Page 52 of Alien Prince's Fake Bride
It’s mostly my mind that’s numb, I realize. This really terrible news doesn’t rattle me much. “So I’m going to burn up?”
“The AI claims not. The pod is clad in some kind of hyper-advanced material that will shield you, it says. It recommends you strap in. It will deactivate the gravity. It has to brake hard before the pod touches the atmos— ah, okay.”The view out of the window vanishes as some kind of plate slides down across it.“That looks about right. I was wondering how that glass would stand up to four thousand degrees of friction heat.”
I grab hold of a harness and start trying to put it on. “So we could make it?”
“There’s a tiny chance you will survive the crash. I have little data about what might happen later. The green color of the planet is a good sign that there might be plants that do photosynthesis, which would mean oxygen. Whether or not you can breathe the air there is a different matter.”
“Thanks,” I tell her, struggling with the stiff, unused harness as the artificial gravity suddenly goes away and I start to float in the air.
“My pleasure. No, that’s the wrong way, Umbra. Take that loop and bring it around your waist. Yes, like that. Now tighten. Good. Now take this next strap…”
- - -
The crash is loud, drawn-out, confusing, and terrible. I’m tossed here and there in the harness, feeling like a ragdoll in a furious washing machine. The screech of tearing metal and the sickening crunch of impacts vibrate through my bones. But the harness holds, biting into my flesh, and I don’t get crushed under my own weight when the pod finally comes to a shuddering, grinding stop. The smell of burning electronics mixes with the already stale air.
“We’re here,”Vera says. “The pod’s AI didn’t make it, though. He’s only giving me gibberish. Do you want to open the hatch and exit?”
I fight with the mechanism to come loose. “Do I have a choice?”
“Not in the long term. I suppose you might survive for about a day in here before the CO2 builds up enough to kill you. I would recommend trying the atmosphere outside before then.”
The locking mechanism opens with a sharp click, and I drop to the ground. “Oh, I’ll do it right away. No reason to wait.”
“The hatch is unlocked,”Vera says. “You can just open it and look out.”
I check the windows. They’re still closed from the outside. “I guess I have to. We’re not in an ocean or a lake, right?”
“I think we’re on land. The sensations I felt during the last part of the crash are consistent with landing in a dense forest, crashing through treetops and breaking trunks before bouncing between several sturdy trees.”
It’s obvious how to open the hatch, so I take a deep breath and turn the handle.
The hatch opens with a sharp hiss of pressure being equalized. Immediately the smell in the pod changes, from stale and dusty to extremely organic, with rotting vegetation as the main note. It’s a thick, cloying stench that makes my stomach churn. The air from outside is hot and humid, and the inside of the window immediately mists over.
I push the hatch open on screaming, unwilling hinges. Then I stand back and look. “It’s a jungle.”
“Can you breathe?”Vera asks.
I take a deep breath. “I can. But I may not want to. It smells like a compost heap that’s been left in a foot locker along with a ripe cheese for a year.”
“Ah. From your tone I gather that’s not good?”
“It stinks,” I tell her as I stick my head out the hatch. There are tree trunks and bushes and dense undergrowth. Sticky stuff drips from above, and I have to lean way out to look up and see the treetops. The canopy of branches and leaves is at least three hundred feet above me. It’s incredibly dense, and barely a thin ray of sunlight reaches the forest floor.
I can see the trail of destruction the pod made as it crashed. It flattened trees and dug a deep groove in the ground before it hit a tree trunk so hard it dug halfway into the wood, leaving a gaping, white wound in the otherwise deep green trunk. Sap oozes from the broken wood, adding a sickly-sweet note to the already overwhelming smell.
“What do I do now?” I ponder, the weight of my isolation pressing down on me. “Should I stay with the pod?”
“Staying with the lifeboat is the conventional wisdom,”Vera lectures. “If you expect a search and rescue operation being mounted, it will be easier for the rescuers to find this pod than one camouflaged woman in a jungle.”
“I’m not sure what to expect,” I admit as I gingerly step out of the pod and onto the alien planet, the strange, spongy ground feeling unnervingly alive beneath my boot. “I feel like Mareliux would try to find me. But he had his hands full last time I saw him. I don’t even know if he’s alive.”
The realization hits me and pierces the strange numbness like a spear of ice. Mareliux might be dead!
“Shit,” I mutter. “There were a lot of Vyrpy in that hallway-”
A sudden movement makes me freeze. I stare into the jungle, heart rate going wild. “Did you see something?”
“I’m not facing the right way,”Vera chirps.
