? I wouldn’t dream of it. You’re the one making sure the three of us don’t die.”
I did not reply, just took the ship in. As we entered the atmosphere I could feel the stress impacting against the shuttle’s hull. The land below was covered in green forests and mountains, a jungle world that the Kreossian Empire had yet to fully explore beyond space surveys. No life signs that we could see, but it was tough to trust the instruments when they were so damaged.
“Brace for impact!” I shouted, hoping that the Admiral had gotten himself into a safe position for landing. I looked over to my right and saw Melissa strapping herself into the chair that was built for someone much bigger than her.
She reached out her hand toward me. I did not know what it meant, but I kept my left hand on the controls and took her hand in mine. Melissa smiled at me.
“Please don’t kill us, Ark,” she whispered. “This was just starting to get fun.”
I scowled back at her. “As mates go, Melissa Crane of Earth, you can be very irritating.”
“What? Mate? What are you-“
And then we crashed.
CHAPTER 05 - MELISSA
Oof. That hurt. I mean, I had never been aboard an alien shuttle when it crashed into the side of a jungle planet before, but I had to imagine this hurt more than the average of those situations.
I sat there, thankful that I had managed to stay in my harness despite the chair having been designed for someone at least a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than me. I hurt all over, but after wiggling my fingers and toes around before I opened my eyes, I knew that I was all in one piece, which was probably more than I could say for the shuttle itself.
I tentatively opened one eye, then the other, giving them a few seconds to begin adjusting to the light pouring through the holes in the shuttle. Last I had checked before leaving Earth, space-faring ships were not supposed to have gaping holes in them large enough for me to tell that it was afternoon on whatever planet we had landed upon.
I looked around, my neck pulsing with pain and causing me to grimace as the view became more clear. I was still in the cockpit, which was mostly intact. The main view screen in front of us had shattered and there were a few angry looking trees extending their branches inside. They looked vaguely like Earth trees, but I wasn’t taking any chances. Hell, they might even be trees, but some kind of apex predator.
I undid my harness and slid out of my seat to the floor, testing my balance on either foot and finding myself in surprisingly good condition for a woman who had just been involved in a high speed planetary collision. I briefly wondered if my insurance would cover the medical bills, then shook my head at my attempts at outdated humor. We didn’t even have insurance on Earth anymore!
The pilot’s chair was empty.
Oh shit. Had Ark been thrown from the ship during the crash? Was he OK? Was I all alone here? A fear so strong it threatened to knock me over welled up inside me, and I felt the tears come to my eyes as I braced myself against the chair that had guided me safely down to the planet, only to leave me here all alone.
How in the hell was I going to survive here? What had Ark said? No communications, no propulsion? Good luck, Melissa.
I wanted to curl up in a ball and just cry until I figured out what to do next, but already those thoughts were fading away, replaced by one singular notion: I was going to survive. Whatever it took, I was going to make it on this planet, and then I was going to make it off this planet. Even if I was all alone, further from another human being than anyone had ever been in the history of my species, I was going to be alright.
I heard a rustling from what had been the rear of the shuttle and just as quick as it had disappeared the fear was back, threatening to overwhelm me.
I looked around for whatever tool I could use to defend myself, picking up a pipe that had broken off, and I steeled myself as hard as I could before I stepped into the aft quarters.
Ark looked up from the bed where Admiral Kaalax lay. “Oh, Melissa, you’re awake. Good.”
I dropped the pipe, hearing it clang on the metal floor and roll away as I ran toward him and threw my arms around his neck. “Ark!” I cried. “I’m so happy to see you! I thought you were dead!”
“I woke up first. I checked to make sure you were OK, then I let you sleep for a bit while I tended to Admiral Kaalax.” I was still hanging off his huge muscles, feeling right at home, but Ark turned back to the Admiral lying in front of him.
“How’s he doing?” I asked as I slid back down to the floor. I kept my hands on Ark, though, keeping our physical connection so I didn’t forget that he was real.
Ark had changed back into his more…human form? He looked like he did the first time I saw him. No scales, no wings. I didn’t understand what was going on with that whole transformation thing, but I also knew now wasn’t the right time to be asking questions about stuff like that. It was enough to know that he was alive.
“I’ve stabilized him,” Ark said, his voice clearly heavy with sadness. “But his injuries are extensive.”
“Is he going to be alright?” I didn’t know what to do, or how I could help.
“I will be fine,” Admiral Kaalax whispered back, and I heard Ark drew in a sharp breath.
“Do not speak, Admiral.”
“I will talk when I want to, Ark. I have earned that right.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now let me rest up a bit. You two set up a perimeter and figure out where we are. I want a situation report as soon as I wake up.”
“Yes, Admiral.” Kaalax closed his eyes and twisted around on the bed, and within seconds I heard him snoring, almost peacefully, though to be fair, I didn’t have any frame of reference for what peaceful Kreossian snoring sounded like. For all I knew to them it was a natural mating ritual.
“You heard the Admiral,” Ark said, turning from the bed and walking toward a storage locker that had miraculously survived the crash.
“Huh?”
“We are to set up a perimeter and figure out where we are.” Ark’s back was toward me as he unloaded supplies, and I took the opportunity to admire his incredible physique. That silhouette, that shape, those huge muscles, all of it made my mouth water.
Down, girl. This was most definitely not the time nor place for you to be indulging in some crush on the hunky alien. There might be time for that later.
Maybe. If we survived for another few days.
“And then what do we do?”
“We will do nothing, Melissa Crane of Earth. You will go home, and I will go back to my fleet.”
“That’s it? You’re just gonna go home?”
Ark snapped the locker shut, his hands full of supplies. He nodded toward me and tossed me two containers. I caught them and winced at the strength of the throws, before looking back, the unspoken question on my face. “One is water, the other a nutritional supplement.”
“Of course it is. Which one is this? 43? 127?”
“Do all the women of your planet choose such strange times to make jokes? It is a special emergency supplement. A small amount of it will keep you nourished for one standard day.” He nodded toward the container in my hand. “That will be enough for you to survive for a month.”
I gulped, looking down at the containers in my hand. “You really think we’ll be here that long?”
“No. After a month we will either have escaped or we will be dead.”
“You really know just how to say the right thing, don’t you?”
“My species does not believe in obfuscating the truth, Melissa Crane of Earth; or meaningless platitudes. We believe in getting things done.”
“I’m right there with you, partner.” I pinned the water container to my belt and carefully opened the other, tearing off a small chunk of the powdery brick inside. Just before I took a tentative bite I realized that I was famished, and I tossed it in my mouth and chewed. “Tastes like…peanut butter!”
“I am not aware of that substance.”
“It’s made from peanuts. You grind them up and add…well, never mind, I’ll replicate you some when we get back to civilization.”
Ark handed me a package. “This should fit you,” he said, then began stripping down out of his flight suit, like it was no big deal.
“What’re you doing?!” I almost shrieked, turning around to avoid seeing him naked. Of course I wanted to, but this was hardly the time or place for that! I could feel my face burning up from embarrassment. “You can’t just take off your clothes like that!”
“That is the only way to change into my survival suit, Melissa. Put yours on.”
I looked down at the bag Ark had put in my hands, opening it and pulling out the suit inside. It looked like the one I could see Ark pulling on out of the corner of my eye, only clearly shaped for someone much smaller and with different proportions.
“I’m going to put this on in the storage locker,” I said, avoiding looking at Ark as I passed by. Once inside the locker I closed the door without sealing it and changed quickly, taking a deep breath as I felt the skin-tight suit envelop me, before leaving.
I felt Ark’s eyes on me and I saw them widen as he took my new look in. I flushed even further, unsure of whether he liked what he saw.
Ark finished adjusting his suit and he nodded at me. I stood just behind him as he opened the airlock door, for all the good it was doing us with the giant holes all over the ship.
We stepped outside and into the new world we had crashed on.
It was…much like a forest on Earth, except everything was a slightly different color. The leaves weren’t as deep green as we had them back home - here they were, depending on the tree, more yellow or more blue. It was a startling effect, and one that made me think my eyes had been damaged in the crash for a second. I blinked a few times and everything seemed alright.
We walked about 30 yards from the ship in a straight line, Ark pulling out a long blade from somewhere I couldn’t see and hacking away where the brush got dense. Without a word he pulled out another, smaller blade, and passed it back to me. For him it must have been a pocket knife, but to me it was a machete.
Once we had gone that distance from the ship, Ark turned to the left and started walking along a circle, keeping the ship at the center, an equal distance away at all times. I followed him, looking around, taking in the sights and random sounds of the natural and verdant place we had unceremoniously dumped ourselves into.
I realized that I should be huddled up in a ball back in the ship still, wanting to wake up from this nightmare. It was weird that I didn’t feel anything like that anymore. Sure, I was scared - petrified, really, of the unknown that lay spread out before us.
But as I walked behind Ark, reaching out to touch his back occasionally as the going got rough and I needed some support, I realized that just having the giant alien man around had gone a long way to making my fears disappear.
Sure, we were alone on an unknown planet with no way to contact help, but at least I wasn’t alone, and Ark looked like the kind of man who could take care of himself in a tough situation. I figured after all the battles he’d mentioned being in before that this was like a regular walk in the forest for him.
Ark scanned from side to side, taking in everything, and I looked out for anything suspicious too, but I knew that there was no substitute for training and experience. We trudged around the entire crash site, stopping every so often for water and to wipe the accumulating sweat off our foreheads.
It was like hiking through the dense forests of a tropical island, only everything was colored just a little bit wrong. If we weren’t stuck here, I almost would have enjoyed it.
Of course, getting to see Ark from behind was nice too. That man was buiiiiilt. It was all I could do to tear my gaze away from him and focus on the task at hand.
We finished up after an hour, Ark having said nothing the entire time. I hadn’t wanted to disturb him. As we walked back to the ship along the same route we’d left from, I stopped. Ark took a step further before he noticed that I had not. “What is it? Are you tired?”
When I didn’t answer, he turned around. Ugh, he was so gorgeous, I just wanted to tear that survival suit off him and jump into his arms, but I couldn’t. “Do you really think we’ll make it off this planet?”
“I do.”
“You sound very sure of yourself.”
“I am. This is not the planet I die on, Melissa Crane of Earth. And it is not the planet you die on either.”
I folded my arms under my chest. “How can you be so sure of that?”
