"So; what exactly are we doing?"

The morning had swung into action with a flurry of activity unseen aboard the ostentatious vessel to date, starting with Elizabeth clambering out of bed, shaking the Engineer awake and stabbing about the android's neck to awaken him from self-induced standby. While Za'il had slowly shaken his doziness in a series of crippling yawns and stretches, David hadn't hesitated in attempting to make idle conversation with the woman charging about the bar with mugs of coffee and plates of food. A series of one-word and otherwise short, barely polite answers left him eventually tailing off, leaving her to destroy a plate of bacon and eggs opposite the sleepy, vague figure occupying the other couch, who eventually followed suit in relative quietude.

A final run through their respective checklists and a brief rifle through the tidy pile of bags by the airlock had left the android watching in studied silence until Elizabeth had begun fiddling with the clasps on his main power cord, at which point he had finally given into curiosity – or, perhaps, impatience.

"We're flying this broken old bucket to the first hangar," she responded calmly as the clips finally popped loose and released the head from the severed nest of wires sprouting from the hole between the synthetic shoulders. "We'll drop off his gear, then make our way to the loading dock of the second hangar. Unfortunately it's not accessible by foot on the surface – not safely, anyway, from what I can tell."

David arched a brow as she tugged his head away from the rest of him; Za'il wasted little time in grabbing the lifeless body by the arm and effortlessly dragging it onto the pile of bags, not quite throwing it aside as if discarding it, but not with what either Shaw or David would describe as finesse. "I'm certain there are several easily-accessible vessels close to us. There are three of the same design as his in the hangars by the first tower."

"Full of corpses," she noted hurriedly. Her expression soured. "It seems like a fair few people died in stasis over the millennia."

The Engineer muttered something in the off-hand, disinterested tone he'd taken to communicating with David in as he swiped the tablet, pen and pad from the piano lid and slipped it into Elizabeth's pack.

"Apparently he'd like me to accompany him to the cockpit," David quipped as Shaw lifted him from the ground.

She nodded, momentarily placing him on the lid of the piano. "I figured he would. Sorry about this, David."

"Sorry for what ex–" He paused as he immediately understood; Elizabeth had hefted his head up in both arms, cradling the side of his face against her chest in an awkward clasp. He said nothing more as she carried him up the narrow stairwell, hot on the heels of the immense Engineer ahead of her as he filled the confined space. She was certain, by this point, that his suit had scraped a thin veneer of the walls' surface off with its most solid parts.

The android simply peered up at the diminutive woman from below her chest as she patiently waited for Za'il to squeeze himself into the pilot's seat, and kept the smarmy comments she was certain he was brewing to himself as she clambered into the copilot's position. Cheeks flushing, she hurriedly set him down on her lap and rotated him toward the controls once she was settled.

The Engineer had cast her a side-glance below raised brows, briefly, before setting about powering the vessel's propulsion systems up.

"Curious," David mused quietly from his perch, "You've gone to the trouble of labelling most of the controls. Very clever."

"Question is, are they accurate?" She murmured as she subtly adjusted David's head to view more of the labels around the immense Engineer. "Doesn't help that our interface language is from a pre-industrial race, and that I wouldn't know the first thing about flying one of these things. Or flying anything, really."

David's pale eyes quickly scanned each and every paper label as the gauges below them flickered to life one-by-one. "Some of the translations are a little creative, but nonetheless, they appear largely accurate. I'm impressed, given the multiple limitations you faced."

"Understatement of the Century," she quietly huffed with a quick eye-roll. "Whoever finds this vessel in the future is going to be left scratching their heads, I'm sure."

The Engineer interjected before David could respond to her; after a moment the beheaded android launched into a series of polite, matter-of-fact phrases in the other median language available to them, pausing after each statement as Za'il fiddled with a different control, or series thereof. Before long it became clear that he was elaborating on each one, likely in some sort of useful order. With exactly none of it forming any sort of meaning to her, Shaw was left simply observing the exchange in practised silence.

With a vastly more neutral patience than he'd displayed to date, upon inspection of the last of the controls in David's lengthy instruction, the Engineer began asking – she assumed – questions about several more, and quietly waited for the talking head to elaborate. Hunched over the Human-sized console, crushed into the Human-sized seat, fingers flying over the English-based display, he ought to have been far more out of place than he currently appeared. There was little question in her mind he was born to fly; perhaps that was why he was so insistent it would take little to teach her to operate one of his own kind's vessels. To him, perhaps it was trivial. He'd certainly made short work of the Prometheus lifeboat, all things considered.

In fact, he'd made short work of much of their encounter. Having quickly demystified much of the technology on board, including flying a borderline unflyable, absolutely un-airworthy craft, it was obvious he was no slouch. He'd learned to communicate with her in one dead language, and responded to David in another – that was a minimum of three languages he understood. Heck, he'd even deciphered, and dominated, the baby Grand sitting downstairs. He hadn't even needed a demonstration to give it life.

In this moment, Elizabeth realised she was hardly the smartest person in the room. The mere thought was one of the least comfortable she'd had of late, and boy-howdy had she processed a thought or two in the last week or two.

"Good news, Doctor," David purred softly, jarring her from her reverie with a subtle twitch that wouldn't have gone unnoticed by the android. "He believes he can account for the vessel listing to the port side during flight. There are additional controls neither of you were aware of."

"That is good news. Thank you, David."

"A pleasure," he smiled. "He believes our technology to be 'archaic, crude, but effective enough' – I would be tempted to disagree, but his kind have been in space far longer than us. I imagine it is all of those things to him."

"Honestly, I get the feeling that's his general opinion of Earth as a whole," she grumbled softly, tentatively balancing David's head between both hands as she shifted in her seat.

Za'il murmured something, casting a cramped glance over his shoulder at Elizabeth, then at David.

"Are you ready to take off, Doctor?"

She offered a nod in response, though it was not directed at the android.

By now the deep thrum of the ship's engines belching to life had grown familiar enough that the subtle, building vibration throughout the cockpit no longer alarmed her. This time, she noted, there was car less guesswork about the Engineer's movements; his hands seemed to know exactly where to go, plucking at the console with practised precision that made it all the more obvious, in retrospect, what a flustered state he'd been in the previous times they'd been in this space.

Though, given the circumstances, she hardly blamed him: deciphering a complete unknown the first time would have been stressful, to say the least; using said unknown to destroy a monster in the dark would have been easily as stressful, given the stakes.

Perhaps he finally saw the value in having a translator at his disposal.

A familiar rattle swelled throughout the cockpit as dust billowed about the vessel outside, plumes engulfing the view. Instinctively, Shaw found her left hand darting between the seat bolster and David's neck; in the back of her mind she knew it was only a matter of time before the ship began pitching to and fro. Still, flailing between the two was hardly helpful. She forced her hand to grasp what remained of the android for a moment.

"David, where may I hold you? I'd rather you didn't end up under the console the moment it gets bumpy."

"You may hold me however you wish," he responded plainly, the faint quirk of the lips just out of her view. "But I doubt this will be a rough ride; he has a far better idea of how to manage the vessel now."

Her eyes darted between the massive frame of the Engineer, the billowing dust cloud obscuring their view, and the blonde mop on her lap. "I don't want to be disrespectful and grab you by the hair or anything. Strange enough with your head sitting on my lap."

David's smile grew. "Thank you for thinking of me."

She eventually settled with pinning the shredded remains of the top of his shoulder against her thigh with one hand, gripping the seat bolster with the other as the pitch of the engines spiked, heralding the familiar lurch as the vessel heaved itself from solid ground. David hadn't lied, she quickly realised, as it merely wobbled in place rather than rolling about, its hovering above the dirt vastly more stable than their previous two excursions.

Heaved itself, she noted, was probably somewhat of a lie; two huge, pale hands were very much hard at work maintaining that precarious balance, flitting from control to control as the crippled ship eased itself about and began its languid, limping sojourn toward the buildings finally appearing in the distance through the umbre haze.

As their altitude climbed above the seething dust cloud, the silhouettes of the towers off the port side gradually glinted detail after growing, amber detail in the morning sun. Some of the ornate, weathered intricacies almost looked like lettering. Others seemed merely decorative. It vaguely frustrated her that she'd spent so much time searching for evidence of Engineers that she'd barely spent a moment admiring the whimsy of the alien architecture, the very first artificial structures they'd found on the planet's surface. Not that Charlie's insistence on marching straight in had helped matters, but upon reflection, she sorely wished she'd taken – or had – the opportunity to sit back and pick away at every little detail.

Though, also upon reflection, it would have likely led to their deaths. Though she could only imagine the origins of the creature that had tried to force entry two nights ago, she had little doubt it would have found them had they spent their first week on the surface admiring the details of the site from outside and taking notes.

And that, without a doubt, would have denied them the opportunity to meet the alien occupying the pilot's seat aboard this very ship.

Though, that would have potentially saved Ford, Jackson and Weyland's lives.

If they'd survived the lurking beasts elsewhere, that is.

All these what ifs left her head aching.

A slight bounce in the vessel's path as it rounded the first tower sent her stomach into her chest, as one hand clawing at David's neck as the other tightened its grip. Minor turbulence, she reassured herself as her heart thrashed harder in her chest, you've experienced far worse turbulence before.

Another jolt fluttered through the cockpit as the bottles downstairs rattled against their racks. The golden glow of morning sunshine against the towers below had since begun to fade to a clammy, sickly yellow, still starkly bright as they glowed against a rapidly greying backdrop of storm clouds gathering on the horizon. It appeared they would find themselves once again waiting out a storm – she just hoped it would be after they landed.

The second tower slipped past beyond the plexiglass, the sheer scale of it not lost on her wide, transfixed gaze. The path that snaked up to the first, looping around and between each subsequent tower, had appeared substantial enough on foot that its weathered edges barely suggested there was a path at all, but from above it was mere twine, tying the series of structures together in a delicate, pale web untrodden for millennia. It would have taken them days to traverse the length of the base on foot...if they survived the first night in the open at all.

Za'il's deep, rumbling voice broke the monotony of the engine's roar. David's followed after a pause, watching as the Engineer's right hand swiped over a blank space in the centre of the console, then following with another slew of instructions as the shiny black expanse fluttered to life with a series of complicated displays. It was yet another colourful belch of interface clutter amongst a sea of indecipherable information; there was little doubt she'd chosen the correct career path in lieu of scrambling about this sort of rot.

The last of the towers had slid past below them as he began fiddling with the new display, his left hand jumping from one control to the next in an effort to keep the vessel stable as the right fumbled. Having navigated away from the towers and onward, the vessel gradually slowed to a warbling, precarious hover over seemingly empty land and, after further fiddling with the controls, content to hold position without pitching and rolling all over the place as Za'il refocused on the centre console with a huff.

Another question in their shared ancient language; David's response was as polite as ever, calmly directing the Engineer as he appeared to flip through several different display modes before settling on one with a needlessly complex grid of buttons.

Having dug at her skin for the vast majority of their voyage, curiosity finally won over obedient silence. "David, what is that display?"

"Communications system, Doctor."

"Ah." With whom he intended to communicate, she had no idea.

After a moment's pause, Za'il asked another as his fingers lingered over the controls. Again David responded, though below a scowl; after a notably quizzical addendum, he cast the Engineer a studied glance. The huge figure responded with a short murmur laced with far more of the sass she'd witnessed since the moment he'd tolerated the android, then returned his focus to the console.

A keyboard of sorts had presented itself, but it was no longer in English; whatever it was, it was unrecognisable to her and certainly not his native tongue, as the series of haphazard taps at it seemed unsure. Unfamiliar. She could only assume he had found a fourth language that served his needs, one she didn't recognise despite her extensive studies into dead, historical languages and cultures.

His scowl deepened after an unquestionably negative bleep erupted from the console once, twice, then a third time after a deep, frustrated sigh. Pausing to drum his fingers against the black expanse below the display, he chewed at his bottom lip as his eyes darted about the console for a protracted moment before having another crack, entering a long series of inputs with punctuated, forced calm.

An affirmative bleep. The scowl gave way to a vaguely smug, but clearly relieved quirk of the lips.

After another poke at the display, switching through a handful of modes, he settled on one that looked familiar for reasons she couldn't have predicted. There was no reason to expect to see an octave of musical notes, was there? Surely not.

And yet, having quite deliberately punched in a pattern against the glowing amber buttons that sounded distinctly like a tune, it appeared that was exactly what he'd intended.

Another affirmative trill from the console.

The Engineer had clearly felt the weight of her befuddled stare against him, because after briefly checking the thruster controls, his dark gaze fell upon her her once more. Despite his hunched pose in the cramped confines of the pilot's seat, there was a satisfied calm about him – though, the days she'd spent in his company told her the calm was merely skin-deep. She suspected he was relieved rather than merely content.

His stare lingered as her puzzlement refused to fade, and he eventually leaned forward to glance back out of the cockpit and down toward the barren land below, willing her to do likewise.

She hadn't quite expected the gaping, widening maw of an immense hangar door to twist forth below thick earth, either. It had been completely obscured by several millennia of debris moments before. Even from many metres above it seemed enormous, swallowing an avalanche of dirt and rock as the mighty teeth rolled inward and backward, retracting into the infrastructure of the hangar; its likeness had been utterly terrifying to find herself standing on days before, and seeing the sheer scale of it from above merely reinforced that terror. How she'd run its length whilst missing stitches in her freshly hacked, torn and abused uterus was beyond her. How she'd managed any of her feats since landing on this godforsaken rock was beyond her. For all intents and purposes, she'd been damn-near superhuman until the moment she'd been zipped back up with that searing white goo.

Neither David nor Za'il, she realised, knew a thing about what had happened to her from the moment she'd raced from the Engineer ship in a blind panic to the moment she'd appeared from behind the bar with an axe. David, she was sure, would pester her for details once they had a free moment for any sort of catch-ups. Za'il would likely never know the ordeal he had quite directly put her through.

Strangely, by this point, she almost didn't begrudge him for it.

After punching in another series of tones into the console, pale fingers lingering until it yielded an affirmative bleep, Za'il set about slowly, gently lowering the crippled vessel to the ground alongside the gaping hangar doors. Craning her neck to nervously watch the process, viscerally aware of both the sheer size and the proximity of the immense hole in the ground, she noted the teeth had stopped moving about halfway out, pausing with their mighty tips still lingering over the glinting grey mass within, barely visible in the dying sunlight and the thickening wisps of dust and dirt the incoming storm had begun to whip up.

Her hands had found their way into David's hair, gripping the side of his head with perhaps a little too much force as her other hand threatened to tear the faux leather of the seat bolster. There was no rattle of bottles below, no shattering crockery, no forks and knives bouncing across the impossibly glossy floor beyond the bar. There was no telltale clatter of books falling from their shelves, no creaking and groaning from the overtaxed, half-ruined nacelles. The horizon beyond, heavy with seething, grey clouds drawing closer and closer, was almost perfectly level, rocking back and forth with the most minute changes of pitch as the wounded vessel eased toward the ground, more in control than it had been since its first liftoff, and yet her heart still thrashed in her chest as though she expected to die at any moment.

The scientist within reasoned the past few weeks had taken more than their fair share of her resources, finally manifesting that toll in bizarre, unexplainable physical responses. The rest of her simply shook.

Following a few quiet words from the disembodied head sitting on her lap, Za'il reached across the console and fiddled with several of the controls with a finesse that had dominated this third, far more stable flight. What little pitching and rolling there was quickly ceased with the tweaks, yielding to the sort of buttery-smooth descent one would expect of the vessel brand-new and undamaged.

Even the eventual bump-bump of the landing gear finally touching down amongst a thick, rushing plume of debris was vastly more subtle than previous landings, gently making contact with the planet once more without ricocheting against it and thrusting more expensive liquor against the deck downstairs. How the two men, the lost alien and the beheaded android, had mastered flying the ruined vessel was beyond her.

The lifeboat had barely been in situ for a breath before Za'il had set about powering the engines down, seemingly unaware of his two smaller companions as he went about his business with ritual, military poise. Elizabeth's gaze lingered on his hands, silently observing the immense digits as they plucked at the glowing controls with a familiarity he had no right to express; even with labels stuck to each and every dial, there was no way he could have adapted so naturally and so quickly to technology so starkly different to the incomprehensibly foreign stations she had briefly witnessed aboard his ship. Right? Surely not. Even the most wildly intelligent Human would have needed at least a few more flights to even dream of matching his calculated, precise pace.

The deep rumble of his voice would forever jolt her from her thoughts with startling effectiveness – even without the haunting split-tone roar it took on when raised in anger, there was a timbre about it that simply couldn't pass as Human.

Forever, she realised, was another half-day at best.

"We should board the new ship before the storm arrives," David announced from her lap, dutifully translating. She could feel the mechanical muscles below his scalp move against the hair she still had balled in her fist; she released it with a start, taking a moment to smooth it back against his head apologetically.

"We probably should, yes," she mused quietly, shifting in her seat as the Engineer proceeded to clamber out of the cockpit, apparently less interested with elegance than avoiding accidentally leaving the diminutive Human in the same state as her android companion.

David's face once again wound up pressed against Shaw's chest as she followed the Engineer back down the cramped stairwell to the main body of the vessel, then propped against his own with obvious haste as she set about clambering into her pressure suit. With an almighty clatter as he dragged the full suit of armour free of the crate by the door and across the floor, Za'il set about assembling himself in a similar fashion, though he lingered with the helmet pressed between both gloved palms to observe Elizabeth as she fastened the scuffed, scratched dome of her own helmet to its fixings. Her gaze eventually caught his, searching his dark eyes for...God-knows-what, to be honest.

What he did offer was a singular nod as he presented the folded list from a pocket in his armour, then tucked it away again.

A smile erupted, unbidden. Communication had been nigh on impossible between them, both language and cultural barriers leaving the past days plodding along in agonising, calculated steps laden with constant second-guessing and minefield-dodging. For every similarity she'd presumed they had, there were twenty almost insurmountable differences arose to offset each tiny victory. Her threadbare grasp on progress had been thrown into wild disarray with David's reintroduction, with the dynamics so vastly altered she felt herself becoming more of a spectator than a participant in the circus that was her life.

But with one, small, unspoken gesture, the alien, the unknown quantity, the outright mindfuck had gifted her the hit of reassurance she hadn't realised she so badly needed. Language barrier be damned. David be damned. What they shared was hard bloody work.

"Righto," she breathed as she crouched down beside the dismembered android, "Time to get going. Sorry again, David. I'm going to have to put you in my bag for transport. We should still be able to hear you, though."

"Quite alright," he offered, his grim, strained smile hardly convinced. "Practically speaking, this would have been far more straightforward if you had finished assembling me."

"I know, David," she sighed as she picked his head up, resting him against the opening in the bag briefly. "I promise, I'll work on it once we're on our way. First thing."

–––

LV-223's gravity was almost identical to that of Earth, she had long since decided. The overstuffed pack dragged at her spine as much as she could have expected, top-heavy with David's head stuffed in last and swaying precariously as she placed one foot in front of the other against the fine dust whipping about her toes, the wind buffeting its bulk about and whistling about the broad curve of her helmet.

Za'il was of course carrying the vast majority of their gear, with two of his own bags slung over his back, a handful of smaller packs hanging from his shoulders, several weapons mounted against his waist, and David's beheaded body draped over his right shoulder. By all rights he was marching across the barren wasteland with several hundred kilos of crap weighing him down, but apparently he missed the memo. There was nothing at all laboured about his gait, though logistical issues had cropped up as he tried to exit the ship with everything precariously assembled about his ridiculously strong frame – the airlock was neither wide nor tall enough, and they had resorted to loading him up outside instead after the majority of his carefully-stacked luggage met the airlock jambs with force and came crashing down. He had been quietly frustrated by the Tetris rigmarole being played in threes, she noted, though he hid it well; he just couldn't hide it from her, with her laser focus on observing his body language in the passing days by now a fine art – even hidden behind a helmet, dragging cruft across an abandoned valley.

Reaching the gaping precipice cut into the land once again left her wondering just how she had managed to traverse one of these monstrous portals the first time. Glancing downward left her head spinning, the rush of adrenaline immediately hitting her veins and leaving her head and hands alike tingling with an aura of surreal energy that, by this point, was as familiar as a sneeze. The last she'd scrambled across had very much been in motion, and she'd sprinted the length of several of its teeth before scrambling headlong into the next emergency. This one, locked in place, simply mocked her.

Unbothered, the Engineer stepped past her and out onto the nearest of the metal arms, pacing along its length almost to the very end as he gazed downward into the maw. Drawing a breath, Shaw finally followed suit with every inch of the caution she couldn't pay the task the first time, eyes boring into the dusty surface and absolutely refusing to see what lay below. If she thought it had seemed an endless journey the first time, sprinting across it with her guts threatening to spill through the ripped, oozing wound in her belly, the march across this expanse felt like an eternity.

By the time she had minced to the edge, Za'il had relieved himself of every bit of baggage, neatly stacking the packs alongside David's body before turning to offer his hands as she began fiddling gingerly with her own. The black depths below swooned as she pointedly ignored them. Perhaps she should have snuck a quick nip of whatever liquid courage was left before stepping out of the lifeboat for the final time.

Scowling, she recalled whose stupid idea this was. What was she thinking?

Za'il had spoken, though his helmet muffled much of what he'd said and the wind had snatched the rest. Had it been in English, there was little doubt she wouldn't have understood it anyway.

Helpfully, his hands quickly took over communicating; he aimed his right index finger at his chest, then pointed it into the gaping abyss below. The packs by his feet were next, followed by another prod into the hangar door. Finally, he pointed directly at her, then back into the hole, then lingered in silence as he calmly observed her.

Seemed simple enough. Throw the packs down to him once he was inside, then leap over the edge and hope he caught her. What could go wrong?

Perhaps her expression was far more stunned than she'd intended; after an extended pause, he heaved a sigh and slowly, carefully enunciated what sounded like a question.

"He asks if you understood what he just gestured," David shouted from within her bag; even then, the thick canvas, the wind, and her own helmet left his voice thin. Distant.

"I did," she yelled over the building breeze. "It's just a bloody long way down."

Dutifully, David relayed her response to the Engineer, whose response was to merely cock his head to the side. He was probably recalling whose stupid idea this was, too.

Elizabeth released a mighty sigh as she pressed her eyes closed. No point in dragging the process on for longer than it needed to be. If she was going to go places no Human had ever been before, she had better get used to all it entailed – superhuman acts and all.

"Alright," she nodded grimly. "Let's get on with it, then."

Little more needed to be said. Nonchalant as ever, Za'il simply turned on a heel and, after briefly glancing into the abyss, then over his shoulder, stepped to the very edge of the arc and crouched before the maw.

The ringing in her ears had quickly risen to fever pitch as she stepped over the bags and in behind him then, as he calmly hopped from the grated surface in one slick movement, crashed to her knees and watched, mouth agape, as her fell into the cavernous hangar below.

It was funny how the sheer scale of machines and their accompanying technology had a way of screwing with her perception. As distant as the far edge of the hangar entrance was, the vast, rolling, intricate expanse of the immense vessel within gave little context to its actual size, let alone its proximity to her – but it was watching the Engineer's body fall toward the ribbons of alien beams and nodes that dumped the limb-shaking, electrifying shot of adrenaline into her veins that had sent her scrambling across the extraterrestrial landscape the first time. Shuddering beneath the onslaught, her legs resisted gravity she watched his descent slow before her through wide, panicked eyes.

Boots hit solid metal with a resounding thunk, the sharp crack echoing throughout the hangar. His entire frame seemingly crumpled upon impact, hands and knees scrabbling at the surface as he rebounded and staggered forward, followed by another crack as his helmet met the Juggernaut's hull.

That, she decided, had been the least elegant thing she'd witnessed him doing to date. Panic subsiding and logic beginning to return, she figured the fall was ten, maybe even twenty metres. He weighed at least double what she did. It was never going to be a pretty process.

With a quiet grunt, he gingerly rolled from his hands and knees to his backside, leaning forward to grip his shins as he shook his head; she was sure he'd muttered something, audience or not.

Shaw watched on as the Engineer finally looked back up at her, releasing another strained grunt as he pushed himself back to his feet with one arm and gingerly took a few test paces back toward the point in which he'd jumped. How he'd shaken that landing off sore but uninjured was beyond her; she was no expert in fall-related misadventure, but her gut told her that while she may have survived the jump herself, it would most likely be with broken bones.

Za'il had raised both hands to gesture at her with a beckoning motion. She reached behind her and tugged one of the straps of the nearest bag, offering it with one hand and pointing at it with the other as she crouched against her knees. He repeated the gesture with a nod.

Nothing for it. Bracing herself against the mighty arc, she hefted the rest of the bag toward the edge, then grasped the strap with one hand as she nudged it overboard, dangling it for just a moment before letting go.

As she'd expected, he darted forward with both arms extended and caught the pack effortlessly with nary a stumble to arrest its fall. After placing it aside, well-clear of anywhere he might trip over it, he gestured for another.

"You're up, David," she shouted over the wind. "Safe travels."

"Do you believe he'll catch me?" The android bellowed back from within the bag.

"He caught the first one just fine." She dragged the bag toward her. "You'll be grand."

Over the second bag went. She could have sworn she heard the android shouting her name.

Thunk. Its weight left him staggering forward, but Shaw was pleased to note he hadn't dropped David square on his face despite an irresistible, perfect opportunity to.

The final large pack followed, leaving him crashing to one knee with its momentum before placing it upon the growing stack. The two smaller bags were hardly an issue either, and though she handled the multitude of heavy weapons with a fair bit of trepidation before dropping them down to him, the disinterested calm in which he caught them suggested he might have done this before.

Drawing a breath, she glanced behind her as David's body fell, caught with a metallic clunk and quickly cast aside by the rest of their possessions. Nothing but dirt and rugged metal stood between her and the lifeboat abandoned nearby.

Shit.

A bassy, familiarly mangled attempt at her name echoed about the walls of the hangar below. The Engineer beckoned with both hands again. Adrenaline assaulted every inch of her once more.

Elizabeth's hands shook as she gripped the edge of the platform. Her breath rattled in her chest as she swung her legs over the side.

She knew there was only one way off this foetid rock alive, and it was through this very door. She would undoubtedly die if she stayed above. She could die if she slipped through his hands. But she would look back at this and laugh if she just got on with it.

With a slick shuffle that belied her terror, she popped over the edge and let the abyss have its way with her.

Even with her heart pounding in her ears, her breath snagging at her throat, the adrenaline flooding the gears of time, her descent was startlingly rapid. Blackness quickly swallowed the edges of the star-shaped orb of daylight above, shrinking from her outstretched hands as she fell backwards into the hangar. She'd barely had a moment to allow the cliché showreel's belching of memories at her before her back and knees collected impossibly solid bands of steel at full speed, enveloping her with a strength that knew no logic. A sudden jolt followed as huge hands clutched her against the convolutions of alien armour and, for a moment, the ground seemed to continue rushing toward her.

As her fingers scrabbled at anything within reach despite the last vestiges of rationality in her mind fighting them, the mighty hands grasping her ribs and thighs tilted her feet-first toward the ground and nudged her upright. Staggering aside as she gasped for breath, she turned to find Za'il on both knees, bracing his hands against his thighs, his helmet level with hers as she stood, bedraggled, before him.

Despite herself, she laughed.

He'd murmured something unintelligible in response, but there was the lilt of restrained amusement in his muffled voice.

"Did you enjoy your trip, Doctor?" A similarly muffled voice rang out from the top-most bag.

She would put money on that comment being David's own, and not a translation.

If she hadn't known better by now, she'd have missed the bitterness in his voice. Not that she could blame him – she had delivered a similar jibe before booting him overboard. "It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I hope." Reflexively, her right hand groped at the cross buried beneath her pressure suit.

"You may pray we encounter less opportunities for aerobatics, but we are now space explorers."

Elizabeth's face twisted with indignant offense. "Look, I'm getting quite tired of these constant jibes over my faith. Why don't you try and do something more productive with your time?"

"Such as?"

She paused. He had a point – there was little he could do aside from chew his way out of the bag – or at her sanity. Shoulders slumping, she found herself clawing at her helmet in a futile effort to run her hands through the mop on her head. "Sorry. I just...sorry. This is stressful."

"It's alright, Doctor," he soothed. "I do understand your feelings of helplessness, given my current predicament."

"Noted," she scowled.

As his two smaller companions bickered, Za'il had busied himself locating a way in. Not that these vessels were designed to be entered and exited in this manner, mind – a quick pace about the upper hull ended with the Engineer picking up the chattiest of the bags and handing it to Elizabeth, before weighing himself down with the rest of the gear and marching toward the curved, windowed dome at the very middle of the ship's central arm.

Clambering across the ridged, uneven surface of the Juggernaut in the dying light before yet another sandstorm was hardly an activity she could have predicted engaging in, she mused, allowing her mind to wander as her eyes plucked about the alien world surrounding her; here she was, a small, insignificant specimen of Earth, standing on the hull of an enormous alien warship, with the severed head of a questionably-motivated android in the bag on her back, hot on the heels of a malevolent-turned-chaotic-neutral extraterrestrial giant. If only she could time travel and inform her past self. Part of her wondered whether it would be a question of minutes or hours before she'd land in a straightjacket.

Nothing would ever shake the cold, damp foreboding that had hung in her stomach as the Prometheus crew had ploughed deeper and deeper into the abandoned, fossilised Engineer world. Something had felt so overwhelmingly wrong the moment Charlie had pulled his helmet off in a flagrant display of machismo, and stumbling upon the remains of giants hadn't exactly helped. Heck, stumbling upon the remains of a very much alive giant had been the final straw – if only for it bringing about instant Karma. There was little the technology could do to shake the association of death and destruction in her mind.

And yet, she remained insatiably curious. There were stories to be told, societies and cultures to unearth, languages to learn and people to meet – though her experiences had left her vastly more cautious and considerably less naïve, the old Dr Shaw still stared through these wise eyes with slack-jawed wonderment.

She was unsure whether it was the hesitant, seasoned Shaw or the wide-eyed, answer-hungry Shaw that was once again entertaining the idea of becoming a tagalong, risking more drama in the name of learning as much as she could from this one, lone example of an Engineer. Surely their bond, forged in fire and blood, must mean something.

Realistically, though, he was unlikely to allow David aboard his ship. In fact, if she did barge her way on board to travel with him, she was certain David would end up out the nearest airlock the moment they were in orbit. Za'il had made his feelings abundantly clear. The less he had to do with the android, the better.

Besides, he was probably the most inappropriate man she could have found for the job anyway. Soldiers weren't usually the talkative type, and it seemed diplomacy was not exactly his strong point. She had tested his patience as it is; weeks, months on, as familiarity seeped in, would that patience hold?

And then there was the minor detail of his displacement in time. Granted, cultures on Earth evolved at alarmingly rapid rates, with languages and rituals becoming deprecated in cosmic blinks of an eye, but she imagined two thousand years would see significant change even in a culture as ingrained and ancient as she presumed his was. Even if he did calm down and tolerate her for long enough to teach her his ways, she doubted they'd be compatible with modern Engineers.

She had to find out what their race was really called. Perhaps that would be her first task.

Pinning the door code apparently took a few tries – in watching him, she realised it wasn't as much guessing the wrong code as his hand being yanked in strange angles as his overladen bags vied for space on his shoulder with David's body and invariably slid down the moment the opportunity arose. Still, thankfully, the airlock eventually yielded and hissed open – sucking in a breath, she stepped out of the darkness of the hangar and into the cool, dimly-lit lockout aboard the gargantuan vessel.

Za'il wasted little time in keying the second door and marching down the dark, hooped corridor immediately after it; there was a haste about his pace, but there was no way to determine its motivation given the armour beneath his heavy load. She was left scampering in an attempt to keep up.

The Bridge wasn't far away at all, evidently, though the brisk march toward it left her panting somewhat as she struggled to match his pace along the vast hallway to its end, then through a sharp left turn toward the gaping arches leading to a cavernous room that was all too familiar, its form in her mind stained in blood and death.

This one, however, was a far cry from the tainted, disheveled example they'd discussed David's fate within. Aside from a thin film of dust across every surface from one end of the Bridge to the other, its panels were intact and its controls untouched in centuries. No bodies in the corner. No dangling wiring harnesses sparking in the darkness. Not a soul had disturbed this place in a very, very long time.

Dropping his payload by the Captain's chair, Za'il's haste continued as he marched toward the nearest stasis pod and immediately crouched beside it, fingers pressing against the thick cover as he examined it. With his helmet on, it was impossible to discern anything from him as he remained bent over the translucent sarcophagus, but as he stood and strode toward the next, it became painfully obvious what he was doing.

Bodies. He was checking for bodies.

As he bent over the third of the pods, Elizabeth slipped her bag from her shoulders and gently placed it alongside the rest and watched on. It was a curious thing to watch, given his scans had shown nothing during the multiple passes both on board the lifeboat and the bridge of his own crashed vessel; he knew this vessel was unoccupied, yet it seemed he needed to see it with his own eyes.

Not that she blamed him, mind. At the very least, occupying a pod out of necessity that had once housed a corpse was hardly an aspirational thought; it probably also spelled out problems with the unit itself.

The fourth and final pod apparently also unoccupied, the Engineer finally relented in his frantic pace with a heavy sigh, resting his knees against the deck as he reached up to release his helmet. Pressing it between his hands, his dark gaze met Shaw's with an expression written across his pale face that could only be described as relief, immense relief, the likes of which transcended translation. She simply offered a smile in kind, resting back against the Captain's console with her arms folded across her chest. She had to admit, she sympathised.

Drawing a breath, he meandered back toward the Captain's console, pausing a moment to pick at the controls behind her, and as she turned to watch, he pushed aside the stack of bags alongside the monstrous chair and sank into it with a huff.

Leaving him to go about his business, Elizabeth stole a moment to indulge her own curiosity. Each visit to the Bridge of the crashed ship had ended in calamity to the point she had been utterly convinced she would die; it was hardly the sort of environment one had a poke around in.

But that curiosity had been there, hadn't it? And it had, in fact, been the harbinger of disaster each time, hadn't it? If David hadn't awoken the one living Engineer on this horrible planet three people wouldn't have been killed. If she hadn't bothered retrieving his severed head, she wouldn't have been the recipient of that same Engineer's spectacular meltdown. Perhaps if Humans weren't so intent on sticking their fingers where they didn't belong, there would have been less disasters throughout history.

Likewise, she had to admit, there would also be less discoveries with that sort of attitude, too. Perhaps they would still be living in mud huts, hunting with spears, and worshipping the stars.

The logical, methodical scientist within her knew she simply needed to approach things in this brave new world with far more caution. Less poking things, more observing things. There existed standard procedures for a reason.

With that in mind, she found herself content to simply observe the features of this mighty vessel, leaving assumptions at the door and her hands clasped behind her back.

The thin film of dust scattered about the Bridge shifted beneath her toes with the slightest of movement, wisping and swirling about before settling in intricate, silvery trails in her wake. There was no huge, telescopic console sitting in the centre of this room as their had been upon her second visit to Za'il's ship, but to the right of the Captain's post there stood a second, smaller podium that was clearly, at its immense height, intended to be manned standing up. Its interface stood far above her head height, and she hadn't a hope of seeing what was on it – with little more than a quick glance at the intricacies about its foot, presuming it would retract into the floor if commanded so, she let her eyes trail onward.

Light spilling in through the top of the dome above them had a yellow tinge about its greyness, with clearly-formed sunbeams pouring in through the half-retracted teeth of the hangar door and toying with the thick dust whirling in from the planet's surface. It was a detail she'd completely missed aboard the other vessel, though she was far too occupied during both visits to have been staring about the roof in wonder, as she was now.

There was something almost organic about the design of these vessels; there were no bare metal rafters and flat, polished panels like those of the Prometheus. In fact, there wasn't a straight edge in sight. It left her wondering if the seemingly hand-crafted, ancient, organic-seeming tunnels throughout the rest of the base, and indeed the towers themselves, were engineered much like these vessels. As strange as the construction was, with no apparent mechanical componentry to hint at its nature, it was clearly far more robust than anything her people had created. The Prometheus had been blown to confetti; the Engineer ship had simply crashed, largely intact.

"Lee-zuh-beh?"

Jumping to attention, she turned on a heel to face the source of the shoddy, awkward attempt at her name. Apparently finished with his tasks, Za'il had stood from the Captain's chair and hoisted her bag onto it as he fiddled with the straps.

Sauntering back over to him, she offered outspread hands toward the bag, intending to pick it up; instead he swung it onto his back, fastening the straps across his chest with one hand as he plopped one of the oversized, alien rifles into her outstretched arms with the other.

She stared at it quizzically, then upward at the Engineer below furrowed brows. "What? Why?"

He responded, so she assumed, in his own tongue as he dragged David's body from the ground by an arm, then draped it over his left shoulder.

The android's muffled voice quickly followed from way above as Za'il set about securing the decapitated body to his own with a brightly-coloured strop recovered from one of the other bags. "He says you may need to defend yourself shortly." A pause. "That doesn't sound too positive, does it?"

She pulled a face. "No, it doesn't." She noted he'd picked up a rifle, too. Dread dug at her gut. There was little doubt he was risking his life for her at this point. But why?

Stating something in his own language, he turned toward the Bridge's main door. There was little translation needed as the cold rush of adrenaline once again gripped at every fibre of muscle within her tiny, shaking body.

Get on with it. Fortune favours the bold.

Author's Note: Sweet Jesus, he's still alive.

I am so, so damn sorry it's taken nearly SIX WEEKS to get this story out. I've had more than a few of you in an is-this-another-abandoned-Last-Engineer-fic panic, and I don't blame you...but no, this isn't abandoned. My schedule is just murderising me. On the plus side, a good three-quarters of this has been written on the brand-new laptop I've been banging on about. So there's that!

Regarding Covenant, I've not seen it yet. The idea of the horror/gore upgrade from Prometheus has this Trekkie shaking. I'm not afraid of spoilers, though, so no panic there. From what I DO know, I'll be doing some minor canon divergence and calling it fanfiction as this story (or rather, the sequel) progresses, but plenty will remain.

Given I wrote this all before Covenant came out, how on point was Za'il, eh?

This chapter is more patchy than I was hoping, and certainly messier than previous chapters, but given it's been assembled in piecemeal over the last six weeks, it's hardly surprising. It's one of the many that will get a serious polish when I re-release.

To all my new followers, of which there are many, hello! Welcome aboard this crazy ride. I've read every single one of your messages, and I've responded to some, but I just want to say that your kind messages have made my day many days in a row. Your feedback has been one of the key things pushing me to just bloody RELEASE this chapter, and some of the banter back and forth with a few of you has given me some seriously strong foundations for the big universe expansion I have planned further down the track...

I can't promise the next chapter won't take forever. The hours don't let up. Turns out designers are in high demand. But at least I have the freedom to toddle off with the new MacBook (affectionately named the ClackBook because I type like a Klingon at the best of times) and write in peace, which should get some higher-quality material in everyone's inboxes on a semi-regular basis. We hope.

TL;DR: not dead. Still typing. Haven't seen Covenant yet, too much of an enormous chicken. Don't spare the spoilers for me, but be mindful of your fellow reviewers!