Navik

Navik blinked awake, and immediately the pungent tang of melted electronics filled his nostrils. He coughed once, then twice, and winced at the sharp pain in his belly. His body ached, but an experimental shrug told him nothing was broken. No time to run diagnostics now.

He scrambled to release his restraints, craning his neck to catch a glimpse of his creature. In the navigator’s seat, her eyes were still closed. She slumped, unmoving, her head lolling. Navik cursed, wishing he’d kept her encased in her bulky suit. He moved to her side, hovering his fingers near her speckled snout, waiting with bated breath.

When he felt the soft puff of air he nearly sagged with relief. Not dead, then.

Satisfied, he tore himself away from the alien and moved to the console. A quick scan revealed an electrical fire raging in the docking bay — a rupture in the fuel storage tank. His claws scraped along the console as he activated the containment protocols which, blessedly, seemed operational.

There was also irreparable damage on both thrusters, an external fissure in the main fuel tank, and life support was down. Oh, and the operator was in reboot, so no computer functions until he could reset it and assess the damage.

It was bad, but not the worst situation Navik had dealt with. He would survive. His gaze slid to the still-unconscious creature… it wasn’t his survival that he worried about.

With a sigh, he paced to the main viewport. It sported a new, large crack. From the vantage point, he could see they were grounded in the center of a rocky, windswept plateau. In front of the ship, there was a deep rut in the earth flanked by still-steaming vegetation. The groove traveled far, up the distorted peak of a cliff.

His spines snapped flat and he grimaced, wondering how much time he’d lost. It felt like the blink of an eye, but… it was longer. Navik tried not to dwell on it. He also refused to dwell on what would have happened to them — him and the creature — had he remained unconscious and allowed the fire in the docking bay to burn unchecked.

He shook his head once, hard, clearing it so that he could get to work.

A quick survey of the bridge revealed the extent of the damage. Not good, but salvageable. The computer system was still in reboot, and likely would be until he could get down to the maintenance override — so conveniently located in the docking bay — but the emergency batteries still held a charge.

Using a little juice from the backup system, he ran an environmental scan and studied it thoughtfully. Breathable atmosphere, at least. Moderate temperatures, pressure a little higher than he’d prefer. They would be able to survive here in the short term.

Navik peered out at the rocky landscape and scowled. Massive stones spired from the ground at odd angles. Twiggy vegetation covered almost everything, with an orange lichen marching up into the mountains. Barren.

A flash of light on the horizon caught his eye — sunlight, glinting off what he hoped was a meandering stream. Water. He watched it for a long moment, breathing in the sulfurous air leaking through the wreckage that once was his ship. It didn’t take long to come to a decision.

Gritting his teeth, he gathered what little supplies he kept on the bridge. Some hydration gel and prepackaged nutrition bars, enough for one. A bag of his favorite fried sylnto beans, leftover from his last station refuel. An emergency radio that would pick up local signals (and was suspiciously silent).

A short time later, he’d salvaged what he could. It wasn’t enough, but he prayed that was water he spied and not some atmospheric trick. It was the best he could do.

Navik turned back to his creature and scooped her up. She was breathing, softly, and he imagined that if it weren’t for the roar of the fire he’d be able to hear the faint thump of her heart — then he shook his head to banish that thought as quickly as it came. Ridiculous. Focus.

They needed to evacuate the ship. The fire might spread, he had no way of saying for sure. He murmured to his alien as he activated the emergency hatch. It creaked open, letting in a gust of that pungent air along with a fine dust that made his snout itch. He hesitated for only a moment before stepping out onto this unknown planet, his fragile charge cradled tightly against his chest.

Now to find shelter, water, and more supplies. And hopefully, when the fires burned out, answers about what in the universe was going on.

___

Lucy

Hot air, so hot it was blistering her skin even through her turnout gear. Oh fuck, she thought her mask was compromised, she couldn’t breathe. The taste of smoke. Scratchy eyes. Running, running as fast as she could with thirty pounds of gear on her back and a child in her arms. Between tenements, down an alleyway with fire roaring on either side. She had to get to the reservoir. Please, oh please, god — she leaped, plunging into the water and it was too deep, and she was struggling, fighting, holding the kid and clawing to the surface and—

Her eyes snapped open. The first thing she saw was a dark, uneven ceiling. Underneath her, she felt something hard and cold and curiously earthen. A groan escaped her lips before she could bite it back. She felt like she got her shit kicked in, like one tremendous bruise covered her from head to toe.

Lucy sucked in a great lungful, then another, not caring that the air smelled like deviled eggs left out overnight. She savored it.

And then the memories rushed back in. The Golden Pioneer. The attack. Tumbling through space, wondering if she should just take off her helmet and end it. And then the monster — the hulking, spined creature that moved like an animal on all fours. Its harsh grip and strange, rasping voice as it stripped off her EVA suit and...

And saved her life.

She shivered, she couldn’t help it. There was a sheen of sweat coating her, tacky and cold where her skin creased. She took another breath and realized it was a struggle. Like something was sitting on her chest, weighing her down. She twitched her fingers, then lifted her arm experimentally. They, too, felt leaden. What was going on here—

Her thoughts were interrupted by movement on the periphery of her vision. Scarcely daring to breathe, she tilted her head and peered into the darkness. It took her a moment to unscramble the images before her.

Lucy saw a cave, at least that’s what her brain said it was. It was a large space, maybe the size of a bedroom back home, with stone walls and a low ceiling worn smooth by time or erosion or both. Massive stone teeth (what were they called — stalactites, maybe) arched down at the mouth of the cave, which was hardly more than a horizontal crack in the stone anyway.

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But what had moved? With effort, she propped herself up on her elbows so she could survey her surroundings more fully. It was dark. The only light came from the mouth of the cave, a soft glow that looked suspiciously like moonlight. It could very well be, she reminded herself, but not from the moon she knew.

She waited several moments just watching for movement. But nothing caught her eye, and soon her racing heart settled and her breaths evened out.

Rolling to her knees, Lucy pulled herself into a kneeling position. The ceiling was so low that she could thought she could have reached up and touched it, had her muscles not felt so weak. Even kneeling took great effort. So much so that she worried she was in worse condition than she’d thought — with that in mind, she glanced at her smart band still thankfully held to her wrist with her dad’s old leather band. She stroked the imprinted letters once, twice, then activated the smart band.

It showed her vitals were normal, heart rate and blood pressure elevated but perhaps that was just stress. She flicked to the atmospheric scanner and her brows ticked up. According to the limited information the smart band could provide, the gravity was just under double that on Earth.

“No wonder this is so fucking hard,” she murmured, but she wasn’t scowling. If anything, she felt energized. She may be alone, but she was on a planet with a breathable atmosphere and she was not dead. That was worth a little optimism these days.

Now to figure out how she got here. Rocking forward, she crawled on her hands and knees toward the mouth of the cave. It was hard, harder than carrying forty pounds of wildland gear on her back, but it was doable. A few more steps and she’d be able to look out, at least get a lay of the land.

For the second time, movement caused her heart to jump into her throat. But this time, it was right in front of her, the monster, squeezing through the mouth of the cave on its belly.

For a moment, time stood still as she gawked into the face of the monster. The monster that looked like some sort of horrible mash-up between Alien and Predator and a Tolkien-esque orc. The monster that had plucked her from space and roared at her while it ripped off her helmet.

The monster that wanted her to breathe.

Her skin crawled at the memory and she took a reflexive breath even now.

It clearly had not expected to see her, looking just as startled as she felt to be nose-to-nose with another being so abruptly. Lucy couldn’t say how she knew that, but somehow she did. Something in the eyes, which were solidly black with two (two!) slitted pupils in each amber iris. The monster blinked, first one eye then the other, and stared back at her with an uncanny focus.

Then it opened its mouth, revealing rows of sharp teeth like so many shards of broken glass, and the moment was broken.

“Loo-see,” it rasped. It began to slither backward out of the cave, its head bent almost deferentially. Even army-crawling, it was graceful, and Lucy stared for a long moment before realizing the monster had said her name.

She couldn’t help it then. She laughed, and the monster froze. It had spoken. It said her fucking name. And it said it in such a gravelly and unmistakably male voice that it was funny.

The monster’s eyes held hers with a mix of caution and interest as if he didn’t know what to make of her. Still on his belly, he raised both hands in a universal peace offering, or maybe a ‘woah, there, crazy lady’. Each of his stout fingers was tipped with a curving claw, and Lucy sobered as she studied them. The claws were frightening, sure, but what drew her eye was the fingers.

Four of them and a thumb. Just like hers.

Dreamlike, she lifted her hand and placed it against the monsters. He was surprisingly warm to her tentative touch. Lucy flattened her palm to his, astonished at the similarities and differences. His hands dwarfed hers, charcoal colored with scaly callouses and an extra joint on each finger. But beyond that… they were the same.

She stroked her thumb across the side of his pointer finger — marveling at the thick, rubbery skin there — and felt him go rigid. Oops. Sheepishly, she took her hand back and met his freaky eyes.

“Sorry about that,” she whispered.

He didn’t respond, but there was a subtle movement around his head that caught her eye. He didn’t have hair, she realized, instead, he was crowned with strange, keratinous protuberances like quills. She itched to touch them too, but fought back the urge. They flicked a little at her attention.

Okay, that was kind of nasty, and a frown crossed her face.

She took a few awkward steps back, still on her hands and knees, into the cavern. “You coming in?” She asked the monster. It was his turn to frown, and it pulled the already down-turned corners of his mouth into a deep scowl.

Right, then, no talking, Lucy thought as she made room in the short cavern for him. After a moment’s hesitation, he squeezed inside. His bulk filled the room, outsized and intimidating. He even smelled — spicy and metallic in a way she wasn’t sure she preferred over the rotten-egg smell of this planet.

Without so much as a word, he dropped a sack she hadn’t even realized he’d been wearing. It hit the ground with a rattle. Next, he grunted and, with a motion suspiciously like a shrug he shed forty percent of his body mass and something wet hit the floor with a wet thunk.

It was silly that she still struggled to comprehend what she saw — as she sat across from an enormous, alien monster — but that’s the situation she found herself in staring at the thing he’d dumped at her feet. It lay before her, and she decided it was like a snake. A snake with an extremely thick midsection and six — no, eight — stubby legs. It twitched, and she stifled a shriek.

The monster bristled, his eyes training on her. He watched her for a moment before blinking, that same disjointed blink as before, and turning his attention to the creature. Using one of his claws, he sliced down what she supposed was its belly.

The smell was unbelievable, pungent and putrid all at once, and Lucy’s hands flew to her nose. “Oh my god,” she groaned through her fingers. “What is that?”

He scowled and produced a series of unrecognizable noises, ending with a growled, “Loo-see.” His tail (oh God, he has a tail) flicked behind him. Ridged jaw clenched, he continued to butcher the creature, pulling out what she supposed were the entrails — although they were an unfamiliar blue — and placing them aside.

His strange eyes met hers across the gore and her heart fluttered. She swallowed dryly as her dreamlike state began to ebb. The reality was settling in — the reality that she was stuck god-knows-where with an alien that looked like he might eat her next.

“Don’t panic.” Her voice came out scarcely above a whisper, and the monster’s. He tilted his head, and she flinched at the movement.

He was frightening on an instinctual level, with spines down his back and a face ridged with bony protrusions along his brows, cheekbones, nose, and chin. But, she sensed no malice in his gaze. Only caution. She latched on to that, covering herself in it like a security blanket.

His attention moved back to the snake-like creature, and Lucy watched with morbid fascination as the monster efficiently butchered it. The sight and stench caused nausea to roil in her belly. Something about his focus, and the way he used those sharp claws, caused the hairs on the back of her neck to stir. When he finally finished skinning it and carefully set aside the scaly hide, he sat back on his haunches.

Using a bloodied claw, he pierced a piece of the white flesh and held it out to her.

Oh. Oh, no. Lucy blanched, shaking her head in a silent ‘no’.

He watched her a moment longer then, with a flick of his spines, popped the meat into his mouth. He held her gaze while he chewed, and swallowed, in slow, exaggerated form. He speared another piece and held it out to her again.

The empty pit of her stomach chose that moment to give a loud rumble, and the monster’s eyes flicked to her belly. He shook the piece of meat slightly, which flopped wetly against his black knuckles.

“I guess we can’t cook it.”

The monster rumbled something, said her name, and shook the meat more vigorously in her face. She took only a second to weigh the pros and cons — the chance that the creature might get angry, the potential for food poisoning, and her nagging hunger — and then scooted a bit closer and extended her hand. He made a strange drumming sound in his chest that she took for approval and then deposited the chuck of meat in her outstretched hand.

Lucy steeled herself before putting the entire piece in her mouth as he had. It smelled like rotten eggs but tasted like… nothing. Gamy, very chewy, but not wholly unpleasant. The bite was too big and it took a long time to chew enough to get it down, but she held her breath and forced herself to swallow. A dribble escaped her clamped lips and she wiped it away.

The entire time the monster stared at her, his intense eyes roaming over her face, her mouth, her hands. Tentatively, she gave him a thumbs up. “It’s good.” She said — a lie, but who complains at a monster trying to feed you?

He didn’t smile — she wasn’t sure his face allowed for it — but his pupils dilated slightly in what she hoped was pleasure. Or at least approval. He held out another piece, this time significantly smaller, and she took it.