Summary: AU (Alternate Universe), Chuck and Katie are both astronauts sent to Planet 51 to document the apparently uninhabited exoplanet, neither expect that there is already any complex life forms already living there, things are made yet more complicated when the two get separated. Katie finds herself having to play along with the charade of being a hostile alien invader in order to convince (or rather trick) the unfortunate General Grawl to stop him from turning her over to the government who want to take her apart.
Chapter 1 - Crash landing
Deep in the far reaches of space something moved.
Everything was black there...for the moment.
Presently a red light on the ceiling began to blink rapidly. There was movement again, as something stirred in the darkness The red flickering light illuminated the sleeping form of Charles 'Chuck' Baker as he made clumsy move to wipe at his nose in his sleep, in the process of which though he slowly began to slide out of his sleeping pod, before artificial gravity took over and he fell out onto the floor; strangely enough though the astronaut did not appear to feel this and carried on sleeping, snoring loudly, mouth hanging open.
The room was small, it was made so the ship had more room for stuff deemed important. The 'Mothership', as it was known, was large but it had to house a huge engine and several hundred fuels tanks, making the habitable space on board available, minimal.
Outside of this 'dormant' room on the, one and only, floor below, several dozen meters away, closer to the alpha computer control room, a timer went off, initiating a whole sequence of responses. The main one being that the lights throughout the ship turned on, though were ignored by everyone.
Two bright blue electronic lights switched on, metal constraints hissed and clicked as they folded away and released their grip on the droid that had until then been working simultaneously with the computer system, collecting and filing all the data through its artificial brain.
Metal claw-like feet clinked onto the ground as it straightened itself, for a moment it paused, proto-field reconnecting with that of the command computer console to reassure itself of the data. They were approaching the coordinates of their designated destination, the ship would be entering orbit soon.
The droid tapped into the system's security cameras, and felt what could only be described as annoyance as it noted that both humans were asleep. droids were not often built to feel emotions and certainly were not built to have personalities, but they tended to develop them after many years of being in use.
This was droid L-4 aka. ELF, designated and designed for computer control, navigation and, in rare cases, the protection of its assigned humans. It linked automatically back into the computer's mainframe and checked on all fuel, damage and oil levels, along with everything else that could be important to travel and survival of the astronauts, and then, out of personal decision, it activated the emergency waking system.
The alarm was nothing more than three loud beeps which could be heard throughout the ship, but they would have awoken the dead. In the dormitory, both humans shot up in their sleeping pods simultaneously. The human, who wasn't Chuck, looked around frantically in alarm.
"Where's the fire?! Where's the fire?! Where's the-…oh." she realised the noise wasn't a fire alarm.
Charles 'Chuck' Baker shot up as well, but with a grin on his face, ready to face the day, or possibly night - it was so hard to tell in space - straight away. The same could not be said for the other, who after grumbling deludedly for several moments, collapsed backwards into her pod again and went back to sleep.
Chuck slipped on his blue jumpsuit over his underwear and bounded out into the hall, still grinning. The door automatically hissed shut behind him. Today, or tonight - he still wasn't sure - was to be the biggest break in his career. He was young, famous and handsome - he paused to admire his reflection on the shiny metal surface of the door - yes, very handsome, he thought to himself.
Once he was certain that he had nothing between his teeth, Chuck headed towards the main command room, thumping on the door once before he left.
'Katie, get up.' he shouted, he didn't wait for a response though, he knew his sister was not a morning person - even if it wasn't really morning, the time thing really was a tricky when you were traveling in space - and the last thing he wanted to do now was have anything ruin the start to a fabulous day. He carried on his journey, but half way there stopped, having caught his reflection again in another piece of gleaming metal - was his hair unkempt? Did chicks like it when it was unkempt or did they prefer it neat and tidy? What would look better for the photoshoot?
While Chuck was pondering this deeply philosophical question, the droid ELF had made its way up from the ground floor so as to join the captain in the command room, only of course the captain wasn't there yet but admiring his reflection.
Chuck had just come to the conclusion that he would look good in photograph no matter how his hair was styled when he became aware that he was not alone.
Chuck was immediately confronted with the sight of the blank stare of ELF.
"Good morning, captain." the droid stated through hidden speakers within its chest cavity. ELF was a humanoid droid but only to a certain extent, "he" was not organic in any sense, his appearance was all shiny silver metal, a straight slate grey face without any distinguishing features such as a mouth or nose, just with two cold blue optics - they were not really eyes but lights.
"Good morning, Elfy-boy!" said Chuck playfully thumping the droid on one metal shoulder. "Status report?"
ELF paused in answering, gears and diodes firing quickly within its artificial brain, confused over the action. It hadn't been the first time Chuck had thumped him on the back, and he still wasn't sure what the gesture meant. At first he had interpreted it as violence, then as a greeting, as well as friendly gesture or perhaps a sign of dominance. Either way on the one occasion that ELF had attempted to use it on someone things had had not turned out well - they had taken him to the maintanance bay and kept him there for over a week to find out his programming was malfunctioning.
"Approaching destination. Current coordinates show that the ship will be entering orbit within less than 30 minutes. It is advised at this current time to ready yourself for departure."
"Okay, I think I caught half of that." Chuck had been distracted by his own reflection again, visible on ELF's highly polished metal face. "So basically I need to go get ready...Now?"
"Two hours have been provided, but may be extended if necessary. We will be entering orbit shortly. Where is Miss Katie? If she intends to travel with you to the planet surface then she must also be prepared."
Chuck looked back towards the dormitories, as he expected there was still no sign of Katie emerging from the room any time soon.
"Katie's snoozing like a log, you won't be getting her up easily." he replied shaking his head.
The droid was silent and still for a moment, as if contemplating an answer. But it was clear it had already made a decision when Chuck realized his feet were no longer touching the ground. The droid had activated the anti-gravity within the ship. Chuck grabbed onto a nearby rail and pulled himself back down to the ground, strangely enough ELF seemed unaffected by the gravity change.
There was silence for a moment, then the gravity was reactivated again causing anything that had slowly been floating upwards to go crashing back down to the ground, there was a crash from within the dormitory, followed by a string of curses.
"Well I guess she hit the roof. Haw, haw, haw." said ELF. Amongst many of the things he had tried to copy off of humans, humor had to be the one he had failed most sadly at. Chuck managed a fake laugh just to make the droid not feel bad, a depressed droid was not something anyone wanted.
Several moments later, Katie stormed through the room, her hair up in a messy ponytail in attempt to look somewhat presentable. She glared briefly at ELF, then disappeared in the general direction of the kitchen.
"Katie is up." Chuck grinned at ELF who was now busy with the console screen, communicating the the ship's computer system. "Hey Katie, could you grab me some of those Twix bars?"
"Eat your breakfast, then get some yourself." came the grouchy reply.
"Hey, sis, please. This is a big day for me." he shouted back, doing his best to sound sad, but it sounded more as if he had a stomach ache - Chuck was not the best of actors.
There was a groan, then some angry muttering.
"Fine, where are you keeping them? They're not with the other rations."
"Um, the furthest storage room, right at the end of the hall." he replied.
"That's not a storage room, that's an-"
Chuck didn't catch the last words his sister said as he had just remembered his hair gel, he had forgotten it under his bed back on Earth! He reeled from this shock for a moment before remembering that he had decided to go for the messy look already. 'Makes me look more adventurous, heroic.' he thought to himself.
He was actually feeling quite giddy with excitement, he was going to be the first ever human to set foot on this planet, but this was not really in his thoughts, he was thinking more of the photos to be taken, and the magazine, newspaper fronts, the press conferences, the talk show! Everyone would love him, the heroic astronaut, come back from outer space where no man had ever gone before. The only bad thing that was nagging him a little today was the fact that he didn't smell as good all that good (since ELF, in an attempt to fix a leaky tap shortly after their departure from Earth, had downed the whole showering system), but even that wasn't bothering him now.
Chuck, finding that he had nothing immediately to do other than wait for Katie to return, flopped down in a swivel chair beside ELF who was still busily tapping away at the console screen. It was all just a swirl of green to Chuck, weird seemingly alien symbols popping up in a continuous stream, ELF selecting and choosing each of one at a split second's notice. Chuck thought it was strange that anyone could ever even understand these symbols but there were, Katie was one of them, though even she could not rival the speed the droid was going at.. Chuck began to go through his planend speech in his head, he considered briefly bouncing it off of ELF but decided against that quickly - and ELF was not the best at conversation, only being able stare back blankly at him, occasionally correcting him midsentence when he used slang instead of official words.
ELF finally stopped and turned to face him, though he didn't need to, ELF only had optic eyes for the humans' comfort, he was perfectly capable of seeing the world around him without them by means of an electric field.
"The drop-ship is ready for embarking. Oxygen levels are filled to their maximum, as are fuel tanks. There appear to be no faults in the system mainframe that would suggest any trouble with the drop-ship, it is in perfect working order."
Chuck was eyeing the green screen, though the symbols were no longer flashing up since no one was changing them, there was still a stream of codes going along underneath, monitoring the ship's behaviour continuously.
"So I can board now?" But Chuck's eyes were on the four neon awaiting command from droid.
"Affirmative. As soon as the energy transfer pump levels are at full capacity and the door has been opened."
Chuck leant forward, he was feeling very confident right now, like he could do anything, so he didn't hesitate when he badly mistook one of the signs on the screen and pressed it - thinking that it represented the internal heating of the ship, in his jumpsuit he felt half-boiled and wanted air conditioning.
"You do not have the authorization to access the scroll panel." ELF stated. The droid was not built to show emotions, so he didn't react in any readable way.
"Yeah, but what no ones knows won't hurt anyone will it?" said Chuck eagerly, choosing a second icon as four new ones popped up to replace the old. Several clicks later the whole ship suddenly shuddered, but apart from that nothing else seemed to happen, and Chuck didn't feel any cooler.
"You just released escape pod number 4."
Chuck's smile faded for a moment, but then he grinned in a self-assured way and patted ELF on the shoulder.
"Number 4? That means there are at least three others right?"
"Affirmative."
"Well then, lets forget this ever happened."
"Not possible. My memory unit is incapable of erasing infor-"
"Okay, okay, just don't mention it to anyone."
"Affirmative."
"Can you turn down the heating though, I feel like a boiled cabbage. And where is Katie with those Twix?"
ELF paused a moment, his geers whirring as he tracked down the missing passenger.
"In space." he replied shortly.
"Yeah, we all are."
"She was in the escape pod you just released."
"Ah." Chuck looked a little surprised but otherwise didn't seem very affected.
"I'll just have to pick her up once I get down there. Flag first though, she knows how to use an astro suit. I'll maintain contact with you once I'm on the ground, you can guide me towards he location once I'm on the planet's surface, right?"
"Correct. All the astronaut gear is infused with a tracking device chip."
Chuck then chuckled nervously as his brain finally found time to catch up with the implications of his accident. "She's not going to be happy when she realises what happened, all her electronics are still up here, and her book for her field notes, and her camera..."
Katie was younger than Chuck by three years, and was not trained foremost as an astronaut but a biologist, but she had had the luck to get the chance to do her final year disseration project on extraterrestrial life on exoplanets - sure this planet was apparently lifeless (a ball of rock with more rocks on it), but there might be microscopic life hidden away somewhere, and it would make a fancy title if nothing, it certainly sounded exciting. She already suspected though her paper was going to have to be on why life hadn't evolved there though.
It had still been hard to get on the mission, even with her back up of her tutors from university, but Chuck had managed to pull some strings. Chuck had pointed out to her that ELF's company for six weeks (the time it took to get there and back) was going to be boring and could possibly negatively affect him mentally, or so he argued. And as it turned out, with the fully automated computer system inbuilt within the ship, as well as ELF who was programmed especially to pilot the ship should there be a system failure, Katie came to realise that Chuck didn't really know that much more about piloting spaceships than she did.
Katie had paid little attention to the door behind her when it hissed shut, she assumed that as per safety protocol, all the doors shut automatically after being left alone for too long. It was only when the escape pod shook violently upon grazing past an asteroid, one of the many circling the planet, that she realised something was wrong. At first she had thought it was ELF doing his stupid gravity trick again, but then the room shook again.
She stood up quickly and headed towards the door, she found to her annoyance that the door had been sealed shut, this was not good.
"Passenger Katie." came the metallic voice of ELF from the com-link in the escape pod.
"Katie here, ELF, could you access the security panel for, please? I appear to have been locked into one of the safety pods, number four." the place shook again and Katie almost lost her footing. "And stop messing with the gravity field, its crazy down here!"
"Err, Katie?" it was Chuck speaking now, he sounded a little uneasy.
"Chuck?" Now what was he up to?
"Your escape pod was kinda released and right now you're hurtling at break neck speed towards Planet 51's surface." Chuck said very quickly, not giving her a chance to say anything back.
"…What?"
"Elfy here advises you stay within the pod until we can retrieve you. He's says there is oxygen on the planet but isn't sure how much, he's working on an analysis of the atmospheric composition now." there was static for a few seconds, which Katie was quite sure Chuck was producing himself, since it only appeared to happen when he wasn't speaking. "The com signals seemed to be breaking up, your oxygen tank should last you twelve hours or so anyway. I'll see you soon, little sis!"
"Chuck!"
The ship began to shudder rather violently as she entered the atmosphere. Katie quickly found the safety harnesses and strapped herself in after having already thrown the astro gear over the top of her smartsuit in case the oxygen supply failed, she had been on plenty of simulated flight landings before but this was an escape pod, they were not designed for soft landings, they were designed for CRASH landings!
But when she did land there wasn't a crash, but a very loud thud and a long high pitched squealing of metal scraping against metal. The ship was still for a moment and Katie was just considering on how to unclip the strap system without pulling her hair when there was another violent shudder and the pod fell over onto one side.
Now she was upside down, hanging by the straps keeping her from flying everywhere in the anti-gravity field, but there was gravity now, ordinary gravity. Katie searched desperately for the release buckle but couldn't find it anywhere, the escape hatch to the pod had sprung open automatically as soon as the pod had stopped moving, and now there was thick smoke billowing in through the door, making her choke. And Katie, despite having the presence of mind to previously done her white astrosuit, only now realised she had forgotten to don her mask - which now lay somewhere in the jumple of twix bars and cardboard boxes that Chuck had illsuitedly decided to store in the escape pod.
Desperately she wriggled to get free, but she could not unbuckle herself from the wall-now-ceiling. The was only one last resort, she knew she would have to get out of the astrosuit.
She unzipped the front of her suit, and without a mask or anything to stop her, gravity took over and she fell towards the wall-now-floor with a shriek. For a moment she lay groaning in self-pity, then she rolled over and got up, desperately seeking around with her hands for the fire extinguisher. Unable to find it in the darkness, she gave up and climbed out of the open to eye the damage from a distance not oscurred with smoke. She leapt out into the pleasantly cool air, backing up about 20 feet or so before looking over the escape pod, climbing up to the edge of the small crater that have formed around the pod. Escape pods weren't suppose to catch fire...she realised then that there were traces of metal of some other structure just below the pod.
'My car! You totalled my car!'
Katie spun around to see a little green man with antenna running towards the crashsite, a large camera bouncing on his chest - though this was not Earth Katie was immediately reminded of a sightseer. And immediately she knew she was suffering hypoxia, too little oxygen in her body, there was not supposed to be any life on planet X, let alone little green men.
'The wife is not going to happy!' continued on the little alien waving his hands around frantically, completely ignoring Katie. 'I suppose we're going to have to exchange car insuran-' it was only now that he turned to look at her. Wide eyes glanced between the crashsite and Katie frantically, then without warning the strange little alien screamed and fled back the way he had came, hands high in the air.
'Alien! Alien!' she could hear him shrieking, but it didn't concern her too much. What she was more worried about was her own state of mind, the urge to climb back in the escape pod and search out her suit was overpowering, but so was the urge to flee from the smoke. Not a moment later a flame roared to life and there was an explosion that seared out as a hot blast, the white light nearly blinding her. Katie stumbled further back, and then put another 20 or so feet between herself and the escape pod, knowing that the fire had just spread to the oxygen tanks, what with how high the flames were now licking at the metal of the escape pod.
Slowly she looked around at her surroundings, to one side all she could see was stony desert, as she had expected, but as she turned around to look in the other direction she realised she had crashed at the edge of a valley, and nestled there was a town. A town! Katie shook her head more than once in an attempt to clear away the illusion, but it stayed as strong as ever. There was grass, trees, and in the far distance of the town she could see movement. What on earth...?
'There! Look!' the little alien with the camera was back, standing in a car with several others. A car that hovered! Katie glanced once more back at the smoking wreck of the escape pod, knowing that none of the electronics on board would have survived, and then going against every instinct broke off into a run, heading towards a small copse of trees.
Within Base 9 things were haywire, almost everyone was panicking, an incidents of unknown region had disrupted their normal generally uninteresting day. Their radar had picked up a relatively large object hurtling through the sky. It could have been a meteor but it wasn't travelling fast enough. Scientists had little time to ponder this before the object crashed just outside the town Glipforg.
Amongst others, and with a large portion of the army under his control, General Grawl had been one of the first officials on scene.
Everyone was too scared to even go near the ship, a lot of them had seen the 'Humaniac' films, they all pictured giant laser eyed monsters of great stature to come bursting through the space craft's door at any moment to destroy them all, though that didn't stop them forming a crowd near it.
It was lucky for them all that the General was there that day, otherwise it was quite possible that the ship was have gone untouched for several weeks, merely observed by nervous onlookers and thrill seeking sightseers.
A small man named Plampus Jaferg had been the sole witness to crash, and as such was very shaky though excited to be the focus of so much attention, reporters, citizens and the army alike all barraging him with a range of questions, cameras clicking away.
The pandemonium irritated General Grawl, quickly he ordered his men to rope off the area surrounding the crash site. This did little for the noise level though, even at a distance the crowd still clamoured, shoving each other aside to get a better look at the spaceship.'I was bird-watching on my day off.' said Plampus when the General finally got to speak to him, Grawl got the distinct feeling that Plampus had told this story several times now but hadn't lost any of his interest in it. 'Next thing I know is that there is this huge explosion of sound and light, I look back over my shoulder, and my car is gone! And then this huge blue alien comes roaring out, it must have been 10 feet, no 30 feet tall! And it had pitch black eyes with no whites, and fangs the size of dinner plates!'Plampus sounded almost a little to enthusiastic, but the General understood he had just been through a big ordeal. Afterall, he was witness to the first signs of the incoming alien invasion, the first invaders had arrived.
'General, sir!' shouted one of his men emerging from the crashed spaceship. 'General, I think you may want to come and have a look at this!'
Grawl left Plampus and headed towards the white and black husk of the spaceship, it had been on fire when they had arrived but they had since managed to put it out. Initial inspection had proven that it was empty, but no one had wanted to have thorough look due to the thick smoke. It was clear now though.
Grawl considered himself a brave individual, that was why he had first enlisted in the army, it was why he had been able to work his way up the chain of command to the rank of general through the years - but that didn't stop the chill creeping up his spin as he clambered up over the wreckage and ropped down into the spaceship. He was not so brave as to be suicidal, and when he followed after his men into the ship, it was with a gun loaded and ready in his hands.
The ship inside wasn't very big, in fact the Grawl found that he had a hard time actually moving around with three other soldiers already there. There was no room for the alien pilot to hide, though this was to be expected - according to Plampus the monster had fled after its ship had caught fire.
'What is it, soldier?'
'General, sir?' one soldier said, trying to get his attention, and pointed upwards, towards the ceiling with his torch.
And there, in the torch light, standing out against the charred black of the ship, was a white shape. It not unlike that of the body, with arms and legs but no head, tied to the ceiling of the ship. But though it was gently swaying under the affect of gravity he could instantly tell it wasn't alive or had ever been. Cautiously he reached up, being the only one tall enough to reach, and pressed the end of his gun against the white material. It moved without resistance, like cloth.
'By the rings, it has shed it skin.' he remarked, looking over the white shape with his torch. If this thing had molted, then it was only going to get bigger.
The General climbed back out of the ship, and addressed his waiting troops.
'Attention soldiers and citizens of Glipforg, the alien is still within the area, it cannot have gone far.' he informed them. 'It has just molted into a new form. It is large, and unmistakable in appearance. If you see it, do not approach it but contact us or your nearest security official. I can promise you that we, the army, will do everything possible to track the alien monster down. Your safety is our priority.'
Author's Note: Okay, to be honest, this chapter was just to test the waters and I'm not certain I will be continuing it anytime soon. I actually wrote most of this about 4 years ago, and after having watched Planet 51 the other day I remembered I had written it, so I thought I might as well post it. I would like to continue it, but at the moment I'm focusing on other things, updates may be sporadic.
The title is reference to a 1950's horror film, which was remade in the 80's and you may know simply as 'The Thing'.