As the ship crashed into the atmosphere of the hostile planetary body below them, Ira stumbled to his feet. He swayed with the rapid motions of the rattling ship under his feet and fought his way over to the door to his quarters. Slamming his hand down on the button beside it, the door slid open with a loud hiss before stopping halfway. Ira frowned, his eyes shifting to the small gap that he now had to squeeze through. On the other hand, he could just… not.
Actually, that sounded like a great plan.
Turning around, he stumbled his way back to his bed and fell down on it. His fingers grappled along the edges of his bed until he managed to get a hold of the belts that were currently trapped under the bed. Pulling them out, he strapped himself onto the bed so that he wouldn’t be thrown about when the ship inevitably crashed.
The light above the door was giving off a blindingly red color. Alarms echoed throughout the entire ship, constantly reminding everyone to strap in and prepare for impact. Smoke drifted in through his still-open doorway, setting off the fire alarm in his room too.
A gigantic quake shook the ship and Ira felt his brain rattle in his skull like loose change. Luckily, his ability to sense pain had been turned off, and the impact against the atmosphere didn’t bother him. Searching for his Host using his map, Ira frowned when he found him on the bridge of the ship.
The ship shook again. Ira’s body pressed harshly against the straps holding him in place. The combination of the bright lights, the loud alarms constantly warning about fire, loss of life-support, hull breaches, and the smoke that kept on flowing throughout the entire ship, was disorienting. Ira had no trouble dealing with it because he wasn’t human, but all the humans on the ship were panicking at the moment. Even the ones that pretended they weren’t.
The planet they were crashing on was about Earth-size. Which was good — significantly smaller and they would sort of float, like on the moon. Too big, and the gravity would be so great that they wouldn’t be able to move. Earth-size was just about right for the fragile humans scattered across this doomed vessel.
But the planet was nothing like Earth. A hostile atmosphere with less than enough oxygen, deadly plants, two suns with one side of the planet locked to one sun. Not enough water, too much methane — from a distance it might look like Earth, but it very much was not.
As the people of this ship were about to discover.
And, of course, that wasn’t mentioning the aliens.
With one last tumbling shake, the ship broke through the final layer of the atmosphere. Hurtling at top velocity toward the planet, all that anyone of them was able to do was strap in and hope for the best. Naturally, so did Ira’s Host.
Meanwhile, Ira was hit by the devastating fact that in a world like this, Silas probably wouldn’t be able to bake any of Ira’s favorites.
He decided to just lay back on his bed and wait for death.
The crash was as surprising as it was expected. For a moment, his new body lost consciousness and Ira was trapped in a black void. Then he got it back with a whimper and reawakened to a crumbling ship.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Blinking up at the low ceiling above him, Ira tested the restraints keeping him in place. The ship wasn’t moving anymore, so it was time to get out of them. Slowly, his fingers hit the latch and the belts loosened and finally fell off him completely. They clattered to the floor before they were pulled in by the automatic function under the bed that they had first appeared out of, the handle only sticking out a few centimeters.
Pushing himself off the bed, Ira groaned as the movement made every bone in this body protest. But there was nothing broken, so he decided not to worry about it and left his quarters.
Outside, the smoke was thick enough to obscure his vision. Ira squinted and turned his range of sight up, walking through the smoke-filled hallways with a hand against the wall. It wasn’t only his door that had spazzed out, it turned out that many doors required him to turn up his strength in order to force them open on his way to the cafeteria.
Obviously, the first order of business was to secure the food. Any other priority order was senseless to him. Edging along the narrow corridors, Ira zoomed in on his Host and made sure that he wasn’t dead yet.
After a crash like this, he guessed that it was to be expected, that Ira would check in on his Host.
It had truly been a very bad one.
His Host was only just beginning to awaken. Covered in bloody gashes, with a dislocated arm and severely bruised ribs, his Host looked like a character from a horror movie as he painfully stood up from his seat. Like all others on the bridge, he had been strapped onto a seat at the moment of the crash, and the momentum had not been kind to him.
When his Host finally managed to stumble to his feet, most of the other people on the bridge had woken up again. Except for the ones that were dead, obviously.
“What’s the status?” the captain demanded, stumbling toward the nearest console like he wasn’t bleeding a river from his head. He wiped it off his eyes with a hand that became covered in blood, only for the blood to replace itself almost immediately.
The pilot said, “We crashed.”
“No shit,” the navigational officer drawled out.
The captain threw xem an annoyed look. “Don’t be antagonistic, we need to work together. Do a headcount of the people and recourses we still have. If we’re lucky, we can still get off this rock.”
Entering the cafeteria, Ira immediately veered off toward the storage room. Some quick typing on the lock and the door slid open to an atmospherically controlled room that appeared, at first glance, to be perfectly intact. Smiling, Ira walked further in and stared with hungry eyes at the shelves full of food.
His radio crackled. Pulling it from his belt, he asked, “What?”
“Status report,” the navigational officer requested.
“No bleeding, nothing broken. Location: the cafeteria storage facility,” Ira answered, deciding that it wasn’t worth it to antagonize them. He wanted to have a front-row seat to the horror that was about to befall these people when they realized what a cursed planet they had crashed on, and to do that, he needed to not get chased away.
The radio crackled again, the signal weakening. “What’s the status of the food?” the navigational officer asked.
Ira picked up a can and bounced it in his hand. “At first glance, it appears to be intact. Further investigation will need to be made.”
“Roger,” the navigational officer said.
The radio crackled one final time, and then he couldn’t hear anything at all from it. Ira put the radio back on his belt and put the can on its shelf. He walked over to the screen interface right next to the entrance to the storage and tapped it gently with his finger. Nothing happened. Narrowing his eyes, he pressed more firmly upon it. Still no reaction. Ira didn’t have his tablet with him, but he was willing to bet that it wouldn’t work either.
Which meant that they couldn’t access the food manifest. Rolling up his sleeves, Ira opened the cabinet’s door and pulled out a thick notebook and a gaggle of ink-pens. They were for a case of emergencies, and Ira reluctantly gave the humans’ foresight a gold star.
Then he started taking stock. It took hours to go through and count every single food-related item in the storage room. The shelves were high, and this was only the first room. There were more rooms for food that required different temperatures in order to store long-term.
While Ira was counting and dutifully marking down it all in the notebook, the captain of the ship was busy with locating and rescuing all the crew members still alive. Ira hadn’t been the only one to have the doors fail on him. Ira’s Host, who was only a lower officer and had only been on the bridge at the time of the crash due to coincidence, also followed after the captain like a dog. In the end, they managed to rescue twenty-five people out of a crew that was one-hundred-eighty-three members strong.
Counting Ira and the people from the bridge, that was thirty-two people still alive.
Not exactly the desired result.
When Ira looked up, his internal clock told him that he had been at this for over six hours. Ira blinked. “Huh,” he breathed out and closed the notebook. With this, he had finished.
The crew still alive had assembled in one of the cargo holds that still had functioning life-support. Seeing as he was done with his self-appointed job, Ira elected to head over to the rest of the crew and watch first-hand how it all went to hell.
Walking through the dark and smoke-filled hallways, Ira avoided any of the compromised areas easily with the help of his map. He reached the cargo hold safe and sound. Inside, he could see his Host standing uneasily by the side as the captain argued with his core crew (basically, the people who spent time regularly on the bridge) about what they should do now.
The rest of the crew were in different states, but all of them were injured to some extent. Ira pressed down the code and the door slid open. It was the navigational officer that first spoke to Ira.
“You have the food manifest?” xe asked and stood up straighter. With xyr words, the captain also looked over at Ira and quickly started approaching him.
Ira held out the thick notebook and easily let go when the captain almost tore it out of his hands. Ira decided to be magnanimous and let it go, as he would soon be seeing Silas. For this one time, he would be generous and showcase his kinder side.
The human should be grateful.
The captain instantly started leafing through the pages. Nodding and smiling, the captain said, “Good work, Petty Officer Blair. You can get some rest now.”
Ira wasn’t about to argue with that. He walked over to one of the crates and sat down on the floor with his back against the one-meter high metal crate. It wasn’t very comfortable, but he would take what he could get.
“So then, are we in agreement?” the highest-ranking medical officer left alive said.
Ira had no idea what they were talking about. But he came here for a reason and there was no TV in this world (well, there was, but not on this planet) so he would simply make do.
The Captain was still looking over the manifest that Ira had given him. When he heard the medical officer’s words he looked up, a furious frown on his aged face. “We’ll get a good meal in us and decide after. We’ll be more clearheaded when we’re not hungry,” the Captain said. Some of the crew sent each other looks that Ira couldn’t decipher, but no-one raised any objections.
So a small team of three left the cargo hold in order to get food from the cafeteria. Ira wasn’t among this group as the Captain asserted that he had done his duty for the day. What was the use of arguing that?
While waiting for the crew members to come back, Ira looked over at his Host. His Host had a fiercely troubled expression on his face where he stood leaning against his wall, blood still covering him. Ira was not so ignorant that he didn’t know why. After all, this time, the mission was to escape from this planet of death.
A/N: xe/xem is a gender-neutral pronoun: xe/xem/xyr/xyrs/xemself
in contrast for easier understanding of use: he/him/his/his/himself
more contrast: they/them/their/theirs/themself
Those pronouns are new to me! :O
Cool, let’s see where this will go.
Thanks for the chapter!
Ohh!
If you google “xem” by itself, you won’t get any meaningful results, but they are indeed a gender-neutral pronoun. The first result is from a university.
I never knew there were so many!
hum….
thanks for the chapter
Ohh Now I understood the pronoun used last chapter! I thought it was an error as the character’s name changed ! Kkkkkk
Thanks for the chapter!
I thought the pronouns were names