In four minutes, my life would officially change. It was already too late to turn back, but the introduction of a countdown sent my stomach into a series of flips and spins. I was no longer going to be Celine Lemaire, the girl from Baltimore and nutrition coach to middle-aged women trying to lose the baby weight. My life was suddenly going to have a purpose greater than any I could have expected: the health and well-being of every human colonist on Albaterra was going to be on my shoulders. It was a weight I’d been confident I could carry, but, as my ears started to pop and I started to feel the impact of increased pressure in my belly with the ship’s descent, doubts began to bloom in my mind.
Without warning, there was a boom so loud that I went deaf entirely. Everything from the floor beneath my feet to the ceiling above my head shook violently, throwing my body from side to side with such force that the straps cut into my flesh. My stomach lurched and, as my deafness gave way to relentless ringing, I was tilted forward. Blood rushed to the front of my face, heating my cheeks. I realized with a jolt of horror that this was no turbulence; we were plummeting downward. The harness strained against my chest, and my rear slid toward my knees until the belt between my legs caught me.
Panic welled in my gut, and my head became light. The edges of my vision became white and blurry. It felt like I couldn’t get enough oxygen. The reality of the situation flashed through my mind: we were going to crash, and I was helpless, unable to stop it.
Then, with my last ounce of control, I opened my mouth and screamed.
3
Lokos
The initial impact of the ship was so powerful it punched the ground and sent me flying upward as if I had jumped. The craft’s wide breast smashed into the very grove of trees Silah and I had waited behind mere moments ago, splintering the trunks so violently it sounded like breaking bones. There was no more high-pitched squealing in my ears; rather, the roar of the massive blaze overtaking the ship’s rear bellowed with such force that it was more akin to a gusting, relentless storm-wind than fire. I was thrown to the ground again as an explosion detonated from the furthermost portion of the transport.
Then, as quickly as the chaos had started, it stopped. The ship became still in its mangled state as it lost momentum, the flames relaxed to cheery crackles as they met the fireproofed portion of the construct, and I was left lying on my back with a viscous layer of snow and conifer tar coating my skin. I took in a slow breath of the sharp, frosty air before sitting up to assess the situation.
“Silah!” I barked. Not even a hint of an echo boomeranged back to me, blocked by the carnage all around.
“Here, Chief,” he muttered, poking his head out from behind a nearby tree, sounding thoroughly disgruntled.
I leaped to my feet in one swift movement and quickly tested my limbs and joints for functionality. “Are you injured?” I called to him.
He stepped into the open. “No,” he grumbled. “But I may as well be. This mess is going to set me back weeks in training.”
We turned in tandem to survey the scene before us. The flames, while appearing to remain restricted to the tail end of the ship, towered toward the sky, and pieces of the craft littered the ground as far as the eye could see. Smoke billowed in thick, black clouds from the starboard side, indicating an unseen blaze within. While snow had blanketed the clearing floor only minutes earlier, much of it had either been displaced by the ship’s skidding or melted by the flames, revealing the dark, frozen soil beneath. Worst of all, I distinctly heard the sounds of distant wails and cries over the residual noises of the crash.
“Fetch the Emergency Response Team,” I said through tight lips. “I must find those who can be saved.”
Silah turned a wary eye to me. “You think it wise to maneuver the wreckage alone?” he asked dubiously.
“No,” I admitted. “But there are survivors within, and I cannot let them perish while I stand idly by. Fetch the ERT, Silah. Quickly.”
He hesitated, clearly reluctant to obey my order and leave me to venture amongst the rubble unaccompanied, but I threw him a severe look, and he yielded. As he turned and departed with a sprint, I carefully strode forward to the mammoth space-vehicle and began strolling a perimeter around it to access the damage. The main engines at the furthermost end were unquestionably the source of the wall of fire, and closer inspection revealed thick swaths of strange, compressed fluff that I assumed to be what kept the blaze from advancing inward. As I circled to the opposite side, I was choked by the smoke and rancid fumes blooming from a gaping hole, but I was unable to discern the room from which the smoke was born.
The loading bay had been blown open entirely by the force of the landing, and I saw the contents within tossed about the space in haphazard disarray. Without permitting myself to think about the potential risks, I stepped into the bay. My boots thumped against the floor as I crossed to a massive door on the eastern wall. It was crumpled and bent out of its frame, leaving jagged edges jutting outward and a gap large enough for a body at the top. I hoisted myself up, stepping onto one of the jutted edges for leverage, and contorted myself through the void. I dropped into a corridor, though it was wide enough to serve as a meeting hall or a feasting room, and narrowly avoided cracking my head on a pipe that had been jarred from the ceiling.
The cries of the survivors were louder now, no longer drowned out by the incendiary roar, and they tugged at my gut. I could hear pain and panic as viscerally as if it had been me screaming. Transitioning into a jog, my boots thudding persistently now, I followed the corridor to a split and darted instinctually to the left. There was no smoke here, but there was a potent, bitter odor in the air that made my nose ache. With each step, the pleas grew closer.
I drew up to identical portal-like doors on either side of me. Both were intact, but one was slightly ajar while the other was open completely. I glanced through the open door to see a dark, unoccupied bunkhouse before turning to the other. Through the slit, I saw four slumped, seated figures.
With every ounce of strength I possessed, I wrenched the door open and crossed the threshold. I counted eight humans in total, all strapped into black, high-backed chairs and all with their chins resting limply on their chests. Seven of the eight were males, the last a woman, and none moved. My pulse quickening, I moved forward and pressed my fingers into the neck of the nearest man. A heartbeat throbbed against my fingertips. He had likely just been rendered unconscious by the force of the crash.
My ears pricked as I heard screams again. They sounded much deeper in the ship than I was presently. After searching for a pulse on a second human in the room and successfully locating one, I exited and proceeded again through the corridor.
I encountered seven more rooms with eight unconscious crewmembers, as well as one room that had caved in completely and killed its occupants, before finally locating the shrieks. The door, like the first I had found in the loading bay, was crushed upon itself from the top down and offered only a small breadth through which I could enter. The thick black smoke was present here, however, and I heard the snapping of a nearby inferno. I hoisted myself onto a folded, protruding section of the door to peer through the opening at the top, and I was met with the sight of vivid orange flames lapping at the postern wall. At the very back, nearest the conflagration, there were two females. The one to the right was as unconscious as the others I had found before her, but the straps holding her upright were enveloped in a small, tenacious blaze. The other was very conscious, and it was she who screamed.
The moment she spotted me, her screeches became louder, but with them came words. “Help her! Oh my God, help her! She’s going to be burned alive! Get her out! Get her out!” she wailed. Her hands pulled helplessly at the belts crisscrossing her chest, but they seemed to have melted into one great grid from the heat, and she was unable to free herself.
I scaled the door and leaped through the orifice. The six others in the room, all males, were unmoving, but I could see their chests faintly rising and falling, s
o I bypassed them. The alert woman was bucking against her restraints now, kicking her legs wildly and twisting desperately.
“Please!” she howled. There were shiny, moist tracks down her cheeks, and her golden hair was practically a halo of frizzled snarls around her head. “She’s going to die!”
I swooped down upon the inflamed woman. It was difficult to see through the haze of smoke, but I could make out a curtain of deep, rich umber hair and sweet, full lips that dangled open in her comatose state. With a quick inhale of breath and jolt of determination, I plunged my hands into the flames. Excruciating, searing pain pierced my nerves and sent a shout of torment rolling from my throat, but I forced my fingertips to scrabble over the straps in search of the buckles that would free the female. I found one, then a second, before I had to pull back from sheer agony.
The crying woman screamed again, pleading with me to free her friend, but I tuned her out. Lunging forward once more, I dug for the third, fourth, and fifth clasps. Flames licked my arms and smoke burned my nostrils, but I refused to pull back this time, as I knew I would be too reluctant to finish. When the sixth fastening was undone, I wrapped my hands around the woman’s upper arms and tugged, but she was still held in place by something. I glanced down to her lap, where fire danced wickedly and shoved my hand between her thighs without care for proprieties. There, I felt a seventh hasp. I unbuckled it, threw the final strap aside, and tossed her from the chair to the ground.
“Is she alive? Is she breathing?” the blonde cried tearfully, still struggling against her bonds.
I fell to my knees beside the unconscious woman and lowered my ear to her mouth for a sign of breath. I heard nothing.
4
Celine
The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was bright, purple glittering. I blinked, trying to clear my vision, but my eyes felt heavy and sluggish. For a moment, I wondered if I was dreaming, but, when my lids opened again, the purple glitter was still hovering overhead.
“Ms. Lemaire? Can you hear me?”
I lowered my gaze and attempted to do the same with my head, but it was bulky and cumbersome and unwilling to move. Standing beside me, there was a slender man with square, wire-rimmed glasses and a clipboard clutched to his chest. The colors of his clothing pooled together into a swampy green hue through my hazy vision, but I recognized the silhouette as a military uniform. He stepped closer and leaned down until I was able to make out a closely-shaven buzz cut on his scalp, and he reached forward to lift one of my eyelids.
“She seems alert, but I don’t know if she’s suffered any brain damage from the impact,” he said to someone I couldn’t see. “If we had electricity figured out here, I’d send her in for a CT, but we might have to go the old-fashioned route to find out.”
He reached into his breast pocket and extracted something with a click. The next thing I knew, I was blinded by a brilliant light. “Ms. Lemaire, if you can hear me, I need you to respond,” he said loudly. “Can you hear me?”
I parted my lips to respond, but I immediately realized my mouth was as dry as cotton. Dragging my tongue over my teeth to stimulate salivation, I croaked, “I can hear you.”
The light in my eye disappeared, leaving me with black spots swimming before me. The man straightened up again, though he remained close enough for me to touch if I’d been able. “Tell Burke the patient is awake. The Chief has been asking to see her,” he said, still speaking to the person I was unable to see. Then, dropping his gaze down to me, he introduced, “Ms. Lemaire, I’m Captain Geoffrey Biddle, a member of the USAMC and one of the doctors assigned to the Fifth Ward. I’ve been overseeing your treatment and monitoring your condition.”
His words sounded strange, almost as if he were speaking to me through a pane of glass. “What happened?” I whispered hoarsely.
“The Conquest was struck by an unknown source and crashed upon landing. Do you remember the accident, or anything before it?”
My mind retracted to the observatory onboard. I foggily recalled the sight of Albaterra, massive and vibrant against the pitch of space around it. An image of the Conquest crashing to the ground played through my head, but I saw it from a third-person perspective and knew it was merely my mental response to the information I’d just received.
“I remember—” Deep, reverberating coughs suddenly burst from my chest, rendering me speechless and erupting forth so violently I ached. I curled involuntarily as I hacked, but the doctor reached forward and gently pressed my shoulders back against the pillows.
“You’ve suffered quite a bit of smoke inhalation,” he explained. “You’ll experience some coughing, wheezing, hoarseness, and possibly headaches for a little while. We are also treating you for a concussion and second-degree burns. Thank God NASA made the jumpsuits flame-resistant.”
He was becoming more audible as my grogginess began to fade, but I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly. While my body felt weighted, I wasn’t experiencing any pain to indicate any injury as severe as second-degree burns. If the coughs hadn’t still been wracking my body, I would have asked him to clarify, to explain further.
“Captain?” The voice was higher-pitched but still definitively male, and I tried again to lower my head and see the source. This time, I was able to tilt my neck a bit, and a man slightly shorter and rather bulkier than the doctor was drawing up to the foot of my bed. Biddle turned to him. “Burke says the Chief is onsite and will see the patient anytime she’s ready.”
Biddle looked back down at me. I could see indecision on his face. “I’m not sure if you’re well enough for a visitor, but it was the Chief who brought you in here and he’s been asking about you for hours…”
“I’ll see him,” I uttered throatily. I had no idea who this mysterious Chief was, nor why he wanted to see me, but he sounded like an important man, so I was agreeable to the idea.
There was a moment in which I was certain the captain would tell me no, but then he nodded briefly and looked at the newcomer by my feet. “Send him in,” he told him. “Five minutes.”
The man departed, and Captain Biddle said, “I will be back to check on you soon.”
Once I was alone, I turned my eyes back upward. The purple sparkles above were actually glinting faces of beautiful violet geodes growing from a rocky ceiling, catching filtered rays of stark-white sunlight through enormous, arched windows lining the upper walls opposite me. I reached down on either side of me and cautiously pushed to ease myself into a slightly-sitting position. My strength was feeble, and I was only able to elevate myself a few inches before falling back against the pillows, but it was enough to enable me to see the room in its entirety.
It was a vast, massive room, larger than a high school gymnasium or even a football field. The walls were made entirely of the same rock as the ceiling, a dusty chocolate-brown color with smooth bulges and mild crevices. Hospital-style cots like mine were lined up in two rows from one side to the other and placed equal measures apart, most with free-standing IV poles beside them. To my surprise, at least twelve of the beds in the row across from me were occupied. None of the patients were moving, but I heard the soft grumbles of someone snoring nearby. I didn’t know for sure, but I had a feeling they were other survivors from the Conquest crash.
Movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention, and I slowly turned my head. When I did, I was rendered completely speechless.
What approached me was not a man at all, but an alien. An A’li-uud. Standing well over six feet tall with long strands of colorless white hair rippling down his back and skin of such a pale azure he looked like a frost-covered blueberry, he moved toward me with dancer-like grace and ninja-like stealth. His footfalls were silent, despite the thickly-soled knee-high boots he wore. His pants were rather harem in style and the color of raw bamboo, but they didn’t swish or whoosh as he walked. He wore no shirt, allowing me a view of his ripe, fissured abdomen with ridges profound enough to rival a superhero’s. And his eyes… They were as
white as his hair with only a hair-thin circle to indicate where his iris ended and his sclera began, and they were pinned so intently on me that I felt hot, penetrating vulnerability in my belly.
As he drew near, I finally ripped my eyes away from his and noticed he had odd bandages the color of Captain Biddle’s uniform wrapped around both hands and up to each elbow. When he finally came to a stop beside me, he noticed my stare and followed my gaze.
“I have burns,” he said. He spoke English, but his words sounded strange. They were clipped short at the ends as if he was finished with each word before it was complete. The final syllables drifted from between his thin lips like breaths. He raised both hands before him, showing me. “Not as severe as yours, I am told. I imagine your skin is more delicate than mine.”
I didn’t know what to say. All of a sudden, I’d forgotten how to speak. My tongue tripped over several responses, my lips fumbling clumsily for enunciations, but nothing remotely like English came out. He didn’t seem to mind. On the contrary, he watched my mouth closely with an expression of fascination on his finely featured face. When the silence became too lengthy and awkwardness began to set in, I forced myself to expel anything I could manage.
“Who are you?” I asked in a raspy whisper.
He tilted his head so slightly it was practically imperceptible. Then, his thin, sculpted lips parted, and he growled, “I am Lokos, War Chief of Montemba. You belong to me.”
5
Lokos
Lokos: A Scifi Alien Romance: Albaterra Mates Book 4 Page 2