I blinked. These were not simple Venus flytraps like we have on Earth; these were carnivores bent over the water so that they could snap up jumping fish in their jaws. Beautiful and deadly.
“What happens when you pick them?” I asked, breathless as we walked past.
“They die,” he said, “like any plant. But they could take your finger off first if you’re not careful.”
We kept walking, and I marveled at the scenery, doing my best to push away the horrific images of the explosion that made my presence here a necessity. It was a beautiful planet, and it made me feel interminably small: the plants, trees, even the grass dwarfed me. We had yet to see any proper animals, but I had the sinking sensation that they would be to scale. A common poodle would probably be able to swallow me whole. If they even had common poodles.
I was just about to ask Danovan if they had domesticated pets on Galatea when a great groaning sound like the death rattle of a giant whale echoed across the sky. We stopped dead in our tracks, my chest heaving, my heart racing, and we looked up.
There, some two hundred kilometers off, was the Leviathan, bursting through the cloud cover. It had done all it could, and it had finally succumbed to the pull of Galatea’s considerable gravitational force. The sound of it falling was the bending of great metals, debris the size of warships breaking off and falling to the planet in a fiery blaze like a meteor shower, like a barrage of missiles. Danovan had been right. It would fall clear out of the sky.
It was still fighting to claw its way back into orbit, its engines still doing their job, or trying to as best they could. So the Leviathan hung there, half-obscured by a collection of cumulus clouds, before it finally gave in. It dropped like a dead bird out of the sky, falling straight to the ground below with nothing but a cradle of fiery plasma to cushion it.
It made its impact with a great roar that sent plumes of dust and black smoke high into the air, like a signal flare to anyone who hadn’t seen, who hadn’t watched the great beast fall to earth. All those thousands of lives, lost. All those millions of dollars, in parts, in building, in research—my research—gone in one single, defining moment.
Danovan reached out without looking at me, his jaw hanging agape as he watched the disaster unfold, and took my hand in his. We were alone, bearing witness together; we had seen the death of a great and terrible beast.
Chapter 7:
Danovan tel’Darian
I’d read about things like this, seen disasters in the movies. I liked stories about warships and submarines, these great bastions of wartime technology that, ultimately, had to adhere to the laws of physics like anything else in the universe. But nothing could have prepared me for watching the Leviathan fall. Although it seemed unlikely that anyone would have the hubris to say, “This ship could never crash,” it was what we all thought and felt when we were aboard it. It was sturdy, the size of four skyscrapers lined up side by side. It was its own very small planet; no one thought it would drop out of the air like so much dead offal.
But I don’t meant to wax poetic; it was bloody terrifying.
The impact shook the ground with a great tremor, and eventually a wave of dust and warm air hit us where we stood. Araceli stumbled back, but I held fast to her hand. I turned to look at her in the ensuing quiet and saw her stoic, a tear leaving its saltwater trails over the slope of her cheek.
“Come on,” she said after a time, her voice hitching in her throat, “let’s keep moving.”
I was more than happy to oblige—anything to give me a reason to avert my gaze from the rising black smoke in the distance. And we were marching at an angle: the Leviathan was due east and we were moving in a south-southeasterly direction, neither toward it nor away from it, really. So it could haunt us in our periphery.
We walked in silence for minutes, hours—I don’t know how long. But eventually the light began to wane and the star that was our galactic center was disappearing behind the horizon line. And Ara had her arms crossed tight against the cooling of the air.
“We’ll stop here,” I said after a time, and she was more than happy to oblige, dropping unceremoniously down onto a fallen log near the riverbed. I went about collecting dried-out twigs and branches, and she watched me impassively, her chest rising and falling, rising and falling, in her attempts to catch her breath.
“If I sleep at all tonight,” she breathed, “it will be like the dead.” She was weary; I could tell. Her body was unused to the gravitational force of this place, but she was also bone-tired in a way that only someone who has lost everything can feel. I hadn’t lost everything: just my job, just my charge.
Which isn’t to say that I didn’t mourn Christian Ward’s loss—I did. Deeply. He was a fair and reasonable man, and his absence would create a power vacuum in GenOriens that dozens of other lesser men would scramble to fill. But still, we were safe, alive, and on my home planet. She was a veritable orphan in a new land. All I wanted was to hug her close and tell her that the movies had taught me that things that started out this way didn’t end on such a dire note. But she was slumped where she sat, her elbow on her knee, her face in her hand.
So, I just started us a fire.
“Do you think,” she asked at length as I stoked the flames to build them higher, “that the water is safe? To swim in, and drink?”
I went to the pack and pulled out a few strips of litmus paper, designed to answer these very questions. My guess was that the water was just fine—if it were just me, I would’ve had a drink from it without thinking twice. But I had to remind myself that Ara was an alien on this planet, and that she would require some reassurance to feel safe.
I dipped the litmus paper into the water and watched it glow with the tiny microchips that comprised its microscopic computer. And when the strip glowed green, I gave her the thumbs-up. “It is,” I said, and she made her mouth curve up in a smile that did not reach her eyes.
“I just want to…” She made a frantic gesture with her hands, and I understood that it was a gesture of cleansing. She wanted to wash the day off of her body. I nodded my understanding.
“I’m going to set us up with somewhere to sleep,” I said. “You go ahead. Just don’t wander too far—it’s getting dark, and I want to make sure I can see you in case you need me.”
“I’ll be all right,” she assured me, and hoisted herself to her feet, with a grunt of effort.
I watched impassively as she went down to the water, and set about the business of collecting palm fronds from the low-hanging Cyon tree and laying them down near the fire, two makeshift beds. When I looked up again, my heart caught in my throat.
She had shed all of her clothes and was tentatively toeing the water. She looked like a statue in the waning daylight, her flesh smooth and unblemished as fresh milk. The humans had named our people for a statue that came alive, but it was she who looked that way to me. Her backside and bosom were ample and soft, and she’d collected her red curls high on her head, her nipples erect in the cool air.
She took one step, then two, then forced herself forward. I could hear her emit a little shriek as her body adjusted to the cold temperature of the water, and I watched as she dove under, disappearing beneath the gentle meniscus of the river.
I swallowed, having grown turgid at the sight of her, ashamed, really, at how fully and unabashedly my lust had made itself known to me. But I was not a monster, nor a savage. I would lie on my palm fronds and she on hers, and I would take her safely to the GenOriens base, where we could contact the appropriate authorities and we could work on getting her home.
Because maybe Christian Ward had made it off the ship—maybe he was traversing the same surface of the same planet, hoping against all hope that his Araceli was alive. If I was truly his loyal servant, as I professed to be, then I would do everything in my power to ensure their reunion.
I pretended not to watch her as she climbed out of the water, smoothing her damp curls back as she wiped the exce
ss water from her limbs. There is an expression that I’ve heard in the movies before—“I’m only human.” I had to ask one of my fellow trainees what that meant the first time I heard it.
“It means,” he began, steepling his fingers, his lips curled up in a kind of smirk, “basically it means, ‘you can’t expect that much from me.’ Like, I’ll do what I can, but it won’t be perfect.”
And if I were human, that would be applicable here. I would get Araceli back to Christian, if he was even alive. But wasn’t it too much to ask for me not to be aroused by the object of my desire?
I’m only Galatean.
Ara donned her clothes and joined me by the fire, dropping down onto one of the palm frond beds. “Thank you for doing this,” she murmured.
“It was no problem.” I reached into the backpack and gave her a water bottle and a protein bar, then took one for myself, and we sat in companionable silence as we ate.
“Can you believe this?” she asked finally.
“I know—it’s like congealed mush,” I commented, examining the protein bar, which looked altogether too much like clay with pieces of crushed nuts in it.
“No, I mean… everything that’s happened.”
“Oh.”
“I think I’m in denial or something.”
“Well,” I said, setting my half-eaten bar aside, “from what I understand, that’s part of the process. Of overcoming something.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “It just doesn’t feel real.”
“Maybe that’s for the best right now,” I offered gently. “Maybe that way you’ll actually be able to get some sleep.”
“Yes,” she said on the wings of an exhale. “Yes. That’s good.”
She hadn’t touched her congealed mush, but she had consumed half her bottle of water. So I didn’t protest when she lay down on the palm fronts, her head on her arm as she peered at me around the flames.
“I’m glad you’re with me,” she said.
“I’m glad I’m with you as well,” I replied. And then I lay down too, situating myself just as she did with my head on my arm so I could look at her. Her hair was like glowing copper in the firelight.
“Good night, Danovan tel’Darian,” she said, and the sound of my name on her tongue sent a little shudder down my spine.
“Good night, Dr. Cross.”
***
During my training, I’d spent countless nights on harder beds than the one I made us out of palm fronds. Chipped boulders were pillows, rough concrete a cradle. So I actually slept rather well on the riverbank, the fire the only thing separating me from Dr. Araceli Cross. I woke with the dawn, feeling rested enough to take on the day’s tasks. I wish I could have said the same for Ara.
But she was a scientist, not a soldier, and she was used to softer things. So I woke in time to see her toss and turn, her hands sucked into the sleeves of her jacket, before she gave up the entire endeavor and sat up on the leaves.
“Good morning,” I murmured, more out of habit than anything else. She grunted her response, reaching out to curl her fingers around her water bottle. She lifted it to her mouth, but slowly, her muscles remembering that here, everything took just a bit more energy. She drank, she ate her protein bar, she lay back down again.
“Are you all right?” I asked, and she turned glassy eyes on me from where she lay.
“There’s no coffee,” she remarked, “is there? Nothing instant we can mix with water? Nothing at all?”
I chuckled wryly and gave a slow shake of my head. “I’m afraid not.”
“Then I don’t see how I can possibly go on,” she deadpanned. I grinned and held out a hand for her, which she took and used to hoist herself to her feet.
We set off at a quiet clip, and I turned my eyes to the east to see that black plume of smoke continue to rise from a distance, where the Leviathan had fallen. That meant things were still very much on fire.
“God Almighty,” she whispered, only just loud enough for me to hear her. And my sentiment echoed hers. I made a silent prayer to the gods of death and solace, respectively. Much good might it do those poor lost souls.
The morning mist was rolling across the hills of the lowlands as we began our trek in earnest, making the tall grass look like it was poking up out of little grey clouds. And the day was dim with the threat of rainfall. I could feel the dampness in the air, and I could tell it was intense because a sheen of sweat covered Ara’s forehead. Eventually she paused to tie the arms of her jacket around her waist, exposing her milky skin to the air. And it was in that moment that I noticed how silent things had become.
The ecosystem of Galatea is much like that of Earth: creatures large and small have evolved out of the primordial ooze that meant life could be sustained on this planet. Ours are a little different, of course, and considerably larger. The winged creatures here that sing in the daytime look more like insects than birds, though their skeletons share a lot in common with that of a condor or other birds of prey. We call them Caromays, and their songs sound like the chirping of crickets, constant and unobtrusive, hard to notice unless you’re listening for it, or unless they stop suddenly.
And they stopped suddenly.
I stood stock-still and waited for Araceli to catch up to me, though she was only ever a few paces behind. She was breathing hard when she came to rest, her hand absently finding purchase on the line of my elbow as she steadied herself.
“What?” she breathed. “Is something the matter?”
“Shh.” I scanned the expanse of the rolling fields, doing my best to make out any oncoming predators. For what else could be the reason for their sudden silence but the presence of a hunter? Some hunters we need not concern ourselves with: jungle cats come down from the mountains to stalk small prey and eat water creatures. But others… well. Others could be a problem.
We stood in silence for several long moments, and I couldn’t see anything as far as my vision could reach. Eventually, I had to concede defeat; if anything was going to spring out and eat us, it had done a good job of concealing its whereabouts before the strike. Props to the killer. We pressed onwards.
“What do you think it was?” Ara asked in hushed tones when we started walking again.
I bounced my shoulders in a shrug, trying not to look at the smoke rising far to my left. “A Caromay, maybe.” A large, winged predator that could probably have taken Araceli in its talons but would have likely left me to my own devices. “Or a Ribomax.”
“A Ribomax!” Her exclamation indicated that she knew what I was talking about.
“Ah, so you’ve heard of it.”
“I read about it in school,” she said, “when I began specializing in Galatea.”
“So you know what an asshole a Ribomax is,” I muttered. They were profoundly intelligent creatures, a fact that so many people tend to forget because of their hulking size. They’re about seven times my size, trihorned, and grey-scaled. Stout and low to the ground, they can’t move very quickly. But they don’t need to. When they decide to make themselves known, they spit a paralytic at their prey, and then hobble on over and gobble them whole. They’re exceedingly difficult to kill, and even harder to evade. The best thing we could do, were we to encounter one, was run our asses off until we were out of spitting range.
“Come on,” I urged her forward, “I don’t want to just stand out here in the open like this.” And she didn’t need to be asked twice.
We didn’t speak much for the rest of the journey. At one point I tried to make conversation.
“So, are you feeling better today?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, panting, “thank you.”
“I’m glad to hear it. What do you make of our little planet thus far?”
“It’s very… beautiful…”
“I think so. I look forward to hearing your thoughts about the metropolitan areas. Pyrathas, in particular.”
“I’ve heard… it’s quite… a sight
… to see…”
“I grew up in a town just outside of it. A—what’s the word?—suburb.”
She laughed, then stopped her marching, bending forward with her hands on her knees as she tried to catch her breath.
“Danovan,” she said after a while.
“Yes?”
“I do want to get to know you. Truly, I do. And I’ve had many thoughts about this place since we began our journey and, God knows, I desperately want to be out of my own head. It’s just awful in my thoughts right now. But I’m afraid I’m not physically capable of speaking while I keep up this pace.”
I blinked, wanting to smack myself in the forehead. “No,” I said, proffering a chagrined little smile, “of course not. How insensitive of me—my apologies.”
“No need to apologize,” she said, moving forward and clapping me warmly on the arm, “just a little less talking til we get to the base, hmm?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I confirmed, and we hiked on in silence.
After several more quiet hours, I finally spied the GenOriens base, looming large just up the slope of the hill in front of us. We paused in the grass and she reached out and gripped my wrist, giving it a squeeze before sucking in a deep breath of air and moving on, picking up a bit of speed as though the sight of the base newly invigorated her.
But something was off. I think I noticed it before she did, the same way I noticed the silencing of the Caromays. The GenOriens logo wasn’t illuminated, and there were no signs of comings or goings from the base itself. Given what had happened with the Leviathan, I expected to see doctors and military personnel constantly on the move. But everything was still.
Alien Survivor: (Stranded on Galatea) An Alien SciFi Romance Page 6
