“I’m telling you, they’re not that bad.” Malik Rosen stood on the white sand beach with his arms folded against his chest and a stern expression chiseled across his face. “Just ask Fred. He met them.”

The carbuncle idly lifted its head from grooming one of its paws. When no food was immediately forthcoming, the green six-legged feline went back to its current task.

“That’s right. I saw you lurking around the treeline,” Mal muttered as he turned his attention away from the prehistoric alligator. His bright blue eyes fell upon the carbuncle with the weight of a meteor crashing through the sky. “You’re lucky they didn’t see you. They weren't in the right state of mind for an introduction.”

Mal would swear that he saw the carbuncle shrug.

“Fine,” Malik groaned, throwing his hands up in exasperation. “But this is happening, whether you two are on board with it or not. As soon as I find another island, we’re headed to it. I’m tempted to go back to the Hab that Caleb and Brittany came from, but I can’t afford to get bogged down in whatever is going on there. I need to find Catherine and the crew first.”

Oscar’s amber eye blinked once in an expression of solidarity, despite its misgivings concerning these new humans. The massive crocogator’s vote of confidence did wonders for relieving the anxiety he’d felt worrying at his mind like a splinter beneath a fingernail. It wasn’t the first time he’d gleaned a measure of stability from the leviathan’s presence. Hopefully, it wouldn't be the last. Mal was loath to imagine what Ryujin’s challenges would be like without the kind of support he’d come to expect from his favorite sea monster.

Even if, academically, Malik knew that it was all in his head.

“You could learn a thing or two from Oscar about being a team player,” Malik chided the carbuncle.

The XO took a half dozen tentative steps toward the large beast as he spoke, hoping to get a better look at the wound Fred had taken during the Battle of the Bog. The ragged gash across its hind leg looked as gruesome today as it had yesterday. Since Fred had licked away the fur surrounding the injury, Mal could see dark purple bruises that reminded him of the bar fights he’d gotten into when he was younger. Much younger.

Fortunately, those bruises seemed to be the extent of the damage. Though he’d be the first one to point out that he wasn’t a doctor, Mal was capable of identifying the tell-tale signs of infection. Seeing none of those, he still offered to share some of his dwindling medical supplies.

“Want me to dress that wound for you, buddy?” Mal had stopped a half dozen paces away. It was as close as he’d ever gotten to his new friend. The carbuncle’s sheer, physics-defying speed made Mal feel remarkably vulnerable despite the pistol at his hip and the EM rifle slung over his shoulder. “I don’t have much by way of antiseptics, but what I’ve got has to be better than trying to clean it up with your spit.”

Fred seemed utterly disinterested in the human’s words. Or his proximity. The carbuncle didn’t even bother to lift its long, floppy ears to pretend like it was listening. Whatever Malik had to say had been summarily disregarded with a level of disdain normally reserved for royalty dismissing a servant.

“Fine. Suit yourself.” Mal said with a shake of his head. He turned to begin the short walk toward his lifepod, calling back over his shoulder, “If that’s how it's going to be don't come crying to me the next time Oscar bullies you. As long as your leg is hurt, he’s going to keep making fun of you for being slow.”

As Malik trudged his way further down the beach, he wrestled with the thought that he may have developed a problem during his time in isolation. It certainly wouldn’t have filled the colonists with confidence if they’d witnessed his conversation with the local wildlife. Not that he would have blamed them. If someone like O’Brian had been exhibiting this kind of behavior on the Starlight Journey, Malik would have immediately sent them to Doctor Lisell for a psych evaluation.

What had begun as a coping mechanism to help process the grief and loneliness he’d felt after splashdown was now an inescapable habit. He didn’t feel crazy when he spoke to Oscar or Fred, but he had no illusions that he’d certainly look unhinged. Which made it a problem. He needed the colonists to trust him and that trust could be shaken if they caught him having a heart-to-heart with a vicious alien predator.

For better or worse, the problem would likely work itself out by the time he departed the island. It wasn’t like he could pack Fred on the skiff with the colonists. The other alternative would be somehow coaxing the large animal into hitching a ride in Mal’s lifepod. Technically, that was a possible solution, but he could only imagine the kind of damage that a bored cat/fox/raccoon that size could do if it was trapped in his tiny home for an extended period.

To say nothing of bathroom breaks. Malik scowled as he remembered Fred’s demonstration earlier in the day. He’d finally gotten the reek of coatl guts out of the lifepod. He had no intention of replacing that with the stench of cat pee.

Oscar, paradoxically, was both a larger and a smaller problem. The leviathan would have no trouble traversing the ocean on its own. Mal doubted the sea monster could keep up with the skiff for an extended time, but it wouldn’t take much restraint to let Oscar keep pace. No, it wasn’t the crocogator’s ability to travel with them that was the problem. It was Malik’s inability to keep him from tagging along. Not that he was thrilled with the idea of leaving behind his new best friend, but he was leery of the sea monster’s ability to do damage should he feel the need. It was one thing for Mal to entrust Oscar with his life. It was an entirely different manner for him to expect Brittany to turn a blind eye to the huge crocodile that could capsize their skiff whenever it felt like it needed a snack. Malik felt relatively confident that Oscar wasn’t going to eat him. But other humans? It wouldn’t be a surprise if the big lug saw them as fair game.

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“It would not surprise me if the first thing Oscar and Fred managed to agree on was the best wine to pair with human pâté,” Malik griped to himself as he shuffled through the sand. His words dredged up a long-forgotten memory of an ancient Earth cartoon. In it, two dogs were enjoying a candlelight dinner over a shared plate of spaghetti.

Mal almost walked straight into the hull of his lifepod when he imagined Fred and Oscar slurping at the same noodle until their snouts met.

“Note to self: I am definitely suffering from social deprivation. Seek medical attention immediately.” Despite his dire self-diagnosis, a ghost of a smile tugged at one corner of his lips as he stepped through the lifepod’s hatch.

The pod, Malik grudgingly admitted, had certainly seen better days. Several pieces of equipment, ranging from the two crash couches to redundant instrumentation panels, had been dismantled for parts. The general state of disrepair gave the pod a ramshackle aesthetic that made it seem as if it were held together by little more than gravity and wishful thinking.

You may not look like much these days, Malik thought as he crossed the tiny vessel, but you got me down to the surface in one piece. Even got me to an island with a little help from our friend Oscar. You’re probably the only lifepod in human history to employ a crocogator as a means of propulsion.

The XO gave the pod’s shiny steel control panel an affectionate pat before he sank onto his makeshift bed with a groan of relief. After another long day of hiking, he was very thankful for the chance to slip his boots off and relax for a moment. After indulging in the small pleasure of wiggling his toes, Malik leaned toward the control panel and toggled a switch that made one of the monitors spark to life.

The scene playing across the screen was a familiar one by now. Water. Nothing but water, water, everywhere. Malik absently adjusted the drone’s recorded footage to four times speed as he reached for one of his last three ration bars. Aerial footage of the endless ocean didn’t make for particularly exciting dinner entertainment, but considering how exciting the last few days had been, he was more than happy to embrace the impending boredom.

Or, he would have been, if the water in the recording hadn’t suddenly been interrupted by a smudge of land that grew larger and more defined with each passing second of footage.

Mal’s deep blue eyes narrowed, abruptly focusing his undivided attention on the recorded drone footage. It quickly became apparent that this newly discovered island was considerably larger than the one he currently called home. It also seemed considerably tamer. There were no intimidating Gloam trees to be seen. No looming mountain or dangerous bog. All he could see beyond the beaches were rolling meadows that looked to be barely above sea level.

Unfortunately, the drone’s flight path hadn’t taken it further inland. He would have to content himself with the footage of the coastline, for now. As the drone flew along the shore, white sand slid through the camera shot in a pristine path the color of sun-bleached bone. Only an occasional piece of driftwood marred the beach’s natural perfection.

Then Malik saw something that sent his hand darting through the air like a mongoose lashing out at a cobra.

His fingers slapped the console to bring the recording to a sudden stop. The strike was so sharp that it sent a tingle racing up his arm from his fingertips to his shoulder blade. For a long moment afterward, Malik stared silently at the screen. While he struggled to keep his breathing even, his blue eyes shone with a feverish light that threatened to scorch the very air around him with their intensity. That unblinking gaze never faltered, never strayed from the monitor as a shaking hand started to rewind the drone’s video.

Ten seconds went by before the screen showed anything besides sand and surf. Mal began to wonder if he’d imagined the blurry images on the screen, chalking it up to an exhausted body and a desperate mind. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d bent beneath the mental strain of trying to survive on this alien world.

All questions of his sanity died with a helpless whimper when the camera passed over a message in the sand.

It would have taken the work of many days to gather up the pieces of driftwood that were laid out across the white canvas of the empty beach. At this distance, it was impossible to tell how large some of the pieces were, or how many it had taken to spell out the simple message scrawled across the sand. Malik guessed that it would have taken hundreds of pieces and hours upon hours of work.

Malik paused the recording and read the message across the screen.

“S.O.S.,” Mal breathed, his eyes sliding from one blocky letter to the next. Besides the letters, like a gleaming tombstone in the sand, stood a lifepod that was an exact copy of the one Malik currently sat in.

For a time the XO could only stare at the screen in shock. When he finally gathered enough presence of mind to blink, tears rushed from the corners of his eyes like floodwater surging through a broken levy. Mal’s jaw clenched and he tilted his head back, forcing himself to look away from the scene that filled him with such raw emotion.

He didn’t know how much time passed before he managed to steady himself with a deep, shuddering breath. Like a bootlegger putting a cork in a jug of rotgut, Mal bottled up his emotions and hid them away. There would be a time to confront those raw feelings, but that time wasn’t now.

It took all of his willpower to toggle the recording back to four times speed to watch the rest of the reconnaissance footage. The last thing he wanted to do was sit still and study film. But he owed it to his crew mate, whoever they were, to be as prepared for the rescue operation as possible.

That was how Malik found himself, ten minutes later, looking down at a recording of an alien city.

This large, sprawling complex dwarfed the tiny village that Malik had found. It seemed to be built of the same red stone but on a far grander scale. Situated at the edge of a shallow harbor, the meticulously arranged buildings could have housed tens of thousands of people. Perhaps more.

Malik couldn't know, because the entire city was completely, and utterly, empty.