Alien Survivor: Stranded on Galatea

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, have 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 mean to wax poetic: it was bloody terrifying.

The impact shook the earth 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 at a South-South-easterly angle, neither toward it, really, nor away from it. 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 be. 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 taught me that things that start out this way don'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, but how fully and unabashedly my lust had made itself known to me. But I was not a monster, nor a savage: I would lay 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 were 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 excess 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 will get Araceli back to Christian, if he's even alive. But isn'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 laid 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 laid 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 laid 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 fell. 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 may 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 gray 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 skeleton's 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 below as she steadied herself.

"What?" She breathed. "Is something the matter?"

"Shh." I scanned the expanse of the rolling fields, doing my best to eek 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

Caromax, 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, tri-horned, 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 can do, were we to encounter one, is run our asses off until we're 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 till we get to the base, hm?"

"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.

The base itself was an impressive thing, the only structure of its kind out there in the otherwise undeveloped lowlands of Galatea. Three stories high, it was a thick, plated glass dome that allowed the scientists in the outer rooms have a constant view of their lands and territories. the last time I had been there it had been a bustling hub, full of movement, like a buzzing hive of honeybees. But now...

"Ara, hang on a second," I said, this time jogging to catch up with her.

"Now what's the matter?" She asked, pausing to prop her hand up on her hip. "Something just doesn't seem right," I explained. "So let's just...proceed with caution."

"I'm sure everything's fine..." she countered, but I could tell that she was feeling that same insistent sensation that something was amiss.

It wasn't a military operation, but the last time I had been to this base, there had been armored trucks and armed guards posted at the entrance. But there was no one there, and we walked right up to the building without so much as a how-do-you-do, let alone a demand for credentials.

The glass doors parted for Araceli, and she crossed the threshold even as an automated voice said, Welcome, Dr. Cross in dulcet tones. Me, I got a Welcome, Guest, which I suppose was better than nothing. Another set of glass doors opened, and I felt the pressure around us shift just slightly, just enough to mimic the gravity on earth; Araceli walked a little easier, and I felt like I was bouncing on a cloud.

The base was the pinnacle of modern technology, both human and Galatean, and it was beautiful in the way that only the sleek and modern can be beautiful. We walked into the lobby, treading lightly on black marble floors, and I saw her furrow her brow as she ran her hands along the chrome detailing that adorned an empty reception desk. Behind that desk was an uninterrupted data feed, boasting high resolution images of humans and Galateans shaking hands, slinging arms around shoulders, looking shyly into one another's eyes. The picture windows at the front let in light that glistened off the dark flooring, and we followed the beams past reception and into a corridor, its walls lined with those same happy LCD screens, with those animated images of those same, happy Human-Galatean couples. We didn't speak to one another as we moved with silent trepidation through the hallway.

We reached the end of the corridor and came to a heavy metal door, armed and impenetrable. Araceli flashed her keycard at a small console screen to the right of the doorknob, and I heard the behemoth click, groan, and give way. Thank you, Dr. Cross, the calm voice said, and Ara tugged the door open.

The scene on the other side of that door was dramatically different from the one we'd just left behind. In reception things were quiet and orderly, functional and clean, untouched as though the receptionist had simply taken a bathroom break and would return in just a moment to help

you.

But we'd crossed over into one of the laboratory areas, and it had been thoroughly destroyed. Once, there had been separate labs on either side of the hallway in which we were standing, but they were indistinguishable from one another now: broken glass was strewn haphazardly over the expanse of our general vicinity, smoke rising from indeterminate locations. The fluorescent lights above us flickered ominously, and hummed in a sporadic, insistent buzz, tinging everything in a sort of sickly yellow. But that wasn't nearly the worst of it. Blood. There was blood everywhere. Blood, and viscera, the chunky pieces of organic life that were so damaged as to be beyond recognition.

Ara was breathing hard, and I knew she too could smell the copper in the air, so strong I could almost taste it. And I didn't know what to do. I'd brought her here, thinking that this place would have answers for us, thinking it'd be safe. But I simply delivered her into more danger, and I didn't know what to do to help her, what to do to set things right.

She swallowed hard, lifting her arm to wipe away the beads of anxious sweat that had formed at her brow. "Come on," she murmured at last, not able to speak to the horror we were witnessing,

able, only, to move forward. "We need to get to a communications console."

"Ara-"

"Please," she cut me off, "don't say anything." And my shoulders drooped a little to know that she blamed me, too. "Just follow me." And I did.

She stepped gingerly over and around blood, gore, broken glass, bits and pieces of what I imagine was once furniture or chunks of LCD screens or lab equipment. The base was one giant half-circle, and there was only one entrance. This was supposed to be a security measure, but it seems as though that measure backfired, as it made the scientists and lab assistants, the specimens and the volunteers trapped like rats in a maze when whoever was responsible came

for them.

"What if they're still here?" I asked in low tones, and she simply cast a sidelong glance in my direction, a look so full of vitriol it nearly stopped me in my tracks.

"Then I guess we'll die, too," came her cold reply. I bristled, unsure of when I'd made the deal to

follow broken glass and the exploded corpses? No. So I tromped on.

a crazy woman to my death. But what was I going to do, just leave her in there with the

I saw the contorted grimace of a still in-tact face when I inadvertently glanced into one of the

labs: her jaw had come unhinged with the force of her screaming, and she had expired without closing her eyes. I hoped Ara hadn't seen.

We wound around the perimeter until we arrived at a space that was more comparably intact than what had come before it. The glass remained in place, and there seemed to be only one cleanly executed corpse in the room, instead of dozens cut down like dogs in the street. But this corpse was different, because Araceli rushed to its side, and dropped to her knees beside it. It had been a man, balding, with spectacles on the bridge of his nose even in death. He'd been shot once, clean, in the head, and even still, those glasses stayed on. How was that possible? Araceli was trembling with the force of her emotion as she placed her hands reverently on the man's chest. "This was Dr. Martin Pierce. He was my long-time colleague, and my friend." She petted him gently, the way one might soothe an ill child in bed, and I couldn't do anything but kneel down at her side.

"I'm sorry," I murmured lamely, but that's what humans say during times like these. Humans take on the unimaginable and apologize for it, as though it will ever be enough. "Galateans have a saying during times like these," I continued quietly and spoke in my native tongue: "Kygliian ei roshem cah may." Literally, it translated to, 'let no man's blood be wasted', but colloquially-"His death was not in vain, I know," she said, wiping the damp apple of her cheek with the back of her

hand.

"You speak Galatean?" I asked.

She shook her head. "No, but I've heard the expression. And I've experienced a lot of loss, I guess." She sniffled and rose to her feet, turning her attention then to the console behind her. I stepped around Dr. Pierce's body and stood just behind Araceli, my eyes angled down at the touch screen she was manipulating. Her fingers were lightning quick over the screen, and after a few moments of diligent work, she sighed.

"The internal communications are functional, but someone cut the satellite feed," she explained.

"What does that mean?"

"It means, if you were standing on the opposite side of the building, I could communicate with

you just fine. But trying to get a signal to an orbiting ship, or to a Galatean city, let alone all the

way back to earth..." she shook her head. "It just isn't possible."

"How do we fix it?" I asked. Stupid.

"Well, unless you're secretly a mechanical engineer that specializes in satellites..." I glowered

down at her, and she held up her hands defensively. "I'm sorry!" she asserted, "I'm just saying...

Van, I'm a geneticist. I don't know how to repair satellites."

"But-"

"No," she stopped me. "Whatever you're going to say, no. I'm not some...swiss army knife of

science genius, I just know bodies. Biology. Organic matter. I can fix that. But I don't know how to

fix this. I'm

sorry."

She dropped down onto a rolling chair, all of the air deflating out of her where she sat with her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands. She didn't know what to do any more than I did.

"So, what? We just give up then? Lay down and die here along with everyone else?" She peeked at me through her fingers; at least she was listening to me. "What do you propose we do?" she asked, taking her hands away from her face. "We need to get to Pyrathas. It's the biggest city on Galatea, they'll have functional satellite

feeds. We need to find out what happened here, and if it's connected to what happened to the

Leviathan."

She nodded, a few errant curls falling into her line of vision. She swept them impatiently aside.

"Yes," she agreed. "Good. How far away is it?"

I moved forward and manipulated the touch screen-I was adept, but much slower than she was.

I was trying to pull up a map but when I closed out of her schematics page, I saw that a message

icon was blinking insistently in the lower left-hand corner of the screen.

I touched it without

thinking twice.

Immediately, the screen above the touch panel illuminated with the image of a living Dr. Martin

Pierce, a sheen of sweat coating his face. His mouth was agape beneath his bushy brown

mustache, and his brow was furrowed in desperation. "What is that?" Ara demanded.

"A message," I said. I looked up at her and was shocked by her desperate expression, how she

literally was wringing her hands. "Should I play it...?"

She swallowed hard and glanced over her shoulder to where he lay, dead on the floor behind us.

"Yes," she breathed. "Yes, play it."

I pressed play, and the audio filled the lab with the sounds of his heavy breathing and the more distant sounds of screams and gun shots.