Crash-Landed with the Weredragon Prince

Chapter 1

*** MARINA ***

The alarms were the first sign that everything had gone wrong.

Marina Livingstone grabbed the edge of her console as the Vulcana shuddered beneath her.

The ship had been cruising smoothly for weeks, and now the floor was tilting at an angle that no spacecraft should ever achieve.

Red lights flashed across every screen in the science bay. The sound was deafening.

"All hands, brace for impact! This is not a drill!" Captain Okafor's voice boomed through the intercom, strained but steady.

Marina didn't need to be told twice. She threw herself into the nearest crash seat and pulled the harness tight across her chest. Her equipment; months of carefully organized research samples, slid off the counters and shattered on the floor.

She winced but didn't move. The samples weren't worth her life.

The ship hit something, hard.

The impact threw her forward against the harness.

Her teeth slammed together. The lights went out, then flickered back in emergency red.

The shuddering stopped, replaced by an eerie stillness that was somehow worse.

Through the porthole, she could see dust and debris settling around the hull.

They'd landed, or crashed. The distinction was going to matter.

"Marina! You okay?" Athena's voice cut through the ringing in her ears.

Her younger sister appeared in the doorway of the science bay, sidearm already drawn, blonde ponytail swinging.

She looked like she'd just walked out of a combat simulation, not a near-death experience.

That was Athena. The universe could be ending and she'd face it with a gun and an attitude.

"I'm fine. What happened?"

"Gravitational anomaly pulled us off course. We tried to correct, but the planet's atmosphere grabbed us before Okafor could compensate. We're on the surface of..." Athena checked her wrist link. "Ceylara. Red Wall 7. Uncharted."

"Uncharted is not reassuring."

"Nothing about this is reassuring. Okafor's checking the hull.

He says we might've cracked the port stabilizer, which means we're not flying anywhere until it's fixed.

" Athena holstered her weapon, though Marina noticed she didn't click the safety.

"The good news is we're alive. Forty-seven crew, all accounted for. "

"And the bad news?"

"The air out there is breathable but barely. It's hot as hell, and something tripped the external sensors about three minutes after we landed. Movement. Big movement."

Marina stood and crossed to the main viewport.

The world outside was red. Not a pleasant red; not autumn leaves or sunset, but a hostile red.

Cracked rock stretched in every direction, broken by smoking vents that spewed yellowish gas.

Two suns blazed overhead, close enough that their light had a physical weight.

The sky was brown where it should've been blue.

There was no vegetation she could see. No water, just rock and heat and the vague shimmer of something moving at the edge of her vision.

"That's... not great," Marina said.

"Understatement of the century," Athena agreed. "But we need to know what we're dealing with. I want to take a team outside. Short recon. A quarter mile in each direction. See if there's water, shelter, anything useful."

"We don't even know if those vents are toxic."

"The sensors say the air is breathable. The vents are sulfuric, which means stay upwind. I'm not suggesting a picnic, Marina. I'm suggesting we figure out where we are before whatever tripped those sensors figures out we're here."

Marina looked at her sister. Athena was three years younger and approximately three decades more reckless, but she wasn't wrong. Sitting inside a damaged ship on an unknown planet waiting for something to come to them was not a strategy. It was a death sentence with extra steps.

"Fine. Take Peter and two of his security team. Stay in radio contact. If you see anything you can't identify, you come back. You don't engage."

"When have I ever engaged unnecessarily?"

"Do you want the list chronologically or alphabetically?"

Athena grinned. It was the grin that had gotten her into and out of more trouble than Marina could count. "Thirty minutes. We'll be back before you've finished cataloging whatever's left of your samples."

She was gone before Marina could respond. That was also Athena.

Marina turned back to the viewport. The red world stared back. Somewhere out there, something was moving, and she was responsible for forty-seven people who were counting on her to keep them alive long enough to get home. She didn't even know where home was from here.

She pulled up the navigation data on her console and started calculating. Panic was a luxury she couldn't afford. Data was free.

* * *

The recon team returned in twenty-two minutes. Athena's face told Marina everything before her sister opened her mouth.

"There's life out there," Athena announced, dropping into a chair in the briefing room. Peter stood behind her, looking pale. The two security officers flanked the door, still gripping their weapons.

"What kind of life?"

"The bad kind. We found these worm-looking things near the vents. Tube worms, maybe, about a yard long. They spit acid, Marina. Actual acid. Peter's boot is half-dissolved."

Peter held up the boot in question. The sole was eaten through, the edges still smoking faintly. "It barely missed my foot," he confirmed. He was trying to sound calm. He wasn't succeeding.

"Are they aggressive?"

"They didn't chase us. They seemed territorial; stay away from the vents and they leave you alone. But there were a lot of them, and they were big. The ones near the sulfur vents were the worst."

"Anything else?"

"Water. Sort of. There's a depression about four hundred yards northwest that has standing liquid. I wouldn't drink it without testing, but it's there. And..." Athena hesitated.

"And what?"

"I thought I saw something high up in the sky moving fast. Bigger than any bird I've ever seen. Could've been a heat shimmer, but Peter saw it too."

Peter nodded. "I saw it. It was big and it had wings."

The room was quiet for a moment.

Marina looked at each of them. Okafor had joined them by now, his dark face grave.

"We're alive. Forty-seven people are depending on us to keep them that way.

Athena, I want you to set up a perimeter.

Nothing gets within a hundred yards of this ship without us knowing about it.

Peter, work with the engineering team on that stabilizer. If we can fix it, we can leave."

"And if we can't?" Peter asked.

"Then we adapt. We find water, we find food, and we survive until rescue comes or we fix the ship ourselves. This isn't the first time humans have crash-landed somewhere hostile."

"It's the first time we've crash-landed on an alien planet with acid-spitting worms and something with wings," Athena pointed out.

"Then we'll be pioneers. Put it on your resume." Marina turned to her console. The humor was thin, but it was all she had. Fear would come later, in the dark, when she was alone. Right now, she had work to do.

She activated the ship-wide channel. "All crew, this is Marina Livingstone. We've completed an initial surface survey. Ceylara is habitable but hostile. Department heads will meet in the briefing room in thirty minutes. Until then, stay inside the ship. I repeat, stay inside."

She released the channel. Steady voice, and calm delivery. Forty-seven people drawing comfort from the steadiness. That was the burden of being in charge. People trusted you, and then you had to earn it.

Through the viewport, the twin suns of Ceylara blazed down on red rock and acid-spitting creatures and a world that didn't want them there. Marina intended to survive it anyway.

* * *

The department heads filed into the briefing room looking exactly the way Marina expected: scared and trying not to show it.

Dr. Vasquez from medical had her tablet clutched to her chest like a shield.

Engineering Chief Rowan was already talking numbers under his breath; fuel consumption, structural integrity, repair timelines.

The biologist, Dr. Patel, kept glancing at the viewport as if something might come through the glass at any moment.

Marina had spent the last eight minutes organizing her data into something that resembled a plan. It wasn't a great plan. But it was better than no plan, and right now that was the bar.

"Here's what we know," she began. "We're on Ceylara, designated Red Wall 7 in the exploration database. It's uncharted, which means nobody's been here before us and nobody knows we're here. The ship sustained damage to the port stabilizer during landing. Chief Rowan?"

"It's fixable," Rowan said. He was a large man with careful hands and a voice that always sounded like he was delivering bad news, even when he wasn't. "But I need parts we don't have.

The stabilizer's main coupling sheared clean through.

I can jury-rig a temporary fix, maybe, but it won't hold through atmospheric exit. We need proper materials."

"What kind of materials?"

"Metal alloy of a specific grade. We might find something compatible on the surface, but I'd need to test it. Could take days or weeks."

The room absorbed this quietly.

"The surface environment is hostile but survivable," Marina continued. "Breathable air, extreme heat, sulfuric vent activity. Dr. Patel, what can you tell us about the wildlife?"

Patel cleared her throat. She was a small woman who spoke in precise sentences and who had, Marina knew, a background in xenobiology that was about to become spectacularly relevant.

"Based on Athena's recon data, we're looking at a primarily volcanic ecosystem.

The tube worms near the vents appear to be the dominant surface fauna.

They're chemosynthetic; they feed on sulfur compounds, not sunlight.

The acid spit is a defense mechanism, likely evolved against predators. "