Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR

The orange glow on the inside of her lids woke Olivia, the alien world’s sunlight shining a ray through the torn hole in the hull. Naturally, it was just her luck that her face was in perfect alignment for the solar intrusion.

“Even here,” she grumbled quietly to herself as she carefully pushed back from Harper so as not to wake her.

It was something of a personal joke for Olivia alone. No matter where she had lived ever since college, sunlight always seemed to find her pillow at the most inopportune moments. Be it a gap in the curtains or a reflection from the edge of a mirror or her phone lying on its charging pad, it had gotten to the point where she almost wondered if she was living in a simulation and her personal code had that one rather annoying glitch written into her daily routine.

Of course, she knew that wasn’t the case. Or, at least, she certainly hoped not. If she was the product of some lines of code, she sure as hell wanted a word with whoever wrote this particularly shitty situation.

She looked at the wrecked interior, taking in the damage in full detail now that there was proper illumination filtering in. The place was a mess, broken bits and bobs everywhere even though the compartment had been a relatively Spartan setup while still attached to the Raxxian craft. But now, after the turmoil it had been put through, many of those systems formerly hidden within the walls were exposed to view, and a lot of their components were scattered as a result.

The red arm lying cocked at an unnatural angle caught her eye. Olivia glanced at her sleeping friend, still out cold after the ordeal. Her injuries were pretty significant, and she needed her rest. More than that, she very much needed to keep her cool when she woke up. Olivia knew that meant there was only one thing to do.

Fuck.

With the most stealth she could manage, Olivia moved through the compartment, gathering up their limited bunk linings and anything else she could use to wrap up the bodies of their shipmates. It was a horrible job that she in no way wanted, but if she could spare Harper from the sight of their broken friends, she’d do it.

Wrapping them up was a grim but rather straightforward task. In no time, she’d managed to hide the bodies from view while only getting a tiny bit of their blood on her hands. She wiped it off as best she could after she mopped up the largest of the drying puddles spotting the deck where the bodies had come to rest. She then cleared a path to the hole in the hull to keep noise to a minimum and dragged the bodies out one by one.

By the time Harper finally woke, the three corpses were nowhere to be seen, buried in a shallow grave in the alien soil nearby. Olivia didn’t know if there were wild animals about, but she was sure as hell not taking any chances. The soil tamped down firmly, she was about to follow her nose to what smelled like water nearby when she heard a worried voice.

“Liv? Are you there?” Harper called out.

Fortunately, sound didn’t carry far from the inside of the compartment, meaning they would be relatively safe talking in normal voices. Only if someone happened upon the craft itself and came near would there be risk of detection.

“Yeah, I’m here,” she said, giving her handiwork one last look then climbing back inside. “How you feeling?”

Harper gestured at her splinted leg. “You need to ask?”

“Valid point. Sorry we don’t have any pain relievers.”

“At least it’s stabilized,” the woman said, examining the MacGyvered splint job her friend had whipped up. “You did this in the dark?”

“Well, to be fair, there was a little light to work with. And this was pretty straightforward.”

“Straightforward? It’s an improvised splint made from parts of an alien spaceship.”

“Okay, there is that. But the principle is the same.”

Harper pulled on the wrappings holding the splint in place. All was properly secured and well padded.

“How do you even know how to do this?” she asked.

Olivia let out a chuckle, the sound and accompanying genuine hint of amusement she felt surprising her.

“That’s a long story, my friend.”

“And we’re crashed on an alien planet who knows how far from home. I think we have time.”

“Point taken.”

“So?”

“So, let’s just say I haven’t always had the best luck dating men.”

“Preaching to the choir. But that still doesn’t explain this.”

“I was getting to that. There was this guy, Billy. Well, Billy was a bad boy, which I used to have something of a weakness for.” She gestured to an ornate design on her left shoulder. “That’s a coverup from matching tattoos we got on our one-year anniversary.”

“Pretty.”

“Yeah, now it is. But let’s just say the original wasn’t the greatest of looks. Anyway, this was before the crazy really started to show through. Back then, he was just a prepper. You know the kind, the guys who stockpile canned food and water filters, ‘just in case.’ Turns out the guy was a certifiable nut job, once he let his true self show through. But I have to admit, he did teach me some useful skills when he wasn’t going on about conspiracy theories, and chemtrails, and chips in people’s heads.”

“What about alien abduction? Was that on his survivalist Bingo card?”

“Surprisingly, that wasn’t one of them.”

Harper chuckled. “And yet here we are.”

Olivia laughed, but it was a somewhat pained sound, her gallows humor deployed as she continued her efforts to keep herself from slipping into panic, shock, or worse. “Yep. If only I’d been so lucky.”

“If only.” Harper looked around at the ruins of their former cell. “This place is a wreck. We must’ve really taken a beating when we—” She fell silent, eyes quickly scanning the compartment before resting on a few lingering bloodstains on the walls and floor. “Where are the others?”

There was no gentle way to ease her into this. Ripping off the Band-Aid was the only option.

“They’re dead, Harper. All three of them died in the crash.”

“But, where?—”

“I buried them while you were sleeping. It was the least I could do for them.”

The injured woman moved as if to say something, her mouth moving like a fish struggling to breathe a moment before it shut as the reality sank in.

“Look, I don’t know what we’re dealing with out there, but we can breathe this atmosphere, and the weather isn’t too hot or cold.”

“The Goldilocks Zone.”

“What?”

“Not too hot, not too cold,” Harper replied, slowly coming out of her silence.

“Right. We got lucky with that, but one thing is for sure: we need water if we’re going to survive. I put aside some pieces I can use to hold water if I find some, but I’m gonna have to leave you alone for a while to search.”

“What about the built-in water supply?”

“It didn’t seem to be working earlier, but if you can figure out how to get it functional, that’s one more resource we’ll have on our side. But for now, we need to assume we have very limited supplies, and getting more water is priority one.”

Olivia moved for the opening in the hull, carefully stepping out into the fresh air.

“Don’t be too long,” Harper called after her.

“I won’t.”

The items gathered to hold water were rather varied in size and shape, and none of them had a proper sealing top. But even so, with a little ingenuity and hard work, Olivia had managed to scrounge together a respectable assortment of makeshift vessels to fill if she did, in fact, find a fresh water source. First and foremost, however, she set to work while the air was still warming from the overnight lows.

The foliage around their crash site was deep burgundy and a stunning shade of dark green. Trees with winding branches towered above, and waxy-leaved bushes spread as far as the eye could see, dotting the area but still spaced out enough to allow relative freedom of movement.

There was a clearing as well, naturally, where the Raxxian craft had touched down, the scorched ground a clear sign of what had arrested their descent and kept them from being scattered across the landscape. Olivia headed to the broad leaves nearest and wiped them with her finger, directing the dew condensed on them into a container drop by drop.

It was time-consuming and tedious, but there was more than enough moisture in the air to have generated a fair amount of dew to collect, and that water was essentially distilled and pure. Whatever else she found, well, that would be a crapshoot. And without iodine tablets or fire, they’d have to risk it when it came right down to it.

She spent an hour gathering dew before the air temperature rose enough to evaporate the rest. Olivia climbed back into the downed ship and left her haul with Harper, then set out once more, this time in search of a more substantial water source.

The smell in the air was that of verdant nature, and Olivia was all but certain there was a body of water nearby. All she had to do was find it.

As it turned out, it only required twenty minutes of trekking to come across a small creek trickling through the woods. The vegetation around it was thick and lush all the way to the water’s edge, which was a good sign so far as she could tell. If it was toxic, odds were the plants would have died off where it touched.

“I come bearing water,” she announced when she brought the first of many vessels back to their former prison and current shelter.

Harper sniffed it. “Is it safe?”

“Good question.” Olivia picked up a scrap of metal and scratched her forearm, dripping a few drops on the wound.

“What are you doing?”

“Testing it. Kind of like how you test plants to see if they’re toxic or not. If the skin gets irritated, you know it’s bad. If not, odds are on your side.”

“Another lesson from the ex?”

“Ha, no. That guy was all about conspiracy theories. Nature stuff was mostly my dad, actually.”

“Not a conspiracy nut, I take it?”

“Not at all. We camped when I was little. He’d been in the military, and whenever we’d spend time out in nature, he loved to teach me little tricks. Knots, how to pitch a tent, how moss grows on the north side of trees. That sort of thing. Anyway, he died when I was still pretty young, but I never forgot the time we spent together.”

“Sounds like a cool guy.”

“Yeah. He was a pretty exceptional man. Mama always hoped I’d find someone half as good as he was. Guess I proved a disappointment in that regard.” Olivia pulled a long piece of wreckage from the pack she’d fashioned and handed it to Harper.

“What’s this?”

“A weapon. I didn’t see any animals out there, but this is for just in case.”

“What is it like out there?”

Olivia hesitated. Seeing was one thing, but describing an alien world?

“Actually, it’s quite beautiful,” she finally said. “Tall trees, lush plants, but all of it colors we wouldn’t expect normally.”

“Sounds pretty.”

“It is. And when I get back, if it’s still light enough to be safe, maybe we’ll get you outside for a proper look. But for the moment, stay in here, okay?”

“I think we’ve got enough water for now.”

“We do, but I want to see if I can find anything that looks edible.”

A smashed green blob lay smeared on the deck. Raxxian food, shaken loose in the crash.

“I think I can pry open the food ball dispenser unit, but I have no idea how many might be in there or if they were destroyed in the crash,” she continued. “Can’t be relying on Raxxian leftovers forever, now, can we?”

“Definitely not. And who knows? Maybe plants taste really good here.”

“Let’s hope so,” Olivia replied, heading for the outside once more. “I’ll be back soon.”

And with that she stepped out of the ship and back into the mysterious alien wilderness.