Page 20 of Protected By the Alien Commander

“It does not work.”

Oh. My stomach dropped. We had found a ship, not my ship or his, but it was a ship, and nothing worked but the shower and translator. How would I ever find my friends again? And get help for Emma? I covered my face and willed myself to not cry.

"I have tried everything on this side of the cockpit. Try everything on that side.”

I licked my lips, hesitating. I didn’t know much about spaceships, practically nothing, but randomly pushing and touching things didn’t seem the safest thing to do. What if I accidentally shot a laser beam or something? “Um, are there any weapons on this ship that you know of? I don’t want to blow up something.”

“No, this is a civilian ship.”

Okay. I looked around at the switches, buttons and screens that were dead. I was a little scared to be randomly pushing things, even if he did say it wouldn’t do any damage. “You know your scanner that tested the water?"

He grunted.

Not so different from a human male then, using grunts as a form of communication. "Would it also work to scan the writing?"

He turned to me with a frown. “Yes, but I would have to read the scanner translation to you. I do not think you can read any languages programmed in the scanner.”

It was a long shot, but I thought I might be able to read one language. “I could read the captain’s journal you set on the bed. That was you, right?” He nodded, but with narrowed eyes. It sounded crazy, I know. “It’s in a language used on Earth. Maybe that language was introduced here and now more people use it?”

“If it was used anywhere in the IGS, I would have seen it at least once in my training. And it would have been in the scanner. You had a good idea, but it will not work.” Well, it had been a long shot. “What was in the journal?”

“The captain had been taken from Earth. I don’t know if he had gotten sucked here like my ship did, or abducted from the planet. Anyway, the last entry didn’t say anything weird other than they were taking a shortcut near the planet Yazell, which scared the crew. The captain mentioned stories about the planet. This planet we’re on has to be Yazell. The entry didn’t say what stories the crew had heard. There was nothing else after that; it was the last entry.”

Doshax frowned. “That is odd. Someone else from your system here and working as a freighter captain. He must have been here a long time. But it did not tell us anything about their crash or what they found on this planet.” He turned back to the dashboard.

I stared at him. What had he expected? That the captain would make an entry in the journal in the middle of an emergency? And I thought the info that someone else had gotten sucked into this galaxy, universe, whatever, pretty damn interesting.

It meant my friends and I weren’t the only ones here from Earth.