Page 13 of Crash Landing
I turned to my comrades, speaking in our common tongue. “Woman thinks she’s the captain of this outing.”
My crew mates chuckled as they ushered the interns across the docks to the ship. I waited for everyone to pass, including Sam, before taking up the rear. She was the last one to start walking save for the middle-aged man. He followed her closely, giving off a certain aura that I didn’t like. The way his eyes roamed over her made my jaw clench. Not that I had any claim—or wanted a claim—over Sam, but the man oozed unclean thoughts.
On the ship, I stood in the middle of the passenger cabin waiting for everyone to get situated. Most of them knew exactly how to put their things in the storage compartment and how to strap in and they did it quickly. A few of them fumbled about, unsure what to do first, but they figured it out eventually. Sam was among the ones to put up her things without a problem and once people started finding their places, I made my way up the stairs.
“Uh, excuse me,” I heard her say.
I wouldn’t have turned if she hadn’t tapped me on the arm to get my attention. I spun to face her, already two steps up the stairs and towering over her small frame.
“Sorry, I thought we were going to Sylos.”
I shook my head. “I already said—”
“Right, I know.” Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a folded piece of paper with a hand-drawn picture of a plant on it. A flower, to be exact. “See, I’m looking for this plant and I know for a fact it’s on Sylos.”
I reached out and took the paper. I didn’t need to, of course. It was an arlakh plant. The plant she was so deathly allergic to the last time we saw each other. It was well drawn down to the details of the stripes on the dual petals.
So she was looking for revenge on the flower and not looking to see me on Sylos. I was both amused and let down.
“The arlakh plant,” I said, handing the picture back to her. “They do grow on Sylos.”
“Right. So, is there some way I could do my studies there?”
“No,” I said plainly. “My job is to escort you to Phesah. We’ll only be going to Sylos for a brief rest afterward before I take you all back to the Nexus.”
I turned to keep walking when I caught the droop in her shoulders like she’d been completely let down.
“But it doesn’t matter,” I sighed. “The arlakh plant isn’t native to Sylos. It comes from Phesah. You’ll find plenty of them there. I don’t know why you’d want to if you’re allergic, though.”
I nearly choked on my words and hesitated a beat, waiting for Sam to react. It took her a couple of seconds, but then she blinked, lifting a brow.
“Huh?”
“I mean… a woman came to Sylos years ago and had an unpleasant reaction.”
She smiled awkwardly. “That was me. And that’s why I want to find it. I’m trying to study it so I can find a way to not be allergic.”
“Why would you want that? Planning on an extended visit?”
Her cheeks went pink and she furrowed her brows, stuffing her drawing in her pocket.
“I’m just a science geek,” she surrendered, backing away.
I couldn’t help it. I chuckled at her response and as she walked away, the sound made her glance back at me with that mean glare of hers.
She hadn’t changed, the little geshi.
6: Sam
Everything was happening so damn fast. I felt like I barely left Earth and now I was well on my way to some moon I never even knew about so I could prove myself to a bunch of snotty researchers. I wanted to discover something useful. Maybe then people wouldn’t look at me like an imposter. Without Innifer, I felt like my identity had been stripped away and that was just pathetic. I needed to be important without her.
I stared at my sketch of the plant in my hands and started to recall all the terrible things it did to me. Its pollen had made me nauseous. Feverish. Irritable. It made it hard to breathe. It made my eyes itch. I’d never had allergies in my life let alone ones so severe and if other people with worse allergies ever wanted to hop planets, I could be the one to make it safe for them.
They were big dreams, but they were the only ones I had.
I’d studied other plants from Sylos to prepare my research. I knew which ones were potentially edible. Which ones were absolutely lethal and which ones could bite off a finger… because apparently, those existed. I knew a lot, but I had no hands-on experience so I was stuck with a lot of theories. Of course, now I knew we weren’t even going to Sylos, but I was hoping the plant life on Phesah would be similar if not the same as what I’d been studying.
The ship jerked a bit when we popped out of the jump gate. Windows on human ships were all live feeds. Everyone knew that. But on valerian ships, the windows were actual windowswith radiation shields. I stared out into the diamond-speckled darkness for a couple of moments just to test my courage and then kept staring at my drawing when the ship’s speed picked up, trying to distract myself from the maw of space. But just knowing it was around us, big and endless and terrifying, made my foot bounce uncontrollably.
