Alien Primal's Treasure

Chapter 1

Rachel

Alright, Rachel. Just stay calm.

The entire ship shakes, and it’s hard to tell the showers of sparks from the emergency lights flashing all over the bridge. I’ve never been through a crash before. As much as I’ve always wanted to believe my instinct would be to fight, every cell of my being is screaming to get the hell out of here. 

Save yourself.

Can I really just do that?

“Captain Shannon, please! Let’s just get to the escape pods.”

“No.” He clings to his command station with an iron grip, his eyes riveted to the controls. “We can pull this out. I now we can.”

The ship bucks hard and our Captain pitches forward over his controls. If possible, the ship shakes even harder. He just rights himself.

“Stay calm everyone. Lt. Armin, engage auxiliary thrusters.”

This is madness. Darting through the door, I find Dr. Harris wedged against a wall in the corridor, sucking on a cigarette as if it’s gonna save his life.

“He can’t, you know.” He rakes a hand up through his stringy hair and looks at me through those ruined, once-handsome eyes.

“Can’t what?”

“He can’t call an evacuation. There aren’t enough shuttles for everyone.” 

My stomach shrivels into an ice cold knot. I want to say something, but the enormity of it stops all my words at the base of my throat. Harris just shrugs and takes another ugly drag off his smoke.

“Cost saving. It was never supposed to come to this.”

“You got that right.” I almost grip him by the shoulder in solidarity, but my feet are already running. 

“I know I do,” Harris calls after me. “Travel safe. Don’t go alone.”

His words rattle into me as I tear around the corner. He knows. I’m not going to die like this. There’s no way in hell I’m letting the people who packed this tin can have a say in how I’m going out. 

Skidding up to the engine room, I look in to see a thin haze of smoke. It’s not that we’re damaged, but everything is operating beyond capacity. The ventilation system is roaring, sucking out as much of the haze as possible, and the technical team is drenched in sweat. In the center of it all is Jessica.

Her mass of dark hair is pulled back out of her face, and hard determination sits in her eyes. This is gonna be hard.

“Hey.” I’m at her shoulder, but she won’t look at me. 

“What’s up? I’m kinda busy.” She’s pouring coolant directly over a spinning gear to keep it from cracking from the heat.

“We’re getting the fuck out of here.” I whisper it directly into her ear, and her whole body tenses. I’ve got her attention now.

“We can’t.” She speaks without moving her lips.

“The fuck we can’t. The only reason Shannon isn’t calling for the pods is that there aren’t enough of them for everybody. I’m taking one, but I can’t do it alone. You’re one of my best friends, now let’s go.”

Those luminous brown eyes turn to me, and I can see how much she wants this. In a snap, she puts down the coolant and looks to the rest of her crew.

“I’m going for supplies,” she calls over the blast of the ventilators.

In the hallway, she starts to shiver uncontrollably. Despite the heat. It’s terrible, but I know exactly why.

“We could have brought some of them,” she says.

“There’s no time.” My voice is harder than I mean it to be, but if we called out an evacuation to the engine room, the ship would go down before any of us could reach a single pod.

“Where are we going? The evacuation units are behind us.”

“We need one more.” I’m charging now, my heart beating so hard I think it might crack my ribs. It’s hard to tell if the rushing in my ears is from the Precursor or my pulse. Coming around the corner, I nearly collide with Nicole. 

“Jesus Fuck!” She blinks away her surprise and stares at us. Her arms are laden with weaponry. “I’m going for the shuttles.” It’s more a fact than a confession.

“So are we.”

Without a word, Nicole dumps the load of weapons into my arms and turns to run back. I know exactly what she’s doing. Within seconds, she’s steaming back up toward us, with more clutched against her than she can really carry. Bundling some of her armful on Jessica, the three of us break into a run.

It may be fate that my two closest friends are the head of engineering and a munitions whiz, but I’m not asking questions. The time to count our blessings is when we’re actually safe.

Reaching the bank of pods, we pile in and get to work. There’s room for six, and a stab of guilt tears into my chest. We could have brought more. I should have brough more. A sickening heave to the side wipes those thoughts away. For now.

“You’re gonna want to strap in.” Jessica already hammers away at the command screen, and the pod rumbles to life. 

“Two seconds.” Nicole piles the weapons into bins and ratchets them shut. “If these are loose on our entry, they’ll wind up flying around and beating us to death. No sense escaping for that.”

I look at the heap of weapons she’s stowing and count the time in my head. Is there enough? We’re gonna need a doctor. In my mind, I can see Harris hacking away against the wall just outside the bridge. He gave me the courage to do this. The least I can do is offer him a spot on the arc.

“I’ll be right back.” I make for the portal, but it slides shut in my face. Spinning around, I see Nicole with her palm on the control.

“Nope. Strap in.”

“We’re gonna need medical help on this thing. Dr. Harris…”

“Dr. Harris can’t help us. If he weren’t dying of cancer, he’d already be here.” There’s a bone-chilling pragmatism in her voice, but I know she’s right. The weapons have been locked up in record time, and she’s already buckling in. 

“We’re all leaving someone behind,” she says.

The words sink into my core, and any number of faces flash before my eyes. Good luck. My ass hits a seat, and as soon as my first buckle is fastened, we break free. All the shuddering of the Precursor gives way to the eerie calm of space. It’s oddly terrifying. 

I look through the main portals, expecting to see the infinite blackness of the universe stretched out, but instead I see the vast, beige curve of a planet. How had we gotten so close? 

“What are we looking at,” I ask.

“Our new home,” Jessica says, clicking away. 

“Great.” It’ll do for now, anyway. Looking through one of the side portals, I see the massive, sleek exterior of the Precursor. All the people inside weigh on me, and yet it seems so impossibly removed already. 

As if spun by some enormous, invisible hand, our former ship dives into a terrible spin. My blood turns to ice. We’re too close. Before I can yell, there’s a cataclysmic bang, and our entire pod jolts with impact. A cascade of red emergency lights flash up on every side.

Fuck. Did we really run just to crash anyway? Is this my punishment for leaving them all behind?

“Hang on!” Rebecca shouts. As if she needs to tell us.

“What is it,” I ask. “How bad.” 

“No breech, but one of our thrusters was clipped. Bad.”

“So, what does that mean?” Nicole is holding onto her restraints so tightly, her knuckles look like they might split her skin.

“It means a rocky landing.”

“A landing, though,” Nicole says. “Not a crash?”

“Cross your fingers.” You know the crazy thing? I actually do. 

We’re clearly feeling the strain from the lost booster, but Jessica is a dynamo. Sweat soaks through her shirt, but she leans into the controls with the entire force of her being. As much as I’d love to help, I’d just break her flow. It’s all in her hands now.

“Holy shit.” 

I look up, following Nicole’s gaze and see the broad expanse of planet unfolding in front of us. From the side, the Precursor slues ahead of us, coming in horribly low. As it does, it cracks against the top of a mountain peak, and scrapes forward on its doomed trajectory. Immense, crystal-like boulders scatter down into the valley, and the Precursor grinds on for another mile or more before gouging into the plains beyond.

It’s a terrific crash, sending up a plume of soil and smoke, but she looks relatively intact. 

Maybe they survived.

The thought floods into my chest like pure relief, and the faintest edge of my guilt is dulled. Conscience is a motherfucker, but maybe we hadn’t left them all to die. 

Our own trajectory is bumpy at best. A massive expanse of water roils out under us, and I get a chill thinking we escaped the fire only to drown. We’re close. Maybe within a dozen yards. Definitely less.

“How we doing, Jess?”

“Not good.” Her teeth are gritted, but she’s soldiering through. 

“Are we gonna pull this out?”

“Depends on how far land is.” With a herculean effort, she manages to gain altitude. The sea below us recedes, but it’s an uneven ascent. The two surviving thrusters are working overtime, and there’s only so long they’ll be able to keep that up.

“Land, ho,” Nicole calls like she’s in some old pirate movie. For the first time, Jessica’s eyes peel up from her console, and the three of us look forward to see a lip of land on the horizon.

“What are our chances?” 

“We’ll make it,” Jessica says. “Barely.” 

Nicole has her eyes squeezed shut, mumbling to herself. Funny, she’s not exactly the praying type. But, then, there are no atheists in the foxholes I hear. After a second, a few of the words drift over to me a bit more clearly.

“Like a bat out of hell, I’ll be gone when the morning comes.

When the night is over, like a bat out of hell, I’ll be gone, gone gone…”

Meatloaf. Yeah, that’s more her speed. She always was a fan of the classics.

“Secure to touch down.” As much as you want those words to be calm, Jessica can’t manage it. The rage of the boosters subsides, and we slow with an angry ferocity. Leaning back from her control station, Jessica braces herself as hard into her seat as she can. I follow suit. 

There’s a sudden crunch, then silence. Then crunch again. We skip over the sand like a stone, each time losing a bit of our speed. By some miracle, the whole pod doesn’t go spiraling off into a thousand pieces. It rocks and groans, but holds together.

We grind to a miserable halt, and all of the aching danger of our descent settles into the quiet glow of survival. Somehow, as insane as it all may seem, we made it. 

When my legs can hold me again, I unbuckle from my seat, and head over to push open the hatch. The last time I looked through it, I saw the same hallway I had walked down for more days that I could count. Now there’s just sand in every direction, broiling under an angry sun. The thick heat pours through the opening, and follows me after I pull it shut, hanging like a muggy blanket in the air.

“What’s the word,” Nicole asks.

“We’re gonna need a lot of water,” I say.

“Shame,” she says. “Maybe I should have nabbed something besides the guns.”