Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

Now that Olivia knew the way to the creek she was better able to turn her attention to the surrounding foliage as she moved, noting the varying shapes and colors of the leaves surrounding her like a kaleidoscope of burgundies, greens, oranges, and purples, not to mention a healthy amount of what she might consider traditional vegetation colors.

Morphology-wise the plants may have leaned toward the more alien in overall looks, but they were still similar enough to what she was used to back on Earth to be able to discern trees from shrubs from bushes and tall grasses. It was familiar in a way, yet not, almost like she had somehow landed in some of the stranger dreams she’d had as a girl. Only those hadn’t featured abduction by fearsome lizard-like aliens who wanted to eat her for lunch.

“This is so gross,” she muttered to herself, examining the blood still tenaciously clinging to her arms and hands as she sidestepped a rocky outcropping. “Well, water still had to be first. Foraging second. But some things gotta take priority.”

In this case, washing the last of her former co-captives’ blood off was top of that list.

The creek came into view a few minutes later, roughly where she’d remembered it being, though she did take a slightly different course getting there to survey more of the surroundings as she walked. Two birds, one stone, and all that. Olivia hurried to the water’s edge and, after a quick check to make sure there were no aquatic threats lurking in the clear water, strode in up to her waist before squatting down, lowering herself to her neck.

“Fuck it,” she muttered, then submerged all the way.

The water felt amazing. Cool, refreshing, restorative. The gentle flow began cleaning her skin, but she wasn’t about to take a passive role in the process. She pulled her top off and washed it as best she could before resting it on a bush along the shore. Her nipples grew taut from the breeze across her bare skin, goosebumps springing up on her breasts and along her sides in a most delightful way in spite of the situation.

Olivia cupped a handful of water and splashed it across her chest, washing off the sweat and grime. Her clit’s reaction to the sensation shooting from her nipples actually surprised her. Not that it was unusual under normal circumstances—she’d always been wired that way—but after so long spent in a state of locked-up tension and stress, it was an almost comforting realization that even here, after all she’d endured, her body still worked. Not that she’d have any use for that sort of thing a bajillion miles from home.

She turned in the water and rinsed her arms and shoulders thoroughly. This was actually quite pleasant and not too cold, the sun’s rays quickly warming her body as she scrubbed her arms, neck, and shoulders. It felt like it was probably going to be a hot day. Good thing there was ample water.

“Huh,” she mused as she waded to the shore.

Her tattoos looked brighter somehow, almost as if this sun operated on a slightly different spectrum, causing the ink to jump out more vividly. She paused and actually looked at herself rather than taking her art for granted. She had a rather nice collection of art adorning her body, most of them carefully chosen for both design and location so as to flow with her physique in an appealing way. Of course, there were a few that she might admit were questionable, but those were from her youth, and she still had plans on a few coverups one day.

“Or not,” she muttered, reality setting in hard and fast.

Stuck on an alien world, she had to accept that wasn’t really an option anymore. A whole lot of things weren’t. Hell, even survival itself was still very much in question.

“Get it together, Liv. Harper’s counting on you. No melting down. You’ve got this.”

Amazingly, she almost believed herself.

“Hey, what do we have here?” she wondered, a cluster of deep purple berries that looked almost like elongated fingertips dangling from a sprawling bush growing over the water. “Blackberries love water. Maybe these are similar,” she mused, carefully picking the first of many utterly new plants on what was going to prove a most interesting outing.

“Hey, I’m back,” she announced as she entered the wrecked craft.

Harper had moved to another spot, a pile of their thin bunk pads scavenged into something akin to a nest of sorts. Or maybe an oversized dog bed. Whatever it was, it certainly looked more comfortable than the hard metal they’d slept on the night before.

“Any luck?” the injured woman asked.

Olivia unslung her makeshift pack and began unloading her haul. “Yeah, I found some interesting stuff.”

“Hang on. What happened to your arms?”

Olivia looked at the few spots and welts she’d brought back as trophies of her excursion.

“That’s nothing.”

“Nothing? It doesn’t look like nothing.”

“I was testing things to see what we could probably eat.”

“Using yourself as a scratch-test guinea pig? I don’t approve.”

“You don’t have to approve. You just have to eat, okay? You’re hurt, we’re both stranded here, and eventually the food balls are going to run out. If you’re going to heal, we’re going to need a steady food supply. So I think this was a reasonable methodology. And besides, my skin only reacted to a few of them. And look at all this stuff,” she said, gesturing to the rather eclectic spread. “This should all be edible. We’ve got fruits, berries, nuts, veggies. Honestly, I’m kind of shocked how much there was that looked safe to eat out there. It was almost like a wilderness farm, in a way.”

“But we don’t know for sure it’s safe.”

“We have as good an idea as we’re gonna get without actually trying it. And about that, I suggest we do a test diet with these. Only add in one or two items at a time, and in limited quantities, just in case it doesn’t sit well. Then we’ll know what not to eat.”

Harper picked up a shiny green vegetable that looked like a cross between a carrot and a zucchini.

“Only one way to find out, I guess,” she said, then took a bite. “Hey, that’s actually not bad. A little sweet, kind of crispy. Honestly, it’s pretty good.”

“Seems like as good a start as any. Dig in. I’m going to see about getting the food system open. There’s no power, but if the metal is damaged enough, maybe there’s a way to get to whatever feed system they have built into these compartments.”

Harper continued munching on her snack. “You really think there will be food in there?” she asked, her mouth full of alien produce.

“It makes sense. I mean, every compartment was different from what we gathered, so it would only stand to reason that they’d have dedicated delivery systems for each of them, especially the way seeing as they were all designed to land and not crash in case of emergency. Seems to me they’d want to make sure they could keep their livestock alive, right?”

“I suppose so. But they didn’t expect us to get pulled into a planet’s gravity, I’d be willing to bet.”

“Though there was an emergency braking thing built in, so they clearly took that into consideration at some point.”

“True.”

“In any case, it can’t hurt to look.”

With that Olivia set to work, using stout pieces of debris to further pry open torn sections of the compartment. It was slow going and hard work, but after several hours of toil, she’d actually made progress.

For one, there was a distribution reservoir of the relatively unpleasant Raxxian food balls. Unfortunately, they seemed to have an abundance of the least pleasant of the flavors, though none were what anyone would ever call tasty. Still, some were more palatable than others, and whatever the case, they had food, and by the looks of it, enough to last quite a while, especially with regular supplementation of local fare.

Another coup was the water system. Though power was out and the inner workings damaged, Olivia managed to trace back the lines that fed the prisoners’ water supply to its reservoir. It took some time to figure out how to access it, but after a lot of trial and error she found a cracked feed line. It was dripping slowly, but that was fine for their purposes. Better than fine, actually. They could collect the dripping water slowly in the multiple empty vessels now lined up against the hull. In this way they would catch every drop without having to pay constant attention to a spigot or hose, all while not wasting any of the precious resource.

Surviving like this, the women figured they could hold out comfortably for quite some time if they had to, though their definition of comfort had shifted quite drastically in the last twenty-four hours.

They spent the rest of the day taking stock of what supplies and makeshift resources they could scour from the wreckage. It wasn’t a lot, but given that this was a containment unit, that wasn’t terribly surprising. If they’d gone down in a crew section of the ship, it would have likely been a very different story.

But then there would have likely been Raxxians as well if that had been the case. Given that alternative, this was by far the better option.

The pair were exhausted by the time night came, both mentally as well as physically. Survival was tough on a person in more ways than one, and when the initial adrenaline wore off, every ache, pain, and frazzled nerve was readily apparent. Luckily, the day seemed somewhat close to a normal Earth cycle, though they didn’t have any time-keeping device at their disposal. Tired as they were, they didn’t need one.

When darkness set in, Olivia propped up some debris to mostly seal the opening to their shelter, then the two curled up together and fell fast asleep. Miraculously, both remained that way all the way until morning.

“You know we can’t just sit here and wait,” Olivia said as they ate a breakfast of an orange food ration ball along with some violet berries.

“I mean, sure, I get that. But what can we do? We’re on an alien world, Liv.”

“Yes, we are. And that means no one is coming to save us. My dad said the military drilled it into his head early on to always accept that self-rescue might be the only way out of a situation.”

“But we need a spaceship if we want to get home,” Harper noted.

“Well, sure. But you know what?”

“What?”

“This world, out of all the places we could have crashed, has a breathable atmosphere, drinkable water, and even edible plant life. What are the odds, Harper? I mean seriously. If ever there was a place likely to have alien life, this would probably be it.”

“I hate to rain on your parade, but the alien life we’ve already met was not exactly friendly, if you recall.”

“Sure, the Raxxians were terrible. But we have to do something, right? And if this world is habitable, maybe there’s civilization out there. And if there is, hopefully it’s not Raxxian.”

Harper shook her head, gently patting her splinted leg. “I appreciate your optimism, but I’m in no condition to trek.”

“I know. But I can do the hard part for now. You know, go on a bit of a hike to get the lay of the land. You’ve got plenty of food and water, and I’ve already gathered up a bunch of local stuff to eat as well.”

“You’re going to leave me here? Alone?”

“I promise, I’ll make it quick. Maybe a few days, tops.”

“I don’t know.”

“Look, we’ll run out of supplies eventually, and then it’ll be up to us to make do with whatever we can scrounge up on our own. You know it makes sense at the very least for me to go and figure out where we are and what other resources might be nearby.”

A look of growing panic began to form on Harper’s rapidly paling face. “Don’t leave me. Please, I don’t want to be alone out here.”

Olivia moved close and rested her hands on her friend’s shoulders. “I’ll be back in a jiff. Just a few days, I swear. An out and back scouting trip is all for now. You know I’ve gotta do this. We can’t just sit here and wait.”

Harper’s lip quivered, but she said nothing. Olivia felt her heart break for the poor woman. She was hurt and stranded on an alien world, and very soon she’d be all alone. But it would be brief, and she’d meant what she said. They needed to know what they were up against, and sooner than later. There simply wasn’t another choice.

Olivia affixed a sharp piece of metal to a relatively straight piece of a branch and handed it to Harper.

“Something bigger for you, just in case.”

Harper nodded but said nothing, trying her best to be stoic.

Olivia gathered up some water and her makeshift pack. “I’ll be back soon. I promise.”

And with that, she headed out, ready as she’d ever be to face the unknown.