Space
“Will you stop covering me in dirt. Just because the scan says it’s safe does not mean I want to breathe it.” Larry growled.
“I wouldn’t be kicking it if you hadn’t blown our damn relay. Are you done assessing the damage yet?” Myn clenched her fist. That relay was their last shot for getting in contact with the Alliance and getting rescued from this planet. If they didn’t have it up and running soon, they would be presumed dead as it was common for teams of explorers to go missing or die exploring the Milky Way.
“I’m not a damn techie. Give me a mo’ soldier girl.”
Larry tinkered some more before sighing, “We need a new power core. This one fried itself. There should be a spare in the other escape pod that crashed.”
“I’ll go retrieve it. Hain will guard you until I get back. Try not to die Larry.” Myn growled.
Wonderful, now she had to go back into the Jungle she had just left. When they said this was a peaceful planet, they forgot to scan the vegetation. Turns out there are plants that are carnivorous here and, because of that, the wildlife is even more aggressive. Eden sure was an ironic name for this planet. Typical humans calling every green planet they find Eden only to have to rename it due to the planets not being peaceful.
Checking her gear and switching out some of her empty mags for full ones, she lowered her helmet and integrated with the AI inside. “Erik, scan the environment as I go.”
“Yes Ms. Myn,” the AI responded. People thought soldiers were crazy for naming their AI but it was missions like this, or ones where they flew solo, that gave them only their AI as their companion. Funnily enough, she wasn’t a soldier, she was a mercenary that everyone mistook for a soldier. It did not help that her race, the Elénta, were known for entering the Alliance military due to their active nature. Sitting still was never her race’s strong suit. Her armored boots clunked against the ground as she followed the path they had taken to get to their location from the crash site they had visited earlier and found Larry there Hain was with her in their escape pod that also crashed.
Her pistol was ready and loaded as she moved through the forest, eyeing the plants that she walked by, especially the yellow ones that she saw eat a small animal earlier. Reaching the site was anticlimactic, but that was pretty much most of this adventure. When she signed up, she signed up as protection to explorers. A nice easy vacation from the smuggling she usually did, and, unlike the rest of the crew, she would have no one to miss her if she disappeared. Growing up in the slum worlds of the Alliance shows you that people leave you once you no longer have worth, so she never got close to anyone.
“Erik, scan for power core.”
“Ms. Myn there are no power cores in the vicinity.”
Myn’s eye twitched and she crouched to the ground examining the dirt. “Tracks. What are the measurements Erik?”
“They appear to be 12.5 centimeters wide at the widest and 27.93 centimeters in length. Larger than any Human or Elénta aboard the ship and smaller than the Darka that were aboard.”
“So, a native, stowaway, or exile.” It was not unusual for exiles to inhabit unexplored planets, since they were not under Alliance control. Myn narrowed her eyes and her lips twitched down. “Erik, analyze the crash data again.” Standing up, she glanced around before following the tracks. Whoever it was had not dealt with a mercenary before as they did not hide their tracks well. They were smart, though, as they went deeper into the forest and did not follow any discernible path. By the time Myn found a cave that the trail seemed to go into, she was down half her bullets for her pistol and a clip in her assault rifle. Turns out there is a large reptilian species that live here, and they do not go down easy. The cave looked dark, but she decided not to risk a flare as she did not know if there were explosive materials in there and would instead just have her head light on.
Treading as lightly as she could she held her pistol in front of her, ready to fire. “Erik, scan for life.”
“There is one life form in the cave that is alive.” Erik’s voice filtered into her ears as her eyes caught a shadow of movement.
“I’m not here to kill you. I just need something you stole.” Her voice was strong and steady as she aimed her gun at the shadow.
“Ne camu le shai ke,” The shadow growled.
“Erik, translate. Stay where you are.” Myn kept her gun aimed at the shadow as it moved forward and into her light.
“NE CAMU LE SHAI KE!” The shadow roared. The darkness melted from their skin as they stepped into the light and revealed a human child. He could not have been older than twenty, considerably younger than her 328 years, and was dressed in tribal-like clothes.
“Ms. Myn he is saying that he needs you to leave.”
“Can you translate to him?”
“Yes, he is using an archaic form of Dialian from the twenty-third century.”
“The Dialians were exiled. They must have lived here. Why do I need to leave?”
“Ma le sa shu?” Erik’s voice filtered out of her helmet.
“Na ku ta jea kawy per sa.”
“He says that there is sickness in the air.”
“Ask him about the power core and scan for disease.”
“Al sha fe gor?”
The child’s face scrunched up before he turned and grabbed something from a pile of cloth, it was the power core. “Al ki.”
“Et.” Erik replied. The child handed the power core to her before pointing to the entrance behind her. “Ms. Myn the child is not infected with the disease, but it seems the others were affected with some type of lung disease. It is indiscernible what it is as it does not match any known lung afflictions. The final symptom seems to be drowning in their own blood.”
“Then there is nothing we can do but bring the data back to the Alliance.” She told Erik as they walked out of the cave. Maybe if she was a different person, a less bitter person, she would make the kid leave his planet, but that was not her. She had a job to do and a kid would just get in the way. After all, life is not a fairytale where people can welcome strangers with open arms and eyes full of hope. No. Life was about crushing dreams and hopes you had as a child and realizing that it was sometimes better off leaving people for dead knowing that part of them already died when their home was gone.
They made it off Eden once the power relay came back on and, while Myn forgot about the human boy in the cave, he never forgot her as he was picked up by scientists from the Alliance. After all, it was her fault that these strange people found him and poked him with needles and drew his red life force. He cursed her to the Gods and would never forgive her. He’d even kill her if he ever escaped from the white rooms he was trapped in.
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Amara Gitomer is a sophomore in the Mathematics Department. Amara’s inspiration for writing comes from her love of reading sci-fi and fantasy novels.