Chapter 2 #2
I pushed myself to my feet and joined her, because that's what we did. We kept each other from disappearing into the dark places in our own heads.
"Anything?" I asked, though I already knew the answer.
"Nothing. Same as yesterday. Same as the day before."
The sky was doing its sunset thing. Okay, I'd give this planet this much: it had spectacular sunsets. Purple and orange and deep crimson, like the atmosphere was on fire. Beautiful and deadly, just like everything else here.
"Three more hours," I said.
"Then what? We run around in the dark, hoping we don't trip over something that wants to eat us?"
"That's the plan."
"It's a shit plan, Dana."
"Got a better one?"
Elena turned to face me, and there was something in her expression I couldn't quite read. Fear, maybe. Or resignation. "No. I don't have a better plan. I don't have any plan. I had one job, pilot us to safety, and I failed."
"The wormhole wasn't your fault."
"Wasn't it? I was at the controls. I should have—"
"What? Out-flown physics we don't understand? Anticipated a cosmic event no one saw coming?" I grabbed her shoulder, made her look at me. "We survived. That's what matters. We're alive, and as long as we're alive, we keep moving forward."
She nodded, but I could see she didn't believe it. Not really. None of us believed it. We just said it often enough that it felt like the truth.
The temperature was dropping fast now, the way it always did when the sun started its descent. In another hour, we'd be able to venture outside without fear of our skin peeling off. Another hour of waiting, of existing in this liminal space between burning day and dangerous night.
I went back to check the beacon one more time, because checking the beacon was something I could control. The numbers hadn't changed. It was still broadcasting, still draining our power reserves, still screaming into the void with no way of knowing if anyone was listening.
"Contact in T-minus thirty minutes," I called out, using the old mission terminology that felt like a lifetime ago. "Everyone gear up."
The cave became a flurry of controlled motion. Women pulling on salvaged gear, checking makeshift weapons, preparing for another night of desperate foraging. We'd gotten good at this, I had to admit. We'd developed routines, systems, a rhythm to our survival that was almost professional.
Almost.
I was strapping on my own pack when the cave entrance suddenly blazed with light, not the fading purple-orange of sunset, but white-hot and impossibly bright, like someone had turned on a spotlight that could illuminate planets.
"What the—" Elena's voice, sharp with surprise.
I spun around, hand instinctively reaching for the improvised weapon at my belt. Through the cave entrance, lights brightened in the sky. Massive lights. Descending lights.
My heart kicked into overdrive, adrenaline flooding my system with such force I actually staggered.
"Ship," someone breathed. "That's a ship."
For three seconds, maybe four, pure relief washed through me. Rescue. Someone had heard us. Someone was coming.
Then my engineer brain kicked back in, and I really looked at what was descending toward us.
That wasn't any design I'd ever seen. Not Earth tech. Not Liberty design. The geometry was all wrong, the lights configured in patterns that didn't match any vessel I'd studied in my training.
"That's not one of ours," I said, my voice cutting through the rising chatter.
"Does it matter?" Bea asked. "It's a ship. It's—"
"We don't know what it is."
The vessel was getting closer, impossibly large now that I could judge its scale. It had to be the size of a small city, all strange angles and surfaces that seemed to shift in the light. The roar of its engines—if they were engines—was building, a deep thrumming that I could feel in my bones.
"Weapons," I ordered, my command voice surprising even me. "Everyone who can stand, grab a weapon. We don't know if this is a rescue or something else."
The women moved, but I could see the hope war with fear on their faces. Because here was the terrible truth: we needed rescue so desperately that we'd take it from anyone, anything, even if it meant trading one death for another.
The ship was hovering now, maybe a hundred meters above the cave, its lights so bright I had to shield my eyes. Then something detached from its belly, a smaller craft, landing craft maybe, descending directly toward us.
"They're landing," Jalina said unnecessarily.
"I can see that."
My mind was racing, running through scenarios, calculating possibilities. First contact. We were about to make first contact with an alien species, and we were doing it half-starved, desperate, and armed with improvised weapons that wouldn't do shit against anything with actual technology.
The landing craft touched down maybe twenty meters from the cave entrance, close enough that I could see details now. Close enough to see that it was definitely designed by someone, something that didn't think like humans. The hatch was opening, ramp extending.
"Stay together," I said quietly. "Whatever happens, we stay together."
Figures emerged from the craft. Tall figures. Really tall figures. The ramp lights backlit them, making it hard to see details, but I could make out shapes that were humanoid but wrong in subtle ways.
One of them took a step forward, and the lights hit them full-on.
My breath caught in my throat.
Eight feet tall, maybe more. Muscular in a way that suggested serious gravity on their home world.
Skin that had a blue bronze sheen to it, marked with geometric patterns that might have been tattoos or might have been something else entirely.
Four-fingered hands. Eyes that caught the light with an amber gleam.
Alien. Unmistakably, undeniably alien.
The figure, male, I thought, though I had no idea if that category even applied, was looking at us. At our small, fragile, desperate group of humans huddling at the mouth of a cave on a planet that wanted us dead.
He made a sound. Words, probably, in a language I'd never heard.
No one moved. No one breathed.
The alien tried again, different sounds this time, still incomprehensible.
"We don't understand," I said, hating how small my voice sounded. "We're human. From... from far away. We don't speak your language."
More sounds from the alien. Then he turned, gesturing to others emerging from the craft. They were carrying equipment, scanners maybe, moving with purpose and efficiency that suggested this wasn't their first rescue operation.
Another alien approached, bigger than the first, if that was possible, with darker skin marked with different patterns. He moved with a careful deliberation, like he was trying not to spook us.
Smart. We looked about three seconds from bolting.
He pointed at us, then at the landing craft, made a gesture that was probably supposed to be reassuring.
"I think..." Bea's voice was barely a whisper. "I think they want us to go with them."
"No shit," Elena muttered. "Question is: do we trust them?"
I looked back at our cave. At our dying beacon and our dwindling supplies and our injured lying on makeshift beds. Looked at the women who'd survived a disaster beyond imagination, only to face death by slow starvation on a hostile world.
Then I looked at the aliens. At their ship hanging in the sky like a mechanical god. At the technology that had brought them here, to this exact spot, at this exact time.
Terror and hope warred in my chest, two sides of the same desperate coin.
"We don't have a choice," I said finally. "We're out of time, out of supplies, and out of options."
I took a step forward, hands raised in what I hoped was a universal gesture of non-aggression. The blue-bronze skinned alien watched me approach, those amber eyes tracking my movement with an intelligence that was simultaneously comforting and deeply unsettling.
When I was close enough to see my reflection in his eyes—close enough to smell copper and ozone coming off his skin, I stopped.
"I'm Dana," I said clearly, touching my chest. "We're... we need help. Please."
The alien stared at me for a long moment. Then, slowly, deliberately, he touched his own chest and made a sound that I knew was a name, even though I had no hope of pronouncing it.
Behind me, I heard someone start to cry. Tears of relief, probably. Or fear. Maybe both.
The alien gestured again toward the landing craft, more insistent this time.
I turned back to face the others. Fifteen women were looking at me for the answer, for the call that would determine whether we lived or died.
"We're going," I said. "Everyone. Now."
"Dana—" Jalina started.
"Now," I repeated. "Grab what you can carry. Help the injured. Move."
They moved. Because that's what we did. We survived, and we adapted, and we made impossible choices because the alternative was giving up.
I was the last one to board the landing craft, taking one final look at the cave that had been our shelter, our prison, our last defense against a planet that wanted us dead.
The alien was waiting at the top of the ramp, those amber eyes still watching me with that uncomfortable intensity.
I met his gaze, tried to convey everything I couldn't say in words: gratitude and terror and desperate hope and the bone-deep exhaustion of carrying fifteen other lives on my shoulders.
Then I stepped onto the craft, into the belly of an alien ship, and the ramp began to close.
Behind us, through the narrowing gap, I caught one last glimpse of the cave entrance, of the planet's surface beginning to glow red with heat as the sun started its climb.
The ramp sealed shut with a hydraulic hiss.
We were committed now. For better or worse.
And as the craft lifted off, carrying us toward the massive ship hanging in the sky above, I couldn't help but wonder if we'd just been rescued or captured.
I guess we were about to find out.