Trapped with the Alien Transporter (Ragrim Explorations #1)

Chapter 7

With the ship finally, blessedly empty, Ophelia took the opportunity to dress in extra layers. The thin fabrics of the stretchy outfits she’d brought meant she could put on as many shirts and pants as she wanted, and that meant half of what she’d brought. It looked awkward and felt worse, but at least she wasn’t cold anymore.

After that, she started picking through the boxes. Half of what she’d refilled or stacked had been half-empty, and though she wasn’t versed in alien languages, her datapad had a built-in translation option that let her match boxes.

She couldn’t focus on her work data, and the chaos of having boxes along the wall that she knew could be combined was making her chest feel tight, like she had too much energy and nowhere for it to go.

So she started consolidating.

Jerky bars made of some undefinable meat paste from wild-caught fish and farmed berries? Check; there were two half-empty boxes of those. Toys meant to teach Geshallan children what skin to peel and how, apparently manufactured on a planet whose name she couldn’t pronounce? Check. She put all dozen into a box of other, similar toys that apparently demonstrated cleaning methods for Krengar, though the flexible entrance where the penises came out made her jump and drop the one she was playing with when she realized what it was.

She could only hope those were children’s toys. The idea of aliens having fleshlights made her giggle just a little, and though she wanted to keep playing with the Krengar look-alikes to see how exactly they worked, she had more boxes to go through.

Finishing the final box meant that she had a huge stack of empty boxes and a vastly neater room to sleep in tonight. She surveyed the vastly lightened containers with a sense of accomplishment, realizing she’d need somewhere to put them that wasn’t her room.

That meant leaving her nest of organized safety and finding Hsinth, and her mood dropped. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to deal with him, it was just that he might make her consolidate out there, and who knew what else he was storing and where besides the galley and this room. She could find herself organizing a huge hangar bay, or worse, Hsinth’s room.

If the public areas of the ship were this much of a mess, his room undoubtedly looked like a rat’s nest. And she would not be cleaning everything on his ship just because she could, thank you very much. Being here was already taxing enough, let alone having to work to make a space that was her own, no matter how much her rage and effort warmed her.

She still wanted those boxes out.

Maybe she could just pile them up along the wall outside her room? It wasn’t like Hsinth would notice anything was out of place.

The door opened more quietly than she’d expected and she started carting boxes out, being careful not to let anything fall and attract him. Despite being empty enough to move, the boxes were still weighty. If she dropped one of the metal ones, it would no doubt make an unpleasant clanging noise that would rattle on forever as a counterpoint to a low humming in the walls that she was very carefully trying to ignore.

Stacking the boxes made her room feel a little cleaner, a little less topsy-turvy. Was Hsinth still outside the ship, checking on things?

Ophelia pulled out her datapad and looked at the clock in the corner. Cold dread settled over her as she realized that she’d lost hours in her efforts to consolidate everything. Had Hsinth come in and she hadn’t noticed? Her stomach curdled as she considered the possibility that he’d checked on her and found her in a hyper-focused state and she’d somehow missed it.

No. No, that hadn’t happened. She was still too vigilant; she would have noticed the door hissing open and another presence in the room.

But at three in the morning Earth-time, he should be back by now.

“Hsinth?” she called cautiously, raising her voice. “Just making sure you came back okay!”

Silence answered her.

“Hsinth, where are you?”

She checked all the rooms she had access to except for the one that had to be his bedroom. She knocked hard on the metal door and got no answer, and then she looked at the exit hatch.

The door light blinked green. Unlocked. Thank gods some things were constant everywhere.

She’d been at it for hours… Was he still outside in the cold? Ophelia didn’t know much about Geshallan biology, but if they were anything like Earth reptiles, the snow couldn’t be good for Hsinth.

She could go to sleep and curl around the hot box and hope he was there in the morning when she woke up, or she could go find him. The ship was only so big, even on the outside, right? Hsinth couldn’t have gone too far. She pushed her emotions away and focused on the goal at the far end of what she had to do now and made mental steps to get there.

She was still very wired and very much awake. That was good; it meant she wasn’t about to drop from exhaustion, though eventually it would hit her like a freight train. She had to be back by then.

An open drawer on one wall of the galley had a huge, puffy thing that could only be a cold-weather suit, which she managed to pull up around herself and seal, though it was almost too big to move in. That was why she preferred her soft, truly one-size-fits- all clothing.

The other thing that wasn’t quite one-size was the rifle. She found it in another cabinet next to the door. It was heavy and awkward to lift and would no doubt be more awkward to shoot, but she wasn’t about to go out without it.

Hsinth had said that the planet was uninhabited, but Ophelia was human. She’d feel better with a weapon at hand. If Hsinth wanted to give her crap about it later, she could just fall back on the fact that she was human and exceedingly fragile compared to the rest of the species in the Republic.

Girded and guarded, she stepped out the airlock and barely managed to grab an air cycler when she tried to take a breath of icy air and found herself gasping for oxygen.

The glare of the sun on the snow outside startled her. She hadn’t realized that the planet’s rotation was so slow, but the sun looked like it had barely moved overhead from its position when they had first crashed.

Okay. That was weird, but she could deal. Three in the morning but bright as noon. At least that would make it easier to stay awake.

Ophelia had thought the suit would make it easier to stay warm, but her face was still freezing, and having her hands exposed wasn’t helping. She tucked the rifle under one elbow so she could shove her hands into the opposite sleeves and get them at least a little warm there.

“Hsinth,” she yelled as loudly as she could through the mask. “Are you out here?”

Silence answered her.

The terrifying thought that if he was dead it meant she was the only being alive on the planet—no, in the entire solar system —made her jaw clench so hard she was a little surprised a tooth didn’t crack.

“You’re not alone,” she told herself fiercely. “The idiot is out here, and you’re going to find him. And then you’re going to go back to the ship, he’s going to do whatever he needs to to get help, and you’re both going to stay there until help comes. Just find the idiot.”

Step one: Find Hsinth.

His footsteps in the snow were easier to follow than she’d thought. She followed them around to the front of the ship where she could vaguely even see the viewports high above her before they veered off towards the cliff face. Should she follow the path that led around the ship or follow this?

If he was around the ship, he would have heard her. She was too chilly to go hiking around in the snow, and at least where the footsteps were leading was solid rock and ice. There was a broad opening in the rock there; he had to have gone down that way. But why ?

Maybe he’d seen a part of the ship that had broken off. Maybe he’d been chasing something. Maybe something had been chasing him.

Ophelia pulled her fingers back out of her sleeves and tightened her grip on the rifle as she walked.

Step two: See something, make sure it’s not Hsinth, and shoot it.

At least the sun was giving the illusion of warmth as she walked, though the only thing really keeping her moving at this point was needing to find her reluctant companion.

“Hsinth,” she called. “Did you come down this way?”

Silence, again.

How far was she supposed to look for him? A mile? Two?

“Hsinth,” she yelled again.

A long, low cry answered her at last, and she picked up her speed.

Two huge, hairy figures were crouched over a small opening in the rock, tearing at it with their paws.

“Ophelia, run!”

“No,” she snarled, picking up the rifle. It was heavy and hard to aim, but she managed to point it in the general direction of the beasts. There was no time to make sure they weren’t Parjaal or Armin or whatever.

All she could do was remember the base lessons that everyone big enough to carry a rifle had gotten when Earth was trying to free itself from Lukrim.

Point. Aim. Squeeze .

There was less recoil than she’d expected, but the payoff was huge.

Zorch . A short, actinic bolt emanated from the end of the rifle and spent itself against the icy rock of the canyon wall.

Both monsters turned around to lock eyes with her, and she barely had time to drop the muzzle and fire again. One flew back with a howl, gray fur singed black. The other veered off, and she managed to tag it with another shot.

A blur of white and yellow had her re-aiming before she realized that it was Hsinth, scrambling out from the fissure he’d managed to jam himself into.

“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go,” he said, teeth chattering as he grabbed her arm and tugged her along in his wake.

“What are those things?” Ophelia asked, looking back. The one she’d managed to hit center-mass was still motionless on the ground, and the other was still struggling to get up.

“I don’t know,” he said, huffing. His hood had fallen back, and she noted that his exposed skin was an unhealthy shade of gray.

“Were they those aliens you mentioned?”

It startled a snort out of him. “No,” he gasped. “Armin… insectoid. Parjaal are feathered. Promise you can’t mix them up, and they’d be offended if you did.”

Though they were barely tottering along, they made it back to the canyon opening in good time.

“I need to get back inside, but I want to set up the emergency beacon first,” he managed to get out in a few quick breaths.

“Of course you do,” Ophelia muttered, following him to the door of the ship.

He tapped something on the keypad and she watched out of the corner of her eye as a conical antenna rose from the top of the ship.

Nothing had come out of the canyon.

“Is that it?” she asked. “I expected more fanfare.”

Hsinth glared at her. “It’s an antenna. I wanted to make sure it came out at all, given that landing we had.”

“Are we going to be coming back out here anytime soon?” she asked, eyes fixed on the mouth of the canyon.

“Gods I hope not,” he muttered.

“Good,” Ophelia said. She shoved the rifle into his arms and walked up the ship’s ramp. “Because if those things come back out of that canyon, they’re your problem.”

Seeing the ship from the outside had driven home just how truly screwed they were, even if she refused to really study everything. The ship had looked like a pile of garbage before, now it was broken and dented and absolutely not flying anywhere. They were well and truly stuck, and all Ophelia could do was hope that the emergency beacon worked.

Hsinth trailed in behind her, shedding the snowsuit as he went. The inside of the ship was warm compared to what it had been like outside, and Ophelia reveled in the heat as the chilled suit dropped to the floor.

Hsinth leaned the rifle up against the doorframe, which was now locked and outlined in red.

“I had a thought while I was out and losing most of my body heat to the ground,” he said hesitantly.

“What was it?” she asked warily. If he was about to suggest eating the things outside, she might just throw him back out with them.

“There’s only one real good bed in the ship,” he ventured.

Before she could let her outrage form words, he plowed on. “My room is in the center of the ship. It has heating, it’s protected, and the guest bedroom your stuff is in has bare bones for utilities. The boxes went everywhere, and it’s not suitable at all.”

Though she wanted nothing more than to yell at him, Ophelia studied Hsinth. His eyes were haunted, the thin scales under them turning translucent with exhaustion. “I’m good,” she said, confused at why he would offer her the use of his bedroom. “I appreciate the offer, but I think you need the warmth more than me. I’ll just layer up.”

Hsinth’s jaw dropped, but before he could say anything, she marched to the door she’d designated as her own.

“If you need me, knock,” Ophelia said.

The room was cold, but it was the bone-deep humming from the walls that bothered her more than the cold.

Everything was still neat, still orderly. Or as orderly as she could get without shoving all the boxes outside.

She pulled the container that radiated heat up onto the thin, horrible mattress along with her bag, then layered the thin blanket over both of them and crawled in.

Shoving her back up against a metal box wasn’t as nice as something softer would have been, but it was still better than trying to warm up the bed on her own.

Ophelia rubbed her thumb over the old arrowhead National Parks patch. If she was careful, she could feel the ridge of the white bison embroidered on it. She’d left all the parks behind without ever seeing any of them. It couldn’t have been a mistake. She couldn’t die here.

This would work. Help would come.

It had to.