Quickly, I deploy two more of the escape pods until just one is left. Then, I grab my hand and my gun and head off to figure out how to take over the rest of the ship.
? ? ?
My badass takeover of the ship ends up not being quite so badass. When I find the bridge, all the aliens are unconscious or dead. There’s three Little Green Men sprawled on the floor and two more guards, and even though they’re the enemy, I can’t find it in myself to put my gun to their temples and kill them in cold blood. So I step around them and try to figure out how to interface with the chip I’ve so carefully smuggled on board.
It doesn’t work, though. No matter what I do, I can’t figure out how to get the stupid chip interfaced, and no amount of questions I ask the computer itself seem to help.
Frustrated, I slap the panels with the disembodied hand that is my key-card to accessing the ship.
The world tilts.
I catch myself before I can tumble to the ground and stare at the control panel, alarmed. What did I hit that made the ship move like that? Through a little experimentation, I find that one of the panels is touch sensitive, and acts a bit like a steering wheel. I tilt the ship downward, and then figure out how to make it accelerate instead of simply hang in the air.
Then, with one last slam of the controls, I push it into gear.
The ship groans and moves forward, and I watch as it begins to pick up speed. It doesn’t move much at first, then slowly, it begins to descend, heading on a crash course for one of the far away mountain peaks.
That done, I get my gun and hightail it back to the last remaining pod. I slide in to the seat even as I hear the wind whistling and searing. It sounds like an airplane crashing – except I’m in the plane still. I slam the panel shut around me, hating that it feels like I’m trapped in a test tube. I push the alien’s hand on the panel. “Release! Go! Go!”
“Where do you wish to go?” the computer asks. “Please input coordinates.”
As if there were any question where I want to go. “Take me back to the surface.” Back to my mate and my new people.
“Please enter in coordinates or access manual controls.”
“Um, give me the manual controls, I guess.”
Two joysticks spit out from the control panel, and I grab them. The moment I do, the pod detaches and slings backward in high speed, and my ears pop a bajillion times as the pod flings itself into the atmosphere, then hovers, waiting.
I watch as the alien ship tilts even more, listing to one side as it heads for the mountain. I wince, waiting for the collision. It doesn’t seem like it’s moving that fast, but—
BOOOOOOM.
The mountain – and the ship – explode in a fiery inferno. I sigh heavily and a weight feels as if it’s been lifted from my shoulders. Those aliens won’t bother us again.
Also, damn. I’m kind of a badass for taking down the bad guys. Who knew that little, shy Kira had it in her, huh?
HARLOW
I need two poles for a travois. Okay. I can do this. Aehako’s instructions ring through my mind, over and over. My heart races wildly in my chest as I sprint through the snow, looking for the thin pink wispy trees of this planet. Kira’s gone, and both aliens are wounded. They need my help, and I can’t let them down. My feet sink into the snow, but I trudge forward over a drift-covered hill, and when I see trees in the distance, I pick up the pace.
I have Haeden’s knife, since he’s too wounded to use it. When I get to the first tree, I touch the bark and wince, because it feels spongy and damp despite the chill in the air. It doesn’t feel like a hard, woodsy tree at all. I have no idea if this will work, but I’ll give it a shot. Kneeling down, I begin to hack at the base of the first tree. The knife sinks in with a squishing noise, and sap squirts out onto the snow. Ugh. I wrinkle my nose and keep cutting.
The snow crunches nearby, and I stand upright, surprised. It almost sounded like a footstep. “Hello?” I turn around and look. “Aehako?”
No one’s there. I must be imagining things. Or maybe it’s a rabbit. Or…whatever the rabbit equivalent on this planet is. I can’t be a silly chicken and freak out at every little sound, though. I turn back to the tree and continue hacking at it.
I hear the crunch of snow again, and a moment later, a heavy thudding. No, not quite a thudding, a…purring? What on Earth…
Something slams into the back of my head, and I pitch forward into darkness.
Even there, the purring follows me.
AEHAKO
There’s no sign of Harlow. Damn the human for abandoning us.