..[ ANDREW ]..

It was six Months since the reptilian planet had been discovered, and the hype hadn’t worn off yet. The first truly intelligent species and it was over seven thousand five hundred light-Years from Earth. And it wasn’t even evolved enough to talk or use fire. As far as Andrew was concerned, that had been a huge disappointment. If that trend continued, there would be less than a thousand intelligent species on the Milky Way galaxy. And that was with a pretty loose definition of what constituted an intelligent species.

Two shuttles had taken over three hundred non-staff crew to spent several Months on the planet. It would take them over a Year to get back to the main ship. They had to wait for it to make a complete turn before it would be close enough again for a shuttle ride. It also meant that the colonial ship would find them on the planet. Andrew wondered what the development of the reptilians would be like; they had met a civilized species before they developed their own religion.

Andrew was on his way to another planet. Very likely to be inhabited. A lot of people had gone on explorations with high hopes that they would find intelligent species, only to come back disappointed. He knew he had a job to do. Discovering other intelligent species wasn’t the only thing they set out to do. Resources where just as important, if not more so. Andrew much preferred to be the first to discover a bountiful supply of Mutrium, diMutrium would be the motherlode.

So, when their shuttle was assaulted by a barrage of spears as they made their descent, Andrew was understandably disappointed. Their sensors had picked up signs of bipeds roaming the three main continents while they were in orbit. He had just hoped they were wrong somehow. They hadn’t, and apparently, they would be needing their diplomats and linguists as soon as the shuttle landed.

From the shuttle, he couldn’t really tell what the natives looked like. Walking on two legs, yes; wielding weapons, yes; and very hairy, yes. The signs of smoke made it pretty clear that they were masters of fire. If I somehow get captured, will I be burnt as a sacrifice or roasted as a meal? Andrew couldn’t help himself, with his large size he might make a pretty appetizing size to the natives. No getting caught then, he decided.

Hilton, their pilot, chose a landing site high on a hill with steep slopes. Noah and Nthambi, another set of pilots, were quickly send out by Cindy on the shuttle’s crafts to act both as scouts and keep the natives away from the shuttle. It would be a tough climb down, and back up when the time came. Andrew hoped that their relations would be nonaggressive, at least by then.

The crew of one twenty-six would be divided into groups of forty-two for the three main continents. At least that had been the plan while they were in orbit. It seemed like that division would have to wait until things in the continent they had landed on settled down.

The planet was covered by a large body of water with the three main continents occupying an arc two thirds of the planet’s equator. They were separated by two narrow seas cleanly splitting them apart. The remaining third was dotted by small islands. The main continents were only covering half of the planet longitudinally. Perfectly placed at the equator, they were well clear of the polar ice caps.

They had landed on the eastern most continent, with Andrew’s group expected to explore the central continent. From afar, all three continents appeared to share the same kind of vegetation. With their northern and southern most tips been arid expanses, getting greener and greener as one moved closer to the equator. Up close, the western most continent was slightly more arid than the others. With the tip arid areas stretching closer to the equator. Its vegetation was mainly grasslands and bushes. Trees were a scarce commodity, with a very thin woodland at the equator.

The central continent was covered in grasslands with plenty pockets of small forests that got progressively larger as one moved closer to the equator, finally forming a forest stretching from the western side of the continent to the eastern side. The forest got wider, stretching farther away from the equator towards the eastern side.

The eastern continent was mainly covered in a large swatch of dense forest that transitioned to a small strip of grasslands before giving way to the arid tips. The shuttle had landed in a small clearing in the middle of the forest.

After not seeing any sign of the spear wielding natives for over an hour, the first team disembarked and the shuttle took off for the central continent. Their reception there was cordial. In fact, they hardly saw any humanoid bipeds as the shuttle landed. Since it didn’t appear like there was any immediate threat, the shuttle began distributing the seven groups of the central continent. Being the third, Andrew’s group of six was left soon after, somewhere in the grasslands closer to the equator than the northern tip of the continent. The shuttle proceeded to take the last team to the western continent.

The planet’s day was coming to a close, and in the distance, Andrew could see little fires popping up. The planet had an approximately twenty-six-hour day, but it was completely out of sync with their Day. According to their time, it was early morning. Thankfully, the events preceding their landing had left them wary, so they chose to rest for a while and begin their work later on in the night. They had three Weeks to explore the continent and if the first continent had told them anything, it was that rushing things on the planet might get them killed.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

…

When morning came, it found the group wading through the dew covered grasslands. The local star was an orange-yellow half circle on the horizon. The sky near it taking on a greyish hue to it, that slowly faded out to the sky blue. The clouds formed a rough rugged elongated half circle of their own with the star at the local center. Appearing as if they were running away from it. It reminded Andrew of the few mornings he had seen back on Earth.

They had been heading towards one of the fires they had seen during the night. As the morning light came, the fire had slowly disappeared. Either put out or overshadowed by the stronger light from the star. But they still had the general bearing, so they kept at it while still being cautious to keep from being spotted. Andrew had liked that idea very much. With how violence prone the native species seemed to be, it was better for Andrew’s group to see them first before they were spotted. That way, they could try and avoid any unnecessary confrontations.

The group had also agreed that they would spend most of the time watching the species from a far, not even making an attempt at contact. With how many groups there were, it wasn’t necessary for all of them to try and communicate with the natives. Half of the groups had been mandated to try and make contact. Andrew’s group wasn’t one of them. Besides, without them knowing that they were being watched, it could allow them to study their natural behaviors. Either way, if some how they couldn’t stay hidden, then contact it would be. Andrew hoped for all their sakes it would be a friendly one.

They got lucky and found one of the places where the fire could have been coming from without been noticed. The blackened slowly smoking area in the middle of the ramshackle of huts was a clear hint. The huts were constructed to easily blend in with the surrounding trees, brushes and grass. They looked like thick bushes with traces of green leaves holding on for dear life. With the fire they had kept going on for the whole night, Andrew had expected a less cautious approach when it came to their shelters. Maybe they hadn’t been using fire for long.

The people were a surprise of their own. If Andrew remembered collected, then this continent had an entirely different species to the one found on the eastern continent. Bipedal, yes. Humanoid, yes. Hair, no. They had what appeared to be scales for hair. And they shimmered prettily in the morning light of the star. They had sun-kissed skin with scales of yellow, green and everything in between. An individual only had scales of one color.

The scales covered their heads where hair would be, slowly flowing down their necks and tapering down to a width that barely covered their spines. As they reached the butt cheeks, they spread out again to cover the whole buttock area. They continued down the back of the thighs before fading out just shy of the knees. The lower legs had a smattering of scales on the outside. The triceps were covered in scales too as well as the back of the forearm. A little on the back hand too. There was also a line of scales tracing from the armpits to the sternum. Those were more prominent on what Andrew assumed were females. The only clothing they had was a small leather flap covering the front pubic area. There were no discernable size differences between the males and the females. All the ones that appeared to be adults were on average one meter sixty at best.

Andrew must have been staring for a while because it appeared that the number had increased from the three people he had first seen to more than twenty. And they appeared to be communicating with each other. Their language, the little that Andrew could pick up from the bushes they were hiding in, appeared to have a lot of s sounds, or maybe it was a lot of hissing. They appeared to have a slim forked tongue inside a mouth that looked surprisingly human. In fact, their faces were too human looking for Andrew’s comfort. Well, except for the third eye. Right at the center of their foreheads, and more circular than oval shaped.

“Interesting,” Yoshika said over the Comms. “Give me a few days and I might have the basics of this language down.”

They had been there for less than an hour and she had already figured out how long it would take her to learn the language. Andrew was more than amazed. They quickly dug in deeper into their bushes as five members of the camp seemed to be heading out, carrying bows and arrows, and short spears. The camp didn’t appear to have anything metallic. The group decided to stay at the camp, it would allow them to gather more data on the cultural lifestyle of the species.

The group spent the whole three Weeks with that one group, following them as they broke camp and relocated to somewhere else. Hunting wasn’t a gender specific activity, nothing really was. They had been spotted by a kid or two during that period. But as to be expected, the adults ignored them. Yoshika had picked up enough of the language that she could follow a conversation. She claimed that without a forked tongue, she might never be able to speak it correctly.

They moved for more than three hours to board the shuttle, but it completely undid all their effort by flying directly over the camp on its way to pick up the rest of the groups. All the groups in the central continent had met the same species. The four groups that had tried contact had been met with strong rebuttals. The species wasn’t as aggressive as their eastern counterparts, but they made it clear that they weren’t interested in interacting with them. They might have respected that, but Andrew knew that the ones coming after them would not. They might not know it, but they were citizens of the empire already.

Back on the shuttle, a very confounding reality about the planet emerged. The eastern continent was solely inhabited by humanoids that bore a resemblance to one of human’s closest ancestors. In fact, the groups that had had encounters with them swore that it could have been the one before the current species of humans. Albeit a bit more hairy with less of a mane of hair, similar to those found on chimpanzees.

The western continent was inhabited by an equally aggressive reptilian species. Spotting three eyes with scales of colors ranging from green to orange covering their whole bodies. And small, barely there, tails. It made the central continent’s species something of a hybrid between the two species. No one could come up with an explanation as to how it had come to be. And no, Andrew didn’t think evolution was the answer.

All three species appeared to be of a similar age, but the hybrid was culturally and socially superior.