Chapter 17: Chapter 16: Rough Landing

For a long while, time had no meaning.

Alex wasn’t even sure if he was still alive. He wasn’t sure of anything, as consciousness had completely fled in the aftermath of their escape from the Racine.

It might have been better off that way. After all, if they didn’t have enough thrust to reach Vesta, wouldn’t it be better to die without the knowledge of impending doom? Wouldn’t it just be simpler if his life faded to black after knowing he’d stopped Serrano from absconding with the ship?

The only disturbing thing about that was what would happen to Jenna. She would die alone in the pod, with nothing but his corpse to keep her company. It wasn’t a fate he wished for someone like her but it was out of his control, wasn’t it?

At least he thought it might be.

The first inclination that Alex was still alive was feeling the crash of the impact. Perhaps crash was the wrong word to describe it but the landing of the escape pod was anything but smooth. The entire thing shook rapidly, causing several of the items in the supply closet to come spilling out. The structure creaked and groaned with stress as it came barreling down into the alien soil, finally giving one last shudder before it finally stopped.

It was also the first time since departure that Alex heard Jenna’s voice, as she squealed as the pod hit the ground.

Before the whole thing was over, Alex had fallen off the seating row that he’d been lying on, hitting the floor with a noticeable thud. It was then that he felt Jenna’s hands on his back.

“Alex? Alex, are you okay?”

For a very brief moment, he felt a sliver of lucidity but it didn’t last for long. By the time the pod came to a rest, he was out again, not even knowing if the pod had landed on Vesta or some kind of moon.

The only difference this time was that he was only out for a couple more hours.

As he came awake once more, he became aware of the presence of a body next to him, one that was unmoving. It could only have been Jenna but even still he found himself cracking an eyelid to look anyway.

Sure enough, her body was lying on the floor near his. Her eyes were closed and her blonde hair was draped across most of her face. The soft motions of her body told him that she was sleeping.

At that moment, he wished he was too. His head absolutely throbbed with pain. Alex winced as he pushed himself into a sitting position, using his hand to rub at the sore spot on his head. He found a bandage where he expected the wound to be, the one he’d got when the gravity in the pod was suddenly turned on.

It was clear that Jenna had put on the bandage. He had no idea how long he was unconscious but there was one way he could figure it out. Alex moved closer to the controls of the escape pod and toggled the computer, bringing up the main screen. He rolled over the date and time, which was usually given in two distinct varieties. There was universal standard time, which was set to match the official time zone back on the orbital ring around Earth, where the Consortium resided. This was the standard by which every human colony measured time but there was also a local time as well, dependent on whichever system they were in.

And this one told him they were in the 51 Pegasi system, where it was currently Tuesday, June 7^th, 3022. The local systems often differed from the universal standard time depending on the length of the days and the years inside the system, but for the majority of humankind, UST was used as a common link between all humanity.

Today’s date was shocking to Alex for one reason only. He knew that it was the afternoon of June 4^th when the Racine was being destroyed and all the colonists were making for the escape pods.

That meant that he’d been unconscious for nearly three days.

It also meant that his biggest fear about taking off in the pod, which was that they wouldn’t be able to make Vesta at that distance, seemed to have been for naught. A look at the control panel indicated that they were actually on Vesta soil right now.

Alex fired up the pod’s outside cameras so that he could get a view of the strange planet that had been his destination for more than a year. Once the camera feeds were active, he nearly gasped.

The screen occupied nearly the entire diameter of the pod, being nearly a meter tall, and now it displayed their entire surroundings. Alex got his first view of the strange planet of Vesta and it took his breath away.

There were many people that had told him that Vesta was chosen as the site of a new colony because of the similarities to Earth. Similarities like its distance from its star, the presence of an atmosphere dominated by nitrogen and oxygen, as well as the forms of familiar fauna like grass and trees (or things that had developed to look close enough to grass and trees as he knew them on Earth). And it was here that he realized they were completely right.

Despite being in the middle of nowhere, Alex’s first view of Vesta could have been easily mistaken for Earth. He looked out now on an arid landscape that was only broken by several small trees that were spaced out every fifty meters or so. The trees weren’t very tall, and the grass was thin in many of the areas but the sky was still blue and white with fluffy clouds that could be seen overhead.

In the distance, rolling rocks marked the start of an elevated area that surrounded most of the low-lying plain he was currently in. He couldn’t see any running water or any forms of life, though he knew that Vesta had many rivers and had developed small mammals up until that point in its life.

In all, it was nothing like the alien landscapes he’d read about as a child, those that had no atmosphere or anything resembling life. Vesta looked so close to Earth that the scene in front of him could very well have been in Utah or Arizona, where he spent his formative years.

“It’s a little unnerving, isn’t it?”

Alex spun around quickly at the sound of Jenna’s voice. At some point in time, she’d woken up from her slumber. She was sitting with her back against the row of seats and she was hugging her knees against her chest. It didn’t take him long to figure out just what she was referring to.

“All of this out here,” muttered Alex. “It is a little unnerving. I always pictured what it would be like to go to another planet, even when I was on the orbital ring. This isn’t what I thought it would be.”

“I was thinking the same thing right after we landed,” she said, pushing up to her feet. “If I didn’t know any better, I almost thought we could still be on Earth.”

“Except for the control panel,” said Alex, gesturing to the screen next to him. “We made it to Vesta, and we are now 51 light-years away from everyone that we’ve ever known. It was looking like we weren’t going to make it for a time.”

Jenna nodded and stopped once she was next to him. “Are you okay? You’ve been out cold ever since we took off from the Racine. I don’t mean to shock you, but it’s been three days, Alex. I was beginning to wonder if you’d ever wake up.”

Alex met her eyes and smiled. “It’ll take a little more than a bump on the head to kill me. Sorry to disappoint you.”

Jenna didn’t get the joke as she didn’t laugh. Her eyes went up to his forehead, where the bandage still was. She reached out to touch it, her soft fingers brushing across his skin.

“I really should check that. I put it on shortly after we took off but I hadn’t thought to check it until . . . well, until I knew you were going to be okay.”

She made him sit down for a moment while she retrieved the first aid kit that was inside the pod. He winced a little as she pulled back the bandage.

“Sorry,” she said, a smile on her face. “I guess I’m not used to working on another person yet.”

“It’s okay,” muttered Alex. “How does it look?”

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She inspected the wound for a moment.

“Better than it looked three days ago. You’re almost healed. Well, you were almost healed until you fell again shortly after our rough landing on the planet. It looks like there’s been some bleeding since then.”

Jenna took one of the bottles and squirted out a small amount of cream-colored ointment, using her finger to rub it against his wound. At that moment, Alex found himself searching her blue eyes, wondering just what kind of woman he’d been tied to.

Jenna must have felt him searching because her eyes met his for a brief moment. A flush developed in her cheeks before she turned her eyes away, going back to work.

“There, it’s much better now,” she said, placing a fresh bandage on his forehead. “You should be just fine in another day or so.”

There was a tenderness to her words that he didn’t expect. Jenna still confused him greatly, especially considering that she started off so hostile to him. That frigid exterior had melted to a great degree but Alex was forced to recognize that he knew next to nothing about her.

He had no idea what her motivations were for coming to Vesta.

There was no clue why she reacted the way she did to him when they first met, or why she had thawed now.

And even though she was thawing, he could see that she was still guarded. She wanted to be open but she couldn’t allow herself to get there just yet.

There was a story waiting to be told if only he could get Jenna to open the book.

“Thank you,” said Alex finally as his hand touched the bandage. “Not sure what might have happened without you. I’d be in much worse shape.”

“I don’t think you would have bled out or anything,” she replied. “The wound wasn’t that serious. But it was the least I could do. You saved all of us, Alex. Everyone on the Racine owes you a debt for what you did to Serrano.”

“You mean let him get away?” joked Alex. “I have no idea where he is but he still managed to get off the ship. Maybe he’s here on Vesta as well. The just thing would have been for him to die for what he did.”

Jenna shook her head. “The just thing was getting all the colonists out. I don’t think anyone was left on the Racine when the ship disintegrated. They got off because of you.”

“I wonder how many of them survived to land on Vesta,” he muttered. “We were barely supposed to make it here. Did most of them make it? Are there any still in space? What about Rick and all the others? Did they make it here?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “These pods don’t have a method to establish communication with other pods.”

“They don’t?” asked Alex. “That seems like a glaring oversight. You would think they’d want survivors to be able to communicate with each other.”

“I already checked the controls when you were still unconscious,” she said. “I didn’t find anything. What’s even worse, look at this.”

Jenna gestured to Alex’s wrist, where his P-com was strapped around it. It was currently giving him what people in a bygone age used to call the “blue screen of death.”

“I wanted to use that to get ahold of any of the colonists that might have landed here,” said Jenna, pointing to her own bare wrist. “Mine was confiscated by Serrano and his thugs, and with yours not working, we have no way to communicate with the Vestans or even find out exactly where we are.”

“What do we have in food?” asked Alex. “We should have plenty of it, right? These pods are made to hold fifteen people each and keep them alive for a week.”

“We have plenty of freeze-dried food stored over there,” said Jenna as she started to bite her lip. “But Alex, what if even that’s not enough? Vesta is a planet that’s almost the size of Earth. There’s only one city on the entire planet. What if we’ve landed in a remote area? What if we’re an entire continent away? What will we do then?”

Alex didn’t want to answer that question, especially to her. He knew what that would mean. It would mean death long before anyone could rescue them. In his previous occupation, he’d accepted that death could find him at any time, and it had long since stopped being something to be afraid of.

Even still, he didn’t want to worry Jenna with his doubts. Not now.

“We’ll figure something out,” he said, trying to put on a confident expression. “We have time, right? And we have plenty of—”

It was at that moment that they heard a loud roar not far from the escape pod. The sound was loud enough to reverberate throughout the pod, causing a new feeling of anxiety for the two occupants.

“What in the world was that?” whispered Jenna.

The roar came again, this time much closer to the pod.

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” replied Alex. “But it’s getting closer.”

Alex grabbed his pulse pistol and gestured for Jenna to get behind him. At that point, they heard the sound of scratching at the door of the pod.

Something was out there, and it definitely wasn’t human.

He felt Jenna’s hand wrap around his arm.

“Alex, I’m scared.”

He gulped as adrenaline surged through his body. The pod shuddered as the invader tried to ram at the door.

“I’m scared too, Jenna.”

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