Alien Survivor: Stranded on Galatea

DR. ARACELI CROSS

"That's her all right," one of the soldiers said from behind the cover of his visor. "That's Dr. Cross." Danovan and I held our hands up defensively as I tried not to count how many pistols they had trained on us. My heart was a piston motoring at top speed in my chest, and I tried to steady myself by breathing deep into my diaphragm, but I couldn't keep from trembling. Maybe it was the irrevocable violence I had experienced over the course of the last few weeks, but staring down the barrels of those guns made me go cold to the bones.

I tried to think of what it might feel like to be shot, as though I could ward it off somehow, or at least prepare myself for it. I closed my eyes and thought about the laser tearing through my soft tissue; I tried to imagine what that kind of pain must feel like. Burning, and a puncture wound, but deeper, hotter.

After a moment's hesitation, the soldiers began to lower their weapons one at a time. I cast a nervous glance back to Danovan, whose expression was impassive as one of the soldiers began to pat him down, hard but perfunctory. Finding us unarmed, they flanked us on either side before marching us toward the nearest tent with a curt "follow me".

There were lines of tents that, I assumed, acted as temporary lodging and office space for the military and emergency services crew. And the site should have been a bustle of activity, medics and firemen and reporters and soldiers, but the entire place had the feeling of somewhere somber. There were fire crews trudging to and from the crash site, trying to extinguish the still- burning fires that raged in the bowels of the Leviathan, but you could tell that the spirits of these workers had been crushed underneath the realities of their work. Medics clustered, idle, on the sidelines, waiting to be called in to do their jobs. But their loitering presence, inactive and downtrodden, was an indicator of the thing no one was willing to say aloud: there had been no survivors to save.

The soldiers led us to the nearest temporary structure. It was large and looming, made of white canvas that bubbled out from the pressurized entrance that separated it from other similar white canvas structures. This wasn't a mere tent; this was a pressurized habitat.

The soldiers led us into the airlock and closed the door behind us. I felt the pressure in the cabin shift with a woosh of air around me, until everything became lighter. The gravity was comparable to that on earth, and I realized, suddenly, that I'd gotten used to the increased gravity of Galatea, and I felt like I might float away from the surface of the planet. The second door opened, and we were granted admittance into the hab.

The soldiers moved deeper into the space, and we followed. I allowed my gaze to rove over the hab, outfitted with sleek metal and white plastic furniture and workstations. It had GenOriens written all over it—literally, in some places. The LCD screens were emblazoned with the logo, rotating around a clear, blue planet.

The perimeter of the hab was all workstations with computer screens and tablet docks, but there were two white sofas and a glass coffee table in the center of the room. They even had bottled water with GenOriens logos on the label, set up in neat little rows in one corner of the coffee table.

There was a darkened hallway at one end of the room, and I could barely make out his form as he emerged from it. Christian Ward, in shirtsleeves with a five o'clock shadow, a tumbler of bourbon held loosely aloft in one hand.

He frozen in his tracks when his eyes landed on me, the color draining from his face as though he'd seen a ghost. It dawned on me, then, that he hadn't actually thought I was alive.

"Araceli," he said, his eyes two wide, brown saucers, sunk deep in a sleepless expression. His jaw trembled even as it hung agape, and he let the glass drop from his hand and shatter against the metal flooring before he raced over to me and encircled me in his embrace. "Good Lord," he said, hugging me to him and swaying me back and forth, "you're alive."

"I'm alive," I confirmed, for lack of anything better to say. I lifted my arms out of habit and hugged him back, admittedly comforted by his strong familiarity. I could feel a bulge at his lower back where he'd tucked a pistol into the back of his pants, and I wondered about the circumstances that had necessitated an executive be thusly armed. But as I hugged him, I could feel Danovan stiffen behind me; I could feel him suck the air out of the room as his heart dipped into his stomach.

Christian smelled of booze and sweat and aftershave, and I was startled-though perhaps I shouldn't have been-when he lifted his hands to my face, cupped my cheeks in his palms, and tilted my head back to kiss me.

My body tensed, and I recoiled without giving it a second thought. I wasn't his, and my body knew it even though I was trying to construct a lie to convince him that nothing had changed. But in that first fledgling moment, I couldn't help it. I pulled away.

"What's wrong?" he asked, even as I averted my gaze. My cheeks burned as I tried to come up with something, anything, that would sound convincing. My mouth went dry, and my hands went clammy, and my mind was and endless stretch of blank canvas.

"I think," Danovan gently intoned, saving me from this horrible moment, "that she's been through a great deal of trauma, and she's overwhelmed."

Christian looked over at Danovan and took a moment to register his presence at all, before he gave a vague nod of his head. "Of course," Christian said, stepping aside to extend a hand to Danovan. He clasped it firmly, gave it a solid shake. "Thank you for keeping her safe, tel'Darian." "I'm just relieved that she survived," Danovan replied. "I'm happy that I was able to reunite you." But I could hear in that simple sentence what Christian could not: the thick weight of falsity that must have made it taste like acid on his tongue.

"You all can go," he said to the soldiers, who turned on their heels and went out again through the airlock.

"Please," Christian said, his beautiful, dark skin coated in a sheen of sweat, "both of you. Come in. Sit down." He directed us to the couches, and I took the lead, grateful for any bit of business that kept me busy, that kept me from having to meet Christian's searching eyes.

I took a seat and Danovan sat across from me, and I could feel his longing radiating from his body. Or I thought I could, but maybe it was just my own. I snatched a bottle of water from the table and drank it down in three desperate gulps as Christian moved to sit beside me. Close, but not too close.

"Tell me what happened," Christian said, "tell me everything."

I looked up at Danovan then, and his eyes told a story that we couldn't repeat. Not to Christian, not yet. But it was my turn to save us from the silence, so I spoke.

I told him about being knocked unconscious during the attack on the Leviathan. I told him about how Danovan had carried me to the escape pod, how he had saved my life in that moment, and how we'd been rocketed to the Galatean surface. I told him about watching the Leviathan fall, about heading to the GenOriens base, and about the slaughter we saw there. I told him about the Ribomax attack, how Danovan had saved me a second time when he brought me to his family home in Hiropass. I told him about how we had planned to journey to Pyrathas, when we saw Christian's image on the NewsFeed, when we saw that he was looking for me. I told him about how Hiropass had been attacked-but I didn't tell him why. I told him only that Danovan's mother had been gunned down, and that we had set out that very day to see what we could find out about the nature of this ceaseless violence. The story spilled out, largely intact, word over word over word, until I had run out of air, until I simply came to a stop.

But I hadn't told him about the fact that I knew that they were trying to round up anyone who was pregnant with a hybrid. I didn't tell him that I had seen that first beautiful hybrid progeny, and I didn't tell him any of my darkest theories about the GenOriens involvement in the slaughter of its own people. No. Instead, when my story concluded, and it was left to hang there in the air between us, I asked, "Did Cat survive?"

Christian had been attempting to process everything I was telling him, and he looked stunned out of his rumination when I asked the question. I saw him make a decision, saw him hesitate, but ultimately, he swallowed hard and gave a slow shake of his head.

"I'm sorry," he murmured. "We haven't found her."

"From the looks of it," Danovan interjected, "you haven't really found anyone." Christian looked over at him bobbed his head, his lips parted, a sort of vacant look in his eyes. "I'm aware," he said, and I was wondering just how much of that bourbon he'd imbibed before I'd shocked the glass right out of his hand. "We haven't found anyone," he said. "Until you." "But you made it off," I said, suddenly dubious. How had that happened? Who had been with him?

"Yes," he confirmed.

"That's...a stroke of good luck." I was trying to sound grateful, but I think it might have come out a little accusatory. "Who was with you, in the shuttle?"

But Christian just shook his head before rubbing his face in his hands with surprising vigor, like he was trying to will himself to wake up. "That's just it," he muttered, "I haven't the faintest idea."

Danovan and I locked eyes, then. Maybe Christian wasn't on the inside of whatever bizarre conspiracy this was shaping up to be. Maybe he was as innocent a bystander as we were.

"I was knocked unconscious in the blast," he went on, "just like you were, Ara. And then next thing I knew, I was alone in an escape pod, planetside. Not far from where we're sitting at this very moment."

"You remained in orbit until after the Leviathan fell," I remarked, bewildered.

"Yes," he confirmed. "I didn't see it fall, but when I woke up, it was the smoldering wreck you saw when you drove in."

"Do you have any idea who attacked us?" I asked him, turning to face him. He was shaking his head from side to side, so I reached out and grasped his hands, and brought him back to me. "Christian," I asked again, "do you know anything about the attack on the Leviathan, or the attacks on the GenOriens base or on Hiropass?"

"No," he said, meeting my gaze. "No, Ara. I have no idea what in hell is going on. All I know is that I want to get off this God forsaken planet. I want to turn my back on it, go home, and never think of it again."

"Christian-"

"So I am going to send for a shuttle that can take us into orbit, all right?" He was rising to his feet, pacing back and forth in front of the coffee table. "I am going to get us into orbit and onto the next intergalactic vessel and then I am going to get us back to earth and you and me? We're going to settle down at...at...some ranch house somewhere. No, somewhere with picture windows overlooking the ocean, yeah? And then, Ara, you and me? We're going to start making babies and I'm going to step down at GenOriens and you're going to stop...doing whatever it is that you do. You're going to give up your post as the head of the Nova Genus project, and we're going to live a quiet, simple life where giant, unsinkable vessels don't sink." "Christian," Danovan calmly interrupted, "I think you're in shock. I think you should sit down, take a few deep breaths-"

"Due respect, tel'Darian," he said, and I saw the resurgence of Christian Ward's sharpness, his keen intellect, his raw power. "Due respect, but this has nothing whatsoever to do with you." "On the contrary," I said, "he's the reason I'm standing here at all." I fumbled trying to find the right words that would keep us all here until this mystery had been uncovered, until Danovan could broadcast the truth far and wide. "And his home was attacked. His mother was killed. We owe him everything I owe him everything."

Christian glanced between Danovan and me and nodded vaguely. "Fine, yes, fine. We'll...do... something. My mother is in orbit aboard the Carpathian, and she comes planetside once a day, so we'll...Maybe she can help us."

His mother? Lucille Ward? The woman who had pioneered so many of GenOriens' programs, who had stepped down to let her son take over? Why was she in Galatea's galactic neighborhood? "In the meantime," Christian went on, "I want to have the medics inspect you." "Really, I'm fine," I protested.

"She isn't," Danovan interrupted. "She was burned by a Ribomax. We used herbal remedies in Hiropass, but those burns could use the intervention of modern medicine.

He was right, though the burning had been reduced to a dull ache that was easy to forget about, what with all this insufferable intrigue.

"I don't need to be examined, I'm fine," I went on, but the men were having none of it. "Just...let them check you out, Ara, would you?" Danovan asked, and I could deny him nothing, so I acquiesced, however begrudgingly.

"Danovan, we'll put you up in the soldier's quarters, if that suits you-"

"No," I interjected. "I just mean...I would feel better if he were...here. To do his job, right? To protect us, to protect you."

Christian swallowed hard and proffered a faint smile before nodding his consent. "Very well. There are two bedrooms attached to this hab: we will have one and he shall have the other." He bent at the waist to press a kiss to my forehead before holding a hand out to me. I took it, and he helped me to rise to my feet. "But before anything else we shall see the medic." "Christian-"

"No arguments, Araceli," he said, holding up a hand to silence me even as he cast searching glances between Danovan and myself. There was something in the way he looked at us, something about his semi-absence throughout our reunion, that put me on edge. But I gave a shake of my head to clear myself of the thoughts: if anyone was off, it was me.

I followed Christian out of the airlock, and Danovan followed me. Christian didn't say anything about Danovan's constant presence, so I decided not to draw attention to it. But Christian did take my hand as we crossed from the hab to the medic tent, some fifty yards closer to the crash

site.

This one was not pressurized the way Christian's hab was, and I could see how Christian's shoulders drooped under the added weight of Galatea's gravity. "I don't know how you could stand it," he remarked as we made our way across brown earth, so trampled that the grass had died beneath the feet of the soldiers. "This planet is bloody awful."

"I don't know," I began, ready to defend the site of my great adventure. "It's rather beautiful, don't you think?"

"It's an underdeveloped mound of dirt," Christian hissed, "best known as the graveyard of the earth's grandest ship. I can't wait to get off this planet. But what I'm wondering is why you don't feel similarly." He caught my arm and turned me toward him, and I could see his chest rise and fall in an attempt to catch his breath. The planet was hard work, and Christian Ward wasn't accustomed to hard work. "You were attacked, by animal and man, in this place. How could you not loathe it, as I do?"

"The people," I said simply, and turned to continue on toward the med tent. Christian heaved a sigh and moved on with me, with Danovan close at our heels.

"The people," he echoed sourly. Danovan remained ever the silent stoic.

Inside the med tent was a doctor and a team of triage nurses who had been in various states of lethargic lounging when we came in. At the sight of Christian, they all snapped to, and the doctor pranced over to us, with a tablet in her hands.

"Dr. Cross," she said, extending her hand to me. "My name is Melia, and it's an honor to meet you." I shook her hand, smiling warmly down at this young doctor who had introduced herself by

her first name instead of her proper title. She had beautiful, rich brown eyes beneath an epicanthic fold, and her black hair reached almost to her waist. "Er, Dr. Melia Chen. I'm...sorry, I'm just so glad to see that you're alive. You're our first survivor."

"Just...give her a full body scan," Christian interjected. "And pay particular attention to the

venom burn on her-where is it?"

"Leg," Danovan offered. "Her left thigh, in fact."

"Right," Christian went on, "leg."

"Of course, Mr. Ward," Dr. Chen said, stuffing her tablet into the hands of a triage nurse as she

showed me to my spot. There was a pod in the center of the space that looked like that bottom

half of a pea pod in shining stainless steel.

"Would you gentlemen please step outside?" Dr. Chen asked, ever the professional, as she pulled on a pair of latex gloves.

"We'll stay," Christian said, crossing his arms across his chest. I saw Danovan's features cloud, but he brooked no argument, so Dr. Chen simply bobbed her head in a nod and got to work. "Are you wearing any jewelry, Dr. Cross?" She asked, and just as I opened my mouth to speak, Christian chimed in for me.

"No, she isn't." I clutched my left hand to my chest and rang my fingers across my knuckles: my ring was gone. I felt myself flush, as I wracked my brain to think of when I had lost it. Had I been wearing it when we left Hiropass? I couldn't remember. Try as I might, I couldn't remember. "Christian," I whispered, "I'm so sorry I don't know what happened to it, it must have-"” "Now is not the time, my dear," he said quietly, and all I could do was nod. "Very well," Dr. Chen went on. "Please just go ahead and undress fully and climb into the pod." I did as she bid me, feeling startlingly self-conscious in front of Christian and Danovan, Dr. Chen and her team of triage nurses. But I was a doctor, so I tried to convince myself that there was no need to feel so exposed. I was a human body, and they were going to ascertain the damage that body had taken over the trials of the last few days. I tugged my shirt off over my head, and shimmied out of my pants and panties, before climbing into the pod. It cradled me gently. It was heated, and I felt warmed and safe inside of it.

"Go ahead and lay flat, Dr. Cross," said Dr. Chen, who retrieved her tablet form the nurse, and began to swipe her fingers across the screen.

The halogen lamps in the tent began to dim, before an image of my body appeared, a hologram in the air above my actual body. My vitals were projected beneath it, and I could see my heart beating in the image suspended above me. I could see my lungs expanding and contracting as I breathed. I could my stomach acid roiling. I could see my blood moving through my veins. And I could see something else, low in my abdomen. I could see something else. "Dr. Chen-" "Let's take a look at that leg first, shall we?" She asked, and I knew she hadn't noticed the anomaly in the abdomen; I knew she wasn't immediately looking for an embryo. Why would she? She was concerned about the burns on my leg. Maybe Christian hadn't noticed yet, either. He wouldn't know what to look for. Maybe he hadn't noticed; maybe Danovan hadn't noticed. But in that moment, I couldn't bring myself to look at either of them for confirmation. The image zoomed into the burns on my left leg, and Dr. Chen stepped forward to look as well, using something as old fashioned as her eyes to ascertain the damage. "The wound has been well cared for," she said. "Which is excellent. I'm going to apply general purpose medi-gel, which

will expedite the cell regeneration process in that region."

"Dr. Chen," I said quietly, "I know how medi-gel works."

"Yes," she said, shaking her head, flustered, "of course. I'm sorry."

"It's all right. In fact I know how these scans work. I can read it for myself." Maybe this way, she wouldn't note the embryo aloud. Maybe this way, I could keep the secret of my pregnancy to myself, just for a while. Just for a little while. Maybe I could have the opportunity to process it on my own before anyone else had to know.

"Of course," she said, and lowered her tablet, clutching it in front of her, and peering at the hologram above me. My vitals looked normal, though my heart rate was elevated for obvious reasons. My blood pressure reflected the strain I was under, but it was nothing with which I would concern myself. My brain activity was normal, vibrant, despite recent head trauma. And everything else looked fine. One of the nurses came forward to administer the medi-gel to my burn, and it felt cool like menthol on my damaged skin. And this was GenOriens tech: it wouldn't

even leave a scar. "Everything looks good!" I announced, sitting up in the pod. But Dr. Chen wasn't going to let me off the hook. Poor, well-meaning, stupid girl.

"Oh, but Dr. Cross, didn't you see?" She asked, freezing the hologram, and using her stupid, latex-covered finger to point to my uterus. "Maybe you weren't looking for it." "Looking for what?" Danovan asked, and I looked over at the men behind me. Danovan's expression was open and naive and full of hope and promise and intent. Christian's wasn't. His expression belied what he knew, and he seemed to know even before I did that I was in a, shall we say, fragile condition.

"Congratulations, Dr. Cross," Dr. Chen said, clapping her hands together once, and then spreading them apart to enlarge the image of the hologram. "You're pregnant!"

My mouth went dry, and I tried to swallow. "Thank you," I managed, but my voice was just a

squeak.

"And Mr. Ward," Dr. Chen went on, and my cheeks were on fire with the shame of it. I knew, in my gut, that the baby was not his. I didn't need the confirmation he sought to tell him that. "Do you have a date of fertilization for that embryo, Dr. Chen?" Christian asked, his tone edged

to the point of menacing.

"Um, let me see," Dr. Chen mused, as she swiped through the data scan the machine had given on my body. "Ah, yes. Right here-four days, so brand new, and..." she trailed off, because even little naive Dr. Chen knew enough to realize that I was still missing, presumed dead, four days ago. And suddenly everyone knew that it wasn't Christian who should be celebrating, but the only Galatean in the room, in whose arms this hybrid progeny had been conceived a mere four days earlier. "Isn't it amazing," Dr. Chen went on, ignoring the first rule of holes-when you're in one, stop digging. "The technology? I mean, it used to be that it would take just...weeks to know you were even pregnant, let alone, the due date, and estimated date of conception. I just think... Wow, you know? What a time to be alive." Dr. Chen glanced nervously between me and Christian, and I tried to smile at her, but I was rooted in place, naked in the med bay. "Why don't we, um, leave you...so, um, you can have privacy. Yeah? Ok."

Dr. Chen filed out with her nurses in tow, and I climbed out of the pod to tug my clothes back on. The air was thick, but silent, and I didn't know what to say to break that silence. So I got dressed before I turned to face these men, crossing my arms beneath my breasts.

"Christian-"

"Just...tell me one thing, Ara," Christian said, and I could see that he was doing everything in his

power to control his considerable rage. That vagueness was gone, replaced with something bright and pulsing. "Did you even want to come back to me?"

"Yes," I said, "of course I did." And I saw Danovan's face drop then, and I realized that there was

no version of the whole truth that would hurt no one. "I wanted you to know that I was all right,

and I felt that I owed you...an explanation, if nothing else."

"An explanation?"

"Yes, and I thought you owed me one, too."

"For what, exactly?" He asked, propping his hands up on his hips. He was very handsome when

he was angered: his rage was a sharp point that he shot out of the angles of his hip bones and

shoulder blades.

"For everything that happened to me," I went on, feeling bold. "You brought me out here" "To work!" "Yes, but I was aboard the Leviathan for one day before everything went to hell. And I just... you're so well connected. You have your fingers in every pie-how could you have not known that something was going on. How did you not know about the attack on the GenOriens base on Galatea? How did you not know these things?" In earlier days I would have reached out to touch

him. But today, I was afraid he might burn me with the force of his fury. "Are you accusing me of something, Araceli?" Christian asked, his voice a low growl. "Because if we're slinging accusations around, then I would like to accuse you of being a lying whore." The word landed like a blow to the sternum, and I nearly stumbled back where I stood. "Don't you fucking speak to her that way, you spoiled, self-righteous son of a bitch," Danovan spat, and I blinked owlishly as Christian turned his startled gaze on Danovan.

"Ah," Christian said at length, "so the bastard hybrid is yours, then."

Danovan couldn't help it—he looked over at me, then, and he smiled. He smiled, and I smiled

back at him, and I believe it was in that moment that I lost any scrap of trust Christian Ward ever

had in

me.

"I don't know, I don't know," Christian mused quietly, though his tone was energized by his anger. "Maybe it would be easier if you just died. You know, if some horrible accident befell you and you never made it to camp, and I had to go onto the NewsFeed, the weeping would-be widower. I think that'd be easier to spin. What do you think?"

"Don't be insane, Ward," Danovan said, moving to stand bodily between Christian and myself. "We could just...go away," I said, knowing that he had that pistol on his person. "You could spin it however you wanted, if you just let us go away." Christian chuckled low in his throat, shaking his head as he retrieved the pistol from its thinly veiled hiding place in the back of his waistband. "You stupid girl," he said. "After everything, you still don't see the basic fact that this planet isn't safe for hybrids, or the women carrying them?"

I tried to swallow down the lump in my throat, but it would not be dislodged. So instead, I approached Danovan and put my hand on his arm, an arm he outstretched in the universal signal for stay behind me.

"What do you know about the hybrids?" I asked, perhaps in spite of myself.

"Very little," Christian said. "Much less than I should. But I do know that they won't be allowed to

live. And yours will be no different."

"Why?" I demanded. "Why? Why let me do my work if you never wanted it to succeed? Why did

you bring me to the Leviathan to begin my human trials? Why, when all the good data showed

that my intervention wasn't even necessary? Why?"

"I don't ask questions, Araceli," Christian snapped. "I just do as I'm told. I take over at GenOriens.

I greenlight your worthless project. I ask you to marry me. I do what I'm told."

"What...?"

"You were chosen for me, Ara," Christian went on. "I didn't choose you for myself."

"Then why do you care if—"

"Because you're pregnant now. With...with that alien's godless offspring. It's fucking disgusting.

You are disgusting." Though the words stung, the tone was a tense warble. I don't know how

much he believed in what he was saying. "Hey," Danovan snapped. "What'd I say about how you speak to her?" "Don't talk back to the guy with the gun, tel'Darian, it won't work out in your favor." "So, fine," I shouted, coming out from behind Danovan. "What do you we do, now? I'm pregnant. I'm leaving you. Are you going to shoot me?" I locked my eyes on Christian, and I could not see him as a stranger. I didn't believe that he was a heartless puppet who cared nothing for me. I know what love looks like, and while it was not the great love story of my life, I know what genuine affection feels like, and he had it. He showed it to me. And I had hurt him. I sighed, and reached out a hand, even as I was staring down Christian's pistol. "Christian," I gently ventured, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean for things to go this way." "It's my fault, really." A woman's voice sliced through the tense air like a hot knife through butter. Lucille Ward, fabulous in a black designer sheath dress and a single strand of large freshwater pearls, was a vision in the medical tent entrance. "I should have chosen someone else for my son. But I really thought you had promise, Dr. Cross. Promise."

I hadn't heard her walk in, and I had no idea how much she'd heard or what she knew, but there she was, in the flesh, with her coterie of sycophants swarming around her. "So, now that you've

shown your true colors, we need to figure out what to do with you."