Alien Blueprint (Mothership #2)

Chapter 1

Jalina

The charcoal stick snapped between my fingers.

I stared at the broken pieces in my palm, then at the half-finished sketch in my notebook, Dana in her ceremonial wrappings, Er'dox's massive hand cradling hers with impossible gentleness.

The celebration hall stretched behind them in my drawing, filled with Zandovians and the handful of humans who'd become our makeshift family aboard Mothership.

Six months since we'd been rescued from that hell planet.

Six months since Dana had pulled us through survival by sheer force of will and engineering brilliance.

And now she was bonded. Married, in human terms, though the Zandovian ceremony involved bio-synchronized vows I still didn't fully understand.

I was happy for her. I was.

The ache in my chest was just homesickness. Had to be.

"Jalina, you're going to wear through the paper if you keep erasing that same line.

" Bea's voice cut through my thoughts, clinical and precise as a scalpel.

She sat across the table in our shared quarters, reviewing medical files on her datapad with the same intensity she'd brought to every trauma case she'd handled on Earth.

I looked down. My thumb had smudged the charcoal line I'd been perfecting, the exact angle of Dana's smile, genuine joy mixed with something deeper. Security. Belonging.

"It's not right yet," I muttered, reaching for a fresh stick from my rapidly depleting supply.

"It's the fourth version you've drawn tonight.

" Elena appeared from the sleeping alcove, her wild curly hair even more chaotic than usual.

Our electrical systems specialist moved through the quarters like a caffeinated hummingbird, all kinetic energy barely contained in her compact frame.

"Dana's ceremony was beautiful. Your sketch is beautiful. You're stalling."

"I'm not—"

"You've been sketching Dana and Er'dox for three hours." Bea closed her datapad with a decisive snap. "Which you do when you're processing something you don't want to talk about."

I adjusted my glasses, a nervous habit that had gotten worse since we'd been stranded in an alien galaxy.

The frames were Earth-made, one of the few personal items I'd managed to grab before our escape pod had crashed.

Every time I pushed them up my nose, I remembered the optometrist's office in Seattle, the rain against the windows, the barista who always drew hearts in my latte foam.

All of it impossibly far away. Or maybe impossibly destroyed, we still didn't know what had happened to the rest of Liberty after the wormhole tore our colony ship apart.

"I'm fine," I said, adding shadow to Er'dox's bronze skin in the drawing. The geometric patterns on Zandovian bodies were endlessly fascinating, traditional markings that told stories I was only beginning to understand. "Just... thinking about the ceremony. The vows they exchanged."

"About how Dana's building a life here while you're still designing one that might never exist?

" Elena dropped onto the sleeping platform beside me, close enough that I caught the scent of ozone that always clung to her after a shift in Engineering.

"We all feel it, Jalina. That weird guilt about adapting too well. "

Bea's gray-blue eyes fixed on me with an uncomfortable perception. "You're afraid that being happy means you've given up on going home."

Trust Bea to cut straight to the infected tissue.

"Earth might not even exist anymore," I said quietly. "That wormhole, we have no idea if it just displaced us or if it destroyed something. And here I am, sketching alien weddings and worrying about ceiling heights in hypothetical expansion projects."

"Hypothetical?" Bea's eyebrow arched. "Captain Tor'van reassigned you to Operations two months ago specifically because your design skills are needed. That's not hypothetical."

No. It wasn't.

Two months ago, I'd been working in Medical with Zorn.

Gentle, patient Zorn who'd treated our injuries with such care after the rescue.

I'd been organizing supply storage, trying to make myself useful while nursing an architecture degree that seemed utterly pointless light-years from any human settlement.

Then Captain Tor'van had summoned me to his office.

I remembered the walk there, convinced I was being fired from my menial job. The Captain was imposing even by Zandovian standards, nine feet of scarred silver skin and cybernetic enhancements, a living reminder that space was hostile and survival wasn't guaranteed.

Instead, he'd asked about my background. Listened as I stumbled through an explanation of urban planning, settlement design, the beautiful blueprints I'd drawn for humanity's expansion into the stars. Blueprints that would never be built now.

"We're expanding Mothership's habitation sectors," he'd said in that gravelly voice, his cybernetic eye whirring as it focused on me. "Zor'go needs someone who understands how beings live, not just how structures stand. You'll report to Operations tomorrow."

Just like that, my entire purpose had shifted.

Working with Zor'go was complicated.

The Head of Mothership Operations and City Planning was brilliant. Visionary. And completely terrifying in a way that had nothing to do with his eight-and-a-half-foot height or the crystalline blue markings that shimmered across his silver-gray skin when he was deep in concentration.

No, Zor'go was terrifying because he saw things in dimensions I could barely comprehend.

Spatial flows, traffic patterns, efficiency matrices.

His office was a forest of holographic blueprints of entire city sectors floating in mid-air, rotating through his long, elegant fingers as he adjusted power distribution or recalculated structural loads.

And I was supposed to contribute to that genius?

For two months, I'd been sketching ideas, suggesting modifications, trying to prove I was worth the reassignment. Zor'go barely acknowledged my presence most days. He'd glance at my drawings, nod curtly, then return to his holoprojectors like I'd merely confirmed something he already knew.

It shouldn't have bothered me. I was lucky to be working in my field at all. But something about his dismissiveness made me want to prove myself, to make him actually see me instead of just tolerating my existence on his team.

"You're doing it again," Elena said, poking my shoulder. "That thing where you bite your lip and spiral into overthinking."

I released my lip. When did I start doing that?

"Zor'go intimidates me," I admitted. "He's... a lot."

"He's a socially awkward genius who lives in his head," Bea said. "Like you, just eight feet taller and silver."

"I'm not—"

"Jalina. You joined an interstellar colony mission to design settlements on alien worlds. You're absolutely a dreamer who lives in her head." Elena grinned. "It's one of your best features."

A soft chime interrupted before I could formulate a response. My datapad—the Zandovian-issued device that had replaced my Earth tablet—lit up with an incoming message.

My heart did something complicated when I saw the sender: Zor'go.

Report to Operations 0600. Major project briefing. Come prepared with settlement integration concepts.

That was it. No greeting, no context. Just Zor'go's typical communication style as precise, efficient, devoid of unnecessary pleasantries.

"Well?" Elena leaned over to read the message. "Oh damn. 0600? That's in seven hours."

I checked the time display. She was right. It was past midnight, I'd spent the entire evening at Dana's ceremony and then holed up in our quarters sketching instead of sleeping.

"'Come prepared with settlement integration concepts,'" I read aloud, my mind already racing. "What does that even mean? Integration of what? For whom?"

"Only one way to find out." Bea stood, stretching her long frame. "Sleep. You'll need to be sharp if Zor'go's finally giving you a real project."

Sleep. Right.

As if my brain would shut down now, with that message burning in my consciousness like a challenge.

After Bea retreated to her sleeping alcove and Elena finally crashed in hers, I pulled out my battered notebook again.

The Earth-made paper was getting sparse.

I'd already filled three notebooks since the rescue, sketching everything from Mothership's corridor designs to the alien crew members I worked alongside.

Drawing helped me process. Helped me translate the overwhelming alienness of my new existence into something I could understand through line and shadow and form.

I flipped past the ceremony sketches to a fresh page and started mapping out ideas. Settlement integration, that implied new arrivals. Mothership rescued stranded beings from all over the Shorstar Galaxy, and we were far from the only species trying to make a new life aboard this massive vessel.

What would new arrivals need? Privacy but not isolation. Community spaces that felt safe. Sight lines that prevented that trapped feeling we'd all experienced after weeks in the cave on the burning planet.

My charcoal flew across the page. Modular quarters that could adapt to different species' needs.

Common areas positioned at natural intersection points.

Ceiling variations to break up the monotony of endless corridors.

Green spaces, even artificial ones, because beings needed to see growing things, to feel connected to something organic.

An hour passed. Then two.

My hand cramped but I kept sketching, losing myself in the creative flow that had always been my escape. On Earth, I'd spent late nights like this in architecture school, fueled by coffee and possibility, designing buildings that would never be built but felt vital anyway.

These designs felt different. They might actually matter.