Page 1 of Xara and the Xenobeast

CHAPTER ONE

Pain came first—throbbing, insistent, like a bass drum behind Xara’s eyes—followed by confusion when she forced her eyes open and found herself surrounded by unfamiliar metal walls twisted at impossible angles. The acrid smell of burning circuitry stung her nostrils, mingling with the metallic tang of blood that coated the back of her throat. Sparks occasionally sputtered from exposed wiring, casting brief, erratic shadows across the wreckage.

She tried to sit up and almost hit her head against the clear shell hanging half-open above her—above a narrow container that bore an uncomfortable resemblance to a coffin. Suddenly desperate to escape she tried to scramble out of the container, gasping at the sharp pain in her side when she moved. She instinctively clutched her ribs and her hand came away sticky with blood—her blood—seeping through her torn blouse and staining her fingertips.

“What the hell?”

Her voice echoed in the cramped space, sounding foreign even to her own ears as she managed to reach the floor, half-fallingin the process. Clinging to the container until her head stopped spinning, she forced herself to take stock of her surroundings.

Through an opening in front of her she spotted a pilot’s chair torn from its moorings, stuffing spilling from rips in the strange fabric. Slumped across what must have been controls was body with grey skin and elongated limbs. A definitely non-human body. Its head was disproportionately large, with a delicate, almost translucent quality to the skin where it stretched over an enlarged cranium. Dark fluid—perhaps blood—had pooled beneath it, viscous and oddly iridescent in the flickering emergency lights.

The sight finally triggered a memory. She’d been walking across the darkened university campus after another late night in the lab when a figure had stepped from shadows—the classic stereotype of an alien with grey skin and huge eyes in an oversized head. Her first reaction had been to assume that it was a joke, a student playing tricks, but then her analytical skills had kicked in. The proportions were... wrong. No human could have been concealed in that long, thin body.

She’d opened her mouth, not to scream but to ask questions, and its hand had shot out. A blinding flash, followed by an even more blinding pain, before darkness took her. And now she was here, with the same alien dead in front of her.

“No, no, no...”

She scrambled backwards, ignoring the pain stabbing through her ribs, her palms scraping against jagged metal fragments. This couldn’t be happening. This wasn’t real. She was Dr. Xara Reyes, respected biologist, rational scientist. She dealt in observable facts, not science fiction nightmares.

But the dead alien sprawled before her was undeniably real. So was the twisted wreckage around her, and the blood trickling down her side, warm and persistent.

“This can’t be real,” she whispered, suddenly desperate to escape the confines of the ship. She stumbled towards what appeared to be an opening in the hull, ignoring the pain streaking through her side with every step. Squeezing through the rough opening, she took a shaky breath of the warm, humid air, heavy with scents she didn’t recognize. For a moment the relief of being free of the ship was enough, but then she took a look around and froze, her breath catching in her throat.

She might have been able to convince herself that the dead alien was an actor, that the wrecked ship was some kind of film set, but no movie magic could have created her surroundings. Trees with bark the color of charcoal rose around her, their trunks twisting in spirals that defied terrestrial botany, their branches heavy with crimson leaves that swayed despite the still air. The ground beneath her feet was covered in strange, pink moss that seemed to pulse as if it were breathing.

The sky above her was wrong—a pale swirling jade, with three moons of varying sizes hanging impossibly close. The largest was amber-hued, its cratered surface clearly visible even to the naked eye. The middle one gleamed silver-blue, almost transparent at around the edge. The smallest burned a fierce crimson, seeming to pulse in rhythm with the moss below. In the distant hills, strange lights flickered between the trees, like fireflies but larger, more deliberate in their movements, following patterns that seemed to suggest intelligence rather than instinct.

Her legs trembling, she reached out to steady herself against the nearest tree. The smooth bark felt warm to the touch, almostlike skin, and when she brushed the crimson foliage, the leaves hissed, recoiling from her touch like a living thing, curling inward protectively. The entire branch seemed to shudder and pull away from her, the movement rippling up through the trunk.

She jerked her hand back, heart hammering against her ribs.

“I’m definitely not in Kansas anymore.”

Her scientific mind raced even through the haze of pain and shock—reactive plant life, possibly with a centralized nervous system, exhibiting defensive behavior against unknown stimuli. But she couldn’t focus on the intriguing possibilities. Not when her lungs ached and her injured side burned.

“I need to make a plan.”

Her voice sounded even stranger in the open air, and a ripple ran through the bright red leaves of a vine wrapped around one of the tree trunks. She shuddered, resolving to keep quiet as she took inventory: her clothes were torn and bloodied, but functional. Her watch had stopped at 11:47, the hands frozen in time. No phone. No water. No supplies. The pocket where she normally kept her small Swiss Army knife was empty—had someone searched her while she was unconscious? Just her and a dead alien in a crashed shuttle on a planet that couldn’t possibly be Earth.

Think, Xara. Think. She pressed her palms against her temples, forcing herself to breathe slowly, methodically. Panic wouldn’t help. The analytical part of her brain—the part that had earned her tenure at thirty—needed to take control.

Shelter first. Water. Food. Basic survival. She’d worry about the impossible later—about being abducted and crashing on an alien world. About how she might get home.

She tore a strip from her shirt, binding the wound at her side as best she could, and wincing as she pulled the makeshift bandage tight. The bleeding had slowed, but the area around the gash was already showing signs of inflammation. Infection was a very real possibility in this alien environment, with microbes her immune system had never encountered.

Despite the presence of the three moons, the sky was light enough that she suspected it was daytime. She needed to find shelter before that changed. The wrecked shuttle might provide shelter, but its hull was breached in multiple places and the dead body would attract predators. Still she hesitated, reluctant to leave her last link with Earth. The crash couldn’t have occurred that long ago. Some of the torn foliage surrounding the ship still smoked gently and the dead alien showed no sign of decomposition. What if someone came looking for the shuttle?

More grey aliens?

She shuddered at the thought. While she didn’t know why the alien had taken her, she didn’t think it was for anything good. That thought decided her. She forced herself to return to the ship long enough to scavenge for anything useful, but only managed to recover a metal container large enough to hold water and a strip of fabric from her coffin-like container.

Then she started walking away from the crash site, following what appeared to be a natural decline in the terrain. Water would flow downhill. Basic geology had to work the same, even here.

The jungle thickened as she walked. Strange, bulbous fruits hung from vines that wrapped around the trees, their surfaces mottled with colors that shifted subtly, as if responding to the light. Luminescent fungi clustered at their bases, casting eerie blue light that created dancing shadows with each step she took. Their caps opened and closed rhythmically, releasing puffs of glowing spores that floated upward before dissipating. Something skittered across her path—too many legs, too fast to identify, with an exoskeleton that gleamed like polished obsidian—and vanished into the underbrush with a chittering sound.

Her head throbbed with each step, a persistent pounding behind her eyes. The wound at her side pulled with every movement, and her throat burned with thirst, her tongue feeling swollen and dry. How long had she been on that shuttle? Hours? Days? Weeks? The pod in which she’d awoken could have been some type of stasis container, disabled during the crash, but the fact that she didn’t know only added to the sick sense of panic growing inside her.

The trees seemed to press closer as she walked, branches reaching for her like fingers. Or claws. A shiver ran down her spine, and the hairs rose on the back of her neck. She felt watched. Hunted.

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