“Okay,” he said, standing up. “Guess I'll go outside and have a look around. It's getting stuffy in here, anywhere.” Jack went for the door that led out of the ship, which was just outside of the door to his cabin. His hand paused over the control mechanism. “Better safe than sorry...”
Jack returned to his cabin, opening a locked compartment underneath the bed. Reaching inside, he drew out a belt made of military-spec webbed material. Attached to it was a holster, magazine pouches, a flashlight, and a small fixed-blade knife. Jack checked the holster out of habit. Fitted snugly inside was a matte-black .45 semiautomatic. The same one, in fact, that he'd carried as a pilot in the Navy. Jack enjoyed shooting and he'd kept up with it after retiring from the military. With ten shots in the magazine, one in the chamber, and four spare magazines on his belt, Jack would feel quite a bit safer stepping out onto an unfamiliar planet with it than he would have without it. He strapped the belt around his waist, and went back to the door.
“Alright, world...Let's see what you got.” He pressed the door release, and with a strained groan the hatch opened. Jack stood there, looking out, feeling a certain sense of awe. “Yeah, that's...That's something, alright.”
Light from the sun of whatever solar system he was in warmed his face. The light was filtering down through thick trees all around the crashed ship, tall broad-leafed trees of purple, dark green, and iridescent blue. The alien forest around him was thick enough that he couldn't see very far, but not thick enough to make it dark. Jack looked down at the forest floor, and found the source of the smoke inside the ship. When the
Star's Eye
had come down, heat from the hull had set fallen leaves afire, and the smoke had seeped into the ship through the breached armor plating. Where the forest floor had not burned, Jack saw short green grass covered in a layer of dead brown leaves. He wasn't sure how the crash hadn't set off a huge forest fire, but from the smell of the air it seemed that he was in a rainforest type of environment. Perhaps the heavy moisture of the area had prevented the fire from spreading.
Sitting down on the edge of the hatch, Jack hopped the short distance down to the ground. He landed lightly, his boots squelching slightly against the soil, which was damp. It seemed as though rain had fallen recently, perhaps even since the ship had crashed. Jack stood there for a minute or two, listening and looking around.
The air smelled not too different from the air on Earth, but it was fresher and more...something. Flavorful would be the word he would have used to describe it. Whether the freshness was from lack of pollution or a higher oxygen content, Jack couldn't tell yet. A number of trees lay fallen around him, knocked over by the crash. He looked straight up, and saw a pale blue sky smeared here and there with white clouds. All around him was a constant noise that sounded like birds calling.
Jack looked back at the ship, and started walking around it. The damage from outside seemed a whole lot worse than he'd imagined from inside. His engines were almost completely wrecked, and the hull was crumpled in numerous places, with several gashes in the armor plating showing through into the inside of the ship. Dusk was starting to set in once Jack completed his evaluation of the
Star's Eye
, and he shook his head as he came to his conclusion.
“There's no way this ship is flying again,” he said. “Not without at least a month to make repairs. And I don't know if I can cannibalize enough non-essential parts from the rest of the ship to make the repairs I need to get back into space with.”
That said, though, Jack had to admit that it could have been much, much worse. He was alive, after all, and that was step number one in repairing any ship after a crash. His main problem, of course, was patching the hull to make it airtight and getting the main engines back online. His hyperdrive engines had been protected inside the main engine block, and hyperspace travel wouldn't be any worry at all. Parts to make the repairs he did need to worry about, however, was the big problem.
Jack's head jerked around as he heard a low, loud roar somewhere off in the distance. “Damn...Guess I should have expected there might be some big wildlife here.” He looked back at the ship again. “At least I have plenty of supplies. The cargo compartments are packed with guns, ammo, and preserved food.”
With darkness falling, Jack knew he needed to take shelter. He didn't feel much like going back into the wrecked ship, though, so he opened an exterior hatch into the cargo hold. Most of the cargo he'd been carrying was still intact, surprisingly enough. He rummaged around until he got to the general military supplies, and dug around in them until he found what he was looking for: encamping materials. Grabbing one of the crates, he pulled it out of the ship and into the clearing the crash had created. Jack knew he had precious little daylight left, so he had to work fast.
A rustle in the trees nearby, however, made him pause and straighten up to look around. Whatever had made the noise had seemed very close, and larger than a bird. Jack peered into the trees, waiting for the noise to repeat itself, but he heard nothing else. Neither did he see any movement. He shrugged and turned back to the supply crate, but he couldn't shake the feeling that something was watching him. He told himself that the very next thing he would do after setting up camp was to grab a rifle out of the cargo hold.
******
Hours later, darkness had completely fallen over the alien forest, and stars twinkled in the sky overhead as Jack sat in his encampment. He'd been able to dig a fire pit, and there was plenty of wood scattered about for him to build a fire with and keep it going for a while. He'd also managed to set up a fairly large tent that had plenty of room inside for a bedroll and a store of preserved food. True to his promise to himself, Jack had gone back into the cargo hold and retrieved an automatic rifle, along with a hefty supply of ammunition.
Jack sat next to the fire, shivering a little despite the warmth from the flames. This planet was a little chilly at night. At least he'd been able to eat a meal, though it had only been canned meat and dried fruits, cooked over the fire. That was better than nothing, but not much better. He still couldn't shake the feeling of unease, the paranoid sense that someone or something was watching him from the trees. In the hours since he'd heard that strange noise, though, he hadn't been able to spot anything in his surroundings. But still...
“Fuck it,” he said suddenly. He stood up, grabbing the rifle from where it lay beside him. He yanked the charging handle, slamming a round into the chamber and taking the safety off. Taking the flashlight from his belt, he clipped it onto a holder on the side of the rifle and switched it on. “If I don't have a look around, I won't be able to sleep, anyway.”
Jack walked to the edge of his encampment, directing the rifle and the light into the trees around the clearing. He searched more or less methodically, creeping around the perimeter of the crash site, peering into the forest for any signs of movement. After getting back around to where his tent was set up, he hadn't found anything. Jack felt better, even though he did feel a little foolish for being so paranoid. He walked back to the fire, setting his rifle down.
His head jerked around as he heard the snap of a breaking twig. Suddenly frantic, his hands went down to grab for the weapon again, but he stopped at a sound that hissed through the night air.
“
Sala!
”
Jack froze, his hands mere inches away from the rifle on the ground, bent over as he looked through the darkness towards the source of the familiar voice. Leaves rustled as it moved closer, and finally the speaker emerged from the trees into the light cast by the campfire.
Three meters tall. Pale orange, black-striped fur. A long tail, nearly half as long as the body was tall. Bipedal, two arms, carrying a rifle only vaguely similar to Jack's own. Clad in a singed red flight suit, bright yellow eyes reflecting the firelight. Female.
Jack straightened up, trying to fight the urge to panic. He turned towards the figure walking his way, staring right down the barrel of her weapon. He raised his hands, staring.
The Ailian bared her predator's teeth, and tightened her grip on her rifle, staring right back at him with pure, unadulterated hatred in her eyes.
- 2 -
Jack stood there, shaking slightly, facing down the Ailian female who had her rifle aimed straight at his face. She was even larger in person than he had imagined an Ailian would be. He estimated that she was at least three meters tall, putting her height at about three feet above his. The rifle she was holding was pretty big, too, and he didn't really want to imagine the size of the holes it could make through his body. He looked down on the ground where his own rifle lay. For a split second he considered making a go for it, but he wisely thought better of that idea.
Her long tail twitched, and a breeze ruffled the orange and black-striped fur that was exposed outside of her red flight uniform.
“Seresh te a'krai,”
she growled, jerking her weapon at him.
“Suri te seresh te a'krai.”
Jack raised his hands higher, confused. He had no idea what she was saying to him, but her eyes were flashing in the firelight, and he had a pretty intense desire to do whatever it was she wanted him to do. He opened his mouth, which was almost completely dry.
“I don't...I don't, ah...”
“Ka'sa!”
the Ailian snarled, gesturing with her weapon again.
“Suri te seresh te a'krai! Suri!”
She took a step towards him, her fingers flexing on the rifle grip. Her form towered above his.
Jack felt himself growing angry, despite his fear. “Listen, I don't understand a fucking word you're saying!” He suddenly remembered that he had a pistol strapped to his waist, and his right hand flinched down towards it before he caught himself. If he grabbed it he would be dead for sure. “You can yell at me all you want, you overgrown housecat, but I don't have a goddamned clue what you want me to do!”
The Ailian opened her mouth wide, roaring at him. For a moment, Jack was sure that she was about to shoot him, and he stiffened, bracing himself. They faced each other down for a long minute, another breeze rushing through the clearing around Jack's crashed ship. Jack's eyes started to water from being open so long.
She opened her mouth again.
“Seresh te a'kr-”
She closed her mouth again, a low growl rumbling in her throat. She shuffled her feet impatiently, and Jack got the strange sense that she was trying to calm herself down. Her tail swished rapidly, dusting through the scattered leaves at her feet. Then she took a deep breath, letting it out slowly before speaking again.
“Sit,” she muttered. Her voice, speaking unexpectedly in English, had a strange accent to it, a trilling tune that emphasized the hard “T” sound of the word. “You sit. Now. With hands on your head.”
Jack was sufficiently surprised that he immediately sat down. Looking up at the Ailian, he placed his hands on his head, relieved that he finally knew what she wanted him to do. Once he was situated, she advanced on him, kicking his rifle away.
“You move...,” she said, coming behind him and kneeling, “...and I kill you. You understand now, yes?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jack said. “I get it.”
The Ailian set her rifle down, grabbing one of his arms in a powerful grip and jerking it roughly behind his back. From her belt she detached a length of strong black woven cord, which she used to tie his arms together. Drawing the free end of the cord down his back, she pulled his legs up underneath him so that he was kneeling, and then she tied the cord around his feet. When she was finished, he was trussed up securely in a kneeling position, unable to move very much at all. Jack felt a tug at his waist as she pulled his pistol from its holster, and she tucked it into her own belt. That done, she yanked him up, setting him down upright by the fire.
“Agh!” Jack yelped, pain blossoming at his shoulders at her rough treatment. “Bitch...” He was hoping for some kind of reaction from her at that, but she gave him no satisfaction.
She came back around him, carrying her rifle to the other side of the fire, where she sat. She stared at him, the hatred still burning in her eyes. Jack stared right back at her, defiant now that he was reasonably sure that she didn't mean to kill him, at least not yet. The Ailian had her rifle settled across her lap, though it would be easy enough for her to aim it back at him if he tried anything.
Jack took a moment to look her over. He had seen pictures of Ailians before, but he'd never given them too much thought. They were the enemy, but an enemy in a war that he'd counted himself out of almost eight years ago. She was tall, of course, and built very strongly, though her femininity was evident in the curve of her hips and the swell of her breasts. The fur was the main difference, and the tail, as well as the shape of her head. She had a short, tiger-like muzzle with thin black lips and a black nose, and her furred head was crested by two short, pointed ears. Her eyes were an intense yellow, flecked with spots of gold, with thin catlike black pupils.
The Ailian appraised him in probably much the same way he was doing to her, with the difference that she maintained a calm air of superiority, considering their situation. Finally, after about ten minutes of this, she spoke again.
“Name,” she hissed at him.
“What?”
She swung her rifle off of her lap, aiming it squarely at his chest. “Name. Your name. You will tell me.”
Jack tilted his chin up. “You first.”
“I tell you that already,” the Ailian said. “Before. You tell me yours.”
“And I already told you, I can't understand a word of your language,” Jack said. He shrugged his shoulders as much as the cords would allow him. “If you want my name, I want yours.”
“Could kill you now,” she pointed out, flicking a switch on her weapon. A red sighting laser projected a gleaming dot on his chest. “Then your name not matter, yes?” She shrugged back at him, and she smiled for the first time, her white razor-sharp teeth gleaming.
Jack held her gaze, sweating a little, but he wasn't willing to risk that she might be serious. “Jack Squier,” he said finally, grudgingly.
The Ailian switched off her targeting laser, laying the rifle across her lap again. “Good.” She leaned back a little, curling her tail around her waist. She winced a little as her body tilted back, and Jack noticed for the first time that her flight suit was stained with wet patches of what looked like blood. “Why you are in this sector of space?”
“First tell me your name,” Jack shot back at her. “I told you mine, so you tell me yours. Fair's fair.”
“And I tell you I already say my name,” she insisted again. “Be-”
“Yeah, I get it. You told me before.” Jack was getting very frustrated with this woman. “And I told
you
before that I can't understand your language one bit. So if you happened to mention your name while we were blasting the shit out of each other in space, it kinda escaped me.”
The Ailian gnashed her teeth for a few moments, internally debating her response. Jack wasn't entirely sure that she wasn't thinking of the best place to put a bullet hole in him, but then it seemed she took another calming breath.
“Aria Me'lia,” she said. Her tail twitched. “Lieutenant Aria Me'lia.” Aria nodded her head. “Now you have my name. You tell me why you are here. You are human military, yes?” She gestured at his clothing and his gun belt.
Jack shook his head. “No. Not anymore. I was once, but I'm a civilian cargo pilot. I work for a shipping company.”
“Liar,” Aria hissed at him. “You in restricted Ascendancy space! Regular humans do not go there. You tell the truth, yes?” She hefted her rifle threateningly, wincing again. Jack thought that some of the patches of blood on her flight suit were a little bigger than before.
“Bite me!” Jack yelled at her.
“Bite you?” she repeated back to him. She seemed genuinely confused by the phrase. “I could do that. These teeth go through your neck like bread.” She bared her teeth at him. “Unless you tell truth.”
“I
am
telling the truth!” Jack insisted. He cursed at himself for giving her a clever idea. “I'm a civilian cargo pilot. Okay, yeah, I was running military supplies, but on a civilian contract, not a military assignment! The path I was taking was just the quickest route to my rendezvous point with the Navy.” He paused, catching his breath after his rushed statement. He looked at Aria, gauging her reaction to his words.
After looking at him for several minutes, she sniffed the air. Jack got the impression that she was smelling his scent, and he wondered what sort of information she could gather from that. He wondered if she could smell fear. If so, she would be getting a noseful of it right now.
“Truth,” she finally said, though she said it in a disappointed tone. She must have been hoping that she'd caught a spy or something like that. “You speak truth.” Jack let out a held breath. He watched as Aria seemed to slump a little. The patches of blood on her suit were definitely growing in size. She must have been injured worse than he had been in during her own crash landing. Jack was a little amazed that she was as strong as she was in the condition that she seemed to be in, and he shivered just a bit as he realized for the first time just how formidable an opponent an Ailian would be in combat.
“Uh...,” Jack said. He felt like a complete moron for wanting to ask the question he was about to ask. “Are you...uh...okay? You don't look so good.”
Aria snarled at him. “You will be quiet.” But her voice was strained now. Jack knew she must have been pushing herself pretty hard to get to his crash site from her own. “Medical supplies. Where?”
“Well, which is it? You want me to be quiet or you want me to tell you where my medical supplies are?”
She picked up her rifle, thrusting the barrel towards him. He heard a click as she disengaged her safety. Jack moved to hold up his hands before remembering that they were tied behind his back.
“A joke,” he said weakly, trying to smile. “I was...uh...joking.” He jerked his head to one side. “They're over there in the tent.”
Aria slung her rifle over her shoulder, standing with some effort and making her way to Jack's tent. She pushed the flap aside, going in. As soon as she was out of sight, he started struggling against his bonds, trying to get his hands loose. After a few moments he gave up; she'd tied them far too tight, and struggling was only making them tighter. A moment later and she emerged from the tent, his medical kit in one hand. It was a military-grade kit with much more stuff in it than a simple shipboard first aid kit.
Without looking at Jack, Aria returned to her spot beside the fire. She set her rifle and the medical kit down. The first thing that she did was to open the case and pull out an ampule of a painkilling drug, unscrewing the cap and then jabbing the sharp, pointed end into her thigh through her clothes. Her face screwed up in pain, and then relaxed as the medication took hold. As Jack watched, she unzipped her flight suit down the front, pulling it from around her shoulders. Her upper body exposed to him, Jack couldn't quite stifle a gasp as he saw at least four nasty gashes across her torso, all of them bleeding freely. Besides that, she also had what looked like a scar from a previous wound, a long one that traced through the thin fur of her underbelly, from her collarbone down between her breasts and almost to her navel. Clearly she was no stranger to serious injury.
Biting her lip, Aria withdrew a disinfectant spray from the kit along with an electric wound sealer, the modern successor to the old-timey needle and thread. She sprayed disinfectant along the gashes. Switching the sealer on, she started drawing along the wounds. There was a hissing noise as the heat from the instrument slightly singed her fur, but the wounds closed cleanly, leaving behind only drying blood and a ragged line in her flesh as evidence that she'd been cut. When she was finished with her front she moved to her back, the thicker fur there giving her some difficulty. But she finished the job all the same, and she replaced the supplies in the kit before turning back to Jack.
She didn't bother to zip her flight suit back up, and Jack knew it was because she needed the wounds exposed to air before they would fully seal. He also got the feeling that she was trying to unnerve him, in which case she was succeeding. He averted his eyes. Even though she was his enemy, it didn't seem right to stare when she was...well...exposed.
“Now,” Aria said, crossing her arms over her chest. “What I do with you, hm? We are stuck on this planet together, and you are prisoner.”
“What the hell are you asking me for?” Jack shot back at her, glancing over. “You're the one with the gun. Seems to me like you get to give the orders, yeah?”
Aria looked back at him, her face impassive. Then she nodded once. “Well, yes.” She crossed her legs, swishing her tail. She seemed much more at ease now that her wounds were attended to. “First thing. Your radio. Does it work?”
Jack blinked. “No, it doesn't. Whatever you did to it during the fight, you knocked it out completely. I tried using it as soon as I finished setting up my camp, and all I get is static on all channels.” His face took on a dejected look. “Believe me, the first thing I wanted to do was call for help, but you ruined any chance of that, didn't you?”
Aria shrugged. “War. I do what I must, yes?” She uncrossed her legs, standing up and starting to pace back and forth. “Is too bad. What to do...” She paced for a while, lost in thought, paying Jack no mind at all. Then she stopped, turning her head to look at him. “Well, then. If I want to leave this planet, I find my ship. Perhaps radio still work.”