Category : Books-Fiction

Sub Category : Science Fiction

"Hey.” A familiar voice sounds in my ear. “Hey, wake up. Are you okay, Gariel?”
		I slowly come to and groan at the fierce stab of pain shooting through my forehead. Then, a moment later, the pain isn’t just in my head. Every part of my body aches, my wrist most of all. It throbs with an uncomfortable fire that seems to radiate all the way up to my elbow. I squint up at Lily as she hovered over me. “Ow.”
		She grins back, displaying a fat lip and a growing bruise on one cheek. “You’re alive. That’s always a plus.” She sits back on her haunches and offers me a hand. “Can you sit up?”
		With her help, I get to a seated position, wincing. Sitting up just makes everything hurt even more. “What happened?”
		“We crashed,” she says. “Most of us got knocked out from being bounced around. There are a few broken bones, a few bloody noses, and two who didn’t make it.”
		I stare at her in shock then scan the cabin. “Two people…died? Who?”
		“In addition to the guard you took down, Kathy and Paula. Looks like broken necks.” She nods over at the far side of the room. “Poor kids.”
		I swallow the knot of grief in my throat. I didn’t know them well, but I knew their terror and fear. I’m just glad I’m alive. I hug Lily, and she hugs me back, and for a moment, we’re just relieved to be breathing and mostly whole. Over her shoulder, I squint, noticing that the entire cargo bay seems to be slanted at an angle. The metallic floor is covered with debris, tilted, and icy cold. I get to my feet with her help, wobbling, and gaze around in shock.
		Several of the girls cling together in a corner—Marcy is hugging Donna and trying to calm her, the latter choking back braying sobs. Other girls are still sprawled on the ground, unconscious, and I see two bodies piled in the corner next to the dead guard. Kathy’s dark hair tumbles over her face, obscuring her features. It’s for the best. I look away. Over off to the side, Kara’s trying to help another girl straighten an obviously broken leg. Kara’s own face is bruised and blood is running down from her ear implant. 
		Everyone looks beaten up, bruised, and damaged. I gaze down at my own legs, but they seem to be okay. My wrist, however, is swollen and getting a little purplish, and my ribs feel like they’re on fire. “I think I broke this,” I say, holding my wrist and nearly passing out at the shock wave of pain it sends through my body.
		“Guess you won’t be clubbing any more aliens then,” Lily says cheerfully. “If it’s not broke, it’s sprained pretty bad. You should see my toes on my left foot. They look pretty awful, too. Like they tried to make a strategic retreat into my foot and failed.
		I glance over at her skeptically. “Then why are you in such a good mood?”
		“Because we’re free, she says enthusiastically. “We are fucking free, and we’ve landed somewhere. I already count those as better odds than what we had before.”
		“How do you know we landed?”
		Lily hobbles to my side, favoring her leg. “Because the floor’s tilted and cold, and because of that.” She points at something behind me.
		I turn and look. Overhead, it seems as if one of the compartments has peeled partially away, leaving a long, narrow scrape in the hull of our storage bay. Through the scrape, weak light filters in and what looks like snowflakes drizzles down. I gasp and push forward, trying to see. “Is that snow?”
		“It is,” Lily says happily. “And since we’re all not asphyxiating from breathing methane or something, there’s also oxygen coming in.”
		Hope thuds in my heart, and I stare up at the ceiling. I turn back to Lily, full of excitement. “Do you think we landed back on Earth somehow?”
		“I don’t think so,” Kara says, her soft voice interrupting my thoughts. I glance over at her and wince. She looks pretty rough, the entire left side of her thin face purple and bloody. One of her eyes has a broken blood vessel, the red stark against her pale skin. And she is limping, too, her knee swollen.
		“How do you know we’re not on Earth?” I ask. I refuse to give up hope just yet. “How many places can have snow and oxygen? We just might be, I don’t know, in Canada or something.”
		“Except I heard through this thing,” she says, pointing at the bloodied earpiece still attached to her head, “that they were dumping us at a ‘safe location’ for a return pick-up at a later date.”
		Lily crosses her arms, frowning. “Return pick-up? So they dropped us so we can sit pretty, and they’re going to pick us up again in a day or two? Fuck that.”
		“I don’t know when,” Kara says, her face solemn. “But when they mentioned this place, it definitely wasn’t Earth they were referring to. They kept talking about a particle cloud, but the only particle cloud I remember from science class was on the edge of our solar system: the Oort Cloud. And if we’re getting that much light,” she says, pointing at the scrape in the hull, “We’re not anywhere close to Pluto. I don’t think we’re on Earth at all. I don’t think we’re in our solar system, either.”
		“Gotcha,” Lily agrees. She sounds glum.
		I’m still skeptical. Glancing up at the snow falling into the crack, it’s hard not to get excited. We had to be home, didn’t we? It’s winter out there. They could have dropped us in Antarctica. Right now I’d take Antarctica over a random planet. “I don’t want to stick around until they come back.”
		“Me either.” Kara sighs and winces, rubbing her shoulder. “But everyone’s hurt. I don’t know how fast we can move, or if it’s even safe to move. For all we know, we could be floating on a sea of ice filled with man-eating ice-sharks.”
		“Good God, you’re Suzy Fucking Sunshine, aren’t you?” Lily says, staring at Kara.
		“Sorry,” Kara grimaces, pressing a palm to her forehead. “It’s been a hell of a day, and I feel like it’s just going to get worse.”
		She looks so morose that I want to hug her. I refuse to be down about this. One guard is dead, we have his gun, and for now we’re away from our captors. “It’ll be fine,” I tell them brightly. “We’ll figure something out.”
		“Can we figure out food?” Marcy calls from the corner of the slanted storage bay “We’re pretty hungry.”
		“Food is a good start,” I agree, nodding at Lily. “Let’s see what we have if we’re supposed to ride this out and wait for the little green men for return.
		An hour later, though, things are looking grim. We’ve found enough bars for a week, and we have enough water for approximately as long. Beyond that, though, there is nothing.
		In addition, other than what belonged to the guard we’d killed—well, I’d  killed—there were no weapons and no additional clothes. We went through everything, pounding on walls and trying to find hidden compartments in the shuttle bay, but we didn’t find much. The only discovery was some sort of thick plastic-like sheet material, but it wasn’t warm or flexible enough to be used for much of anything.
		“Pretty sure Robinson Crusoe wasn’t nearly as fucked as we are,” Lily jokes.
		I haven’t read Robinson Crusoe, but I agree. It’s clear we’re not equipped for survival. We’re not equipped for survival. We’re not equipped for anything, and it’s getting colder in the hold by the minute, thanks to the snow and cold air that steadily trickles in from the gap in the hull.
		“I mean, I don’t understand,” Lily says, handing out a few seaweed bars. “If they want us to sit and wait, don’t you think they should have left us with more supplies?”
		“You forget that we’re the extras,” I point out, waving away my bar. Someone else could eat it. My stomach was upset enough as it is. “As long as they’re intact, that’s all that matters, right? And they’re not eating.” I thumb a gesture at the lockers still lining the wall. “They’re still in perfect condition.”
		Naturally.
		“Should we wake them up now?” The thought of a handful of women floating in stasis a few feet away with no comprehension of what was going on is rather unnerving to me. If I’d crash landed, wouldn’t I want to know?
		“God no,” Lily says. ‘How do we even know that they’re aware of where we are? For all they know, they’re still tucked into bed and little green men don’t exist. How would you like to wake up to find all this and oh, by the way, we’re stranded and don’t have much to eat?”
		“Good point.” I gaze around the empty room, tapping my bare foot thinking.
		“So what do we do?” Kara asks, sliding in next to the other girls huddling together for body warmth. She looks exhausted.
		Lily glances at me, waiting.
		Am I the leader now? Crap. But…someone’s got to do it, and I’m tired of no one having ideas. I consider our options for a long moment. “Well, if we’re on a planet with oxygen, I’m guessing there are other things living here. I don’t know a lot about science, but if Earth can support all kinds of life, doesn’t it stand to reason that this planet could, too? We could be really close to city for all we know.”
		“A city full of aliens,” someone mutters.
		“True,” I agree. “But we can’t stay here and starve to death. Or freeze. The sun’s shining right now, but we don’t know how long we have until night—”
		“Or how long night will last,” Kara adds.
		“Maybe you quit helping out,” Lily tells her. “I’m just saying.”
		“I think we need to scout around at least,” I suggest. “Find out our bearings, look for food and water, and report back.”
		“But most of us are injured,” sniffs one girl. Tiana. She looks like she is fresh off the farm and utterly terrified. Some of us have taken our captivity with grim determination, and some have completely fallen apart. Tiana’s in the latter category.
		“You should go, Gariel,” Lily chimes in. 
		“Me?” I sputter.
		“You’re kind of our leader.”
		God, I hate that I’m not the only one who thought that. I glance up at the snow pouring through the crack, overhead. It looks cold, and I’m in shorty pajamas. “How am I the leader? I’m practically the last one to arrive.” Only Donna was captured after me.
		“Yeah, but you’re the one with all the plans.  You’re the one who killed the guard, and Kara needs to stay here in case the others return because she’s got the ear thing. And my knee is all jacked up. I wouldn’t get very far. Besides, you’re the one who’s good with the gun.” Lily flutters her lashes at me.
		I snort. “Good at bashing things, you mean.”
		“Hey, you did better than the rest of us, Gariel. Seriously.” She mock-punches at the air, pretending to box. “You want me to hum you some ‘Eye of the Tiger’ to get you pumped up?”
		“Gee, thanks,” I tell her, trying to be upset that I just got volunteered. But it kinda has to be me, I think. Other than Kara and Lily, the others aren’t much of leaders. Everyone is hurt, and I want to point out that my wrist is fucked and my ribs ache, but…everyone is hurt. Lily is limping, Kara’s got a busted leg, and the others are a mess. Do I want to leave my fate in the hands of another and hope she could scout decently? “Anyone in here have any survival experience?”
		Someone sniffs back tears. Other than that, silence.
		Yeah. No one is equipped for this.
		At my side, Lily hums ‘Eye of the Tiger.’
		I shoot her the bird. “Okay, fine. If I’m going out in the snow, I need a couple of bars, the gun, and some water.”
		“we don’t have canteens,” Lily points out. “Just eat the snow.”
		“Not the yellow snow,” someone else quips.
		“Oh sure, everyone’s a comedian now that I’m the one going out to scout,” I grumble, but I stretch my legs and test my wrist and ribs, wincing. It sucks, but we’re low on options. “Okay, I’m somehow going to climb out of that hole in the roof, I guess. I need some clothes.” I gaze down at my dirty shorty pajamas. “I’m guessing these won’t cut it.”
		“I know where you can get some nice warm clothing,” Lily says, and points at the dead guard.
		“Ugh,” I say, though I was thinking the same thing. “I was kind hoping someone would miraculously spring out a parka or something.”
		“No such luck,” says Tiana, getting to her feet. “I’ll help you undress him.”
		A short time later, Tiana and I have stripped the body of his clothing and try to figure out how to put it back on me. There are weird invisible buckles and fastenings instead of the usual zippers and buttons, and it smells like sewage and blood and some other spicily-nauseating scent, but it’s surprisingly warm and lined. The jacket’s a little tight across my breasts and makes me look like I have a uniboob, but I’m not wearing this for fashion. The biggest problems are that there are no gloves for my hands and the shoes are designed to fit something with only two big toes instead of five little ones. I squeeze my feet into each shoe, but it hurts.
		Still better than nothing, I suppose, which is what I had before.
		“Keep your hands tucked in your jacket,” Tiana suggests. “Your body warmth should help.”
		I nod and shove the gun down the front of the jacket, too, letting the long barrel rest between my boobs. I braid my dirty hair to get it out of my face, take the bars Lily offers me, and suck in a deep breath. “I’m going to go as far as I can,” I tell the others. “I’m going to look for help. Or people. Or food. Something. But I’ll be back. If I don’t come back by tomorrow, un, well…don’t come looking for me.”
		“God, I wish I had some wood to knock on right about now,” Lily says. ‘Don’t say shit like that.”
		“I’ll be fine,” I tell her, bluffing. “Now, help me get up to the ceiling so I can climb out.”
		We maneuver the table over, and two girls hold it in place while I climb and Lily and Marcy push me higher. My wrist screams a protest, but I keep climbing, wiggling my way to the top of the breached hull. The scrape is big enough for me to squeeze through, and by the time I make it up to fresh air, my wrist is screaming in pain and it’s getting colder by the minute. I’ve wrapped my sleep shorts around my neck as a scarf and hood, the extra fabric bunched around my exposed throat. My face sticks out of a thigh hole. I’m sure it’s not a sexy look, and the shorts are filthy, but I’m glad for them. The wind is bitter, and I haven’t even stuck my head up through the hold yet.
		I put my hands on the icy metal, hissing when my fingers stick to it. I pull them away carefully, wincing at the needle-like feelings pricking at my skin. It’s not only cold out there, it’s damn  cold. I use my good arm—now sleeved in the thick jacket-like uniform of the alien—to propel myself up a bit higher. As I hoist my torso through the crack in the hull, I have a momentary vision of sticking my head out and having an alien chomp it.
		Not helpful, Gariel, I tell myself. I shove the image out of my mind as I push through the gap and stare around me.
		The good news is that the wind isn’t as bad up here as I thought. Instead, the snow falls in quiet, thick flakes, the two suns shining high overhead.
		Two suns.
		Two freaking suns.
		I squint up at them, making sure I haven’t hit my head in the crash and am now seeing double. Sure enough, two of them. They look almost like a figure eight, with one tinier, much duller sun practically overlapping a large one. Off in the distance, there is an enormous white moon.
		“Not Earth,” I call below. Fuck. I fight back the insane urge to weep in disappointment. I’d so wanted to climb out and see a building in the distance that would tell me oh, it’s just Canada or Finland.
		Two suns have pretty much destroyed that hope.
		“What do you see?” someone calls up to me.
		I stare around the crashed ship at the endless drifts of snow. I look up. In the far distance, there are other mountains—or at least I’m pretty sure they’re mountains—that look like big icy purple crystals the size of skyscrapers. They’re different from this mountain. This one is nothing but barren rock. There are no trees. Nothing but snow and jagged granite. Our tiny ship looks like it bounced off of one of the nearby jaggy cliffs; that was probably how it had torn open. 
		I look for living creatures or water. Something. Anything. There’s nothing but white.
		“What’s it look like?” someone else calls up.
		I lick my lips, hating that they already feel numb with cold. I’m a southern girl. We do not do well with cold. “You ever see Star Wars? The original ones?”
		“Don’t tell me—”
		“Yep. It looks like we landed on fucking Hoth. Except I see two itty bitty suns and a huge-ass moon.”
		“Not Hoth,” Lily yells. “It was the sixth planet from its sun, and I don’t recall it having a moon.”
		“Okay, nerd,” I call back to her. “We’ll call this place Not-Hoth then. You guys cover this hole with the plastic while I’m gone. It’ll help keep things warm.”
		“Stay safe,” Lily tells me.
		“Your lips to God’s ears,” I yell. Then I haul my ass out of the protection of the ship.