Old nostalgia tore at Shane with honeyed thoughts. It hurt in lovely ways, broke him with tender memories of a distant home: The chipped red paint on the front door. The sound of the breeze through the farm. His mother stealing sugar packets from diners. His father tracing the sky above with a finger, saying: You’ll go there someday, I know it. They all tasted like sweet poison. Each was a weightless memory of a home that rotted him from within.
The planet, which Shane had named Dusk, had a feature to its night sky that Earth did not. A celestial nursery. It spiderwebbed above him. The clouded, red-orange mass was stuck motionless in the vacuum as fledgling stars emanated through the dust. It painted the dark recesses of space with an artist’s brush. Shane hated theological discussions, ran from them, but here and now, he wondered whether God or nature was the better painter.
This new sky was not the one Shane was born beneath. This sky did not like him, it had doomed him with its immeasurable beauty, and now mocked him in his solitude. Too far had the mariner sailed, and under the veil of alien night, loneliness would crush him.
“Six-hundred and eighty-three,” Benjamin said from his corner. Shane pulled his attention from the sky and glared at him.
“Sun’s coming up, that’ll give us five hours, what do you want to do with it?” Shane asked, ignoring Benjamin’s dig at him.
Benjamin didn’t answer.
Shane had constructed their camp within a rocky nook that protected them from the elements and native creatures that called Dusk home.
“We need to hit the cliffs today. How about it?” Shane asked. Benjamin stared impassively back but didn’t bother to respond to that either.
He sat up from his cot and stowed his star mapping journal next to the weathered plant registry in his pack. Most of the alien plant life on Dusk resembled giant succulents in some way or another. Some had jabbed him with a hidden thorn, while others irritated his hands with a fine powder. But there were many that were benign, borderline mundane, a plant one might find on grandmother’s windowsill, though tree sized. For the most part, those that were dull green were flavorless but nutritious. The vast majority were leafless and bloated from root to crest, like thick skinned water balloons.
Much like tiny Amazonian frogs, the brightest plants were extremely poisonous. Often, he’d find the remains of creatures that had mistakenly eaten something he had named Bad-Root. It was colored a juicy yellow, and to Shane, smelled very closely to fermenting strawberries. The creature would die shortly after ingesting it, poisoned by the Bad-Root. From within the decaying flesh, utilizing the meat and hot moisture, more Bad-Root sprouts would grow then burst from the body.
In general, if it tasted dull and waterlogged, he could eat it.
“We need water,” Shane mentioned as he packed his bag then laced his boots tightly. “We can take a look through the crash site again. See what we can salvage.” He placed his hand into the gauntlet that was once a piece of his spacesuit. The last sunrise had given the tech tab on his forearm twelve hours of battery life. The map hummed and projected an inch or two above the screen. He’d been mapping the mesa-top for months now, but the limited daylight of Dusk always proved to be a challenge.
Benjamin had said something while Shane was occupied with plotting their path to the cliff. “What?” he asked and looked over at him.
Benjamin didn’t bother repeating himself.
“I was thinking of trying to get into the captain’s quarters again. She said she had some bottles of rum for when the colony was up; you remember that? Figured, if I can get through the doors this time, we’ll have ourselves some drinks tonight. Well, we can get drunk tonight. Real drunk.”
Benjamin looked at him, judgmentally.
“We, yes we.” Shane pointed out the front of the encampment. “It’s a biometric scan to get into her quarters, I need help looking for her or we won’t be drinking rum any time soon. Two sets of eyes are better than one.”
Shane stood up and placed an empty condensation canister into the deepest pocket of his backpack. He clipped his makeshift holster onto his waist, checked the small firearm, and aimed down its curved top, adjusting the pop-up site, before slotting it into the fabric sheath. He went to the corner of the camp and retrieved the machete that he’d sharpened from a fragment of the exterior hull of the Janus. He weaved it as well into the holster’s strap. It still had some of the paint on it from the downed colonial spacecraft.
“Ready?” he asked Benjamin.
Benjamin attempted to protest, but Shane cut him off. “Listen, I survived. I’m going home. I’m not going to die here, bud, and I don’t need you making me feel guilty about it.” He scratched the back of his neck nervously, then averted his eyes from the other’s steely gaze. “Honestly, you’re not the easiest person to live with. Sorry, I know that’s shit to say. I’m just begging for a bit of hope, that too much to ask?”
Benjamin’s vacant eye sockets scowled at him. His blackened skull was scorched and charcoal in color. His lower jaw was nowhere to be seen. He sat on the small shelf that Shane had carved in the rock for him.
Shane picked him up without Benjamin protesting any further and placed him in the netted pouch at the crest of his backpack. He turned him so that his eye sockets stared over his shoulder and forward, then strapped the compartment tightly closed.
“It’s not like you’ve got a choice.” Shane laughed.
“You’re a mariner without a sea,” Benjamin stated.
“You’re a man without a neck,” Shane retorted with an exhausted sigh as he hoisted the backpack onto his shoulders. They exited their makeshift home. He slid a heavy panel from the Janus’ heat shield into the entrance, latched it in place, and brought up the map again.
“Six-hundred and eighty-three,” Benjamin stated. His voice held malicious pleasure.
“Enough,” Shane growled and glanced aggressively over his shoulder into Benjamin’s empty eyes.
Benjamin said nothing, but Shane felt his sick enjoyment all the same.
Shane zoomed toward a far border of the map and changed the subject. “Yesterday, I saw a clearing while going through the cabin pods.” He pointed to a dark section beyond the map’s holoprojection. “I think it’s about six-hundred yards from where they came down. Could be where the captain’s body is, thought we might get lucky.”
“Lucky?” Benjamin questioned incredulously.
“Fortunate?” Shane offered.
“Worse,” he dismissed.
Shane walked the plotted course outlined on the map and avoided any further conversation with Benjamin, despite the latter’s needling. The map would ping with helpful information that he’d documented about Dusk. As he moved, the pad studied the environment around him, using the notes he had accumulated through trial and error to remind him of the dangers he’d already survived. Tips pinged with what strange plants were edible and which others would leave him writhing in pain or worse.
He crept silently passed marked areas where he’d previously discovered hostile dens to alien creatures. Soundlessly, he kept to his established path so as not to wake anything hungry. Shane adjusted the glove nervously, assuring himself that it was snug on his forearm.
He journeyed further under the canopy of great fan-like plants. The tallest of them had him craning his neck like that of the ancient redwoods. They unfurled their high reaching faces to reveal a colorful flat top that bent toward Dusk’s nearest star. They were an iridescent blue that slowly shifted to mottled green. Like large solar farms, the canopy shifted in unison to follow the pale star that bathed them in light.
Shane came to the end of the dense forest and emerged at the edge of a sheer drop. Across a wide chasm was another mesa with a thick mess of succulent forest at its crest much like his. Between the two landmasses was a stretch of grey clouds that hovered several feet below the cliff's lip and filled the space between like a massive river. Shane had never seen the clouds lift or thin, nor witnessed what lie beneath the dense cover. He knew that there wasn’t water like the rivers of earth, just vapor. In truth, he did not want to know what might be lurking in the cloud cover.
He could see the giant fans of the neighboring mesa jostle as something pushed through the succulent forest. It roamed, obscured and unseen; it called out like some terrestrial whale. Its voice long and rumbling. Shane had yet to encounter whatever the creature was on his own island and was thankful for it.
The map pinged pleasantly at his arrival when he neared the cliff face. It snapped his attention from the unseen creature that sung miles away, and back to the task at hand.
He checked the rope he’d secured to a thin tube-shaped plant that rose from the ground and was nearly impossible for him to yank free, though he had tried. The plant was rigid, like coral, but gave a sweet scent from the depths of its hollow face. He pulled the rope, hearing the condensation canister's clinking and scraping over the side and into the large grains of sand that Dusk offered as topsoil. Shane replaced the canister with the empty one and stowed its half full twin in the pack, then lowered it gently down to disappear among the clouds again.
A light, but distinct rustling of foliage sounded from behind him.
“Behind you,” Benjamin voiced from his netted pouch.
Shane whirled, pulled his pistol, dropping to a knee. The thick leaf-like protrusions of the ground cover shuddered as something small fled through it. Glimpses of it flashed as it tumbled over itself like a baseball-sized pill-bug. It rolled away from him in retreat and disappeared.
His heart thumped as he scanned the rest of the foliage for gnashing teeth, or ripping claws, but found that he was once again alone. Shane kept quiet for a long time. It wasn’t strange to have wildlife out during daylight hours, but most were definitely nocturnal. He’d hated the feeling of being watched before the crash, and now, marooned alone on an alien planet, he enjoyed it even less.
He took up his pack, keeping the pistol securely in his grip, and cautiously made his way back into the forest. A low, rumbling, groan from the other side of the chasm meandered through the air, as Shane made his way to the cabin pods.
Shane was sure to follow one of his safest routes, one that steered him away from as many dens as possible. However, several times, off to his right, he heard the scuttering, movements of whatever still trailed him since the cliff face. It kept his nerves on edge as he continued to stop and turn in attempt to see it clearly.
He crested a shallow hill to find the barren trenches that the downed cabin pods had left in their wake. Dusk’s nature had yet to reclaim the scorched scars that the crash had left behind, save for the occasional brightly colored sprout.
The aft section of the Janus had broken up just before the surface spreading the wreckage predominantly over this mesa. He knew that the bridge, science departments, and cargo belly had traveled further, and he was in the process of setting up stations to explore deeper into the forest while having a safe place to camp for the brief night hours. The things that ate meat came out at night and he had learned to hide, not fight.
At the thought of future stations, he glanced down at his tech pad. It stated that he had just over four hours of daylight remaining before he needed to get back to camp. The day and night cycles were short on Dusk, only about five hours on either side. Its pale sun did not arc across the sky like Earth’s, it hovered above the horizon before dipping below again for several hours. This resulted in unending sun rises and sets. During the day, if one could call it that, the atmosphere was pink, a near peach color that never drowned out the heavens above. While at night, it took on a pale-purple hue.
Deep, hollow grunts snapped his attention up in terrified panic. Shane pushed himself heavily into the trench side and made himself as small as he could manage.
Several yards in front of him waited one of Dusk’s most common and hostile creatures, something he’d sketched in his fauna journal and named Shovel-head. It climbed its way to the top of the trench, its clawed feet creating miniature landslides down the bank.
Shovel-heads were about the size of a Great Dane, though much thicker and heavier. The creature emitted deep grunts from its slender throat. Its salamander-orange body was long, and snake-like, but three appendages lined either side of its elongated torso. It balanced on four them while the remaining two limbs resided close to its chest. Both sported, sharp, scythe shaped claws. Its eyeless head was thin but wide. Its cheekbones protruded outward like a hammer head shark. Six nostrils, three on either side, flared and it clapped its thick beak. Its diamond head scented the humid air.
It was not comforting to Shane that it was an herbivore; he was food until proven otherwise in his experience. The Shovel-head’s attention sidled in his direction. Abruptly, and aggressively, it lurched forward for him. It slid down the bank, balancing on its wide trunk of a body and screamed in a deep thrum that peaked with ear splitting pops.
Shane let loose a spree of profanity. He stumbled and grappled with the moist ground as his ears went deaf. When he found his footing, he fled desperately, his arms pumped at his sides and he felt the itch to turn and fire at the creature. He ran ungracefully to the nearest cabin pod as the creature half sprinted, half slithered after him.
The cabin was one he had already explored thoroughly, and luckily for Shane, its port was partly submerged in the ground and too narrow for the creature to move through. The canister slammed into his back as he ran, its sloshing water threw him off balance. He dove for the open port, feeling the backpack snag on the crumpled doorway's mangled metal. Sharp pressure collapsed down on his ankle. He screamed and clambered deeper into the pod.
The creature dug its clawed feet into the soil and yanked him from the wreckage. He slid out of the pack as he was pulled back from the pod, flipped over and ripped the machete from his belt. He slashed wildly at his attacker and cut the Shovel-head over the top of its face, leaving a long slice over its slimy skin. The creature screamed again, and Shane’s eardrums vibrated. But his ankle was now free. He scrambled forward, pushed the pack from the entrance and slid inside.
He looked back to see the Shovel-head pawing at its fresh wound and behind it, two of its smaller, fragile looking, offspring crossed the trench and looked on concerned at their parent.
The creature scented the pack and nudged it with its head. Panic rose within Shane.
Benjamin.
“Hey!” he clanged the machete on the side of the cabin. “Leave it, go on! I’ll cut your god-damned head off! Leave him alone!” he screamed. The creature took the pack in its jaws and flung it where Shane could not see before backing away slowly. It kept itself between the pod and its offspring as they moved up the trench and out of sight.
When the creature was gone, Shane crawled from his hiding place. He turned around and listened to every sound around him before spotting his backpack. When he came upon the bag, he turned it over to find Benjamin looking disapprovingly at him. A long scrape now decorated his charred brow.
He placed an apologetic hand over his friend as he sat in the dirt and caught his breath. “Shit,” he cursed and traced the gashes with a concerned fingertip.
Shane threaded through the rest of the cabin pods; most of which he’d been able to open by finding the remains of his old crew members and gaining access to their bio-locked cabins. But Captain Wainwright, Marshal Hannover, and Science Officer Oram’s were all closed to him, for now.
The pods were supposed to be ejected from the Janus and dropped from about sixteen-hundred meters as colonial seed houses. They weren't designed as lifeboats and couldn't survive the several mile-long fall that they had, especially when they were still connected to the ship. He passed the captain’s cabin pod, seeing the scrapes along its sealed doors where he had attempted to pry his way in.
In total, there were around thirty-nine of the pods in the area, each with their own several hundred-yard-long trench. but these were only a quarter of the cabin pods that the Janus was carrying at the time. Shane often wondered if someone else had made it out, wondered if they had found themselves among a different grouping of pods. If they too were surviving off the failed homesteads.
He kept his footsteps light as he passed the last cabin. Benjamin’s cabin. Scorch marks still stained the round windows, though the smell of putrid smoke had passed some months ago.
“Six-hundred and eighty-three.” Benjamin chuckled at Shane’s regret and discomfort.
From the top of the hill that had built up on the far end of the pod, Shane could see the clearing out among the forest. A vacant space in the plant-life that was, as far as he knew, uncharacteristic of Dusk’s environment.
He kept low and moved cautiously through the unexplored brush. As he walked, the gauntlet used near silent echolocation to build the map accurately for twenty yards around him. He was not alone. Often, he caught sight of the small, tumbling, shape in the underbrush. When he searched for it, the creature went silent and alluded him.
Eventually, he came upon the clearing. Immediately he noticed that the trench's trajectory was much different from the cabin pods, opposite in fact. The soil churned up by the cabins had just begun to have sprigs of growth around them, but here it was booming. The entire clearing was covered by small plant life. As his eyes followed the cleared path, Shane became abundantly aware that this was undoubtedly a crash site. It just wasn’t his.
He slid to the bottom of trench and jogged down the small ravine until he came upon a sight that knocked the breath from his lungs. A different craft, alien to both the planet and him, resided at the foot of one of the massive flat tops.
He snaked the gun from the holster and steadied his breath. The craft was oddly shaped, or maybe the impact had crumpled it oddly.
What he assumed was the cockpit, was a white and bronze sphere. To one side it projected a thin, arcing, structure that housed several smaller spheres in neat line. Dormant turbines resided within in the spheres, all were dark and pointed in different directions. The craft was bent along the narrow middle. The other side was shattered; sharp, twisted, metal had been ripped into a bladelike edge.
An encampment was set up beneath the concave vacancy of the craft’s body. Much of it was overrun with fledgling growth. It was seemingly abandoned. Shane set Benjamin and the pack down near the edge of the camp before taking a steady breath and cautiously proceeding beneath the enclosure.
Silence surrounded him save only for his nervous breath. He found a familiar feeling in the ghostlike camp. A seat, a bed, a pit to cook within, items from the craft placed here and there, machines half put back together on a workbench. Attempts to survive, attempts to make this place home.
Shane turned to see a dark, vaguely human figure in the shadows of the craft. He let out a curt scream and reeled backward, tripping on something hard and hidden. He pulled the pistol's trigger, and the round was sent skyward as he landed squarely on his back.
The figure didn’t stir as Shane scrambled clumsily to his feet and pointed the firearm at it. Neither moved and before long Shane's arm began to tremble lightly. His shoulders started to ache as he waited for the figure to attack or flee.
“Tell me you’re not going to eat me,” he told the shadow.
The figure didn’t respond in any way.
“You rush me, I’m blowing whatever you call a head clean off,” he threatened. He did his best to make his voice steady. He couldn’t deny the hope he felt to see another’s face, to even attempt to speak to someone other than Benjamin.
He checked his footing, studying what had tripped him so he could move forward. His heart sank. Another figure lay in the sprouting underbrush.
It was apparent that it wore a spacesuit, but any facial structure was overtaken by the plants, a metallic white cone was strapped to what was left of its head. Out of the cone, threading into the vest, was a breathing tube. The succulents had burst through the creature's body and eaten away any distinguishing features. Shane brought the gun down from the unmoving figure in the shadows.
“No,” he told it. He looked at the state of the untended camp. “No, you’re alive.” He didn’t venture any closer. He threw both hands to the sky. “Come on! One fresh meal, right here!”
He waited, but nothing stirred from the craft.
He turned all around until he found a sizeable rock. "You’re alive, now stand the hell up," Shane growled. He held the stone out to the shadow. "What do you think of this, huh? Stand up or get the rock, your choice," he warned through a tight jaw and a jutted thumb upward. The figure still did not stir.
"Fine! Have it your way, you ugly bastard," Shane shouted and chucked the stone. It struck the metallic surface of the ship with a hollow clang.
Still, the shadowy figure did not move.
“Get up!” Shane ordered, now desperate to see another marooned soul. “Get the hell up!” His voice began to shake with a nervous tremor and hope withered within him. He needed it to be alive. He needed to not be alone.
“Please, just get up,” Shane begged, but the shadow was as quiet and still as when he arrived.
"Mariners, lost and alone," Benjamin began, "You've washed upon an isle of misery. Death is your host, young mariner. For some, death opens the door unexpectedly, but others, like you, must knock."
Tears welled in Shane’s eyes. “Shut the hell up, Ben, it’s alive,” he lied to himself. “Get up!” he screamed.
“Shane,” Benjamin began tenderly.
"I don't want to hear you," he growled back.
He walked under the shadow if the alien craft. His eyes adjusted to the darkness and found the decayed remains of the alien slunk against the hull. Its skin was tight against its bones, almost mummified in appearance. Its toothless mouth hung open, and its four vacant eye sockets gazed at the soil. The upper half of its body was somewhat human-shaped, while the lower half was comprised of one powerfully built leg.
Laying to the right of the body was a mechanism that fit the shape of the alien's three digited hands. The machine was short with a wide mouth at the end of its snubbed face. Through the side of the alien's head was a hole. It was a violent hole, created by a hard projectile. Smaller on one side of its head, and larger out the other.
“Some, like him, must knock,” Benjamin stated, his voice was grave.
“No,” Shane told the corpse, meekly. His breath came in ever-shortening rasps. His head swam, and he found his shoulder sliding down the craft's slick surface and down next to the alien.
Shane felt the helpless weeping come on quickly, he pulled at the base of his unkempt hair, he screamed sorrowfully to a world of beasts and monsters. He punched the soil. Slammed his fists into the moist ground until the impact created a densely packed hole. His muscles shook and his breath gave way to quiet sobs.
There came a light tumbling through the spouting plants. Something harmlessly pushed its way through the miniature forest.
His nerves were on edge and his fear peaked in a sudden burst. He brought the pistol up and shot at it. The circular creature rolled into cover, but not before Shane got a good look at it.
It was a ball, white and bronze, matching the ship he sat beneath, though much more weathered. It rolled back out cautiously. A pie-slice section of the robot popped up from its round body, revealing a single blue light glowing from behind a series of lenses. The bronze-colored triangles unfurled into four stubby, metallic legs.
Shane stood, and the robot clenched itself into a ball and rolled around the camp erratically.
“No. Sorry,” he sputtered, and holstered the pistol. As he came to snag it from the ground, its eye popped from its body and flash him with a blinding light that left him stumbling around. Shane dove and narrowly missed it as it flashed him again.
“I put the damned gun away!” he rolled over and saw it moving to the shadowed corpse. It unfurled its legs and fit itself into a matching slot on the dead thing's chest. The vest powered on, and an even brighter, and hotter flash erupted from lights on the corpse's chest plate.
“Alright!” Shane clenched his eyes shut and threw his hands in the air. "See, no gun, I'm sorry!" He waited for another flash, but when no other came, he ventured a quick glance. The little bot rolled through grooves in the chest piece, accessing different parts of it and glancing at him as it worked.
Shane sat up, then stood and began approach it cautiously with his hands up. The bot promptly blinded him again. He stumbled, searching for the wall of the craft to balance on. When he found it, his hand slipped, and his face slammed into the ship's hull.
“Jesus!” he exclaimed, “fine!” he blindly took the gun out of the holster and tossed it a few feet away. “No gun,” he said as he rubbed alternating blue-green shapes from his sight.
The bot looked between him and the gun several times before ejecting itself from its track and scuttling over to him.
"Was that you over by the cliffs?" Shane offered his hand, and the bot retreated a few inches. It poked at his finger warily, then walked in a semi-circle, studying him.
"Lost your crew, too, huh?" Shane questioned as it rounded him again. He sat on the ground, and the bot crawled on his knee then poked his stomach with a metallic leg. “See, I’m an alright guy.” Shane smiled down at it.
The bot came closer and poked his chest; it then abruptly rolled into a ball and returned to the corpse. It unfurled again and poked the alien's chest.
“Yeah,” Shane’s voice dropped, “I’m like him.”
The bot climbed into its recessed path again, balled up, and fit itself in. There came a pressurized crack from the corpse's chest plat as it opened down the middle. The bot's head popped from its body to look at Shane expectantly. Shane stood and tried to retrieve the vest as gently as possible, but the marooned alien’s body fell to pieces at the slightest touch.
The chest piece was small, despite Shane's thinner than usual frame. The metal seemed to flex more like fabric and was light to carry. However, it only managed to be a short-cropped vest that wouldn’t close over in the middle. The bot didn't seem to mind the ill fit as it moved over from one shoulder to the other. Shane checked his tech pad for the time until nightfall and found he had just over an hour to get back to the camp. He snatched up his pack, and the gun, then set out quickly the way he had come.
The bot stopped several times on his shoulder to look at Benjamin and then back to Shane with what seemed like a concerned look to it.
“Try not to listen to him,” Shane told the bot. It nervously rolled from Benjamin and occupied Shane's other shoulder.
In the last two hundred yards to Shane’s camp they were forced to travel in Dusk's dark twilight. Several times he stopped at the sound of something sprinting through the darkness of the forest. The bot proved itself useful when what looked like a pangolin with a mouth that peeled open like a banana and reveled rows of serrated fangs rushed them. It flashed the creature with the lights on the vest and sent it blindly sprinting through the brush. It whined and the smell of burned flesh filled the air.
When they made it back to camp, he placed the backpack down, removed Benjamin, and took the vest off. He hit the solar lamp by his cot and watched as the bot rolled around and climbed on things like a pet getting used to new, unfamiliar surroundings.
“I’m hoping you’re not going to kill me while I sleep. Is that fair?” he asked.
He watched the bot maneuver around for about an hour as he wrote in his journal. He sketched the bot and felt his eyelids growing heavy as it too nestled itself into the vest slot and became motionless.
“Make yourself at home.” He smiled. “Humans have a weird thing about them; we like to name things. Helps us categorize information.” He tapped the pen on his lips as he shifted and looked at the orange-red star nursery above. “Not sure why, but you strike me as an Annie,” he chuckled, wrote the name down beneath the drawing, then quickly fell asleep.
Shane awoke to the sound of rustling pages, he turned over to see Annie studying his journals. Her feet turned the pages like a miniature treadmill with no regard for the racket she made. A blue line of laser light emanated from her eye and scanned the writing, then with one of her feet, she rolled the page over and continued scanning.
“Hey.” He sat up. “What are you doing?” Annie backed from the book and slunk away from him as if he was going to kick her. “No, no. Go ahead.” He leaned down and slid the journal to her.
Annie flipped to the page with her sketch on it, and lightly tapped it with her bronze toe.
“You, yeah. You’re Annie.” He pointed from the drawing then back to her.
Annie mimicked the movement with one of her legs pointing from the sketch, then back at herself.
Shane spent his days the next few months with Annie exploring and doing his daily foraging through the forest and crash site. When night came again, the two would sit by his journal and teach her his language. Annie never spoke, didn't so much as beep, but she was able to understand him just a bit better with each passing day. She was even able to write to some degree. It didn't appear hard for her to associate the letters she was scanning with the correlating sound that Shane made to them. Meaning and context were tricky, but she seemed to adapt more quickly to him than he had any hopes of adapting to her.
Annie and Shane traversed more of the mesa than he and Benjamin ever had. She kept him safe with her hot bright flashes of light that seemed to be the bane of all life on Dusk. They had salvaged more and even gotten every cabin pod open. Shane now had a stockpile of rum from the captain’s quarters, new stationary defense lasers from the Marshal’s pod, and years of rations.
As life became better for Shane, Benjamin’s voice began to fade. Eventually, Benjamin stopped speaking for weeks at a time. Instead, only tearing into Shane at his most vulnerable, when he was drunk, or tortured with regret.
Annie helped him map the stars and even pointed them in the direction of her crew’s home planet. However, a question ate at the back of Shane’s mind, and one night where he felt certain Annie would understand, he asked, “how did you get here, Annie?”
Annie looked up at him then scuttled over the dirt floor of the camp drawing something. She drew quickly and efficiently. Shane watched her every movement and when she was done, she backed away from the thing she had drawn.
A large circle was placed on one side of the camp with intersecting lines from it to other circles she placed all around the floor. Next to each circle and each line she put a bit of text that made little sense to him. Shane did recognize what the diagram was though, a celestial map.
The circle where she started her journey was labeled, Triumphant Heart. She traversed one of her emanating lines. One labeled Joyous Wayfarer. She moved on three legs while tracing a path to one of the furthest circles but stopped abruptly. She wrote quickly, then continued in a drastically different direction to the nearest and largest of the circles she had drawn.
Shane read the line of text at the abrupt juncture in her line. Joyous Wayfarer meets Tangled Riot. He followed the line she drew downward into the largest circle which ended in the scribbled words, Seed of Joyous Wayfarer lost to Fervent Hunger.
“Fervent Hunger is where we are?”
Annie confirmed with a checkmark in the dirt.
“Better name than Dusk, I suppose,” he admitted. “Alright, so Triumphant Heart is where you’re from,” Shane confirmed. “Are you Joyous Wayfarer, was that your ship?” he asked.
Annie skittered to the name, pointed at it, then pointed to herself.
“Sweet, so who is Tangled Riot, or what is it?” Shane asked.
Annie moved to the words and pointed at them twice.
“No, I know that’s what it says, I’m asking what it is?”
She looked at her diagram and pointed at the words again, four jabs this time.
“Annie, I know it says that. Okay,” he thought, “is Tangled Riot someone your crew knew? Are they like your crew?”
Annie put a leg down and studied her picture again, then looked at him helplessly.
“Were they the same as your crew? The same kind of people, same species?”
The question perked Annie up. She circled Tangled Riot and drew a dotted line back to Triumphant Heart.
“Same people.” He adjusted his position and peered at the diagram from his cot “Pirates?”
She froze and stared at him blankly. He waved the word off.
“People who steal things?” Shane clarified.
Annie moved over to Tangled Riot and pointed twice and drew the image of the gun on Shane’s hip.
“They killed your crew.”
Shane then followed the line from the junction point of Tangled Riot to the largest circle. “Seed of Joyous Wayfarer.” He read aloud and rubbed a knuckle over his chin. “Tangled Riot destroyed your ship and the seed’s a lifeboat?”
Annie pointed twice as an affirmative.
“You and the two others crashed here, how?” he asked.
Annie maneuvered around the exterior surface of the circle labeled Fervent Hunger. She drew a diagram with numbers that Shane knew all too well. He watched her plot a familiar course entering the atmosphere of this planet. The wrong equation, the same one that sent the Janus plummeting to the surface. She drew a line that looked like straw moving into a water glass- abruptly shifted and bent. She drew an 'X' at the end of her bent line and stepped away.
Benjamin chuckled from his corner.
“Who was piloting the descent, you or the crew?” He ignored Benjamin.
‘Them,’ she wrote.
Shane rubbed his face, fighting off the pain of memory, attempting to lock it away in the back of his thoughts.
“Fervent Hunger, sweet Dusk, the siren of the stars called to more than just you,” Benjamin’s words sliced at him.
Annie wrote something in the dirt just shy of his cot. He looked through his fingers at her question.
‘What way did Shane come to Fervent Hunger?’
Shane reluctantly stood and walked to the diagram she had plotted out. With his finger, he circled the entire equation and sat back down.
Annie studied the circle, then looked back and returned to him. She erased the question at his feet and left a new one in its place. ‘Who was pilot?’
Shane felt the pressure behind his eyes building, the sorrowful tightness in his throat threatened to choke him. He pointed from the circled equation and back to himself, then began cry.
“Me,” he managed.
“You’re a mariner, lost without a sea,” Benjamin began, “wishing the waves had taken you, like they took all the others.”
“Be quiet,” seethed Shane.
“I could have helped,” he responded. Shane’s wrathful eyes flew to Benjamin. But he couldn’t manage any words through his rage and sorrow. “Proud. Arrogant. Foolhardy is the mariner.”
“Shut up, Benjamin,” he whispered.
“I could have saved us, all of us,” Benjamin said.
“You would have done the same thing I did! Same damned math that I, that the Janus, that the god-damned dead aliens calculated.” Shane pointed an accusing finger at Benjamin. “You trusted me for the last leg, you told me that! You said it!” His chest heaved up and down, and adrenaline shot through him.
“My tale did not end with trusting,” Benjamin argued, “it ended with burning.”
“This isn’t you,” Shane sneered at him. “You’re gone, I know that. I know you’re dead!”
“I’m gone because of you. I’m here now, because of you,” he said.
“You don’t think I know that?” Shane spat.
“They are all gone, because of you, arrogant mariner.”
The sobs came hard to Shane. They left his legs feeble and he fell to them. He sunk down into the dirt and clutched his head hard to his body. He wailed into his lap, a frail attempt to contain his anguish. Annie backed away and hid beneath his cot, her blue light dimmed as she curled defensively.
“Six-hundred and eighty-three,” said Benjamin coldly.
“Don’t do this,” begged Shane.
“Six-hundred and eighty-three,” he repeated.
“Please, just stop,” Shane called out.
“Six-hundred and eighty-three.”
“I know!”
“Six-hundred and eighty-three,” Benjamin continued.
Shane got to his feet violently; he threaded the vest on as Annie tumbled from her hiding place and jumped into her track. He grabbed the pistol, and Benjamin by the eye sockets and sprinted out of the camp door without latching it behind him. Before realizing where he was headed, he was running through the forest at a dead sprint. He was unhindered by fear, and anger propelled him ever forward.
“Six-hundred and eighty-three,” boomed Benjamin from somewhere in his head.
He heard the stirring of animals as he flew past them. He no longer cared. Pain and sorrow were the only forces left to him. He broke his way through the foliage, crushing and squishing plants under his boots and crashing through others. At last, he hit the edge of the forest. The great flattops were closing their faces to the dying sun as it set over the far plateau and the cloud ocean below.
“Six-hundred and eighty-three,” stabbed the skull again.
He slammed Benjamin on a nearby rock repeatedly. Shane raised him high above his head and brought Benjamin down on the jagged stone again, and again. He grunted and panted; sweat poured down Shane's forehead. He left Benjamin cracked and damaged. He wheezed between his screams. He challenged everything in existence with his tortured roar. When his lungs burned and his throat was raw, Shane stood and walked on shaky legs to the cliff face.
“Six-hundred and eighty-three.”
He turned wrathfully and pointed the gun at Benjamin. Shane’s eyes were hollow, tears streaked his cheeks as the gun shook violently. He fought to pull the trigger, to kill Benjamin, to silence his incessant tortures and the pain.
“Six-hundred and eighty-three lost, but one, proud mariner still sails, still alive.” Benjamin mocked.
Shane swallowed another painful lump in his throat. He held his breath, trying to steady his arm. Everything within him willed his finger to pull the trigger, to find peace. The barrel dipped to the ground as he lost control again. His diaphragm seized with a debilitating sob.
“The only one awake. The only one to live,” Benjamin chimed.
“This is living?” Shane snarled at Benjamin. His face was red with anger as he argued. “This is a life to you? I live among death, and bones, monsters- I live with you!” he spat. “With your needling, with your hate- with your black teeth and soot staining my hands!” He slammed his knuckles into the side of his head. “I have to live with all this shit, this God-damned guilt!” Shane stopped abruptly, his chest heaving. His voice lowered, “I will never live again; can’t you see that?”
Benjamin did not answer.
“I’m sorry I killed everyone. I just need you to know that I’m sorry, that you were my friend, Ben,” Shane openly wept.
“You were my death, Shane.”
Shane roared at Benjamin, snatched him from the stone and threw him from the cliff. Benjamin sailed, turning over until falling beneath the clouds and disappearing. The world seemed to freeze for Shane as he stared at the golden sunset.
“Ben?” he whispered to the clouds. He looked at the black smudges on his palms. “Ben!?” he called out again. Shane called again and again until his lungs burned, but still, Benjamin did not answer. His panicked breath whirled in his chest and he grew dizzy. He dropped to his knees at the edge of the cliff and covered his ears. He pressed down on his head, hiding from the pain. He shouted and wailed, to drowned out the absence Benjamin had left behind. He howled until his body hurt, until he was at last empty.
Annie maneuvered cautiously off the vest and into the sand next to him. She walked to the edge of the cliff and nudged a small pebble down its face. She looked up at Shane, her lensed eye focusing on him.
“Annie?” he asked quietly.
Her light blinked at him.
"What was your crew member's name, the one I found in the shadows?" he asked.
‘Wistful Current,’ she wrote.
“Why’d they kill themselves?”
Annie erased the name with two of her legs. Then looked at up at him but wrote nothing.
“Do you not know? Is that something you don’t understand?”
‘Wistful Current stated often: Alone, always alone,’ she responded.
“Alone,” Shane read aloud. “And the other’s name?”
‘Exuberant Path,’ she wrote.
“What were they to each other?” he asked.
‘Friends,’ confirmed Annie.
Shane nodded, swallowed hard, and let the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding out. He looked down from the warm sunset, from the vibrant birthplace of stars above, from the golden arcs of clouds beneath his feet, and down into his hand where the gun sat heavily in his palm.
Annie moved her legs quickly and wrote something new. Shane gripped the pistol, his finger finding the courage it hadn’t had for Benjamin. She nudged his leg aggressively until he looked over at her.
‘Shane is not alone.’
“Ben didn’t count,” he laughed humorlessly. He let his voice trail off, “Death’s our host, Annie, here on this island of misery. For some, he opens the door unexpectedly.” He brought the gun to his head, assured of this decision. “But some must knock.”
Annie jabbed at his leg with renewed vigor once again. He glanced down to find her waiting with a new sentence.
‘Not Benjamin.
Annie.’
He felt his hand falter, momentarily. His finger doubted what his brain screamed from within. “What if we’re never found?” he asked, his voice hollow and hopeless.
Annie erased all but her name, then added to it.
‘Annie and Shane. Friends.’
Shane’s grip on the pistol weakened as he looked down at her. She erased the words, her four legs whirling as fast as they could. She wrote the message and looked up at him with a pleading blue eye.
‘Annie and Shane.
Friends.
Not alone.
Never alone.
Please stay, Shane.’
Wow! This one is so gripping. I agree with Emmy. This would make an excellent film. Such a great read. Incredible.
Intriguing start! Can’t wait for the next chapter.