Page 22 of Protected By the Alien Commander

Olivia

I couldn't waitto get out of the ship and see my friends again. I followed Doshax down the corridor to the outside door. He stopped and waved his hand over the vidscreen to the right. The door swooshed open. It was a short drop to the ground without a working ramp, but hey, at least the ship worked.

I ran to the cruise ship and knocked on the metal door. My knuckles hurt but I didn’t mind the pain. "It's me! It's me, Olivia. Open up, I'm back!"

Hopefully, they wouldn’t notice that I had lost my bag with vital food and water. But I had brought a spaceship with water, so I thought that made up for it.

The cruise ship’s door still hadn’t opened yet. What was wrong? I felt sick to my stomach. Had something happened? Were they… not able to come to the door?

I placed my ear close to the hot metal door, but didn’t hear anything. “Hey, open up, I'm here!"

Finally, I heard a noise. Then a featureless voice piped out of the ship’s speaker. "Name the planet this ship took off from."

I frowned. "What? What are you doing? It's me, Olivia. Can’t you see me on the vidscreen?"

"How do we know that it's really you? Our friend has been gone for over a day.”

I didn’t blame them for being careful, but what did they think was on this planet, a bunch of clones or something? I rolled my eyes. “We set off from Earth to go to the Moon on a three-day booze cruise.” Maybe I should share more info, just to prove it really was me. I couldn’t believe I had to do this. I felt silly. “I work as a graphic designer at Schematics Limited. I’m the one that came up with the idea for the booze cruise weekend. I had never been off Earth before, and this would have been my first trip to the Moon.”

The cruise ship’s door scraped against the ground as it opened to reveal pillows and sparkling light tubes. I couldn’t see my friends.

"What are you guys doing?"

Ava lowered the pillow she had been using as a shield. "These were in case you weren't you."

I wasn’t sure how sparkly light dance sticks and pillows would have protected them from anything, but at least they had believed me that I was really me.

Ava jumped off the ship and hugged me so hard I thought my ribs were breaking. I had not expected such a happy reunion from her.

"We were so scared," Ava said. “You didn't come back. I thought for sure you were dead or had gotten lost. Nothing on the ship works, and we couldn’t figure out where you had gone or how to find you. We thought we were going to die here!"

Miranda joined in and nearly knocked me over with her hug. “I thought you were dead! You never showed up, and I felt so guilty. I should have—”

“Stop. We’re all here and alive.” I pulled back from the hug and looked at Miranda. “But what happened? You didn’t say anything to me when you went back to the ship.” I was glad she was fine, but seriously, she should have told me she was leaving me alone and returning to the ship. That wasn’t cool.

“I know, I’m sorry. I just… I got too scared. I didn’t want to tell you that I wanted to turn back. I’m sorry.”

She looked so guilty and was crying so I just let it go. At least she was here and safe.

Then my friends stilled, except for their mouths opening. Oh yeah. I turned and saw Doshax walking towards us. He must have stayed hidden by the other ship to not scare my friends right away. That was really thoughtful. “Um, this is Doshax. He’s a commander in the local military. He rescued me from rat things at the plants. Then from some giant lizard monsters. And made a shelter and fed me. Really, he’s amazing.” I would not share how else he was amazing. I didn’t know what my friends would think of that. “We also found a working spaceship. Its translator makes it possible for us to understand each other.”

Ava and Miranda continued to stare at him. Their eyes were so big and comical that I bit my bottom lip to keep from laughing. “Doshax, these are my friends, Ava and Miranda. You’ll have to excuse them, you’re the first alien we’ve ever seen.”

“I am happy to meet Olivia’s friends. One of you is injured?”

“Yeah, Emma. She’s inside the medpod.” I turned back to the females. “How is she? She hasn’t gotten worse, has she?”

Miranda slowly nodded her head but didn’t take her eyes off Doshax. “Emma’s still doing okay in the medpod. She just hasn’t woken up yet.” She pointed at Doshax, now standing next to me. “He’s… he’s blue. And an alien.”

I nodded, it was hard to get used to aliens being real. And he was bright blue. “He’s really nice and thoughtful. Plus, he knows everything about surviving.”

The girls still stared. I didn’t blame them. I looked at Doshax and shrugged.

He turned to me. “We need to get back on our ship quickly. I do not want it to sit too long. I can carry your injured friend.”

“Thank you.” I smiled. Seriously, I couldn’t believe this guy was real. He was too perfect.

I turned back to my friends, still staring at Doshax. I hoped he realized my friends were just in shock from seeing an alien, and weren’t normally this rude. “I’m going to start moving things over to the ship we found.”