A soft wind blows over a rolling expanse of red grass. A man sits comfortably against a tree, the shade of the tree’s purple leaves giving some protection from the blasting heat of the midday sun. He tucks a loose strand of shoulder length brown hair behind his ear and thumbs the page of the book he's reading. It’s a heavy hardcover, and the dust jacket was lost a long time before it entered his hands. He chuckles for a moment after a particularly amusing passage. After a moment he scratches the two day stubble on his chin.
“This is fucking boring,” a deep feminine voice says.
Nearly a hundred yards away atop a hill, a duo of figures in bulky black and yellow armor stand watching the man through strange square binoculars. Their faces are obscured by full helmets, the front of them made of a glossy black glass. One of them, the one who spoke, is near seven feet tall and undeniably imposing. She lowers her binoculars and places them on a nearby rock. The second, more than a foot shorter, looks back for a moment before making a sudden clicking noise.
“Well, he’s been working almost since he woke up,” she replies, her soft voice standing in contrast to the noise she just made. “I think the poor Survivor's earned a chance to relax. We’ve already gotten some interesting data from him. How many of those heavy bales have we seen him throw around already? I lost count."
The larger one gave a small grunt of annoyance. "It wasn't that impressive. I could've lifted those."
The small one lowers her binoculars and looks over at her companion. "For an entire quarter cycle? Without any significant breaks?"
Again the larger one gives an annoyed grunt, apparently not liking the question.
The small one ignored her companion's consternation and focused again on the man. "He seems to be engrossed in his literature. I can't help but wonder what he's reading about."
The large one scoffed. “You’re the anthropologist, shouldn’t you know?”
“We haven’t been able to unscramble any of their transmissions.” She lowers her binoculars as well and joins her companion at the rock. “The translators have only just cracked their spoken language based entirely on out of context snippets, and we don’t have nearly enough material to start on the written word. Not that I could even see the words from this angle anyway.” She looks back in the man’s direction for a moment as the figure under the tree shakes again with laughter. “It’s strange how similar some of their vocalizations are to other sapients I’ve studied. That certainly sounds like laughter to me, though I don’t have nearly enough data to confirm such an off-the-cuff hypothesis.”
The larger one shifts on the rock and reaches behind her to idly fondle a strange black device shaped like a pyramid. “You think their comedy translates well?”
“Probably not,” the smaller one admits. “Comedy’s always subjective between cultures, let alone species. If we could get our gear working properly, I’d love to find out.” She makes another clicking noise and slaps the hand of the larger one, who pulls her hand away from the device. “Don’t touch the generator! How many times do I have to say it?”
The larger one ignores her for the moment and removes a rectangular device from one of her suit’s pouches. After pawing at it for a moment, the screen of it flashes on, revealing it as some sort of tablet reader. “It bothers me. Something about the O-Field makes my teeth itch.”
“Well you’ll just have to endure the discomfort then.” The small one pulls out her own tablet and begins tapping at it with much more gusto than her partner. “It’s taken weeks to get Kyxoro to agree to let us touch dirt and study the Survivor in person, and I’m not going to risk getting seen just because you’ve got sensitive teeth.”
The two of them tap away at their screens for some time in silence, both making notes of their observations so far. The lazy atmosphere of the peaceful summer day is only broken when the larger one stands up to take a stretch and gives a massive yawn, a low rolling sound like the roar of some powerful jungle cat.
The smaller one makes another disapproving click. “Sheilyn!”, the small one says with an admonishing tone. “Do you have to be so loud?”
The larger one gives a small laugh. “You worry too much, you know? The Fiver’s not going to hear us from this far…”
But her words trail off into the air as she looks in the direction of the man with the book. The shade beneath the tree’s boughs was empty, the flattened grass being the only mark that there was a man there previously.
The smaller one looks up from her tablet, curious as to her companion’s tone. And in her peripheral vision, she sees something that makes her whole body seize up like a deer in headlights. The man, the subject of their observation, was only a few feet from her, standing casually with one hand on his hip.
“Howdy,” the man says, raising his hand in greeting. “Didn’t want to interrupt you, you seemed busy there. You from the company?”
The larger one whips around to look at the man, but the two of them don’t make a sound. At their silence, he presses on with a grimace. “I know my last payment was a little late, and I am truly sorry for that, but I can guarantee that won’t happen again.”
The larger one turns toward the new voice, and for a moment two figures just stare at the man. Eventually, the large one pulls out a long cylindrical object that looks disturbingly like a truncheon from one of her pouches, and begins to approach the man.
“Oh, hold on!” he says as the towering figure approaches, his hand raised in the universal “I don’t want no trouble” gesture. “I’ve still got a few weeks before the next collection, there’s no need to get violent!”
But his pleas fall on deaf ears. The large one reaches out and pokes the man with the object before he can get another word in, and after a few moments of violent convulsions, the man drops onto the grass limp and unconscious.
There’s another moment of silence as the wind whistles through the plains, before it’s broken by another trill of clicking noises as the smaller one buries her head in her hands.
“We are so fucked.”
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Jaycen awakens in an unfamiliar room. For a moment, he tries to sit up, but the pounding in his head nearly forces him back down. Powering through, he tries his best to get his bearings and looks around the room for anything familiar, only to come up empty.
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The room he’s in seems to be made entirely of metal, and every surface has a clean white sheen. By the side of his bed is some sort of computer, and the hard bed he is lying on has is covered with a thin white sheet. Strangely, there are no covers or blankets on the bed, and he's still fully clothed in his jeans and tank top. Even his boots are still on, though he can see that they're immaculately clean despite the hours of work he performed in the fields. As he looks over his clothes, he notices that he’s wearing a strange unfamiliar black wristband. The room is cramped, but spacious enough to accommodate at least a couple of people other than himself. And strangest enough, both of the doors, or at least what he assumed were the doors, have no handles or knobs on them at all.
He considers moving for the door before suddenly the memories of his assault return. A sense of dread begins to infect his thoughts as he puts the pieces together. He had been kidnapped. He missed one damn payment, and some goons from Spartoi had kidnapped him.
Panic wells up in his mind. Most likely, they're going to sell him into slavery. Slavery is extremely illegal, of course, but that was a small comfort this far out from Earth. Everyone knew that being forced to work in a Spartoi facility while they paid you less than half your loan's interest rate annually was essentially slavery in all but name. He wouldn't be the first poor sod tricked into taking on his family's debts only to end up enslaved; everyone knew the stories, no matter how much the company tried to suppress that information. He clutched his head in his hands as his mind spiraled. He should have never come out to the farm. He should’ve stayed back on Earth. Sure, he had nothing to his name and no family or friends; that’s why he was so quick to pack up and ship out to the Pegueros system in the first place. But he should have known damn well as soon as the corporate types started offering to help that this whole operation was a bad idea. Fuck grandpa’s farm, and fuck Spartoi.
At this point, he's too caught up in his own spiraling mental state to pay any attention to his new wristband. If he did, he’d see that where once there was only black metal, there was now a softly glowing ring of red giving off light. Not bright enough to cause discomfort, but certainly noticeable if you’re not distracted.
In another nearby room, a trio of creatures regard him with interest. Two of them are the same figures that were atop that hill back on Jaycen’s farmstead, though they had long since stripped off the bulky exosuits they were wearing on the planet’s surface. The third is even shorter than the smaller of the two by nearly a foot. All three of them wear simple white shirts and pants with matching shoes, though each has an insignia on the breast; a circular metal shield for the shortest one, and a V shape for the other two.
Despite her diminutive stature, the odd one out has a presence that commands the room. Her saturated bright red hair, styled in a short boyish cut, would make her an odd sight in many frontier human settlements, but her sea green skin and four inch long fleshy antennae jutting from her forehead put her well outside human phenotypes.
“He’s awake then,” she says, addressing the other two, but she is sure to never take her bright green eyes off Jaycen. “Akhia, are the translators ready?”
Akhia, the middle height one, gives a small click before she answers. She too is without doubt inhuman. While her shoulder length jet black hair and light brown skin wouldn’t get her any stares, the black chitin covering her forearms and neck certainly would. Her face has a set of chitinous mouthparts, or palps, that rest at the sides of her jawline, but despite that her features are quite human, save for the fact that her eyes are solid pools of jet black without a sclera or iris. Well, that and the ant-like antennae jutting from her hairline. While her arms rest at her side, her two smaller auxiliary arms wring their hands in front of her in worry. Unlike her primary arms, they are covered in black chitin the entire length, and end in small three fingered claws rather than a proper hand.
“Yes, according to the engineers, they should have calibrated themselves by now,” Akhia answered. “It was quite difficult to find usable recordings, as the Survivors are still using radio waves to transmit audio data.”
Her diminutive superior waved her hand. “I don’t particularly care about how primitive their technology is. Sheilyn, do you have any insights into the subject’s mental state?”
The tallest person in the room had to suppress a growl at her superior using her familiar name, but she wisely chose not to press the issue. Nonetheless, her furred ears twitch and her tail fluffs up, easily showing anyone familiar with her body language that she was upset by the breach of courtesy. In another situation, a member of her species would be more than happy to bare her powerful canine teeth and well manicured claws at such an offender, but despite dwarfing them with two feet of height and probably well over a hundred pounds of muscle, it was obvious which one of the two was really in command of the situation. Like the others, there was no mistaking her for human. While her skin is a soft and pale color, similar in complexion to many humans, from her biceps all the way down her arms are covered in a soft white fur, which matches nicely with the fur on her ears and tail. Specifically, her tall and pointed canid ears, and her long and fluffy feline tail. Also matching in color is the thick hair growing from her head, which is tied into a loose ponytail streaming down to the small of her back. But in a way, the most unusual thing about her may be her eyes. Her pupils are slitted like a cat, her iris a bright icy blue, and her sclera a dark gray.
“Well I think we can assume he’s upset,” she says as levelly as she could as she keeps an eye on her tablet. “The scans show his heart rate is up and his muscles have tensed, so he’s likely experiencing a fight or flight response. Without a more in depth scan, there’s no way of knowing the exact nature of…”
“That’s plenty, thank you,” came the sharp reply from the superior. They finally turn to address the other people in the room, a look of supreme consternation on their face as they focus in on Sheilyn. “As the resident xenopsychologist, what is your recommendation for how we proceed?”
Biting her tongue, she thinks for a moment before answering. “Someone needs to explain the situation to him. Regardless of his species, we must remember our ethical and legal obligations here.”
“And you'd be the one to explain to him, then? You think you deserve the right to establish first contact with a new species? After your mistake led to a total breach in protocol?”
Sheilyn’s face starts to go red, but Akhia is quick to interject. “Um, if I may Doctor Kyxoro?” The doctor’s stern gaze turns, and while she shrinks under it a bit, Akhia holds her ground despite the trembling in her clawed hands. “If anything, this is my fault. I was the one who insisted upon an in-person observation and put us both into a position of danger in the first place.”
The short doctor sighs. “While I will concede to your point Akhia, having Sheilyn speak face to face with the subject could be disastrous. It’s entirely possible that it’ll see someone of Miss Chaseri’s stature as a threat, and if its fight or flight response is indeed triggered, that’s not a risk we scan afford to take.”
The three women look back to Jaycen. Since the last time they saw him, he had laid back on the bed with his arm covering his eyes. It’s obvious he was trying his best not to cry, and judging by the soft shaking of his body, he was failing.
Kyxoro shudders at the strange creature in front of her. “Whatever it’s doing in there, I don’t like it. If it suspects it’s under surveillance, it may be engaging in some sort of threat display to intimidate us. No, I think it would be best for Akhia make first contact.” As Akhia gives a startled yelp and begins to protest, the doctor holds up a hand. “No, I don’t want to hear it. Put on your exosuit and get ready. You’re more than capable of handling this assignment, and if anything goes wrong we’ll have a team right outside the door.”
She clicks again. “Doctor, I…”
“Go get suited, Akhia,” the doctor commands. Akhia’s mouth quivers as if she had something to say, but after a moment she turns on her heel and walks out of the room, the door panel smoothly sliding into the wall to allow passage, only to shut moment later.
Sheilyn shakes her head sadly after her departure. “Doctor, I know I'm not one to talk at the moment, but are you sure about this?”
“As sure as I can be, considering how little we know at the moment,” the doctor replies. “Prepare to make observations, and keep an eye on the scans.” She turns back again to the human and prepares her own tablet to take notes. “This was supposed to be a great opportunity for all of us, and now we may very well end up losing our licenses. For now, let’s just hope we can get through this fiasco with our careers intact.”