What if she was already dead?
He swept trembling arms and tentacles over the ground in a feeble search. All he needed was a rock with enough weight and he could attempt to break the glass.
His eyelids drooped, and his head dipped unintentionally. He shook himself, clawing at alertness, but his mind remained oddly hazy.
Breaking the glass could do her harm, and Arkon…Aymee…they are not here to tend her if she is wounded…
His limbs gave out beneath him, and he sagged onto the grass.
No one to help her.
I must help her.
He raised his head to look at the object, but it was too heavy to hold up. Everything was too heavy.
Vasil sank into darkness; it washed over him like seawater at high tide.
Chapter 2
“Theodora. Theo! Theo, wake up!”
Theo gasped and jolted forward as her eyes snapped open. Her harness cut into her chest, stealing the breath from her lungs. She struggled against it, yanking at the straps, but it held fast. The air felt thin; despite her rapid, ragged breaths, she couldn’t get enough oxygen.
“You need to exit the pod,” Kane said through their neural link. He’d been the familiar voice inside her head for years, and hearing him grounded her enough to ease her panic. If only a little.
“No shit,” she rasped.
“The pod’s internal systems have been damaged. You will need to use the manual release for the hatch.”
“And what am I going to find out there? Am I going to be able to breathe, or is the air going to kill me?”
“Yes, you’re going to die when you open it. It should be a slow and painful death, quite entertaining for me. Or you can just stay put and fall into a gentle sleep.”
Her groping fingers finally found the harness’s buckle. She pressed the button, and the straps’ restrictive pressure finally relented.
“Your sarcasm is so not helpful right now, Kane. Remind me to have you wiped and rebooted the next time I’m in for evaluation.” Pulling her arms free, she swept her hair out of her face and leaned forward, extending her arms to twist and pull each of the four emergency releases around the hatch two at a time. There was a loud hiss.
“You’d never do that, Theo.”
Breath ragged, Theo rolled her eyes. “Of course I wouldn’t.”
She placed her hands on the hatch and pushed. It didn’t budge until she moved off the seat and bunched her legs beneath her, opening just a crack. Salty, chilly air flowed in through the gap. The hydraulics kicked in a moment later, and the hatch swung upward to its fully-open position.
Theo inhaled deeply as she stared up at a gray, overcast sky. The air was sweeter than anything she could remember — nothing like the heavily filtered, recycled air she’d been used to for most of her life.
“Well, I’m not dead yet,” she said, straightening her legs to stand upright.
“Yet,” Kane emphasized.
“Dick. Oh wait, you don’t have one.”
“Neither do you, but that didn’t stop you from teaching me how to be one.”
“I taught you no such thing.” She surveyed the open stretch of sand and rock before her, which was met by rolling waves only fifteen or twenty meters away. The water was a deeper gray than the sky, broken by white crests and foam. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d seen water like this — if she’d ever seen it in person to begin with — much less walked upon something other than the hard, artificial flooring of interstellar ships and space stations.
Theo frowned and rubbed the spot where the harness had dug into her chest. “Wanna be helpful, Kane, and tell me where the hell we are?”
Kane offered her a few moments of silence. She might have enjoyed it if it wasn’t so alarming; he usually had an answer ready without delay.
“Kane?”
“I don’t know.”
“What?” Sudden heat suffused her — the beginning of panic. “How the hell do you not know?”
“There are no satellites within my range, IDC or otherwise. I am unable to pinpoint our current location.”
Theo dropped into her seat and swept a hand over the console. The holographic controls flickered for an instant before the projection solidified. Her frown deepened.
“What happened? Where is everyone else?” she asked as she manipulated the controls to access the emergency beacon.
“If I don’t know where we are, Theo, why would I know where anyone else is?”
The display flashed and pulsed with static before presenting an error message.
“Error? The beacon should’ve been activated automatically, right?”
“Due to the circumstances of the incident, it was not activated.”
“It’s an emergency beacon for a reason.” She slapped the console and scowled.
“The beacon wasn’t activated because there was a strong chance of the incident having been caused by an enemy attack. The IDC does not wish to broadcast the whereabouts of surviving crewmen to nearby enemies.”
“So you can’t detect any other pods nearby? We’re alone here?”
“There are no other escape pods within range of my sensors, and ours was damaged in the explosion. Its long-range communications are destroyed, its internal air supply has been almost fully depleted, and according to the limited records I was able to obtain as we left the ship, we may have been thrown through a tear created by the malfunctioning warp drive.”
Theo leaned back and glared out at the gray clouds. “Got any good news?”
“We have each other.”
“I said good news.”
“If I had a mouth, I would be frowning.” He went silent once again, but she could almost feel him thinking. It had been so strange when Kane was installed in her back when she’d enlisted in the IDC; she’d felt like she would never have a moment of privacy, like her thoughts would never be her own again. But now it was more disconcerting to contemplate his absence. He was part of her.
Her best friend.
Theo sighed and ran a hand through her hair, tugging it back from her face. “You know I love you.”
“I wish I had more information to offer, Theo.”
“I know.”
Sitting forward, Theo manipulated the controls to navigate to the diagnostics menu, but she’d only made it through two options before hitting another blaring red error message. Before she could even ask for assistance, Kane inserted a projection of the escape pod into her vision through her retinal implant.
“Fortunately, the field generator held despite the exterior damage,” he said as the image turned to display red areas of damage on the rear underside of the pod. The image enlarged to show the damage in greater detail. “It held long enough to keep us alive, but we landed in an ocean when we arrived on this planet. Exposure to water increased the damage to the internal systems.”
“Damn,” she muttered as she studied the damage display. “If we were still on the ship, I could fix this, but we don’t have the right tools or any of the parts. Not even to fix the transmitter.”
Pushing herself to her feet, Theo grasped the edges of the hatch opening and climbed out. Her boots sank into the sand below. The air was moist; whether it was due to ocean mist or the threat of a storm, she couldn’t tell. What would rain feel like on her skin? She couldn’t remember — she hadn’t experienced it since her childhood on Old Earth.
She walked to the back of the pod and groaned. The exterior shell was dented and scorched black above and below the floatation ring, and the hole on the underside was clearly visible despite the angle and the shadows. There was no way she could repair that without the resources to do so.
She cursed. “Completely wrecked.”
Wind tousled her hair as she scanned her surroundings. The beach gave way to vegetation not far behind the pod, beginning with long grass and thickening to full-blown jungle not much farther along. The plants were more shades of green and purple than she realized existed. She turned back towar
d the ocean.
The waves crashed against the shore, the strongest reaching a point perhaps ten meters away from the pod before receding. She glanced to the side, studying the stretch of sand to the pod’s left; it was nothing but soft sand this far inland. No debris.
“You said we landed in the ocean, right?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“How the hell did the pod get here, then?”
“You do understand how shorelines work, don’t you? I know you’ve spent most of your life in the bowels of various ships…”
“Don’t get smart with me. Look.” She settled her gaze on the water line before dragging it to the bits of driftwood and broken shells farthest from the sea. “You see how far away that is from the pod?”
“We’ve hardly been here long enough to have accurate data on the tidal patterns of this planet…but you are correct.”
“Wait, did I just hear you right? Did you…did you just say I’m correct? Did you record that?”
“No. I’m afraid I’m all out of storage space.”
Theo snorted.
“That sound is most unbecoming of you.” He highlighted something on the ground, guiding her eyes down. It was a deep, wide groove leading from the pod to the wet sand, where it faded. “That is not the result of riding the surf.”
“No, it’s not.” She stared down, examining the other imprints in the sand — longer, undulating marks, like something had been repeatedly swept over the ground. “The pod was pushed out of the water, Kane.”
“I pushed it out of the water,” someone said in a deep voice behind her.
Theo whirled around, dropping her hand to her hip to draw her knife. She had it pointed at the newcomer before she realized what she was looking at. Her heart stopped, her eyes widened, and she sucked in a sharp breath.
“What the fuck is that?” she rasped, taking several steps back.
The creature was unlike anything she’d ever seen. Its upper half was humanoid, with broad, powerful shoulders that tapered to a lean waist, muscular arms, and large, long-fingered hands. But those fingers ended in claws, and the placating way it held up its hands stretched the delicate webbing between each finger. The creature’s skin was light gray, with white stripes on its head, upper arms, and…
Tentacles.
However human-like its features appeared above the waist, it was entirely alien below. The creature was held itself upright on a set of long, thick tentacles that curled over the sand beneath it. She watched those tentacles slowly spread out, lowering the creature’s torso as though it were trying to appear smaller and less threatening.
“Unknown lifeform,” Kane said, sounding as stunned as Theo felt. “There is a firearm with the pod’s emergency supplies.”
“Doesn’t help me now, does it?” she murmured, her gaze drifting back up the creature’s body to stop on its face.
Its facial features were a blend of human and alien; the basic structures were similar, but it was entirely hairless, its nose was broader and less pronounced, and its pupils were horizontal and oddly rectangular, stark against the polished silver of its irises.
“You would prefer to have remained in the water?” the creature asked, brow furrowed.
“It’s talking, Kane.”
“I heard it, Theodora.”
“But it’s speaking our language.”
“I may not have a body, but I am not deaf.”
The creature’s brow knitted further, and its full lips fell into a deep frown. “Have you suffered a head injury? You seem confused.”
Theo continued to stare at the creature, stunned.
“I am here to help,” it said as its tentacles slithered over the sand to drag itself a little closer. The creature’s movement prodded her out of her startlement.
“Stop right there,” Theo warned, tightening her fingers around her weapon and straightening her arm. “Don’t come any closer.”
The creature halted, raising its hands a little higher. “I do not mean you any harm, but you need to know that your knife will offer you little protection.”
“Are you threatening me?”
Its brow lowered. “No. I meant I am not threatened by your weapon.”
“I’m sure this knife can slit your throat as easily as it’d slice through mine, so stay the fuck back.”
“You would have to get it close enough to my throat first, and that will not—” the creature snapped its mouth shut and shook its head as Theo narrowed her eyes. “I am making it worse, am I not?”
“And I thought you were awkward in social interactions,” Kane said, his voice filled with humor.
“Shove it,” she replied.
“I did shove it,” the creature said, gesturing to the pod, “so it was above the high tide line.”
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
The creature regarded her in silence for a few moments, head tilted to one side. “From what I understand, speaking to oneself is often a sign of mental instability in humans. Are you sure your head was not wounded?”
Theodora gritted her teeth as Kane laughed in her mind. Of all the personality traits the AI could’ve developed, why did smugness have to be one?
“Kane, speak out loud,” she said.
The implant in her wrist glowed as Kane projected his voice outward. “You spoil all my fun, Theodora.”
Now it was the creature that backed away, brows falling low over suspicious eyes. “You are not wearing a suit.”
Theo glanced down at her jumpsuit then looked back at the creature with an arched brow.
“A diving suit,” the creature continued, gaze flicking from the light on her wrist back to her face. “You have a…a Sam inside you.”
“What?”
“I believe he is insulting your sexual escapades. Wasn’t Sam one of the—”
“Not now, Kane,” she bit out.
“The diving suits the humans use have computers inside them called Sam,” the creature said.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Theo said, frowning. “Are you—wait, you said humans. Are there other humans here?”
“Yes. They came from the stars hundreds of years ago, just as you did last night.”
“How is that possible? Kane, you said you didn’t know where we are. How could there be humans here but no satellites?”
“I don’t have an answer for you, Theo,” Kane replied. “Many worlds have been colonized by humans since they became capable of interstellar travel. The potential circumstances that brought humans here without any advanced communications equipment are too varied and numerous for me to speculate upon unless you want to spend the next several years going over them.”
“No.” Theo regarded the creature before her. “What are you?”
“A kraken.”
“Well, I think all our questions have been answered,” Kane said.
“You are lost and afraid,” the creature said, “but I will not harm you.”
“How can I trust that?” she asked, glancing at his claws. She was sure he was male — he looked masculine. Like, really masculine, if his size and musculature were anything to go by.
“I saved you from the sea.”
“For all I know, you only saved me so you could eat me later.”
He recoiled, his features contorted in a mix of horror and disgust.
“What?” she asked. “I see those teeth, those claws. I know a predator when I see one.”
“Why would I have made my presence known to you if I meant to eat you?”
“I dunno.” She swept her gaze over him from top to bottom and back again. After her initial shock had passed, it wasn’t nearly as unsettling to look at him as she would’ve thought. “Maybe you like to play with your food.”
“Hunting is not a game, and we do not hunt humans.”
“So there are more of you?” Body tensing, she looked past him, scanning the jungle.
The creature tilted his head, expression wary.
“You
expect me to trust you,” Theo said, “but you won’t tell me if you’re alone?”
“You and I are the only ones here.”
Theo clenched her teeth; he was being intentionally vague. But she forced her frustration aside. She was a stranger to him, too, and he had no more reason to trust her than she did to trust him. Releasing a soft sigh, she cocked her head to the side. “Do you have a name?”
He nodded. “Vasil.”
“Okay, good. I’m—”
“Theodora.”
She nodded, completely ignoring the shiver coursing through her as his deep voice seemed to caress her name. Not going there. Totally not going there. “Yeah. But Theo will do, okay?”
“But that is only part of your name.”
“That’s okay. The full thing is a mouthful.”
“Just Theo, then.”
Theo studied him again. His posture had relaxed, and while he still appeared on guard, he didn’t look as though he were planning to tear her to shreds.
“Why are you here, Vasil?” she asked.
His gaze, suddenly heavier, swept over Theo, and she could almost feel him looking into her. Despite having had Kane in her head for years, it wasn’t comfortable to have someone see inside her so easily.
“Because I followed a fallen star.”
Chapter 3
Theo sat in the pod, legs crossed at the ankle and booted feet propped on the edge of the console. Her left arm was settled over her stomach while her right hand played with her lower lip.
“You do realize there are productive activities by which you could pass your time?” Kane asked.
She glanced at the second seat, upon which she’d piled the stock of emergency rations from the rear storage space. Kane was right — the supplies wouldn’t last forever. She’d need to find other sources of food and water soon, but she refused to give him the satisfaction of voicing her agreement.
“I am being productive. I’m thinking,” she said.
“Your commanding officer would have a different term for this, I think.”
“Good thing my CO isn’t here.”
But there was someone else here. Vasil.
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