Key To His Heart: A SciFi Romance

Chapter 1

Skylar

My morning begins with a blood curdling howl echoing through the open hatch of my hut. I know it’s just a rooster crowing to greet the dawn, but it still draws me out of restful slumber. I always thought roosters went 'cock a doodle do.’ This thing just screeches like a kaiju out of a Godzilla movie.

I try folding my pillow over my head to block out the sound, but the damn thing is just crowing its head off. I sigh and clamber out of my down stuffed mattress. Ava, our most talented seamstress, had made it for me about a month after we crashed.

I miss having a bedframe, or even the elevated platform a ship bunk rests on. Having to literally drag myself to my feet every morning got tiresome after immediately.

I also miss indoor plumbing. I have to stumble out to our privy, built cleverly over a stream so there’s no need to dig a pit or flush. The sun has just peeked the barest sliver of its brilliance over the mountains to the west. We’ve been here almost a year and I still haven’t gotten used to the reversal of what I consider the natural order, having grown up on Earth.

The sun casts slats of bright yellow over the waving grass, and creates deep shadows where its rays are blocked by huts and other structures. I walk through a patch of shadow, barefoot, and find that the grass is still tipped with droplets of dew. Wincing at the cold, I hurry through the shadow and back into the light.

After I finish my business, it’s over to the stream where, at the top of a hill and a bit back from the riverbank, we’ve constructed a sort of bath house. It’s where we keep our toothbrushes and toiletries. I can’t remember the last time I had a nice, hot bath or shower. Oh wait, yes I can. About an hour before we crash landed on this planet.

When I enter the bathhouse, I see that I’m not alone in being an early bird, and I don’t mean the howling rooster. A slender woman with long blonde hair and bright blue eyes bends over the railing and spits into the running stream. She replaces her toothbrush it its labeled holster—Ivy—and turns to face me. She smiles as a greeting.

“Good morning, fearless leader. And how does this lovely day find you?”

“Tired and cranky,” I grumble. “And for the last time, don’t call me fearless leader.”

“Would you prefer madame dictator?”

I groan as I reach for my toothbrush.

“For fuck’s sake, Ivy. You all voted for me to be the leader. I didn’t want the job. I distinctly remember trying to refuse it. I don’t even have any degrees like the rest of you.”

“No, but you’ve got more common sense than the lot of us put together.”

I start brushing my teeth. We use a natural plant extract that tastes like peppermint and a dirty sock had a baby. It’s gross, but it does keep our teeth nice and clean. Not that there’s anyone to kiss in a colony of fifty women.

“Well, if I start acting dumber will you let me resign?”

My speech is garbled around the toothbrush, but she understands me just fine.

“Non, my dear leader. Then one of us would have to step up and nobody wants the job, as you pointed out. But you know what they say. Les grandes personnes ne cherchent pas le pouvoir, mais plutôt le font imposer.”

“Ivy, I speak two languages—English and Bad English. And Galactic Standard, so I guess I speak three languages…”

Okay, so I’m not that great at being witty first thing in the morning. Sue me.

“At any rate, what did you just say?”

Her eyes shine as she speaks. “Great people do not seek power, but rather have it thrust upon them.”

“Lucky me.”

Used to be, for months after we crashed, I’d watch the skies, hoping to see the hull of a rescue craft arrive. Day after day of disappointment has caused me to stop looking. Our resident astrophysicist, Ashley, told us that due to our vector it was possible nobody would ever just ‘happen by’. At least not in our lifetimes. So we made do with what he had.

We’ve carved out a life for ourselves on this world. We all wanted to live on the frontier, settling on a world only recently colonized with sentient life. New Verdan.

Unfortunately, a gamma ray burst had pulled our ship out of superluminal speed early, or late depending on your view of the time space continuum. We were hurtled into a completely unmapped region of space.

Fortunately for us, the ship had just enough hull integrity and fuel to make it to the only class M planet in the star system. At some point we started calling the world New Mundus. At some other point the other women decided to betray me and name me the leader of the colony.

And here I was thinking they didn’t like me because I was too bossy.

I finish brushing my teeth and walk with Ivy to a large, circular shaped hut in the middle of our forty or so dwellings. The sun has just kissed its thatched roof, turning the brown grasses into a brilliant gold.

Inside the hut lies our communal kitchen. Ivy was a trained chef so she seemed a natural fit to be put in charge of it. She’s got a rotating crew of helpers. I tried to arrange it so every one of us, myself included, has a stint in the kitchen, as well as a stint on security and working to cultivate our fields of crops.

If the seeds hadn’t survived the ship crash…I’d prefer not to think about it. We could have survived by foraging, perhaps, but many of the native species are inedible or even poisonous to humans.

We also unfroze the chicken, pig, and cattle embryos. Unlike us, the livestock seem to love the new world.

To be honest, I don’t hate this planet at all. It’s beautiful, with unspoiled wilderness and fresh air with a tinge of ozone missing on most industrialized worlds. But I also miss hot showers.

I don’t have much going on that morning, so I grab an apron and ask Ivy to set me to work. I like working in the kitchen, though I'm no where near the wiz she is. Plus, I get to act like I’m not in charge when I’m working for Ivy, which kind of takes the pressure off.

A sharp crackle sounds through the open window. Ivy and I exchanged glances.

“What the hell was that?”

“Volcanic eruption?” I suggest.

“There aren’t any volcanoes for thousands of miles.”

“Then it could have been thunder—”

A thudding rumble echoes over head, too regular and mechanical seeming for thunder.

“Or it could be a ship!”

I rush out into the sunlight, squinting my eyes at the bright blue sky. All around me, our little village has come to life. Women stand out in the smallclothes or nothing at all, shielding their eyes from the bright sun with their hands to get a glimpse at the object streaking across our sky.

It’s definitely a ship, and for a moment my heart soars with hope. But then I see that the ship seems to be in distress. The lights on the rear of its triangular shaped, narrow design keep sputtering out. I guess they’re thrusters. I don’t know what else they could be.

“Does anyone recognize that ship design?” I call out.

A lot of head shaking and a chorus of ‘no’ rings out. I grimace as I stare at it. I’ve never seen a ship that looks like this one. It doesn’t even really look like a ship as much as a pillar of metal covered in lights and circuitry patterns.

And then there’s the halo. About twenty squarish plates hover around the center of the hull like a halo, moving clockwise and glowing faintly on one side. I don’t know what force holds them in place, or what their function is, but it disturbs me. Whoever this is, they have access to technology that dwarfs that of even the United Star Alliance.

We watch as the strange ship passes overhead, trailing a billowing pillar of smoke behind it. It soon vanishes out of sight over the tree line of the forest to our east.

“Are we saved?” someone’s unsure voice rings out.

I can see a lot of people looking my way. They want me to lead them, to reassure them. I wish I had someone to reassure me, but as my parents used to say, them’s the breaks.

“Right now,” I say, raising my voice to parade ground levels. “We have no idea if whoever is in that ship is a friend, or a foe.”

“Then what should we do?” Ivy looks worriedly over at where the trail of smoke vanishes. “Should we hide?”

“And abandon what we worked so hard to build?” shouts a raven haired woman. Savannah, our engineer. I can see why she’d hate to see all of her efforts to go waste, but I’d hate even more if the lot of us were cut down by alien raiders.

“We need more information on this ship,” I call out, gathering all of their gazes at me again. “I need five volunteers to go check it out with me.”

I can see and sense the fear in everyone else, mirroring that in me. And yet, I soon have my volunteers. Ashley, our astrophysicist with a pixie cut, Savannah, the engineer, Ivy, who thinks of herself as my big sister and tries to keep me out of trouble. Azula, the cattle rancher with strawberry blonde hair and a smile as big as her home state of Texas. And finally, Ember Grace, a very quiet and introspective schoolteacher from Earth. I’m rather surprised when she raises her hand to join our band. She usually keeps very much to herself.

“All right,” I say. “Everyone should go armed. Let’s stop at the supply shed and get kitted out. And make sure you’re wearing clothes, for god’s sake. We’ve all gotten too used to an all-female society.”

“You know that you are currently naked as a—”

“I know, Ivy. I know. Let’s go spy on these newcomers—and hope they aren’t here with malicious intent.”

If they are here to cause us harm, I’m not sure what I can do to stop them.