Trapped with the Alien Transporter (Ragrim Explorations #1)

Chapter 6

“What’s that?” Hsinth asked, immediately interested in the way Ophelia’s face colored and her hands clenched, one on a jar of little caplets, one on what looked like a bag of seed-bits.

He’d come out to check on her, expecting to see piles of hastily arranged chaos, not meticulously stacked boxes. Finding her with something agricultural in her hands, exhibiting all the body language of a smuggler, was absolutely delightful. Whatever she had in her pack was worth a peek.

“N-nothing,” she stuttered. She dropped the containers on the mattress and immediately began shoving the clear plastic bags of what looked like tiny brown beads into her backpack.

“Easy,” he said, forcing a smile. He didn’t like the way she was acting like she’d done something criminal.

Had she?

Hsinth knew there were a number of things that couldn’t be brought between planets, though he didn’t recognize what Ophelia was holding. Was it seeds? There wasn’t much that couldn’t be remediated through carefully targeted biobots, but if you were caught, you’d still get fined and maybe see jail time. He’d gone through a number of close calls as a trader, so he was more than a little acquainted with the rules.

Which made whatever Ophelia had all the more interesting. There shouldn’t have been anything originating from Earth that was banned aside from cockroaches and kudzu.

“Are you going to tell me what it is?” he cajoled.

Ophelia narrowed her eyes as she layered clothes over and around the bags. “Why, so you can convince me to sell it to you? It’s mine .”

Hsinth sighed. If she could turn up the spite, he could turn up the charm. “I think we got off on the wrong foot. I’m not trying to steal anything from you. I’m not trying to do anything to hurt you. We’re stuck here together for the foreseeable future, and us doing this whole hating each other thing isn’t going to work if we want to survive.”

“Survive?” Ophelia’s voice turned high and thready, and she wrapped herself around the backpack. “So you think we’re going to die ?”

Hsinth gritted his teeth. “No. But there’s getting through this comfortably and getting through this un comfortably. I’m not going to steal what’s in your bag, but since I’m taking stock of all of our supplies, I need to know what you have.”

Her voice was flat. “Clothes.”

“And?”

“Hygiene stuff.”

“And?”

“Shoes.”

“I can do this all day,” he said, leaning against the wall. It was slightly chilly in the room, though he hadn’t noticed it until his shoulders had touched the cold metal.

Ophelia tightened her arms around the bag. “So can I.”

“Is it seeds?” he pressed.

“No.”

“Animals?”

“ No .”

“Something weaponized?” he tried, though with how vehemently she’d defended the Lukrimians, he doubted that she would do anything to harm them.

“I swear to gods…” she muttered.

This was getting unpleasant. He hadn’t meant to push this far, but if he backed down now, he might not ever know what was in the bag and they would definitely be at odds after that.

“Feces?”

“It’s medicine!” Ophelia spat. She was really red now. “Happy? I brought a lot because I didn’t think I could get more of what I needed there.”

“Those little seeds?” he asked doubtfully. Medicine wasn’t something he would have considered.

“It’s not medicine yet,” she said. “I make medicine with it.”

“Are you sick?”

“Oh my gods,” she grumbled. “It’s mushrooms.”

Hsinth stared at her blankly.

“Fungus?” she tried again. “Edible fungus? It has hallucinogenic properties and helps my brain function better.”

“And you eat it?” he asked doubtfully.

He knew of clothing made of mushrooms, and some furniture made from it on Madriim, but using it as a mind-altering substance was odd. Then again, there were plenty of intoxicating drinks made from any number of unusual organic processes across the Republic. Mushrooms hadn’t been on that list until now. He filed the information away for later; she might not want to help him with figuring out if it was worth trading, but surely he’d be able to find someone else to help.

“You grow the mushrooms from what’s in the bag, and then you can eat them,” she said. The hold on her bag relaxed a little bit. “I dry them to make them last longer.”

“Ah,” he said. What was he supposed to say? He hadn’t thought that unpleasant Ophelia would be into that with how uptight she was.

He’d love to pursue that line of thinking because he hadn’t even known Earth had good drugs or alcohols worth exporting, but with the inside of the ship checked, he needed to check the outside before it was entirely covered in snow.

“I wanted to thank you for cleaning out there,” he said instead. It wasn’t like it was even a lie. “It will make moving around easier.”

“No problem,” she said awkwardly. “Are we done here? You grilling me about my bag, I mean?”

“Yes,” he said, acutely aware that the look of relief on her face matched the loosening of something small and hard in his chest. Clearly she’d found their interaction as horrible and awkward as he had in the end.

“Good,” she said.

Watching her hold the bag like it was a comfort toy made him feel even worse, and he was suddenly glad that he needed to go out.

“I’m going to go check the hull,” he told her. “Make sure nothing’s torn or leaking. The engines aren’t too badly damaged from what I can see, and the generator should be good for a little while. I don’t think we’ll have too much of a problem losing heat, even in all that.”

He gestured vaguely at the ceiling, relieved when Ophelia nodded at him.

“So I’ll be back in a bit,” he said, leaving the room without trying to annoy her any further.

His rarely used snowsuit was tucked in a wall-bin that he only had access to since Ophelia had neatened up the main room. He was debating spending the rest of their marooning ensconced in it even if he never had to go outside again. Once would be enough.

He grabbed an air rebreather from the emergency set by the door and triggered the hatch isolator. It pushed out the rarely used cycler to create an airlock that meant the more-breathable air still inside the ship wouldn’t vent to the planet’s surface. It was a tiny box that Ophelia would probably be far more comfortable in, but it had never been meant to be a permanent fixture. Like the snowsuit, he could count on one hand the number of times he’d needed to use it.

Bitter cold rushed in as the higher-oxygen air was pulled out of the airlock, leaving him acutely aware that the rebreather was the only thing keeping him from getting lightheaded.

He gingerly stepped out onto the snow, relieved that he didn’t plunge straight through. At the edge of a glacier, he hadn’t been too worried, but some planets had odd substrates. Learning about quicksand on Earth—which only happened there because of some weird interaction between soil and water that created a seemingly solid surface that was actually liquid—had immediately made him want to avoid any interaction with it. It was so compacted that he could still stand on it with ease, though every footstep kicked up loose powder.

Moving onto the rocky, icy surface at the edge of the small valley they had crashed into was another comfort. It gave him something solid to stand on while he surveyed the outside of the Engsth .

Ophelia would have said that she didn’t notice a difference, but Hsinth’s eyes were immediately drawn to the horribly scratched hull, the dents littered along the underside, and the long rent along the cowling on the port side.

“Stars,” he muttered, reaching up to run his fingers along the start of it. “What a mess.”

Between that and the internal damage he hadn’t wanted to mention to Ophelia, they weren’t getting off Porris without help. The solar flare had fried the jump drive entirely, and while he was hoping that the damaged waypoint beacons not sending back responses during the regular maintenance ping schedule would trigger someone being sent out to check on it, he wasn’t sure when that would be.

A small canyon opened up in the wall they’d scraped to a stop next to as he rounded the front of the ship. The angle of the sun cast everything in shadow, but the optimist in him imagined a path down one side. Maybe he could bring something positive out of this, after all. Porris had had a few archaeological expeditions, but maybe there would be something down that way worth holding onto until they managed to get a ride out of the system.

It was worth a shot.

He wouldn’t go too far from the ship; just enough to see if anything from the outpost had survived up here, or if something new had risen in its place. After all, if humans could flourish on a world that had been dying, couldn’t something new grow here?

Snow and gravel crunched underfoot as he walked, letting his eyes adjust to the dimness.

There was nothing, even what had to be a quarter mile from the ship. Maybe this had been a bust. He was starting to get cold even in the padded warmth of the suit, and the canyon had curved enough that he could no longer see the Engsth .

No snow-lichen, no ancient artifacts. Not even ice-worms.

This little expedition had been a bust.

He turned to go back to the ship when his eyes lit upon an opening that hadn’t been visible coming into the canyon. It didn’t look like something that had been caused by the impact on the other side of the planet.

A scent rose to his nose, undeniably organic and almost foul in every note. Something had undeniably survived here, though the odor made him think of some kind of wet moss.

“What are you?” he murmured to himself. He could always come back with a container and a knife to scrape some off the rock. Ophelia’s psychedelic seeds had given him the idea to start looking for something similar. He wouldn’t eat it raw, but whatever he found was worth checking with the analyzer he kept to make sure what he traded was safe for the species he was trading it to.

This far in, there was no light, though he supposed whatever it was could probably live on none. After all, fungi on Geshal grew with relatively little of it.

A shadow rose up out of the cave, revealing itself to be huge, hairy, and with more claws than anything had a right to have.

“Um, hello,” he tried in Common.

A growl was the only response. The thing eyed him with four eyes and inhaled deeply, and Hsinth was uncomfortably aware that he was being sized up.

“ Parjaal? ” he offered desperately. “ Mexs? Yasith! Wjili? ” A dozen other different ways to say hello, and the only thing they did was give the creature time to prowl closer.

Why hadn’t he brought the energy rifle? It was meant for emergencies, but this wasn’t supposed to be the kind of emergency that needed a weapon. Survival gear yes, rifle no.

“Aw stars,” he groaned, dodging a swipe that should have opened up his suit. It meant he had to move further into the canyon. Though the beast was slow, it was wide, and in the increasing cold, Hsinth knew he wouldn’t be able to play keep-away for much longer. Seeing no other option, he ran.

Too bad it was away from the ship.