3. Sticky, Cheap, and Poorly Engineered
STICKY, CHEAP, AND POORLY ENGINEERED
ELENA – XYTHEOS SYSTEM
The universe tries to kill us again before we even touch dirt.
We hit Xytheos’s atmosphere.
The pressure spike feels like the sky’s had a bad day and we’re the last straw. Heat builds fast. Shields waver. I watch the status dip from six percent to three, two, then—
I look away.
The hull is screaming with the friction and stress, but at least there’s enough of it left to make noise.
“Strap in!” Sloane shouts. “Going to be a rough one!”
Twenty women aboard a craft built for ten is not within safety specifications for a crash landing, but we’ve done our best. I start counting under my breath. Seven. Six. Five—
Below us, I see blue oceans and a dense jungle canopy. Beyond, there are other biomes. It’s a beautiful planet. It’s a shame about what they’re going to do to us if we live.
Red strobes blink weakly. Then they fail.
A bolt of green lightning tears across the sky, so bright it punches through a viewport.
The shuttle yaws hard to port, and we slow.
Hard. We must be coming in way too fast. The g-force hits like a body slam.
Limbs tangle. Metal groans. Flesh collides with wet thuds.
We’re nothing but meat bags in seatbelts and poorly chosen cargo netting.
The coolant line blows overhead with a hiss and a splatter.
Something pink and sticky rains down. Hope nobody’s synapses get fried.
“Sticky. Cheap. Poorly engineered!” shouts Dana.
Piper, bleeding from her temple and grinning like a madwoman, swipes it off her face. "Let's hope that's not a metaphor for our love lives!"
Someone chokes out a hysterical snort. It might be me.
Four. Three—
I can just reach the control panel. I flail at it with my fingertips. “Slow us down!”
The AI voice stutters in.
—WARNING. HULL TEMPERATURE EXCEEDS—EXCEEDS—EXCEEDS—
“Override!” My voice rips raw. “Decelerate! Initiate emergency landing procedures!”
—RECOMMEND IMMEDIATE DECELERATION—
“No shit!” Sloane shouts. “Do it!”
—UNABLE TO COMPLY—
There’s another flash of green.
“They’re shooting at us!” screams Reema.
“No!” I shout back, bumping against the bulkhead. “They’re slowing us down!”
The nose lurches sideways. My vision tunnels to a pinprick. Blood rushes from my head to my toes and back again.
We bounce like crash dummies inside our belts. The harness across my chest digs so deep it feels like it’s trying to unzip me.
Then—zero gravity.
Weightless.
Then the floor punches back. My skull snaps forward, then back. My body’s still here. That’s the only confirmation I get.
The shuttle rips open, and for the first time in my life, I see immense trees and a vast jungle.
I hope it’s not the last time.
I come to with a ringing in my ears, feeling like the whole evacuation was just a bad dream.
Then I realize we’ve landed on Xytheos, and the nightmare’s not over. It’s just changed shape. For a few seconds, I just lie there and listen as the ringing fades.
Everything is so quiet that I might be the only one alive. But someone next to me is breathing. I can feel it against my arm.
I force one eyelid open, dreading what I’m going to see.
I can’t see much. My vision’s doubled. Smudged. Like looking through water. I blink. Doesn’t help. The air smells like fresh dirt and something coppery. I touch my tongue to my teeth, counting. All present. Small victories.
My training kicks in. Fixing myself, Maya, and Dr. Patel is the priority, because we’re the ones who can fix the others.
I inhale slowly. Then, I wiggle my toes.
They respond—tight, twitchy, but functional.
I grope in the medkit strapped to me, pull out a tool, and run a quick scan on my head.
The world smudges and clears in a flash.
The world beyond my crash belt is wreckage. Ceiling panels and cables hang. A beam folded in on itself like origami.
Dr. Patel is already moving, professional calm kicking in. She’s barking orders, and Maya’s beside her in an instant. They both spot me and call to me in unison, “Elena!”
I follow without thinking, doing what we did for years during the war on New Terra. Fix bodies first. Panic later.
We check pulses, pupils, breathing.
It’s ugly, but minor for a crash landing. Bruises. Blood. Burns. It could be so much worse. We evacuate from the wreckage.
Outside the twisted hull, the world is alive. Everything moves. I’m not used to this. None of us is used to this.
The green vegetation is so dense it hurts to look at. Back on New Terra, we lived underground most of the time—safer that way. Easier to stay hidden in a universe full of people who want human women for more than conversation.
It’s not that I don’t like nature—it’s more like nature and I don’t really know each other. We’re getting acquainted fast. This place is like stepping inside a myth. A dangerous one.
Dr. Patel, Maya, and I move woman by woman, patching wounds.
Piper’s brow sealed with a strip. Reema’s got a head wound, but she’s lucid.
Dana’s already sitting upright, cradling bloody knuckles.
Everyone has at least one minor injury. Nothing unmanageable, though Dr. Patel is frowning more than I'd like.
When Dr. Patel gives the nod, I break off and head back to what’s left of the shuttle.
The AI’s voice box is fried. It might still be running, but it's voiceless. That's nightmarish if I think about it, but I can't fix it without diagnostics. I can’t run diagnostics because the panels are fused, and the systems are melted. Surprisingly, we don’t have any fatalities, even though half the forward compartment is open to the elements. They built this ship to get out fast and keep us alive. It did that. But it’s not even useful as a shelter anymore.
There’s one last hope. This wreck can’t get us off Xytheos, but maybe we can call for help.
The emergency beacon’s not where it should be. Probably thrown during the crash. Three full minutes of digging, bare-handed, splinters slicing skin, fingers going raw, and there it is, under a tangle of seat frames and half-melted foam.
I slam my fist on the top panel, and the red light goes steady. That little beacon feels like a lifeline. A tether to someone, anyone from New Terra, who might still be out there.
Red. Black. Red. Black. Flash.
I walk back out of the wreckage, knowing we don’t have much of a chance, but needing to share hope with the others.
I tell the others that the red flashing coming from the wreckage is the emergency beacon. “If any New Terrans are out there,” I murmur, “maybe they’ll pick up our emergency signal.”
Sloane snorts. One of those please snorts.
Piper grins, wincing as she adjusts her posture. “If they do, tell them to bring snacks. We don’t have any food.”
I whirl. “They didn’t put any aboard?”
Piper shakes her head. “If they did, it must have fallen out.”
“We could look for it,” I say, as the jungle hums. Nobody moves.
We’ve made quite an entrance. The broken trees around us and under the craft drip with viscous blue sap.
Insects—or something like them—click and chatter.
An insectlike creature the size of two of my hands put together zips past the opening in the hull. Too many wings. Too many legs.
A sound rises in the distance, and it’s got to be a very large animal. The sound is like a chainsaw crossed with a growl.
Across the valley, something answers it.
My skin gets goosebumps.
The others settle in beside me. No one speaks. No one talks about the people we lost on New Terra. No one says the word home. No one dares to ask what happens next. We just sit, watching the flash of the beacon.
Because whatever’s coming, it’s probably not from New Terra.