Alien Survivor: Stranded on Galatea

DR. ARACELI CROSS

This is what it's like to fall from orbit: You are shot away, backwards, from the place that was supposed to be your entire world, and you arch over the gentle curve of a foreign planet. The gravity reaches out to catch you and brings you down, down, until you break into the atmosphere at the speed of sound. The pod begins to tremble, and you turn your head just enough to see streaks of fiery plasma eating away at the protective covering over the windows of your vessel. And even though it's on fire, the cabin has dimmed. The pod shakes violently, jostling your insides as the force makes you queasy, lightheaded. And when you reach terminal velocity, everything goes black.

I woke up with a start when the escape pod's parachute deployed, catching us whiplash-quick at about thirty thousand feet above sea level. I swallowed hard; my entire world was focused to a sharp point, full of intention: I did not want to throw up in the pod before it reached the ground. We swayed in the air as we descended, and I blinked rapidly to clear my eyes of their haze. The windows were smeared with ash and detritus, and I couldn't really see anything but the wisps of a few clouds as we broke through them.

"Ara!" Danovan had been shouting my name. I blinked. "Ara, are you all right?" he asked from where he was strapped in beside me.

"Yes," I managed, "I think so."

"Good. We'll be on the ground shortly."

Astrophysicists call it a "soft landing", but it's about as soft as a sedan colliding head on with a Mack truck at top speed on an open freeway. We hit the earth with a roaring crash as the shock absorbers crinkled like scrap paper beneath us. I suppose "soft" is relative: it was certainly softer than it would have been without the aid of the parachute.

Everything was suddenly still and quiet, the only sound between us was the panting of our breath. After a few moments, I turned, hastily unlatching my safety restraints, and proceeded to vomit on the floor of the escape pod.

Danovan, ever the gentleman, made no mention of it, and took the opportunity to unstrap himself and pop the hatch. He was moving easily, and he didn't seem like he was going to throw up at all. I, on the other hand, was not doing so well. The gravity was stronger on this planet than I was used to, so it felt a little bit like moving through pea soup as I tried to lift my hands to disentangle myself from the straps of my harness. I gave an involuntary groan, which was signal enough to Danovan that he ought to come help me. He hoisted me up and helped me through the hatch so that I could land feet-first on the mound of earth into which our Pod had partially buried itself. I staggered down the little slope and came to a stop on the grass and did, I thought, what any earthling would do on a planet with more gravity than they were used to: I laid down in the grass, flat on my back, and looked up at the sky I'd just cut through.

Danovan squatted down beside me, a white plastic first aid kit in his hands. "Are you hurt?" "Yes."

"Where?" "Everywhere."

I saw the feint of a smile cross his lips before he sat down in the dirt beside me and set the first aid kit in his lap. He rummaged through it, taking quick stock of the materials he had to work with, and reached forward to curl his fingers around my arm. "Sit up," he said, and he helped me when I acquiesced. He opened an antiseptic wipe, his eyes darting furtively around our immediate surroundings, and I knew what he was looking for because I was looking for them, too: other pods; other survivors. He ran his fingers through my hair at the back of my head, and I sucked in air between my teeth as he found a highly sensitive laceration on the base of my skull. He wiped it down, and I could feel the stinging burn of the alcohol against an open wound. "It's superficial," he said, "already starting to congeal."

"Thank you," I murmured, lifting a hand to tentatively finger the inflamed area. He put a finger under my chin to turn my face toward him, and he examined me closely before pressing another antiseptic wipe to a few cuts on my cheek that I didn't know were there until they began to sting. He did the same to my hand before closing up the kit and sitting on the ground beside me.

I sat with my shoulders slumped, my elbows on my knees, my head hanging. "You'll get used to it," he said, noting my posture, "the gravity, I mean. You can get used to just about anything, fairly quickly."

"Really?" I asked, peeking through the curtain of my hair up at him.

"Sure," he replied with a nod. "Basic tasks will tire you out faster than normal, but you'll get used to it. And the more time you spend here, the stronger you'll get."

I swallowed hard and nodded slowly, taking in a few deep breaths before I forced myself to sit up

a little straighter. I watched him watch the sky, a dark cloud of concern crossing his features. "I haven't seen any other pods deploy," he muttered, guessing at my thoughts. I tilted my eyes skyward as well, searching the collection of cumulous clouds for any sign of other escapees. "What happened?" I asked as we searched the heavens. "Did you see?"

"Another ship," he said, his voice heavy, "fired on us. It's only a matter of time before the Leviathan falls out of the sky."

I jerked my head to look at him, eyes wide with the shock of that news. "No," I protested, "it can't be that serious." I forced myself to rise to my feet, my shoulders heavy under the pressure

of Galatea's gravity. "We have to get to the GenOriens Base. We have to try to establish communication with the Leviathan."

But Danovan gave a slow shake of his head. "By the time we launched the pod, the life support on the Leviathan was down."

"That can't be," I insisted, my voice a hushed and desperate whisper.

"Well," he said, uncoiling to his full height, "it is." He held out a hand to me and I took it, grateful for the help to get me up on my feet.

"So, what do we do, then?" I murmured, my mind caught on all of the souls aboard the great ship who were now choking out their last meager breaths in a carbon dioxide-saturated environment.

"We still want to get to the GenOriens base," he said, trudging back toward the escape pod. "We'll want to report the attack, trying to get some information about why we were hit, and by whom, and what GenOriens plans to do about their loss of property and personnel."

"The nearest GenOriens ship must be dozens of lightminutes away, at least," I protested, shrugging out of my white lab coat, but keeping my keycard credentials on a lanyard around my neck.

"Perhaps," Danovan confirmed, trading me the first aid kit for my lab coat. "But there might be a military vessel that's closer. Stay here."

I did as he bid me, watching as he climbed up the pod and disappeared into the hatch a second time. And when he emerged again a few moments later, he had a black backpack slung over one shoulder. My lab coat, however, was gone.

"Your coat has your name on the breast pocket,” he explained. "If someone came looking for the pod, they'll know you were on it."

"What about you?"

He smiled, his feet hitting the dirt hard as he jumped off the pod. "I don't matter as much," he said. "And besides, I checked into the automated roll call system when I opened the pod doors." All those people. Cat. Christian. Oh, God. I saw it painted across the canvas of my mind like a memory instead of some horrible fantasy the brain had concocted to torment me: Cat clawing at a porthole window, trying to get through, even as a fire raged all around her. Christian suffocating as he tried to pull himself bodily through a hallway, his air choked in his throat until the periphery of his vision went blurry, then black.

I began to tremble, a little at first, and then violently; I was tachycardic, I could feel my heart thrashing in my chest like a drowning man's flailing arms. "Ara?" Danovan said, his strong hand on my heavy shoulder. "Are you all right?"

"Neurogenic shock," I said; I was lightheaded, and I could hear my loved ones screaming in the amphitheater of my head. "I'll lose consciousness again soon."

"What do I do?"

I would have collapsed if Danovan hadn't gotten his arms around me in time to lower me gently to the earth. A soft landing.

"Dopamine," I said as things started to get a little fuzzy around the edges. I could feel the blast of the explosion that threw me over and over, the high-pitched squeal of damaged ear drums ringing like siren song in my ears. "Or norepinephrine. See what's in the...thing..."

I am not a weak person, but the body is designed to protect you from this sort of trauma. My body saw the gruesome images on the cutting room floor of my mind and knew I would be better off unconscious. My mind was the villain, my body the hero as I lost consciousness for the third time that day.

No, my body was no hero. But Danovan was.

I don't know how long I was out before I came to, groggy and aching, with Danovan sitting at my side, a tablet in his hands.

He smiled when he heard me groan. "You're awake." "Unfortunately."

"How are you feeling?"

"Like the gravity is going to pop my organs." He set the tablet aside and helped me to sit up, pressing a bottle of lukewarm water into my hands. I drank it down, paying no mind to the fact that we weren't sure how far away from a base we were, or how long these supplies would have to last us. Only after I emptied the bottle did I bother to cast a wide-eyed, apologetic look at Danovan. He patted my hand with gentle patience. "We're about a day's walk from the base," he explained. "But it's spring on Galatea-we're in for warm days and cool nights, but we won't freeze. We'll walk along a river, so we'll have plenty of water, and we have two protein bars in the backpack, so while we won't be feasting, we won't starve."

There was a knot in my throat that I attributed to my heightened emotionality during the intense events of the day, but really, I think I was just grateful that Danovan was there to take charge. His mere presence made me feel like I wouldn't die alone under the immense pressure of the sky on this planet, which was precisely what I wanted to do, given that I'd lost my friends, my colleagues, my fiancé. I looked down at my left hand where I still wore that ridiculous diamond, and sniffled.

"He may have made it, Ara," Danovan said gently, reaching out to cover the diamond with his large hand. "Now is not the time to grieve him."

But that wasn't what I was doing. When I proffered the hint of a smile and laid my hand atop Danovan's, I wasn't grieving the loss of a future husband. Although I certainly would never have invoked his death, there was a part of me that was...well, relieved that I wouldn't have to eventually refuse to marry him. And that tiny little twinge of relief plunged me into an even deeper depression. How awful I must be, to take any comfort whatsoever in the loss of lives. "We should get going," I murmured, struggling to hoist myself up onto my feet. "We will want to connect with the other survivors and get a sense of what in the bloody hell is going on." Danovan nodded his assent and rose to his feet, sticking the empty water bottle back into the pack before zipping it up and slinging it over his shoulder. He consulted the tablet, turned about 45 degrees, and pointed. "This way," he said, and I dutifully followed.

Galatea is comprised of one giant landmass centered between the equator and the north pole. It has an average surface temperature of about 12 degrees Celsius, and according to our data collection that temperature has been fairly stable over the last millennium. In fact, its temperate regions are among the top reasons that humans have been so interested in this planet: while ours is getting warmer each year, heading us directly into an extinction-level event, Galatea has remained stable, temperate, pleasant even. It experiences moderate levels of geological activity in a few hotspots, one of which is at a tectonic plate that will, one day, divide the planet into two continents. That area is more dangerous than the others, with a slew of active volcanoes dotting the line that will split the continent into east and west. The planet is rich in minerals, gemstones, and metals—one of which is a particular draw: Quaridium Drolide, more commonly known as Lover's Gold. This metal is iridescent opal in color and produces rose gold oxide. Prior to oxidation, it is an excellent conductor of heat and electricity, but once it oxidizes, it becomes a poor conductor of both. Fortunately, it is so beautiful after it oxidizes, it becomes even more valuable, and is used in jewelry and finery. It's been a staple for humans as well, and we have sent more and more mining expeditions to Galatea over the years, though their government is strict about what it does and does not let off planet. Next to a ring made of a simple Quaridium Drolide band, my giant diamond would be worthless.

These are all of the things I knew about the planet before I ever stepped foot on it. But looking around as we walked along the riverbank, everything has burst to life.

"Are there seasons here?" I asked after a long stretch of silence, deciding it was time to do my part to keep morale up.

"Ah, sort of," came Danovan's tempered reply. He glanced back at me as I panted along behind him and arched a brow in question. "There is a turning of leaves in the fall, but the temperature doesn't drop more than a couple degrees."

I nodded my understanding, winded by my efforts to keep up and very much wanting to sink down onto the riverbank for a rest. If the Leviathan had to be attacked, I suppose I should be grateful that it happened when I was wearing slacks and sneakers, not when I was wearing heels and a ball gown. I trudged on.

In the distance was a cluster of tall-growing plants, purple flowers blooming in colorful bursts facing the river. I pointed: "What are those?"

Danovan responded with a word in his native tongue that I couldn't begin to decipher, and then offered his translation: "The Bull Rose," he said. As we approached, I saw that they looked like oversized orchids, all purple and black. Their stalks reached toward the sky, but the flowers themselves were bent over the river. And when I reached out to touch one, Danovan grabbed my hand. "Don't," he said, "they have teeth."

I blinked. These were not simple Venus Fly Traps 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 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. He was right, Danovan was right. It would fall clear out of the sky.

It was still fighting to claw its way back into orbit, it's engines still doing their job, or trying to as best they could. So the Leviathan hung there, half obscured by a collection of cumulous 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.