“Shot by my own people or eaten by an alien. Who the fuck cares. Whatever,” Kat mumbled, lying down again. Melanie rolled over, facing the wall.
“Look, we don’t have to figure all of this out now,” I said, slowly lowering myself to my bunk. “But let’s just promise each other that we’ll do our best to get out of this alive somehow. That we pay attention, learn everything we can over the next couple of weeks, and give this thing the best shot we have.”
“I will,” Theresa said instantly from above me.
“Fine,” Kat said.
Melanie said nothing, but I saw a small nod of her head.
I swallowed, nodding to myself. Well, that’s something at least. I laid back in my bunk, trying to ignore the intense pressure building in my chest. Theresa’s words repeated over and over in my head. Maybe we can communicate with them... Damn. If anyone was going to have a hope of making friends with our new alien buddies, it was going to be me.
And, so help me God, if that didn’t light the hottest fucking fire under my ass.
CHAPTER THREE Cece
The next two weeks passed in a fevered blur of eating, sleeping, and trying to decode the language of the planet we were rapidly approaching. After breakfast each day, we were all separated to different training rooms. Mine was a tiny dark office with a single computer and a set of headphones which played snippets of the alien language we’d recorded from our orbiting research vessel. The audio recordings, alongside very grainy photos and videos, had already been analyzed by Earth linguists way above my pay grade, but even they hadn’t been able to make much of it. So far, we had a list of nouns we were mostly sure about, based on where the aliens seemed to be and what they were doing in the accompanying videos and photos. Otherwise, the language was completely without context or clues. I listened, day after day, to the same static-filled recordings, trying to gain some greater kind of understanding of what we were about to plunge into. The aliens must have had fairly humanoid mouths, as I could sort of replicate the sounds, though with some difficulty. The sounds of their language were guttural, many of the consonants clicking at the back of the throat. And their voices were deep and booming. The first time I’d put my headphones in and pressed play, my heart had thrummed in my chest, my skin pricking with goosebumps, to hear such a strange, deep voice, a voice from across the universe, growling in my ears.
When the other girls and I crashed into bed for lights out each night, I remained awake, going over and over the few words I knew, trying to untangle the mess of the rest of the language. Long after the others had gone to sleep, I tossed and turned, anxiety building every day that we got closer to the planet and that I hadn’t made some kind of linguistic breakthrough. Our survival could come down to me and my communications skills. I had to do better. I had to do something.
But the two weeks came to their end, and I’d made very little headway other than identifying what seemed to be a few more nouns the other linguists had missed. Ablik, as far as I could tell, seemed to mean weapon. Or maybe stick. Or shovel. Valok was something on the ground that the aliens looked like they picked up and stabbed, then ate. Maybe a small animal that they sucked the blood and guts out of. Gross. I had about fifty other nouns stored in the back of brain, words I’d memorized with anxious intensity, repeating them over and over as I walked the halls, as I showered, as I ate the crappy space ship food, even as I peed. But that was it. That’s all I had. A handful of nouns to try to negotiate with an alien race. No pressure.
Panic churned in my guts as we rose on that final day, knowing today was the day we’d descend to the surface. Everyone else seemed to feel as I did, and Kat, Theresa, Melanie, and I got dressed silently, shrugging into the plain grey uniforms we’d been given not long after arriving on the ship. Over the lightweight grey track pants and grey tank tops, we put on our solar protection jackets – pale tan in colour, with long sleeves and a hood with an attached visor. We’d been given packs, too, with supplies: rations; water bottles; first aid kits; and futuristic, too-powerful-for-over-the-counter sunscreens that went on thick and blue on our skin.
Chapman and a couple of other soldiers, all wearing solar protection jackets over their uniforms, showed up at our door a few moments after we’d gotten dressed.
“Time to go,” she said, her face blank.
The four of us looked at each other, saying nothing. Because really, what was there to say? Good luck everyone, don’t die.
The four of us were led through the long curving hall to a part of the ship we’d never been in, coming to a stop before a large set of round, metal doors. Chapman yanked some kind of badge from her pocket and tapped it against a small screen beside the doors, causing them to to slide open smoothly.
“Welcome to the bridge,” she said, gesturing us inside.
“Whoa,” Theresa whispered, and Kat whistled, breaking the stoic silence of our little group.
I sucked in a breath. Whoa indeed.
We’d gotten used to the spaceship over the past couple of weeks, and it no longer felt foreign to us. But this? This was something straight out of a science fiction movie set. The bridge was large, curving, with at least twelve different seats and console areas set up, where military pilots and technicians were typing and working with singular focus. Colonel Jackson stood at the front, his hands tucked neatly behind his back, and behind him was a massive open view screen, a gargantuan windshield that yielded us our first glimpse of the planet.
The photos we’d seen did nothing to convey the reality of what we saw now. There as a savage sort of beauty to the planet, its surface a deep, coppery gold, the asteroid belt encircling it like a brutal studded belt.
“I didn’t know we were already so close,” I said, my voice tight. I wasn’t ready. We weren’t ready. This can’t be actually happening.
“Good, everyone’s here and equipped with their packs.” Colonel Jackson nodded approvingly as Kat, Theresa, Melanie, and I stepped forward to join the rest of the women already present on the bridge.
“It will take us about fifteen minutes to descend to the planet’s surface.”
Holy shit. Fifteen minutes? Fifteen minutes until we potentially get blasted off the face of this fucking world? Great.
“Don’t we need to, like, strap in or something?” Someone asked from nearby, but Colonel Jackson shook his head.
“No, our tech is much more advanced than what you’ve seen in the movies. It should be a pretty smooth ride, but I will direct you all to sit against the back wall of the room in case it gets a little bumpy.”
My hands shaking, I took off my backpack and sat against the wall, gripping the grey fabric of the bag between my legs. Theresa gave me a wan smile, her face tinted pale blue from the sunscreen we’d put on.
Colonel Jackson remained standing at the front.
“Now, as we’ve already outlined, when we get to the planet’s surface, we will remain at the vessel until the natives come to us. Based on how territorial they are, and how in tune they seem to be with the land, we don’t think it will take too long. In the area where we are landing, it’s currently about halfway through their sixteen hours of daylight.”