“We didn’t choose to end the mission on this planet.” Malik said, bristling at the accusation. “When the failsafe built into the cryostasis system woke us up, the Journey was already locked into a rapidly decaying orbit around Ryujin.”
Brittany looked away from her son long enough to ask, “That’s the name of this planet? Ryujin?”
For a moment, Malik blinked like a child who’d been caught eating cookies before dinner. “Well, I sorta named it in my head.” Malik’s broad shoulders lifted in a dismissive shrug. “I have no idea if it has an official name. That’s my point. When my crew woke up, we didn’t even know where we were.”
The blond man, Caleb, seemed to be half listening to the XO. With his eyes cast out toward the sea, he murmured, “What the hell is a Ryujin? So far, this place strikes me more as a Bidet. Like it or not,” at this, his angry gaze drifted away from the ocean to look Malik in the eye, “your people put us here. Everything that happens here is on you.”
Anger surged up inside Malik’s chest like the initial spark of a fusion reactor. “My people are out there fighting for their lives right now. Same as anyone else on this planet.” Mal met the challenging look in Caleb’s brown eyes with a glare so hot that it could have melted steel. “I aim to find my crew. Once I do, we can start establishing a support network among the habitation modules. Linking the habs together has been the plan since we launched and nothing has changed it. It's just been postponed.”
Brittany had been watching Malik the entire time as if waiting for the outburst of barely contained violence that was etched across Mal’s taut form. When she spoke, her tone was frosty as winter rime. “There are thousands of people in the module we just left. You’re going to abandon them to search for a handful of people that could already be dead?” The woman shook her head curtly, lowering her eyes to the child in her arms. She began brushing Devin’s hair with a delicate touch of her fingers. “It's no wonder we ended up on this death trap with that kind of attitude.”
Since he’d splashed down, he’d imagined meeting other people so many times. Not once in those fanciful imaginings did the encounter turn out like this. He felt a hot rage churning in the pit of his stomach. What right did these people have to judge his crew?
“Awfully hypocritical for someone who stole a gravskiff to save themselves,” Malik bit back, his words coated in a caustic venom that Mal immediately regretted.
Caleb lurched to his feet, his brown eyes simmering with anger. Brittany’s gaze snapped up as well, lifting the hand that had been brushing Devin’s hair to point an accusing finger at the XO.
“I have a son. My job is to keep him safe. You have a job as well. It's to keep the colonists safe. Right?” Brittany lowered her hand, though she continued to look at Mal as if she’d just bitten into a rotten lemon. “Tell me which of us is actually fulfilling their responsibilities.”
Caleb’s deep voice rumbled as the man pointedly cracked his knuckles, “The lady asked you a question, Mr. Executive Officer.”
Malik could taste the impending violence seasoning the air like a pungent spice. The familiar tang teasing his senses had him sizing up the other man in one sweep of his blue eyes. Sand crunched beneath his boots as he shifted to orient himself with his right shoulder forward in case Caleb made a move.
Mal might have acted first if he hadn’t seen Devin duck his head against his mother’s chest with a faint whimper. The mother glared daggers at him, but it was the sound of the child’s quiet whimper that broke his heart. Malik forced himself to take a deep, calming breath before he tried to de-escalate the situation, for all their sakes.
“Look,” he said, forcing himself to ignore the throbbing pressure of bottled-up rage pounding against his skull. “We’ve all been through some incredibly stressful situations over the past couple of weeks. Tempers are high and patience is short.”
Another deep breath and his shoulders relaxed, his hips soon following as he adopted a casual posture despite Caleb’s aggressive stance. “I’m not good at handling trauma and engaging in diplomatic dialogue. I’m not suited for it. That’s why I need my crew. Those colonists you talked about? They need help. But it's a kind of help that I can’t give them. Not by myself.”
As he spoke, he saw Caleb reluctantly relax. Brittany continued to watch him with her lips pursed in a thin line of dissatisfaction. Malik could work with that, so long as they kept talking.
“Starlight Journey's 2nd crew has some of the most capable people I've ever met,” he continued, his soft-spoken words laced with a combination of hope and anticipation. “They can solve the problems I’m not suited for. Because you’re right. Something is happening on this planet and I may have found information on this island that can tell us more about it. But it’s going to take someone much smarter than I am to put all the pieces together.”
Unconvinced, Brittany remained silent. In her eyes, Malik saw only the unsympathetic look of a judgment that had already been passed. Caleb, however, gave Mal a longer look of consideration as he mulled over the XO’s words.
“So these clues that you found,” Caleb finally said after a lengthy pause, “do they have anything to do with the bandaged-up mummy look you have going on?” The blond man waved a hand at the gauze Malik had wrapped snuggly around his chest. “Because I got to be honest man, from the look of things you need help with a whole lot more than just solving some alien mystery.”
Caleb’s words thawed Brittany just enough for her to speak in a curt, clipped voice. “If we’re going to survive in this world, we need to figure out what's going on. Tell us what you’ve seen.”
Malik gave the woman a slow nod of acceptance. He then helped himself to a seat upon one of the steel cases they’d scattered in a loose circle around their firepit. It took him a moment to organize his thoughts, but soon enough he began to share his story for the first time.
“Well, I should start with what happened back on the Starlight Journey.” Malik looked up at the clear blue sky, his gaze searching for a starship that had been his home, and the home for his family, for decades. “It all started when we woke from cryostasis…”
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*****
“So, you’re telling me there’s a prehistoric alligator, or maybe it's a crocodile, just sleeping in the sand on the other side of the island?” Caleb did not attempt to hide the highly skeptical look he cast Malik’s way.
“I told you I can’t remember whether it’s alligators or crocodiles that live in saltwater habitats.” Malik responded, massaging his temple as he prayed for patience.
“Crocodiles are the ones that occasionally live in saltwater estuaries,” Brittany responded helpfully.
“That isn’t the important part of this conversation!” Caleb groaned as he flashed a longsuffering look toward the woman idly crunching on a ration bar.
“I want to see the crocogator!” Devin shouted, thrusting a hand up in the air as he bounced on his heels. The young boy had become much more interested in the crazy bandaged man when he’d started talking about dinosaurs.
Caleb threw his hands up in defeat.
Malik could have sworn that he saw a ghost of a smile tug at Brittany’s lips. Perhaps sensing his attention, her face fell back into a stony mask as she directed her gaze back toward Mal. It would take more than one conversation to thaw the frosty reception she’d given him. He could probably earn a few brownie points by making sure her son didn’t accidentally get eaten.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Devin,” Malik began. The young boy immediately crossed his arms with a huff. Choosing his words carefully, Mal moved forward like a man crossing a minefield. “Oscar’s usually pretty calm, but he can be grumpy sometimes. Earlier today he bullied Fred the Carbuncle.”
Devin’s petulant look vanished as he unlaced his arms and began bouncing on his heels again. “What’s a carbucker?”
Malik looked to Brittan for aid only to find the woman glowering like he’d just told Devin that there was no Santa Claus. Caleb was no help either.
“Yeah, Mr. Rosen,” the blond man said in a mockingly polite tone that grated on Mal’s nerves. “What’s a carbucker?”
“Carbuncle. That’s what I call them.” Malik grumbled, feeling strangely defensive about being the target of their inquisition. “Alright. I think we’ve managed to drift away from the topic a bit. What we need to do is focus on getting off this island and finding the rest of 2nd crew.”
“Why do we need to go anywhere?” Brittany spoke up as she unwrapped a second ration bar. She held the tasteless nutrient brick out to Devin who immediately blanched and shook his head. A stern look from his mother sent his defiant gaze dropping toward the white sand. His feet shuffled, briefly kicking up a small storm of white grit. Brittany watched the display wordlessly, only responding by giving the bar in her hand a quick shake. With the same kind of reluctance Malik had felt about eating coatl, Devin gloomily accepted the ration bar before collapsing on the sand to nibble at one corner.
“We have our own problems,” Brittany said, her eyes never leaving the young boy as he ate with the vacant expression of a man who’d been tortured into submission. “The last thing we need is to stumble into whatever dangers are lurking out there in the water.”
“I promise you that there are plenty of dangers lurking right here. On this very island.” Malik spoke with the unshakable confidence of a man who’d faced those challenges. And come through to the other side.
“But I’m confused about something,” Malik said as his blue eyes bounced between Brittany ad Caled. “Didn’t you want to help the other colonists? How do you plan to do that if you hide out here?”
Satisfied that Devin was going to finish the ration bar, Brittany turned her attention back toward the XO. “Of course, I want to help them. But what I really want is for you to help them, Mr. Rosen. It is your job, remember?”
Malik held her gaze unflinchingly. “So does that mean you’re going to give me the gravskiff while you three stay here?”
“Oh, hell no. You’ve been talking to the animals for so long that you’ve forgotten what it’s like to deal with people.” Caleb spoke up for the first time since the crocogator had derailed the conversation. “We’re not giving you the gravskiff. You’re giving us one of your guns.”
Malik’s reaction was one of incredulity as if Caleb had casually asked him to cut his legs off at the knees. “That is not a thing that is going to happen. You’re not trained in the use of a bolt caster or an EM rifle.”
To this Caleb offered a flippant shrug. “You point the gun at something and pull the trigger. How hard can it be?”
Brittany’s monotone voice held all the condemnation of a priest denouncing a sinner. “You know this island is dangerous and you’d leave us with no way to defend ourselves?”
“That isn’t fair.” Malik rose to his feet in agitation, feeling as if the enter encounter had gone awry from the first words they’d shared. “You can come with me and we can keep each other safe till we find my crew. Or you can take your chances here. I can’t make you join me, and wouldn’t even if I could, but I’m not going to hand over equipment that I may need to finish my mission.”
“What happens if it isn’t your crew that you find?” Caleb asked quietly, a hard intensity giving his brown eyes a dangerous luster. “What if it’s the other crew?”
“Then they’ll explain to me what happened,” Malik said, his voice cold as the tritanium rounds in the magazine of his rifle. “One way, or another.”
The blond man nodded grimly in acceptance. “Alright. We were never going to be able to stay here anyway. Sooner or later, whatever found the hab would find us and we’d be stuck out here all alone.”
“Caleb…,” Brittany began, the concern in her voice drawing Devin’s attention away from his ration bar.
“It’s the truth, Britt,” Caleb said with a shake of his head. “Like it or not, our best chance of surviving this is to hitch our gravfreighter to Mr. Executive Officer here. Do you think we can survive out here for weeks on our own? I’m an architect. You’re a grav pilot. Trying to subsist in some kind of alien jungle is not what we signed on for.”
“Fine,” Brittany said curtly. “But before we go anywhere, you better have a damn good idea where we’re going. I’m not dragging Devin out onto the ocean again unless you can convince me that you have a plan. A good plan.”
“I’ve got a drone in the air right now,” Malik replied, feeling as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. “If there’s another one in these cases, we can double our search field.”
“They’re all biometrically locked,” Caleb said with a scowl before kicking one of the steel crates in a moment of frustration.
“Some of the locks are keyed to the crew, so I might be able to open them.” Malik was eyeing each of the cases like a jeweler examining a piece of paste.
“But right now, I’ve got a bigger concern than breaking into the crates,” Mal continued, looking over his shoulder toward the jungle that waited beyond the beach.
“Oh really?” Caleb asked with an inquisitive tilt of his head. “What’s that? You worried about the food supply?”
“Not the food. Not yet, at least.” Malik sighed like a man who knew he still had hours of work left after already putting in a full day. “I’m wondering how I’ll convince a prehistoric crocodile and a six-legged cat to come with us.”