A circle cut in half with a line.

I had no idea what it meant but the alien had repeated the gesture until I repeated it back. That meant it understood basic communication. In other words, it was definitely a sentient being and not a ravenous animal. Before I had no plan other than simply wandering from room to room, marveling at alien machinery, and avoiding the patches of caked blood and gore that coated some areas.

There were no bodies or rather no dead ones at least. The room I stumbled into was filled with row upon row of closet sized cells packed with between two and four individuals. Some were too full for the creatures to comfortably lay down, and in many they sat leaned against the walls.

Thousands of these creatures pressed against the glass to stare at me as I passed and I wondered if they were curious or hungry. They might well be predators eyeing their next meal but at this point I was out of options.

I could not read the alien script nor could I navigate this strange vessel. Even if I was free I had not yet left the belly of the beast. I would need these creature’s help to return home, if that was even possible. So I continued my march, past the rows and rows of windows with staring faces and blank gray masks that imprinted some humanity onto these alien’s carapaces and buglike features until eventually I reached the end of the hall where I found a small room with a computer built into a desk.

Humans liked to have separate components. A given setup would have a computer, a monitor, a keyboard and everything else all connected by wires and layered onto a table. The aliens seemed to prefer to integrate everything into one piano shaped piece of furniture. Computers like this were littered around the ship, most being made of thick steel and bolted onto the ground. I did not know if the size was due to a large protective casing or if the alien’s computer systems were simply large.

What I did know from my explorations so far was that if you swung a chair at the screen it would bounce off without leaving so much as a scratch. I stopped and stared directly at what must have been the keyboard, searching for the correct symbol. A circle cut in half. That was what I needed to find.

I stared at the keys finding no such symbol. I looked down at what must have been hundreds of different buttons each labeled with a small character annotating its use.

None of them were circles with lines through them. There was one that was a hexagon with prongs, but none of them resembled what I was looking for. After I spent half an hour staring at the same symbols I concluded that there was no way I simply missed it by mistake. Then I checked the computer screen, maybe it had an off or on switch that looked similar? I turned my focus to the entire body of the device, looking for some sort of hidden key or dial. The computers I knew of had buttons all over them despite most being positioned on a keyboard.

I combed over every inch of this device and found that no such switch existed. For a moment I stood in silence feeling my emotions well up in my throat and realized I had managed to hope this button would save me. That somehow this would allow me to communicate my problem with these strange aliens and that I could survive and return home. I felt my emotions overcome me, rage at those things that abducted me, rage at myself for feeling such hope, rage at the others who had died before I could escape and left me here alone.

I screamed and slammed my fist into the computer, and when I indented the keys the screen flashed to life. I wiped my eyes and looked at what it was showing me.

The monitor displayed squares, rows and rows of equally sized blue squares. It was a grid and each box was marked with symbols. I leaned in closer and found a pattern.

The first letter was a hexagon with prongs, followed by a set of symbols. Below that was a hexagon with prongs, followed by different symbols. An entire column was marked with these hexagons and then differentiated with different symbols. Then another row was each marked by some type of triangle.

Each cell has a three digit code, the first symbol marked its column and the next two marked which row it was in. I turned and glanced through the door, finding a small plate above each cell door with symbols that matched what I was seeing on the computer.

“This is column backwards-seven and row circle then plus-sign. Which means…”

I turned to the computer, finding the box marked with the same symbols and pressed my finger onto it.

“I am here.”

The revelation felt like I was finally understanding something, for a moment I forgot my fears. Sure I had been strapped to a table and was about to be dissected by a strange alien race who abducted me, and now I was stuck in a giant metal tomb that was plummeting through space with no known method of returning to my home. But I now knew where I was, it said so on the computer.

When I removed my finger from the screen I noticed that the box had changed colors and two symbols now hovered over that square on the grid. One with a cube outline, and the other the fabled circle with a line through it.

I pressed it with no hesitation, and then felt my stomach drop when one of the cell doors behind me hissed as the door dragged itself open. I froze as one of the alien’s dark green, four toed feet made its way onto the metal.

I hadn’t actually thought that much about actually meeting one of these creatures, I still had a scalpel with me, but I felt more naked without something proper to defend myself with than the lack of clothes. Sure if I couldn’t find help to escape this ship it would be my tomb, but on the flip side having no back up plan for if this thing chose to disembowel me was perhaps the stupidest thing I had ever done.

It took one step towards me and I shrank back. It took another wavering step and fell to its knee, I heard it gasping through its thick mask and stared for a moment. I did not know if these aliens developed fat or if these insectoids even had muscles the way I understood them. This thing did appeared to be very thin for whatever reason. I had been in one of those pods without food for awhile, even now the hunger gnawed at me though at this point it felt like a background emotion. I wondered how much these things had been fed, and how long they had been in here.

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Surely longer than me at least, did they suffer from muscular atrophy as well?

My fears began to recede slightly, though I still kept as much distance between myself and the alien creature as possible. If it did seem aggressive I could probably kick it in the head fairly easily given the size difference. The thing might have been slightly over four feet tall at the most.

It’s mask crackled with the sound of radio static, “[Eiee, hggg-]”

I understood it was speaking with me, though I would not have been capable of reproducing the same sounds it used. It gestured towards the computer and I shrugged.

It did not have shoulders and tilted its head, I did the same and it reached up into the air.

Something tall.

It reached its arms out.

About this wide.

It stuck one of its arms out behind it.

Mimicking a tail.

I managed to put together that it was asking about the lizard people, our captors, and I thought about how I could communicate that I hadn’t found a single living creature on this ship other than us.

I squatted slightly, mimicking the lizard creature’s bowed legs, then pushed an arm behind me like a tail, and then put one of my hands up like a snout. The alien stopped moving, now enamored it began silently watching, as I pretended to tromp around before falling over.

After I hit the ground the alien tilted its head once again before stepping back, leaning against the wall and loudly conversing with some other aliens it shared a room with. I stood up, and the alien pointed at where I hit the ground. I stood staring blankly.

Did it want me to lay down?

I squatted and began to lie down when the alien interrupted me, “[Eieee, hggggg.]”

The loud noise startled me and I leapt up, the alien approached and I stepped back towards the room until my back hit the wall. I raised my fists and watched the creature turn slightly.

It stood between me and where I laid down, then pointed to where I had been laying. Where the lizard person I pretended to be was lying.

I nodded, and started walking towards the alien-

I slowed, I did not want to get close or, god forbid, to touch that thing. I felt my knees lock up subconsciously and I started edging to the side of it.

The thing was in the doorway, I could not get past without getting close.

It seemed to sense my frustration and backed up, allowing me to walk in a wide arc around it and lead the way.

We walked back down the hall, every so often pausing as the alien leaned against the grey metallic wall to catch its breath. It seemed that walking short distances tired the thing out after however long it had been stuck in here.

It brought me some piece of mind, it could never catch me if I ran so long as I wasn’t cornered. It had a talon-like claw on one of its thick fingers, but so long as I didn’t let it rip into me with that I would probably be fine. We climbed a set of stairs up to the rest of the ship and I ended up waiting at the top for the alien to make its way upwards. Then we set off to the left.

I had a feeling that it wanted to verify if they would be punished for escaping, to see how many of their captors were still alive before considering rebellion. If I showed one splattering it might take that to be a fluke, if there was only evidence of one body then the rest of the ship might be in the middle of repelling boarders or splitting off into parties to capture the lone human stowaway rummaging around.

But, if I showed them what happened in the locker room I found before I even came down to the prisons…

Whatever it was that killed all of those lizard men hadn’t shown itself since I got up and so I moved more boldly, walking at full speed careless about the noise I was making. We went up the stairs, leaving the prison. Then turned and began making our way down the halls, strolling rather than moving slowly and quietly.

When I had come this way before I was preoccupied with staying away from the vents, I had spent hours moving as silently as I could. Acting like there was a beast waiting to leap at me from every corner. After so long without seeing anything alive I had become familiar with the blood stained terrain, complacent even.

Even while I had crept through the ship, flinching at every shadow, I still happened upon enough scenes pointing to the grisly fate of the crew. The ship was covered in splatterings of the alien’s green blood. One room could be absolutely covered in the filth, and then the next room could be untouched. You could walk down a hallway and see nothing wrong, until you looked up and saw the remains of what used to be a person coating the ceiling.

The sheer randomness pieced itself together into a simple story, something had gouged the crew out of existence. The survivors had banded together as best they could only after most of the crew had been wiped out. In some of the larger rooms large numbers of the aliens had made last stands together behind improvised barricades. One warehouse I had walked into had been filled with disassembled shelves and crates placed in front of all the entrances.

It didn’t save them, one of the biggest gatherings was here in the armory I was leading the insectoid to. They had piled into this room to equip themselves, then something had cut the power. When that happened none of the doors would open and neither would the lockers. They had been trapped unarmed in the dark with the monsters.

I opened the door leading the insectoid inwards, the light bulbs would not light no matter how many times I flicked the switch beside the door and so we were left with what lighting could make it in from the hallway. The acidic stench was what hit me first, it burned in the back of my throat and reminded me of breathing in smoke from a campfire.

The creature peered in, staring at the bloodstains. Thick piles of unknown flesh, the harrowing lack of what logically should have been in here.

Where did the bodies go? Would it believe me if I pointed to the ripped open vents? Maybe it would follow the blood trails and come to that conclusion itself.

I wondered at that moment if I should be more fearful of the creaks and moans of the ship. The everpresent sound of metal expanding or shrinking. The hums and vibrations of motors and fans that kept the ship alive and the sounds of metal as it heated and expanded, before cooling and shrinking.

Every so often you heard a sound, as if someone had dropped a heavy weight onto the metallic floor, but when you turned you saw nothing.

The insectoid did not shrink back like I did when I first saw the scene. It instead stepped forwards, and then stomped straight through the piles of gore to reach its target. I watched it slam at the shutters, trying to open up the container to access the weapons within. It brought its fists up and down, kicked and even jammed its talons into the seams of the doors, but ultimately failed.

The original inhabitants could not breach those doors, at least not without the power on and it was unlikely they were as weak from starvation and confinement as we were.

Even now my stamina far outclassed this creature, the insectoid raged against the weapons that were one thin but impenetrable wall away. After less than a minute the effort left it out of breath. It collapsed for a moment.

I couldn’t make out facial features through the mask, what should I do if it fell unconscious?

It slouched, breathing heavily, before trying and failing to rise to its feet. I watched for minutes as it regained its breath before it could rise onto its shaking legs. It stepped through the gore, before staring down and realizing just what its bare appendages were touching. It looked to the door where I stood and finally saw it.

Footprints. My footprints. I brought him to this place to show him the gore. I knew of this place because I had been here first. I had slammed against those same barriers, trying desperately to arm myself with the weapons I could see but never touch behind the metal casing and I had tracked the blood I disregarded in my desperation all the way down the hall.

The creature depressed slightly, seeing the futility of its actions, before shaking itself and wandering back down the way we came.

This time I followed, but I didn't know what the current plan was. Somehow I needed to communicate to this group the urgency of me getting back to Earth.

Right now I would probably need to compromise on this goal for the basics, finding something I could consider edible and maybe a nice safe corner to take a nap.

Hopefully these creatures understood more about the situation and could take charge.