Chapter 1
Jaime
Anothershudderrunsthroughthe ship as I scramble into an emergency seat, using my hands to maneuver my limp legs into position. As I struggle with the safety harness, I glance to the front of the cockpit again. The gas giant we’re barreling toward might be beautiful, but we can’t land there. Then I notice a few smaller objects along our path. Moons?
“We’re going down,” Pon grits out, his normally rich blue skin paled almost into white as he tries to regain control of the ship.
Because we're about to crash. In a freaking spaceship. On a freaking alien planet. Fuck.
Knowing things are about to get rough, I tap on my hoverchair’s controls, ordering it to return to the cabin. As much as I love the thing, I don’t want it to smash into my head when we land. Crash. Oh god.
Our trajectory shifts a little, the front of the ship now aiming for one of the moons. It doesn’t look very hospitable from up here. It’s red and black and…pink? No greens or blues in sight. How can we even survive there?
“It should have a breathable atmosphere,” Pon states, as if he’s reading my mind. He can’t do that. I think. I haven’t been among aliens for too long, but I’ve never met one who reads minds. “No civilization, though. Hold on.”
No civilization. No rescue. Just a red and black rock with a maybe breathable atmosphere. Jesus fucking Christ. I’ve always wanted to go to space, even before I knew aliens were real, but crashing on an alien planet was never on my bucket list. Of course, this had to happen just as I was headed to a bunch of doctors who might treat my chronic illness, or at least stop it from getting worse. Just my damned luck.
“What happened?” I ask, even though the reason hardly matters now that we’re about to crash.
Pon shakes his head. “A massive solar flare killed the nav computer and pretty much everything else. It’s still affecting us, but the shields are holding.”
A solar flare? Most of the viewscreens are filled with images of the beautiful green gas giant and the moon we’re hurtling toward, but one shows an inconspicuous red circle. A red star? A red dwarf, perhaps? I’m not an astrophysicist, but I spent a lot of my life in hospitals, and documentaries and popular science TV shows were often the only thing to watch on the tiny hospital TVs. They did a shitty job of preparing me to encounter an actual red dwarf star, though. And why the hell am I freaking out about a star when we’re about to die in a fiery crash?
The ground is coming up fast. I can now see that the muted red patches are oceans and lakes. Is the water red here or is that just a trick of light? It doesn’t matter, but it’s a helpful mental exercise to keep me from screaming “WE’RE GONNA DIE!” over and over. Normally, I’m a positive and cheerful guy, but right now, terror has me in too tight a grip to think straight. Red water. Fuck, I hope it’s not blood.
“Hold on!” Pon yells, as if there was something more I could do than strap myself in and hope for the best. My legs don’t even work to brace myself for the impact, and my grip on the straps isn’t as strong as an able-bodied person’s would be. In most situations, I can work around my disabilities. A fucking spaceship crash is not one of them.
Petrified, I watch as we skim over the tops of trees in all shades of red and black. A flock of birdlike creatures explodes from the canopy, their tiny wings flapping as they hurriedly get out of our way. Giant blood-red leaves smack the cameras as we barrel through the vegetation. The hull groans as we hit branches and tree trunks, the ship shuddering and getting thrown off course. After that, everything turns into a wildly rotating blur.
My stomach is in my throat as I get thrown back and forth, the straps barely holding me in place. Then, with a massive clang, everything comes to a dead stop.
Too shaken to even look around, I take stock of my body. I don’t have much feeling in my legs, so I can’t always tell if I’ve been hurt, but there’s no blood and no bones sticking out of my useless lower limbs, so I take that as a win. My arms are sore and some of my nails are torn from how hard I’ve been gripping the safety harness, but they aren’t broken or dislocated. My head is spinning and my stomach can’t seem to decide whether it wants to void its contents, but there’s no blood anywhere. My ears are ringing and there’s a loud, whooshing sound in them, but that could just be…
Fuck. It’s not the frantic sound of my heartbeat rushing through my ears. It’s water. Actual fucking water streaming into of the ship through cracks in the hull.
Terror consumes me. I can’t swim. Not because I don’t know how, but because with half of my body unresponsive, I’m physically unable to swim without something keeping me above water and I don’t see any inflatables around here. I’m going to drown. I’m going to— Fuck! Sucking in a panicked breath, I try to rein in my thoughts. “Pon?” I call out for the pilot. He’ll help me. Everything will be fine. “Pon!”
There’s no response.
“Fuck. Fucking fuck.” Cursing, I force my fingers to fumble with the safety harness clasp. Fortunately, all it takes is one click, and I collapse onto the wet floor in an ungainly heap. “Pon! We need to get out of here.”
Still no answer. What if the impact knocked him out? What if he’s— No. I won’t go there. He’s okay. He has to be okay because I can’t do this alone. “Pon!” I call again as I use my forearms to pull myself closer, shivering as the water soaks my jumpsuit. A few feet. Just a few more. The ship rocks, water splashing all over me. I spit it out, hoping the little that stayed in my mouth won’t kill me, because god only knows what bacteria or other elements harmful to the human body water on an alien moon with red and black trees contains.
“Pon, we need—” I finally crawl forward enough to see the pilot’s chair and in it, what’s left of Pon. My stomach finally makes its decision, violently expelling everything I ate earlier into the water sloshing around me.
The branches we flew through ripped into the hull. Most cracked before they did any damage, but one massive splinter is embedded in the pilot’s chair, nearly severing Pon’s body in half.
He’s dead. I stare at him for longer than is probably wise, unable to comprehend how the funny, slightly awkwardspace taxi pilot I spent the past three days watching alien entertainment shows with is now sitting there, cut in half by a piece of an alien tree. Fuck. He said he was saving up to move in with his partners. This was supposed to be his last flight for the agency. Oh my god. I’m the reason he’s dead. If I didn’t need someone to take me to the medical ship, if I weren’t kidnapped from Earth, if I weren’t so damn broken, this male would still be alive.
The ship rocks again, harder this time. I slip, panic surging as I struggle to pull my head above the water. Fuck. I’m going to die here.
Refusing to give up, I turn my ungainly body around and start the long crawl toward the ship’s door. I need to get out before water fills it completely. The thought of slowly sinking in the middle of one of those giant red lakes nags at me, threatening to send me spiraling back into panic, but I push it away. I have to at least try. If I die, I’ll at least be able to say I did my best.
By the time I reach the door, I’m coughing and sputtering as the water, now up to my neck, keeps splashing into my face. The door to my cabin gapes open, my cool new hoverchair crumpled in a corner. “Not fair,” I mutter. “I only just got that thing.” And it was so much better than any wheelchair I’ve ever owned. Aliens make living with a disability seem much less daunting. But of course, now that I desperately need help to move around, the thing is broken. Typical.
“Focus, Jaime,” I tell myself sternly as I arrange my legs so that I can sit by the door, the only way I can reach the control panel. “You’re a positive person. Remember that.” Yep. I’m known for my obnoxious optimism. I just don’t see any positives about surviving a crash on an alien moon only to drown in the ship’s wreckage, or whatever else will happen to me even if I make it out. I’m not exactly Survivor material.
“One step at a time.”
