Shaw hadn't the foggiest why it hadn't occurred to her to explore the upper deck of the lifeboat. She'd seen the narrow staircase leading to the cockpit a handful of times, passing by enroute to other places within the vessel, but had clearly been so preoccupied with God-knows-what that it hadn't dawned on her to meander up and have a poke around.
It was a far cry from the overbearingly posh microcosm downstairs, completely lacking the grotesque display of ornate wealth in almost every manner; looking every part another mere section of the Prometheus aside from a slight reduction in scale, its tight hallway exuded a far more familiar utilitarian atmosphere.
That lack of scale had proven troublesome for Za'il, who had struggled to fit up the stairwell that was both too short to contain his height and damn-near too narrow for his broad shoulders, then smacked the back of his skull on a thick rafter lining the corridor immediately after the last step. She'd come to recognise the string of profanity that he'd hissed as he clutched his head and found herself thankful she didn't have the translations; her good girl psyche preferred to think of him swearing like a sailor and leaving it at that, her imagination hardly interested in decoding words that would likely leave her blushing.
The cockpit proved to be cut from the same cloth, being a somewhat snug fit for anyone much larger than her – let alone someone of Engineer proportions. Unlike the bridge of the Prometheus, however, it took a far more traditional form, with the pilot taking a seat on the left-hand side of the cramped space, and a matching co-pilot post on the right. A cursory glance of the console revealed what was largely a mirror of the rather complex plethora of digital dials, numbers and illustrations. It was certainly more aircraft than ship to her passenger's gaze.
Having wrestled with the faux-leather seat's controls until it was as preposterously far back as it would go and sitting at its lowest position, the Engineer had set about cramming himself into the claustrophobic space as she slid into the right-hand seat. Sitting came as a welcome relief from the rushing about prior; as per their hurried, haphazardly-assembled plan, they had set about quickly securing as many loose items as they could throughout the vessel, checking every entry-point, and, upon his insistence, completing a remarkably thorough preflight that had brought a few surprises to the table. After checking beneath the vessel for anything malicious hiding in the shadows, he had climbed into the narrow crawl-space between the lifeboat's belly and the rocks it was perched on. That had not been kind on her nerves. All she could foresee happening was the ship shifting and collapsing, crushing him – especially as he began prying and twisting at the misshapen metal around two of the damaged engines.
Thankfully nothing untoward had eventuated, but it had left her heart hammering in her chest to a far greater degree than she liked. She had damn-near leapt out of her skin as he'd paused to spit out a mouthful of dust and dirt that had apparently fallen from the engine he was intent on reshaping and landed on his face in significant volumes, and was left suppressing a shriek of dismay as the ship had, in fact, shifted against the rocks by a mere inch as he pried, but for all her catastrophising, he had emerged grubby but unscathed.
What had seemed to her at the time as ad-hoc panelbeating had apparently been far more of an educated manoeuvre than she'd given credit; conducting another scan and throwing the results onto the holo had cleared much of the red from the underbelly of the ship. The two damaged thrusters had faded to yellow, listing warnings and alerts instead of outright errors. Given she could read those errors and still didn't know what to make of them, she'd been left gobsmacked and somewhat ashamed of the fact that he'd interpreted what needed to be done simply by looking at the holo and comparing it to what he saw in the flesh.
It was reality that language barriers often left one considering the other in a different way to what might have been without it, she had mused with embarrassment; it was all too easy to consider the opposing side as less cultured, less intelligent, or simply lost and helpless. In fact she had fallen prey to that mode of thinking herself, without even realising it, over the past few days – this in spite of her initial worshipful view of both his species and him in particular, ascribing damn-near supernatural powers and omniscient intelligence to them. The Engineer's methodical, reasoned, patient circling and checking of the ship had made flaws in both methods of thinking painfully obvious to her within minutes, particularly as he set about correcting the problems he had the power to fix through careful observation and stone-cold reason. Just where that left him in comparison to herself was even more baffling; despite the language barrier he was not stupid, despite the lack of supernatural powers he was still knowledgeable, and despite being a mere mortal just like her, he outpaced her and outgunned her with her own peoples' technology.
Even without being able to read a single thing on the tablet he'd brought with them for the preflight, he'd made himself far more useful than she had.
Now he was about to continue the trend, eyeing the fallen hulk across the valley from the curved, angular cockpit glass as he fidgeted with the seat, experimenting with a variety of positions that left him in different flavours of cramped. She hadn't the first clue as to how to fly the ship, particularly in its current, wounded condition. All she could do was sit in her seat, pray that he knew what he was doing, and hold on.
The Engineer cast her a brief glance as he reached down into the bag she'd brought upstairs with one hand, the other idly gripping the bruise on the back of his head where it'd met the ceiling minutes earlier; plucking the pad of paper and one of several pens free, he set about writing a note as she fished the tablet from the clutter that had made its way in there.
You'll need to help me translate the controls.
She had assumed as much. Perhaps she wouldn't be completely useless.
Those controls, she quickly noticed, were a plethora of colourful, illuminated digital readouts sprawled across the glossy black surface of the dashboard, stretching the length of the cockpit and forming a vaguely concave, scooped shape as it followed the natural arc of an arm's rotation about the shoulder. Hoping they weren't easily movable from their current locations, she set about cobbling together what little sense she could make of them in the ancient language at her disposal. Hopefully he's clever enough to read between the lines. He's got to be.
Methodology quickly fell into place, with Shaw identifying each control by name, putting it to words in Sumerian, handing the pad to Za'il, and watching as he squinted at the otherworldly, awkward descriptions on offer before penning a more sane definition in his own language, tearing the native words from the page, and placing them over the display in question. She found herself silently grateful for her brief but frantic bout of hoarding earlier as she found a roll of cellulose tape amongst the clutter in the bag, demonstrating her brush with genius to the Engineer as she tore off a section with her teeth and stuck one of his translations to the console above its respective control.
The delighted gasp that had escaped him as he realised what the tape was for warmed her from head to toe, and she wasn't quite convinced it was exclusively due to the burgeoning pride deep in her chest. He'd announced something brief but enthusiastic in his own language, flashing her a grin before plucking the tape from the console and hurriedly setting about sticking the other translations to their controls. She couldn't help but laugh as he rushed straight into his first experience with getting a little too much of the tape in his mouth when trying to cut a piece off. Even in watching someone else doing it, she could taste the blasted stuff. If anything, it was a Human rite of passage, complete with trying to wipe the evidence off against the back of a hand.
Whoever finds this lifeboat in the future is going to have a field day, she realised with a grin as the console quickly evolved into a patchwork of neatly torn paper, littered with words from nowhere even remotely near the technology's planet of origin. People just like her, she realised, would likely stumble upon it and be left utterly stumped as to how this very situation must have arisen. The burns in the floor by the ruined infirmary would raise further questions, and the scrawls scattered throughout the main room would probably answer at least a handful of them – and likely raising far more.
Finally, as she handed him the translation for the last remaining unmarked dial, Za'il blew a heavy sigh, then murmured something in his own language. It didn't take a lot of imagination to fill the gaps, particularly as his long, translucent fingers began poking and sliding at the freshly-labelled controls. Section by section the central display, a top-down wireframe of the lifeboat itself, lit up green as systems came online, powered up, and prepared themselves for flight. Try as she might, she struggled to follow the procedure; she hoped he wasn't just guessing, as she would have.
Atmospheric thrusters began to register on the diagram, slowly fading to green with a few educated prods at their respective controls. Four along the base of the ship glowed brightly as their port- and starboard-mounted nacelle familiars pulsated to life one after another; only three eventually took on any colour. The rear-most port nacelle eventually blipped out of existence.
Chasing respective alerts across the console as a deep, audible hum flooded the cockpit, the Engineer remained the picture of calm composure despite fingers staggering from control to hesitant control, dark eyes darting rapidly across the illuminated expanse. Perhaps it was all theory, she realised. Getting a ship into orbit couldn't be too different between cultures, given there were surely only so many configurations that would make faster-than-light travel possible, and possessing such technological prowess in the first place must rule out many of the unknowns.
One of the hull-mounted thrusters on the display faded to orange. A soft beep followed it.
That measured calm faltered as Za'il pointed at the errors that had appeared alongside the damaged engine. Though she didn't understand any of the words he said, it was clear as day what he was asking. Grabbing the tablet and balancing the pad against one thigh, she hurriedly sought a translation that would do the errors justice.
Fuel line C inoperable.
Heat shield damaged.
Power limited to 30%.
He scowled, chewing on his lower lip as his gaze darted between the translation, the ship's wireframe display, and the thruster controls. After a few clumsy attempts to access functionality that clearly wasn't there, he plucked the pen from the console with a deepening scowl and penned a message.
Translating brought extra challenges with the current context, given the Sumerian culture's distinct lack of starships, and the fact that neither of them had thought to tape all three languages on the controls. However, between educated contextual guesswork and mad shuffling between the notes they'd taken prior to tearing pages to ribbons, she managed.
We need to balance the thrusters, two are damaged. Please help me find the individual thruster controls.
"Uh," she began nervously, eyes flitting from dial to dial. "Individual thrusters." Drawing a breath, she touched the console displaying the directional controls and thrust, quickly thumbing through the menu alongside it. Met with a plethora of numbers and apparent settings that meant nothing to her, she recoiled as if burnt, mouthing another um. "That's not it."
Where are the bloody things, she fumed frantically as she tapped at the next gauge down. This is why people spend years training for this crap. I'm an Archaeologist, not a pilot!
After several more false starts, a button alongside the main atmospheric thruster control triggered an empty space to life; there, clear as day, was a wireframe illustration of exactly what they were looking for. Barely letting her remove her hand before he had his own upon it, Za'il murmured something that sounded as though it was in the affirmative, and swiftly unlocked the display's secrets. A gentle swipe brought up a coloured bar alongside all four lower engines and the three functioning nacelles; glowing an angry red and a standing third of the height of the others, the damaged hull-mounted engine's readout stood out immediately. A large, pale index finger pressed against its twin to the right, sliding the bar downward.
With further pointed fiddling between the seven displayed engines, Elizabeth finally saw what he was doing: the maximum and relative thrust outputs of each functioning engine were being balanced in relation to each other, evenly distributing power across the board as closely as he could.
He quietly murmured something else as his fingers moved on, sliding from one display to the next; he appeared to be checking off items from a mental list, finding each corresponding control after a moment of hunting. From what little she knew of flying anything, she could only presume he had mapped hard-wired theory to alien context. He seemed confident enough. Perhaps it was pantomime for her sake.
Don't think about that!
A little louder, undeniably affirmative, he announced something to her – then remembered the language barrier as he trailed off, instead snatching the pen off the console and scribbling in a spare space on the pad.
Are you ready?
She nodded, shifting in her seat, gripping the bolster with both hands as firmly as she was pinching her bottom lip between her teeth.
With a few more well-guessed button presses, the vessel roared to life; jets of dust heaved upward and swirled around the hull, quickly spreading out into the vast landscape and tainting the view from the cockpit windows with dirty, powdery silica. Every inch of the ship shuddered as the whine from the engines quickly raised in pitch and increased in volume, beginning their inevitable fight with gravity. Shaw's eyes damn-near rolled from her skull as they darted between the console, the seething mass of dust outside, and the Engineer's translucent features, as stony as she'd ever seen them.
She had been so certain the vessel would never fly again. With an enormous rush of air that clawed at her eardrums, it did exactly that; lurching from its perch on the rocky terrain, it heaved her against her seat for several terrifying moments before hanging several metres above the ground as huge white fingers fought to keep it from listing to the port side.
It was actually flying.
The dust began to dissipate as they gained altitude, clearing enough that the landscape beyond slowly became visible once more. Hovering no more than twenty metres above the battered rocks it had sat upon for days, the lifeboat appeared to oscillate between listing to the port side briefly, then rotating about its axis as the Engineer fought to correct the movement.
A scowl had formed across his previously calm features. Realistically, it has no business being airborne with so few engines, she realised. This is going to be a bumpy ride.
After a few failed attempts to get the ship moving, he finally found the controls he was after; the tell-tale mechanical whirr of the forward nacelles rotating in their housings heralded a change in movement as they lurched forward. Nose dipped, the vessel slowly, awkwardly swung about and began its wobbly, unsure sojourn toward the immense horseshoe dominating the valley.
Her stomach churned as the constant battle against the failed, malfunctioning engines left the ship's movement in a constant state of flux. The second half of their plan may need revision, she realised; it would be a long, precarious journey with the lifeboat in this state. Perhaps it would be safer to walk – even if it took all day.
The shrill cry of an alarm left both snapping their attention toward the centre of the console. "Great," Shaw mouthed as she immediately spotted its source; the damaged thruster on the vessel's belly blinked red, spewing a singular, unambiguous warning.
"It's overheating," she all but shouted, scrambling for the tablet and pad that had both shifted in the launch. "How do you say 'overheating' in Sumerian, damnit!"
Before she had a chance to translate, he had already begun shutting the engine down and compensating for its loss; it had faded from red to a blackened husk on the display by the time she'd managed to pen the word 'hot'. He'd offered a grim nod before returning to manhandling the swaying vessel.
Dust swirled about them as the lifeboat lost altitude. With the crashed Engineer ship almost upon them, Shaw's gaze once again darted between the landscape outside and the rather busy pilot; she noted the position of his right hand on the console, lingering over thruster control after dragging gently downward on the output panel. An intentional loss of altitude, then. No less anxiety-inducing, she mused. I'd be panicking far less if I could talk to him!
Or would she? A constant barrage of questions probably wouldn't go down well.
At last, at long last, the ailing vessel came upon the shadow of the mighty fallen starship, slipping into the darkness in a plume of dust and debris as the Engineer slowly, painfully eased it toward the clearest patch he could find. Rotating on its axis, the lifeboat lurched to port, then starboard, as he compensated; a tell-tale crash of glass from downstairs echoed up the stairs. Sunlight flooded the cockpit once more as the ship finally yielded, turning about with some semblance of control, sinking toward the rocky terrain below.
A heavy thud resounded through the ship as Shaw was jolted off her seat; a second threw her back into it. Gripping the bolsters as though they were a life raft, she resisted the bucking motion that threatened to throw her clear of the seat entirely. Try as she might, she couldn't tune out the deep, metallic groaning and clanking from below; with so few engines available to control the vessel's course, setting it back down had proven to be just as precarious, with the ship briefly bouncing against its landing gear. But it had done it, hadn't it?
The whine of the engines died down as they throttled back, and the litany of warnings cluttering the centre console gradually faded. For the first time in several minutes – but what felt like hours – she could hear herself breathe again as a stillness pervaded the cockpit.
Somehow, the ruined ship had flown. She could still scarcely believe it.
She let slip a soft laugh as, oblivious, the Engineer busied himself shutting down systems in a haphazard flurry of hands. Against all odds, something had finally gone in some semblance of right; having a somewhat functional ship to cart them from the crashed ship to those lying idle in their respective hangars had drastically improved the chances of their plan seeing success, removing travel time as an issue and reducing their risk of encountering less-than-savoury locals enroute.
As his hands stilled against the console, its various diagrams and dials fading to lifeless wireframes and empty bezels, Za'il released a huge, relieved sigh. Offering a grin as his gaze grazed hers, she busied herself packing up the clutter strewn throughout the cockpit, packing it into the bag between them and shuffling out of her seat and back down the stairs so she didn't end up with a concussion as he tried to exit his own.
Just as she'd expected, the main room downstairs was now in somewhat of a state of disarray. They needn't have bothered placing all the books back on the bookshelf, because half of them had once again been detonated across the floor, with at least three large bottles above the bar following suit in an explosion of glass shrapnel. The air near the bar, whilst overwhelmingly alcoholic, reminded her of smoke and wood, dragging up images of leather, fireplaces and cosy cabins in the furthest vestiges of her mind. She shuddered to think what those broken bottles had contained, and struggled with the idea that she wouldn't need to clean the several litres of spilled liquid from the floor, given they weren't far from abandoning the vessel.
Slow, heavy footsteps dragged her from her reverie. Behind her, the Engineer had emerged, hunched and awkward, from the narrow stairwell with somewhat of an intent expression across his features; pausing to stretch, his elbows grazed the ceiling as he thrust his arms over his head and leaned backward. A whisper of a groan escaped him as several vertebrae in his spine released a loud, bassy pop in the process – several more in his neck did the same as he rolled his head back and forth. While it had always lingered in her consciousness just how inadequate the lifeboat's proportions were for someone of Za'il's height, having watched him struggle as he interacted with a plethora of Human-sized objects, structures and designs, she hadn't quite considered how incredibly uncomfortable it might have been all this time. Just how patient had this creature been over the past few days?
Expelling a thoughtful breath, he offered her a shallow twitch of a nod before reaching past her, collecting a glass from the other side of the bar and filling it with water. The shattered mess smeared across the floor caught his eye as he leaned over; he regarded it with an unamused scowl before draining the glass, but opted to ignore it as he crouched to fish the pad, pens and tablet from the bag still slung over her shoulder, and instead meandered over to the couches and sunk down onto the one cushion that hadn't been ejected from the base during their wild flight.
Casting the mess one last glance, she eventually followed suit after retrieving, at random, an undamaged bottle of Gewürztraminer from a low-lying wine rack and a couple of suitable glasses. The couches, at least, came to rights with little more than throwing the cushions back into place and securing them with a gentle nudge; with some semblance of sanity clawed back within the room, she cracked the bottle open as she curled up on the couch and poured perhaps the first restrained, conservative helping into each glass that this train wreck of a voyage had seen so far.
Meanwhile, Za'il had extracted two somewhat tidily-composed lists from the back of the pad of paper, lining them up alongside each other and the comparatively insane mess of three scribbled languages that had formed them. Several items on the left-most list, written in a language she knew to be his own simply because she couldn't make heads or tails of it, had been scrubbed out with heavy pen strokes. He'd opted, apparently, for a simple line through items on the far messier page, leaving them perfectly legible – or, as legible as they could be with either of their childlike, unfamiliar scratchings.
He cast her the the faintest quirk of the lips as he did the same to a singular item on the third list before handing it to her. This one, of course, was written by her, in English; See if the lifeboat still flies. She returned the grin in spades.
His attention had fallen back to the haphazard mess of languages before him, poking at the hastily-scribbled arrows and brackets looping several items together with the nib of his pen. This, she recalled, had been a point of contention; with lists of items to collect and tasks to complete, they had done their best to forge some kind of timeline in which to achieve it all. As could be expected, he had seemed in an inordinate rush to simply get going, initially planning on gaining access to the first hangar later today after spending a fair chunk of time on board the crashed vessel collecting supplies and leveraging the starship's vastly more powerful scanning equipment to get a final, accurate topography of the tunnels and what lurked within them. Shaw, on the other hand, had every intention of setting about their final escape rested, fed, armed and in full sunlight.
As much as it had clearly irritated him at the time, he had eventually conceded she was right; there was no pressing need for a huge rush, and pushing her comparatively tiny body to keep up with his in a race against the afternoon sun would end in tears. There had been a softness in that concession, something unreadable in his dark eyes that haunted her even now. It wasn't like she could simply ask him, either; writing anything personal in their intermediary language had seemed to fall foul of its mark without fail, and by this point, she'd long since decided she preferred to just get along with him in lieu of risking hubris in the name of answers.
If anything, her respect for him and swelled during the process. With the full knowledge that an empty warship awaited him, he could easily have ditched his Human baggage and set sail the moment they had disagreed on a timeframe for action; he had in fact done the opposite, pursing his lips thin with forced patience as they painfully negotiated to the point of cautious agreement, condensing her getaway to the point of rushing, but slowing him down by an entire day. The fact that every rising bubble of frustration about him had dissipated into self-flagellating resignation when his eyes drifted back to the purple marks staining her biceps was not lost on her. She hoped he was simply reminding himself of her comparative fragility and thinking accordingly.
Leaving no room for misinterpretation, she had etched sun and moon symbols – albeit altering the latter to resemble the huge, ringed gas giant that hung in the sky for at least part of the night when it dawned on her that they were on the moon, so to speak – alongside the growing list of tasks to complete cluttering that busy, messy scratchpad of a page. At almost exactly the same time, he had leaned across to group them by day and night in a series of square brackets. She fondly recalled the outburst of laughter from both of them that had resulted from that joint stroke of genius.
Having paused in his intense scrutiny of the pages littering the coffee table, the Engineer had turned his attention toward one of the two glasses of pale drink sitting opposite him. Apparently patently aware of how absurdly thin the glass was, of its preposterously narrow, delicate stalk, he seemed unwilling to lift it much higher than a foot off the table, instead leaning over it to smell its contents. She'd all but forgotten about it herself, as she'd become lost in thought; she reached across the table for her own glass, gently cupping it in one hand and raising it to her nose.
She wasn't quite sure what to make of it as she took a sip, eyes widening as flavour after flavour exploded across her tongue before fizzling out with a pop what was wholly inappropriate for wine. Whatever the stuff was, there was no denying it was savagely complex – too complex for her tastebuds, though she had to confess the aftertaste left her wanting more. It was probably expensive, as well. She had half a mind to guzzle it as though it came from a cardboard cask just to spite Weyland.
Doing so would probably put her out of commission for the second item on her list, however: Use the scanners on the crashed ship.
A similar expression of wide-eyed surprise had spread across Za'il's face as he mirrored her movements, clearly not sure what to make of whatever it was he'd put in his mouth; swallowing hard, he raised the glass higher and squinted at what remained of the contents for a drawn-out, baffled moment. After another cursory sniff, he simply placed it back on the table.
With the view out the window now consumed by the smoky, grey bulk of the enormous ship outside, there was no easy way to guess the time at a glance; the afternoon had churned on in their flurry of activity, and it was likely that they only had a few hours of sunlight left, if that. She didn't fancy meandering about on the surface after nightfall, never being quite sure of what lurked in the shadows.
A long, white finger probed at the list before her, gently tapping at the item directly below the first, scratched-out line. Having already pushed himself to his feet, the Engineer wasted little time in collecting equipment that had toppled from their neatly-stacked piles and bounced across the floor during their short but eventful flight. After clambering into his awaiting armour and fishing a large weapon-like device she didn't care to identify from one of the crates by the airlock, he cast her an impatient, expectant look as he plopped a blue Human-sized suit and helmet on the crate's lid.
May as well get on with it, she thought as she clambered from the couch. The sooner this is over and done with, the better.
Normally one wasn't supposed to wear an awful lot of clothing under a Weyland Corp standard-issue spacesuit, but at this point, cramming her shorts and singlet into its skin-tight confines would have to do. She certainly wasn't going to strip them with the Engineer standing by the airlock, fiddling with his helmet as he waited for her. It did, however, become evident why things were done as they were as she fought with the zipper and its predilection for catching the clothing underneath, then with the wrinkles of fabric that almost immediately began chewing at her skin.
Whatever. This will do. Get on with it!
Taking one last glance at her list, she set about preparing for their departure. While his had been long, covering multiple tasks whilst aboard his vessel, hers had consisted of just one.
Retrieve David.
Author's Note:
In which not a whole lot happens, because writing this chapter was literal agony.
Sorry this took so long to get here. I've been genuinely struggling with this section of the story, and I'm gagging to move onto the next, but for the sake of pace and background, their messy little flight needed to happen.
I might re-write this one yet, it feels a lit stilted and distant for my liking. I may even merge it with the next one coming, condense it a bit and give it a bit more context - it deserves to be part of a monster of a chapter, but some of the places I post it have chapter length limits and it'll need to be split anyway. Argh.
Generally I try to post more often than this, but this mere 5000 damn near killed me.
ALSO. I recently came upon a significant conundrum with this story. I'd like your feedback, dear readers.
So, in a nutshell, Alien: Covenant is coming out soon and this throws open an enormous can of worms. To keep this canon, I'm likely going to need to rewrite parts of it. Potentially huge parts of it. Does anyone know with this series anyway? Regardless, I'm going to try and finish this story before then, and start working on the sequel in a vague enough way that I can backtrack if necessary (ie: focus on everyone else!). Yay.
The alternative that struck me, as I plan what I want these two to get up to, is just not restricting myself to the source material and growing it the hell away from this series. I'm feeling more and more restricted by existing material, and it's inhibiting growth. Naturally this means 1) re-characterising Elizabeth, though not significantly, and 2) addressing the Engineer look of Za'il. Thankfully he's a unique character, just borrowing the look of the movie, but Elizabeth would need an overhaul.
This would also mean a whole lot of work establishing the how and the why they got to the point of being on this chunk of rock.
I'm game for busting my arse, to be honest, and I would probably actually finish the fanfiction form too if I diversified.
Yay, nay? Overthinking?