While engineers, traffic controllers, and pilots rushed amongst the fighters, Hannah jogged across the flight deck to where Team Commander Ramona Bautista was sealing her armor, considering her choices in weaponry, and wearing an expression that could only be described as reverent. She was a tall and muscular woman, built like a damn tank. In full armor, she was a mountain—formidable and eternally unyielding. Hannah was glad they were on the same side because she was certain even these aliens would pause at the sight of her.
When Bautista caught sight of Hannah as she approached, she gave a broad smile—her teeth bright white in contrast with the dark brown of her skin—and slipped the SMG she'd chosen into its hook on her back. "Ah!" she said in mock surprise. "The illusive female of the Shepard species. To what do I owe this pleasure?"
Hannah smirked and clapped the mountain on her shoulder. "I've come offering a deal, Bautista."
The other woman nodded, her eyes glistening. "I've profited by you before, Mephistopheles. How will I find myself richer this time, and how much of my soul will you require?"
"I'll let you keep your soul this time, Mona. As you know, the male of the Shepard species is given to thrilling heroics—"
Bautista barked a laugh. "Cinga, don't kid yourself! The female is no better."
Hannah smiled and shook her head. "If you can keep a target off his back, you might just find yourself enriched with a suppressor I modded myself when we get back to Arcturus."
Bautista's smile faded. "I don't know, LC. I've seen those recordings just like you. It's not going to be a day at the park with these bastards." She blew out a long breath and ran a hand over the short stubble that covered her scalp as she considered. "Okay, it's a deal. His team is autonomous from mine, LC, but I'll keep an eye on him the best I can. I'll have Vega cover his six if I can't." She chuckled, though not as brightly this time, and shook her head. "You know me too well, Hannah. Dangle a personal gun mod in front of me, and I'll bark like a dog if you want me to."
Hannah laughed, then turned to head toward her fighter. "Doesn't hurt to know what motivates people. Thanks, Mona."
Her deal struck, she jogged the rest of the way to her fighter. She smiled fondly at her bird and ran gloved fingers along the fuselage. Hello, Rosalind, dear, she thought. What do you say you and me go dancing, eh darling girl?
After examining the exterior of her fighter, she climbed into the cockpit just as she had a thousand times before, strapped in, and began internal checks. Everything was in perfect working order, of course—she would never let her Rosie want for anything. It gave her a warm feeling sitting in her fighter. There was nowhere she felt more at home, more like herself, than at these controls. Its wings were her wings, its body her body. She wasn't a fan of vacuum navigation, but once they got in atmo, she would be unstoppable. Bautista may be a mountain on the ground, but once Hannah spread her wings, she would be a whole damn squall line in the air—deadly and impassable.
When she was sure she was ready to go, she sealed her helmet and initiated her life support and comm systems.
"This is Boudica One. Boudica squad, sound off." One after the other, her squad responded. When all had reported in, she gave her approval. "All Boudica squad present and accounted for. Radio silence until we get in atmo. Let's go kick ET's ass, Boudica. Hard on my flank."
She rocketed out of the hangar, and her squad followed her one by one. Shanxi loomed large and silent above them. The alien ship was still far enough away to be little more than a speck, but that was to be expected. Hannah needed time to get her squad in position to meet the planned-for hostile strike squad. She initiated her descending orbit and turned off her thrusters, letting her momentum and the planet's gravity well carry her forward. It would be at least a couple of hours before they reached the outer atmosphere, and they would need to conserve their fuel where they could.
In the silence and solitude that stretched before her, she took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She reached for her breast pocket and pulled out a small tablet. When she switched on the display, Allistair's freckled face smiled at her. She swiped a finger across the interface and it changed to Michael, winking and pointing at her over a cake with lavender icing, lemon slices, and still-burning candles. She swiped again and saw herself, draped in white silk and wrapped in Michael's arms as they danced to something slow. In the next picture, she was holding up the middle finger of one hand while using her other to cover her very pregnant belly. Michael had been fascinated by how much she'd changed; Hannah had just wanted it to end so that she could feel like herself again.
In the next picture, she lay sweaty and tear streaked on a hospital bed, but smiling and holding a red-faced, yawning Alli. That was the first time she actually felt like a mother, and the force of that feeling had overtaken her so suddenly that for once in her life, she'd been speechless.
They hadn't planned Alli, and Hannah had been terrified at first. Michael had been positively jubilant. Of course he's excited, she'd thought. He doesn't have to go around for nine months with this . . . thing growing inside him. Thoughts like that had made her worry she would be a bad mother, that both her child and her husband would come to resent her because she just couldn't feel the way she was supposed to.
But then she'd been there in that hospital bed, exhausted and suddenly empty, and the nurse had slipped Alli into her arms. When she looked into her daughter's eyes, so like her own, that emptiness filled up so quickly—ran over, in fact—that if she hadn't already been lying down, she was sure it would have knocked her over.
Her hand hovered above her stomach as she looked through the pictures. Birthdays, Christmases, shore leaves, first steps, candid moments. For as many as there were and for as slowly as she cruised through them, she went through them all twice before Rosie warned her that the atmosphere was thickening. Our lives aren't long enough yet. One day, it would take her more than an hour to get through all the evidence they'd been alive.
She started her engines again and took control of the ship.
#
"Comms neutralized," a voice crackled loudly into Hannah's helmet. "All forward assault teams falling back. Hostile fighters deployed and en route to your position, Shepard."
"Copy that," Hannah acknowledged. "Dig in, Boudica. Nothing gets past us, no exceptions."
Sooner than she expected, the fighters appeared on her dash. Three seconds later, they were visible.
She locked one and waited for it to get just a bit closer to mitigate the drop. "On my mark," she said and silently counted down from three. "Mark!"
The hail of missiles commenced, three hostiles blew apart, and the dance started.
Hannah felt a moment of relief when she saw the fighters up close. They were dirty* as a teenager's thoughts, obviously designed for intimidation, for combat in the vacuum of space. Here in the soup, it would be no contest against Rosie and her sisters, each one clean as a whistle.
Work first, Hannah, she warned herself. Celebrate after the job is done.
"Lock in and fire at will!" she shouted over the comm, and her squad complied. "Hanson, Rousseau, on my flank!"
She shot down two more hostiles before she found what she was looking for: the leader. It was right there, two of its own flanking it. Its bird didn't look any different from the others, but there was something in the way the other fighters moved around it, responded to its proximity, that made Hannah sure she'd found the head of the serpent. Now to cut it off.
In the corner of her eye, she saw Rousseau's fighter blow apart.
"Hanson, Rousseau is down. Take the fighter on your ten—"
Before Hannah could finish the order, Hanson was also gone. She checked her combat screen. They outnumbered the hostiles at the moment, but the dog fight had gotten snarled quickly. Everyone in her squad was engaged, and she was on her own. She tugged at her harness and settled in.
She pitched forward, almost directly toward the planet, just as a missile passed above her. The hostile fighters rocketed above her but then followed suit more easily than she would have liked. Their engines must've been some kind of pig to pull off that kind of maneuver. Even so, they still had too much drag; they'd never be able to fly like she could with her Rosie.
She held her breath and pulled up sharply, letting herself lose consciousness for the moment it took to come up behind the trio tailing her. As soon as she came to, even in the haze behind her eyes, she directed Rosie to target-fire-target-fire.
The two flanking fighters were now smoke and ash and sent streams of fire and debris toward the planet. Just one left.
She pitched forward again, but her quarry didn't chase her this time. Instead, it went straight up and out of sight. I'll find you again, Hannah swore.
The enemy fighters were dwindling, but Boudica squad was also sustaining losses. Even if they succeeded in defending against the air strike, it looked like it was shaping into a Pyrrhic victory.
"Dig in, Boudica!" she shouted again. "Hold them—"
A crushing force slammed into her Rosie, knocking the wind from Hannah's lungs. Even through her flight suit, she could feel the cockpit depressurize.
Goddammit!
She was starting to spin and fast. Her thrusters weren't turning, and her engines, though still running, weren't responding to her commands to reroute power. It looked like she'd have to bleed speed the old-fashioned way.
"This is Shepard," she called to her squad. "I've been hit. Initiating emergency landing procedures. Keep the pressure on and hold them back, Boudica."
She put her flaps down and opposed her ailerons and rudder. The spin slowed some, but not enough to make a difference. Something was wrong. Her Rosie was too heavy, too awkward. She looked over her shoulder to see if she'd caught a piece of debris.
It wasn't debris.
It was the whole damn fighter. The leader.
Goddammit!
From where she sat, she could see the pilot's face—well, the faceplate of their helmet. They were pushing her down, deliberately tangling the two of them together. She didn't have to look down to know the ground was rushing toward her faster than she'd like.
You don't get to suicide-run me today, asshole!
Above her, the dog fight had moved, but she could see it continuing on her dash. Her squad was going strong, but it was still going to be a close one.
I'm not going down like this, she thought. Come on, girl, let's dig in the talons.
She restarted the engines, hoping a hard reboot would give her more control. She did get some, and the spin slowed marginally, but not enough. Then the other pilot fired up their thrusters, reinvigorating the spin.
"Sic 'em, Rosie!" she called out to her ship as she commenced the hacking suite.
She knew it was a Hail Mary, that the probability she could hack the other fighter's systems was slim to none, but she had to try.
The ground was coming up much too fast; even if she got out of the spin, it wasn't going to be a pretty landing. She twisted the rudder and the ailerons in opposition again, but left the flaps down. She tried it again and felt the cable snap. Shit.
Her dash flashed green. The hack worked. She now had access to the other fighter's commands. She didn't have time to wonder, and she wasn't going to look too closely at this bit of luck just yet.
"Cut their thrusters, Rosie!" she shouted. "Kill their engines!"
The pilot in the other cockpit jerked in surprise as everything around them turned off.
They were too dirty to keep up their current speed, and without the help of the hostile's thrusters, they finally started to slow. They came out of the spin, but now they were in free-fall. It was an improvement, but landing at terminal velocity wasn't really a much better option over being run deliberately into the ground at top speed. She turned back to her dash. She ignored the rapidly dropping fuel gauge and focused instead on the avionics she could do something about: altitude, attitude, airspeed. Altitude. Attitude. Airspeed. Just like in Basic, Hannah.
She had just over three hundred meters of altitude to work with. Not much, but she'd worked with less before. Granted, they were all in simulations and none of them had a hostile fighter attached to her Rosie. No time like the present to up the ante.
If she was lucky, she could stay in the air long enough to reach stall speed.
She knew she wasn't that lucky.
Her arms burned from holding her pitch, and she was still coming in too fast. Ejecting was impossible with the hostile ship looming above her. She'd slam her head and crush her spine against its fuselage, and then where would she be? Dead, that's where.
One hundred and fifty meters.
"Rosie restart the hostile's engines. Start the thrusters, and kill our speed."
Sixty meters.
She was still flying at one hundred knots, and she was running out of elevation.
Her attitude finally leveled out and she wasted no time. She dumped her flaps again and released the landing gear. Maybe she'd be lucky enough to bounce, but only if she could get the angle right. Their ground effect** was as likely to toss them as it was to carry them at this point, but it was a glimmer of hope.
Ten meters.
They hit the ground, and the world went black.
#
Hannah came to with the acrid scent of burning electronics penetrating her filters and curling in her nostrils. She coughed and then winced. Definitely a broken rib. Or five. Probably a broken clavicle, too, from where her harness kept her from ejecting. She felt a rivulet of blood run hot and thick from her nose and down her throat. Perfect.
She blinked, but it didn't do much good. The cockpit was filled with black, billowing smoke.
She switched her helmet's radio to the common fleet channel. "Command, this is Lieutenant Commander Hannah Shepard. Do you read?"
Not even white noise answered her call.
My poor, Rosalind, she mourned.
She released her harness and reached behind her. Ignoring the searing pain tearing through the side of her chest and the ferrous taste in her throat, she released herself from the life support and unhooked the emergency pack from her seat. She released the hook for the exit, but it didn't budge. Fury burned through her, and she turned until she had the leverage she needed to kick the door open, ignoring the fiery pain ripping through her sides and chest.
She stumbled to the ground, her legs gelatin and her hands shaking. Nausea suddenly washed over her, and she had only barely enough time to tear off her helmet before the contents of her stomach evacuated her body. Slowly, her composure returned and she wiped her mouth as she stood. The air was cool on her skin, and she inhaled deeply until the shaking subsided somewhat.
She couldn't see the source of the electrical fire, but she wasn't too concerned about it now that she was out of the cockpit. Eezo wasn't gasoline or even jet fuel; there'd be no great explosion, and she'd have plenty of time to escape the flames. Before the fire got too hot, she reached back into the cockpit, disengaged the black box, and added it to her pack. She'd get back to the Alliance long before they'd have the spare time and manpower to look for her downed fighter, especially if they assumed she was dead—which, by all rights, she probably should be. She'd save them time and resources by bringing her black box with her.
But what about the other fighter?, she wondered. Is it rigged to explode when the pilot dies? They did just try to run you into the ground in a suicide dive.
Tentatively, she stepped toward the other ship, which had stopped some twenty meters from where Rosie now lay. The trail behind them stretched about one hundred meters and was littered with debris. She peered inside the cockpit, but her view was obstructed by smoke. The outline of the pilot was faint but still, and their head hung low.
Good fight, brother, she thought. That took some nerve. You got a good death for people like us.
As she turned to walk away from the crash site, movement caught her eye. The hanging head of the pilot nodded briefly and then rolled back. It brought its hands up, but the smoke obscured what they did. The body seemed to jerk, but it didn't go anywhere. It jerked again, but still stayed where it was. Hannah could hear the sound of a muffled, flanged cough even from where she stood.
Before she could think better of it, she turned back toward the downed fighter. She felt around the edge of the cockpit until she found what felt like a seal release. It took a few different tries, but eventually, she heard the hiss as the cabin depressurized and the hatch swung open. Smoke and heat billowed outward. She set her emergency pack on the ground and opened it. When she found the knife she was looking for, she turned back to the ship and climbed up the side. The alien saw her and saw the knife and started pulling harder at the restraints.
Hannah stopped her ascent just outside the alien's reach and held up the knife, balancing it between her thumb and forefinger while keeping her palm open. With her empty hand, she made slow slashing movements in the direction of the harness. She held her breath and hoped her signals would be enough communication.
The alien stilled and seemed to brace themselves, so Hannah continued her approach slowly, as if she were dealing with an injured animal. She couldn't see the flames, but the smoke was getting thicker and the heat more intense. She'd have to work quickly.
It was easy enough to slice through the harness on both sides, and when she was done, she offered her hand to the pilot. They looked at her and at her hand and slowly took it. She helped the alien out of their seat and then started to climb down again. She pushed her sweat-matted hair out of her face and swiped absently at the drying blood on her face, vaguely aware that she only made it worse.
Hannah turned back toward the alien, who still seemed wary of her.
"The colony is this way," she said, jerking her thumb over her shoulder and having no hope that what she said made any sense to the alien. "You can stay here if you like, but we took out your comms, so no one is coming for you anytime soon. My bird is dead as dead can be too, so my people aren't coming either, at least not for a few days." She paused and looked around at the black forest and mountains around them. She'd gotten a good look at the terrain while she was looking for a patch of land flat enough to land on. She fished out her tablet and brought up a map of the colony, resizing the image until she found the lines that matched the topography she'd seen. She measured the distance she'd have to travel to the colony and turned back to the alien. "There are about two days' worth of walking ahead to get to the colony. I don't know about you, but I like my odds of surviving a strange planet's wilderness much better if I'm not alone. You're one tough asshole, too. If you tag along, I won't complain. I can't make any promises, but I'll do my best to make sure you get back to your people instead of a brig somewhere. Sound reasonable?"
She settled her pack on her shoulder and winced. She turned in the direction of the colony, sparing a mournful sideways glance at Rosie, and started walking. When she'd walked about two hundred meters, she looked back at the crash site. Flames were licking the air around both birds now, and the black smoke was billowing in earnest.
The alien was gone.
Hannah unholstered her pistol, chambered a round, and continued her journey up the mountain and into the forest. At least she would have one traveling companion that wouldn't shoot her in the back. She took a deep breath before stepping among the black-leaved trees and hoped down to her bones she didn't just make the worst mistake of her life.
#
When the sun was low in the sky, Hannah decided to make camp for the night. She was still shaking—from the adrenaline comedown still, but also from hunger now. She only had a handful of ration bars in her emergency pack, so she would allow herself one bar, but not until the sun had gone all the way down. Too much time between eating and sleeping would make for a restless night, which would make for a hard day tomorrow.
Hannah unfolded the lean-to in her pack and set it up under some kind of leafy brush to take advantage of at least a little camouflage. She gathered fuel and started a fire, then gathered more fuel to keep it going for the night. By the time it was too dark to see anything beyond her campsite, she had settled in near her little fire and taken out her tablet from the breast pocket of her flight suit. If she held the device tightly enough to make her fingers ache, she pretended not to notice.
The sounds of the forest were unfamiliar, but not disconcerting. Frankly, she was more concerned about what she couldn't hear. The sun had been down for hours already, but she couldn't sleep. Pain burned at her ribs, and paranoia gnawed at the back of her mind. The alien could be watching her at that very moment, and she had no way of knowing for sure. How could she sleep while imagining them biding their time to move in and kill her?
Finally, she took a chance. "It's nice and warm next to the fire," she called into the velvet blackness of the forest. "I'd like to go to sleep, and I'd consider it a favor if you just gave it up already and made yourself comfortable. At least for tonight. I'm exhausted." Then she considered a moment and took out her pistol. She made an exaggerated show of releasing the magazine and popping out the bullet she'd chambered. She put the pieces on the ground beside her, then swept her arms wide, indicating the area around the fire. "My camp is your camp."
A full five minutes passed before a spot in the air shimmered and the alien pilot stepped into the light. Hannah thought back to old movies about aliens with cloaking devices tracking humans in dark woods and again questioned the wisdom in helping this one.
They had removed their helmet, and now she had her first full look at what they looked like. They had small, honey-colored eyes, and their face seemed to be covered in some kind of semi-mobile, silvery plates. The plates ended in a short ridge just above the brow, and the back of its head was comparatively smooth. Mandibles flicked around its jaw, each one painted with a single, sage-green stripe that started thick toward the back and narrowed to a point as it came forward. Another solid stripe of the same color ran down the bridge between their eyes, stopping just below a series of three horizontal slats (their nose? noses?).
Hannah held out her hand, palm up, and indicated to the ground around the fire again. They remained standing for a moment before warily taking a seat on the ground, leaning against a fallen tree trunk for support. Hannah nodded and returned to the images of her family. Neither of them said a word for some time.
When her stomach complained, Hannah finally acquiesced and reached for her pack. The alien stood quickly—much faster than Hannah would've expected, given all their strange joints and spikes—and she paused. She slowed her movements and deliberately withdrew her hand, holding a ration bar wrapped in foil.
She pulled apart the wrapper and took a bite of the food. "Dinner time," she said around the food in her mouth. "Not very good, but it's better than nothing at all." The voice of her mother echoed through her mind, insisting that food was the fastest way to friends. She didn't need a friend out of this stranded hostile; she needed someone who wouldn't kill her while she slept. She broke the bar in half and held out the unbitten part. After a moment, they passed a hand over their abdomen in a single swipe and sat back down, looking away from Hannah and into the fire.
"Ah," she said, taking another bite. "Not hungry, I guess. I wonder if you guys don't get hungry like humans. More's the pity for us if that's the case. Fewer supply lines to disrupt. You're bigger than us, though. I would've thought you burned more calories."
She finished her ration bar in silence then resumed sliding through the pictures of Michael and Alli. There were a few of her parents and brothers in there, and she was starting to regret not taking more the last time she'd seen them on Earth. In fact, before Alli came along, she'd never been one for taking a lot of pictures at all. It wasn't that she didn't like her own picture taken or that she thought taking pictures took away from the experience of the moment; it just never occurred to her to try to record moments she might want to remember later—like when she's stranded on a strange planet with nothing but her two legs to get her where she needed to go and an alien sitting across from her and possibly considering how to kill her—while they were actually happening.
Hannah sighed and winced. Food or no food, it was probably going to be a rough night. When she looked up from her pictures as she moved to straighten her back, she noticed the alien watching her. She held up the tablet and smiled weakly. "It helps to think about them," she said. Carefully, she stood and moved closer to the alien. She held out the tablet, but they simply looked at her blankly, twitching their mandibles. She brought up a picture that Alli took of herself just a couple of months ago when she'd gotten hold of the tablet while Hannah's back had been turned (it must have taken all of thirty seconds for Alli to grab the tablet and figure out how it worked).
"This is Allistair. She's my daughter," she said pointing to the smiling creature with too-small teeth. She patted her stomach, hoping the sign could explain what she meant. The alien looked from the picture to Hannah without saying anything. Hannah wondered if these aliens spoke the same way humans did. Maybe they weren't hive minds—after all, this one was off by themselves and doing fine—but maybe they were telepaths. Might explain how they fought so well together.
"She's already three years old, the little demon," she continued after a thoughtful moment. "I didn't even want her at first, if you can believe it. Afraid everything was going to change, I guess. It did, of course, but in the best way and in so many ways I didn't expect. Do you guys carry your young? Or do you have eggs maybe? Or maybe you just grow them in vats?" Their mandibles twitched wide—what did that mean?—and Hannah sighed. "I know you have no idea what I'm saying, but I talk when I'm anxious. Michael—he's my husband—he's here too, and I have no way of knowing if he's all right. Talking keeps me from going crazy." She swiped the display until a picture of him sleeping on the couch from the previous Christmas came up. Hannah smiled and held up her left hand, showing her wedding band. "That's him. I know he looks harmless here, but he's the best marksman I know. He hit a target at twelve hundred meters once and didn't stop strutting for a month. We were talking about having a little brother or sister for Alli before we got here."
Would they have a son or daughter?, she wondered. Would they even get the chance—
She stopped herself from finishing that thought, but the wound it left was gaping and starting to fester already.
Suddenly, the pictures weren't quite so comforting. Hannah closed that app and opened another. Soon, she heard a soft, rhythmic beat and smiled weakly. The alien leaned down, perhaps trying to get a better look at Hannah's face.
She held up the device and explained, "It's Alli. She has this bracelet that lets me track her vitals. It's kind of like a baby monitor, but a bit more comprehensive. Michael thinks it's creepy and a gross misuse of QEC tech, but it makes it easier for me to sleep sometimes. If I wore one, I could sync it with her tablet so that she could listen to my heartbeat. I do that sometimes, if I'm at work when she has a nightmare and can't get back to sleep. I don't do it on a deployment, though. If I were to—" she stopped and cleared her throat. "I don't think I'd be doing her any favors."
Hannah winced as she stood again and patted the dust from her suit. The shifting light from the fire sent bouncing shadows against the other's face, and she couldn't help but think of them as beautiful. Beautiful but deadly, she reminded herself. You have no idea what this one's thinking. "It's late and we have a ways to go tomorrow. You can stay or go, whatever you like. You'll probably be taken prisoner by the Alliance when we get to the colony, no matter what I say. But then, there's no telling when your own people will be able to find you out here. Needle in a haystack and all that." Their mandibles dipped, a new expression. "I'm just saying it's your choice. You can do whatever you want and I won't stop you . . . unless you try to kill me. I think you can appreciate that'd try to stop you in that case. But I have a feeling that if you were serious about killing me, you wouldn't have taken off your invisibility thing and sat down by the fire like this. Or maybe you just really don't like the cold. Anyway. Good night."
Hannah stretched carefully beneath her lean-to, mindful of her ribs and collar bone. She turned down the volume on the tablet and set it near her ear. The alien didn't seem to move even a mandible, and she was asleep in minutes.
#
When Hannah woke, it was already hot, the humidity promising to be oppressive in no time at all. The sun was still low in the sky, but sweat was already rolling through her hair and down her neck. I need to find water immediately, was her first coherent thought.
Everything hurt and it took several minutes before she was able to successfully bend herself into a sitting position. As the sound of blood rushing through her ears subsided and she gained control of her breathing, she gradually became aware of the silence around her. She blinked and took in the sight of the campsite. The fire had long since burned down, and the alien was gone. So were Hannah's lean-to, emergency pack, and tablet.
Fuck!
It took another couple of minutes for her to stand up, and even then she couldn't straighten her back. It surprised her that she didn't care that she didn't have a map or a compass. She'd studied the topos as she walked the day before and gotten a good look at her location before the crash. She didn't mind not having her emergency supplies or a lean-to. She might be uncomfortable getting to the colony, but she could improvise if she needed to. She didn't even care about losing her black box.
No. The fury that smoked and curled through her now had only one source: her missing tablet.
Everything else was replaceable.
Hannah started to let out a frustrated yell, but stopped when the pain tore through her sides. She bent forward, her hands flying to her ribs as if that could calm them. Later. Water first. Find them later. Tear their mandibles from their face later.
She took a moment to manage her breathing and gain her bearings again. The trees around her weren't too dissimilar from the ones she'd seen on Earth—taller, thicker, woodier if it was possible, but still similar—and the ground was covered in a thick layer of dead leaves and black sprouts. It would probably be best to stay in the shade they provided as long as she could manage it.
After taking one final deep breath, she started walking.
A heavy hand came down on her shoulder, and Hannah jumped. Then cried out in pain. Dammit. First thing I'm doing in Shanxi is getting a morphine milkshake. When she turned around, she saw the alien standing behind her. How had they moved so quietly? Slung over one shoulder was Hannah's emergency pack with the two bottles it once held inside it now tied to the bottom of the shoulder strap; both bottles were dripping with beads of water. In one of its hands was Hannah's tablet. They pointed to the top of the display, where the battery symbol glowed green and solid.
Hannah took the offered tablet and stared at it like she'd never seen it before. They pointed to the sky. They recharged it for me, she finally realize. It took her a moment more to find her voice and say, "Th-thank you."
They started to walk but only got a few paces away before turning back to Hannah. They motioned with their head in the direction of the colony. She shook her head to break the daze of the confusion she still felt and took a couple of steps forward. She held out her hand for her pack, but they waved a hand dismissively.
"I can carry my own things," Hannah insisted, furrowing her brows in displeasure.
They pulled their mandibles in tight and put a hand to Hannah's ribs, gently but with enough pressure to make the point.
Hannah frowned. "Fine," she said. "You can carry it for a bit. But, it's not like I haven't broken a rib before. I'm a soldier, not an infant."
Their mandibles flared, and they—both of them—started again toward the colony.
*A "dirty" aircraft is one that has features that make it less aerodynamic, whether by design, damage, or wear. The "cleaner" an aircraft is, the more aerodynamic it is.
**Ground effect refers to the movement of air under a plane when it is near the ground (either during takeoff or landing). It acts as a cushion for a clean plane and, in some circumstances, can keep the craft from landing. If the craft is dirty, the movement of air will be much more erratic and can make for a choppy landing.