Alien Survivor: Stranded on Galatea

I have no combat training, no reason to be adept at processing such brutality, such overwhelming carnage. The tang of blood hung in the air, sour and slick, and it formed a knot in my throat that wouldn't dissipate no matter how hard I swallowed. So when Danovan and I moved through the hall, a gamut of broken glass, blood, and viscera, I tried my best just to put one foot in front of the other, one at a time, and on and on, until we reached Dr. Pierce's office, which had always been my intended destination.

But I hadn't planned on seeing him there, lifeless on the tile floor with a gunshot blooming like a rose on the back of his head. He was my friend, this man. I knew him. I knew his wife. They lived in Des Moines. They had four cocker spaniels. A life snuffed out like so much firelight.

But then he popped to life in glorious widescreen, and I feared that, in watching his recorded message, we would see his final moments. And I would not look away. He was my friend; I would not look away.

Danovan played the video, and I could hear Martin Pierce panting. He had been a biologist, and was the manager of this lab, in charge of feeding his findings to the Leviathan, and collecting the findings that I would send to him. He and his team would compile the data and package it neatly for GenOriens shareholders to digest over budget meetings. He would present to board

members; he would communicate with CEOS; he was the only one among us who looked at the big picture. And he was gone.

I saw his features contort with fear before he started speaking, shrieks and the patter of automatic gunfire echoing all around him.

"We are under attack," he breathed into the microphone, glancing behind him every few moments to see if they had come for him, yet. "I don't know who they are or what they want. They have given us no demands. They arrived suddenly. They have set off explosions on all levels of the base. They are gunning people down. I don't know who they are."

He swallowed hard, glanced over his shoulder, and turned back. "Something strange happened this morning, before the attacks began-all of my findings on all of my GenOriens drives had been erased. Everything we've worked on since we arrived on this planet: gone. I have a backup of some archival findings on a personal drive, the location of which I will not disclose in this recording. But even that does not have the most updated information."

He looked over his shoulder again, he wiped nervously at the sweat dripping down his brow. "I do not know for certain if one has anything to do with the other, but it seems like too big a coincidence not to mention." The gunshots were drawing nearer; the sound of a grenade exploding. The camera shook, Dr. Pierce stiffened.

"Please tell Sherry that I love her."

In that moment, a man appeared on the screen behind Dr. Pierce: he looked like a soldier, Galatean, in what looked like army fatigues. He pointed his pistol at Dr. Pierce, and I held my breath. Dr. Pierce-Martin, the married man with 4 dogs back on earth-closed his eyes. And, blessedly, the video came to a stop.

"Galateans killed him," I whispered, aghast. "That was a Galatean soldier."

Danovan nodded slowly. "We saw one Galatean, but that's not a uniform our military force wears. Besides, this is a mixed human-Galatean research center. It's fairly safe to assume that it was a mixed human-Galatean attack."

"Is it?" I snapped without meaning to, and his features colored with unspoken anger. "All we know is what we saw-a Galatean shooting a human in the skull with a handgun." "Technically, we saw a Galatean aim at Dr. Pierce with a handgun..." I shot him a look of rage to match his own. "I'm saying, we don't have a clear picture of the whole story." He paused, propping his fists up on his hips and glaring down at me. "Do you really want to go around mistrusting the Galateans? I'm on your side, Ara."

And I believed that he was. All the air went out of me, and I slumped into the rolling chair which, I realized, was probably where Martin had been shot and killed. I stood up again. "But what does his data have to do with anything? And why would someone have wiped it? No one would have had access to it unless it was someone higher up in GenOriens than Martin himself was." Danovan shook his head. "I honestly haven't the faintest notion. But what I do know is that we have to get out of here."

On that point, we most certainly agreed. "We need to collect supplies," I said, "food, water. A vehicle, if we can manage it. I don't want to be making this whole trek on foot, it'll take too long."

"Agreed."

I quirked a brow. "How long will it take?"

Danovan swiped away the video of Dr. Pierce, and continued to search for a map, enlarging it so that it was projected on the console's primary screen.

"We're here," he said, pointing to the clearly marked base at the center of the map. "Pyrathas is this way." But not close enough to be represented on the map. And, furthermore, it looked like it was going to take us Northeast-past the Leviathan. I shuddered to think of it. "And we'll go by way of a village I know, a day's journey past where the Leviathan fell."

"I don't see it on the map," I mumbled.

"No," he said, bearing the hint of a smile. "But trust me, it's there."

We went diligently about our business, first scouring the GenOriens base for any sign of survivors: there were none. Whatever militia had staged the attack was incredibly thorough. They hadn't left a single survivor. And most of the communications hubs had been cleared of their data, so there weren't even any other videos like the one Dr. Pierce had left. But on the upper levels, where fewer explosives had been used in favor of point-blank executions, there were plenty of undisturbed supplies. Protein bars and water, first aid kits, and tools, and we were more than ready to get the hell out of that base. When we walked out of it, we had sealed its fate as mausoleum.

I tried not to think of it as a place full of my dead colleagues; I tried to think of myself as moving forward, in order to ensure that I found out who was responsible for their demise so that they could be brought to justice.

At the side of the building was a series of terrain rovers, all plugged into their charging stations. They were odd, bulbous little things like a glass bubble on tank tracks that could go up the sides of mountains as easily as they could flat surfaces. "Do you know how to hotwire these things?" Danovan asked me, and I smiled. Another one of his movie references, no doubt.

"No," I said, opening the doors to one and climbing inside, "but my keycard will let me use it." There was a touch screen in the console of the rover, and I flashed my card in front of it. "Good afternoon, Dr. Cross," the rover's soothing female voice said to me as Danovan climbed into the passenger's seat.

"I should drive," he said.

"Why's that?"

"Because I know where we're going."

"Fair enough."

I climbed out of the rover and rounded its backside, crossing paths with Danovan as I did so, our shoulders only barely brushing as we moved. I took my seat next to him in the rover and we closed our doors, allowing the atmosphere to pressure to something I was more used to. I heaved a sigh of relief when we were on our way, putting the GenOriens base in our rearview. We drove quietly for a while, my forehead pressed to the side window of the rover so I could watch the passing landscape. But finally, he broke the silence, and I was grateful for it. "I'm sorry about your...scientist friend."

"Thank you," I murmured.

"We'll figure this all out. I promise."

I turned to look at him in the seat next to mine, steering his way across the tall grass of the Galatean plains, and I believed him.

"So," I breathed, refusing to crack under the weight of our undertaking, "do you know any road trip games?"

He blinked, glancing at me with the ridge of his brow raised in question. I couldn't help but admire him in the afternoon sunlight as it streamed in through the glass of the rover. He was so beautiful; his presence made me feel calm. Even if, sometimes, he got on my last nerve, he was a constant companion, and had proved himself to be more than reliable. That alone earned him respect, if not my good humor.

"I don't know what that is," he said, and I chuckled a little under my breath.

"Your movies never taught you about road trip games?" He shook his head, a smile twinkling in his eyes. "Well, that's ok. The only one I can think of right now is the license plate game, and there aren't exactly any other cars around..."

"What's a license plate?"

I blinked. I had a doctorate in biology and another in genetics, and I wasn't entirely sure how to explain what a license plate was. "Er, it's...how you...it's how someone knows a vehicle is yours." "Ah," he said, and we drove on.

The view from the rover was incredible: we were heading north, directly toward a towering mountain range with snow-capped peaks and hazy cloud cover. To our left was the river along which we'd traveled, to our right, the endless rolling plains and the remnants of smoke from the Leviathan. I tried to put the loss out of my mind; I tried to focus on the task at hand. I failed. "Ara," he gently intoned after a few moments, "you're weeping."

"Am I?" I suppose I was, hot tears leaving a train of saltwater paths down my cheeks. I wiped them hastily away.

"My mother was a healer," he said after a brief silence. "You remind me a little of her, actually." I couldn't say why precisely, but at that comparison, my heart dropped like a stone into the pit of my stomach. "She was as pale as you are. No read hair, though," he amended with a grin. "What is her name?" I asked.

"Jaelle cal'Darian."

"You don't share the same name "

"Darian is our clan's name. It is my mother's clan, in fact, and not without some renown. She married my father for love, and he married into her clan instead of the other way around, so the Sildarine name will die with him."

"But-cal'Darian isn't the same as tel'Darian."

"They didn't teach you Galatean culture and history in your fancy school?" I felt my cheeks warm with a blush. They should have, perhaps, but they didn't, in fact, teach any of the cultural things to us. I knew that the Galateans didn't sweat, that their bodies were better at temperature moderation, and that they don't have a single hair on their bodies. I know that they have hearts that are, proportionally speaking, twice the size of ours and beat half as fast. I know that their "lungs" are, actually, just a single lung, and that their digestive tract looks strikingly like ours for all our differences. But I didn't know the basics of their cultures, as I had primarily concerned myself with their organs-specifically of the reproductive variety.

"Ah, no."

"Well, prepare to be educated." Danovan went on to explain that the beginning of their surname was something of a call sign that indicated their position, their role, in the society. "So before I came of age, I was Danovan kin' Darian-all children are 'kin'. Then, I became a guard, or a soldier, so I became Danovan tel❜Darian. My mother is a healer, so she is Jaelle cal'Darian. My father, before he retired, was a teacher, so he is Olander jin' Darian, and before that, Olander jin'Sildarine. And my sister-"

"You have a sister?"

"Mm. A younger one. She is a midwife, which is also classified as a healer, so she is Dinervah cal'Darian."

"And what is she like?" I asked, shifting in my seat so that I could lean in to look at him as he spoke. "Your sister."

He chuckled wryly, rubbing absently at his forehead before he spoke, as though he were referencing a long-standing headache where this particular individual was concerned. "She's a real shimonyae, I'll tell you."

"Shimonyae...?" I asked.

"Ah, there isn't an exact word for it in your human English. It literally means 'one who spreads the pitch', but more colloquially-"

"A pain in the ass?"

Danovan laughed, a hearty, full-bodied thing, and it warmed me from the inside out to hear it. "Precisely." He glanced my way and smiled to find me smiling at him. I get the sense that he wanted to keep me talking, that he wanted nothing more than for me to keep my mind from the horrors we'd seen and experienced. And I was more than grateful for the distraction. "What about your family?"

I leaned back in my seat and watched the grass go by, taller than me, though easily bowled over by the rover. "There isn't much to tell, I'm afraid," I said quietly. "I was an only child. My parents were scientists-chemists, actually. And they imparted in me a profound love of science." I paused, glancing up at his face, which had such a pleasant little smile on it, I almost didn't tell him the rest of the story. "They were killed in a lab accident fifteen years ago."

He sighed, all the light going out of his expression. "I'm sorry."

I'm apparently super great at killing conversations. But I didn't want to lie to him. I didn't want to have to put on that shiny, happy face that always felt so necessary with Christian. And, furthermore, I didn't have the God damned energy for it.

We drove on through the afternoon, stopping only when the light got too low on the horizon to safely cross the terrain. We would have switched on the headlights, but it ate too much of the energy, and we weren't sure when we would be able to recharge. Same went for the pressurized cabin that made things feel normal for me.

We drove to a clearing and parked underneath the protective cover of an old tree with huge leaves that created a canopy over the ground beneath. Danovan made us leaf beds and a fire, and we ate protein bars and drank bottled water in amiable silence.

But when the fire had died down and we'd drifted off to sleep, my mind wouldn't rest. I saw those ghastly images in my mind, the snarling faces of the recently murdered; the flower-bloom of the gunshot that claimed Dr. Pierce; the gooey viscera that coated the floor. And I shot up straight where I slept, coated in a layer of sweat that made me shiver in the cold air of evening. My heart was a war drum in my chest, and I couldn't get my breathing to normalize. I felt alone on a foreign world. I panicked.

"Danovan?"

Silence.

"Danovan?" I crawled on my hands and knees over to where he'd situated his leaves, only about

three feet away from where he'd situated mine, and gave him a gentle shake, trying to rouse him from his slumber. "Danovan!"

"Huh?" His eyes flew open, and he sat up on his elbows, jerking his head from left to right as he scanned the perimeter. "What? What is it?"

"I had a bad dream," I admitted, suddenly feeling completely and utterly absurd. Come on, Ara, I scolded myself. You are a grown adult. Act like it. "And, um, also? I'm cold."

I hadn't realized that I wanted to sleep in his arms when I first crawled over there. I think originally, I had just wanted him to stay up a bit, stoke the fire to keep the shadows at bay, and keep me company. But when he opened his arms to me, I immediately laid down with my head resting against the pillow of his bicep. His other arm, he wrapped around me, holding me tight against the washboard of his chest. I was dwarfed next to him, and with his body curled around mine like that, I was a little less frightened of the unknown enemies that lurked in the night.

I drifted slowly to consciousness the next morning, still wrapped up in his arms, my breasts pressed against the cradle of his large and powerful hand. I liked how safe I felt there, pressed against him, and snuggled down further, only to be met with the swell of his member, just as powerful, just as large, as his other appendages. But I didn't move. I wasn't scandalized. I couldn't recall a time I'd ever felt that safe, and his sleepy desires were innocent and unobtrusive. I wondered if I might reach back, stroke him to his full rigidity, and forget the nightmares of the last two days by inviting him to plunge home between my thighs. I could feel my desires sharpen by this sort of perversity, a need to join with him in our agony. Yes, we had suffered this tragedy but, yes, we were alive. The both of us. And this was how we could celebrate our survival. I could feel my pulse between my legs as I dampened with my wanting, but after the span of a few breaths, Danovan rolled over onto his back, slinging the arm that was once around me over his eyes to block out the morning light, and I couldn't help but smile a little. He didn't want me. This was just a physiological response, natural as yawning or thirst. It meant nothing.

I admonished myself quietly, and rose to my feet, stretching my arms high over my head. The day was bright and silent, and I was looking forward to arriving at the village later this evening. I had never experienced a Galatean village, and I was trying to make the best of a terrible situation. Perhaps

Wait. Silent.

The Caromays weren't singing.

"Danovan," I whispered, my eyes darting furtively over the expanse of the landscape. "Danovan...?"

I didn't see it at first. It blended easily in the tall grass, looked, in fact, like just another hill. The broad ridge of its humped back had moss growing on it, like the hair of a wooly mammoth, the perfect camouflage. But when it rose to its feet, I saw that it was no hill, though it was almost as big as one. The tri-horned monster looked like a cross between a rhinoceros and a mountain, with much sharper teeth. Those sharp teeth, in fact, it bared to me, showing me the green saliva dripping menacingly from its needle-point canines. It had four eyes-two in front and two on the sides that glowed a catlike green and were shrewd with its intelligence. Then it peeled back its grey-scaled lips and launched a missile of neon green spit right at me.

I knew enough to dive out of the way, but some splattered from the ground onto my leg, and I felt all sensation begin to drain out of that limb. I shrieked, stumbling toward the rover where I knew Danovan had kept a foraged pistol. But he was already there, rolling away from the rover with the gun in hand, and taking aim at the great beast that was gearing up to spit at us again. He shot once, twice, three times, right into the Ribomax's armored skull, and it staggered back, shaken but decidedly not dead. Danovan unloaded the rest of the rounds into the creature, but all it did was look at us like we had deeply offended it by not laying down and dying for its dining pleasure. All of the sensation was gone in my left leg, and it was creeping ever upward; I collapsed in the dirt where I stood.

Danovan darted over to me then and lifted me into his capable arms, scooping me and getting me seated and strapped into the passenger's seat of the rover. Then he rushed around to his side and snatched my keycard from where it was clipped to my jacket, using it to start the rover even as the Ribomax began to charge.

The left side of my face had grown numb as well; my left eye was going fuzzy. I swallowed hard and peered into the rear-view mirror-I tried to urge him to go faster, but my tongue was a heavy sea creature in the cavern of my mouth, and it wouldn't do what I told it to do. The Ribomax was gaining on us as Danovan urged the rover forward, only very slowly picking up speed. I thought you said these things weren't fast? I silently admonished Danovan, before everything went black.