Emotionless, endlessly polite, the voice of the suit's computer fell upon deaf ears as every ounce of her being remained trained on the door. Though her feet were welded to the floor, in a heartbeat she was ready to bolt. Her legs were coiled springs, her finger against the trigger a fuse waiting to pop.
Damn them all to Hell, they would not die like this.
The voices behind her continued in a clamour of pointless noise, the deeper of the two sounding more and more urgent as sweat trickled from her brow into her eyes while the other, muffled and distant, spoke with a far more gentle tone.
There was a persistent ringing in her ears as every resource she owned awaited the arrival of the monster on the other side of the door, breath rasping in her throat, her body quaking from terrified overuse. And yet, the rifle seemed so light in her grasp.
"Warning. Thirty seconds of oxygen remaining. Recharge suit oxygen levels immediately."
The deeper voice persisted amongst a flurry of footsteps, followed by the higher-pitched of the two. There was little to tie them to reality as they floated about her, mere smoke trails in the dusty path in which she stood, squinting in the dark, eyes desperately seeking the slightest of movements amongst the convolutions of the alien corridor. Dust had settled in the shape of footprints far larger than her own, but they were not those of the creature.
It was taunting her.
The distant rattle of a zipper being torn open barely registered as she remained locked in place in the corridor, weapon still raised. The voices continued, far closer this time; the gentle one sounded less muffled as it called her name, and the deeper one, she realised, was looming over her from behind. Why were they not focusing on their doom? Why were they not preparing to fight the sickly-blue monstrosity? They couldn't die like this.
The corridor seemed to close in on her as seconds ticked by, suddenly claustrophobic in its confines.
"Warning. Fifteen seconds of oxygen remaining."
The searing light seemed at odds with the dark corridor; was she still in the tunnel system at all, or was this the lifeboat? Abruptly, she was no longer sure. It seemed like the lifeboat in its cool, artificially-lit haze, but the door looked nothing like the airlock aboard the small, crippled vessel.
Behind her came a tempered, cautious breath and the clack of armour against the metal deck.
In the blink of an eye, two enormous hands had gently snaked up her forearms. What on Earth…
Recoiling from the touch, she watched in horror as the hands slid forward and grasped the rifle in her grip, then sharply wrenched it forwards; her fingers clamoured desperately for it, but it was too far from reach. Her back slapped against a solid surface amongst the chaos, unsure whether she was flailing toward the weapon or away from it – all she knew was that the blue horror would surely be upon them any moment now, and she had to defend herself…
"Warning. Oxygen depleted. Recharge suit oxygen levels immediately."
Icy realisation gripped her chest as the air in her suit quickly became stale. Wide-eyed with startled fear, her gaze whipped about the room as she pivoted on a heel; the door she stood before was unrecognisable, the room beyond it an unfamiliar grey dome with few intricacies etched into the rising, curved walls from featureless, near-black flooring. The Engineer had risen to his feet behind her, whisking the weapon further from her reach and casting it aside with a sharp clatter. Without his helmet, his furrowed brows and wide eyes were a picture of near-panicked concern. David, however, perched atop the bag he arrived in, had a studied scowl etched into his features, but was notably, frustratingly calm.
Each gasp for air became more laboured as the air grew thin and foul. Heat rushed to her cheeks as she began to sweat profusely, fingers clawing desperately at the oxygen port over the chest-piece of her suit. She was going to suffocate in this blasted thing, nowhere near the lifeboat and with no one that could help her.
Za'il had sunk back to his knees again, hurriedly barking something at David as he clamped one hand over her shoulder and pulled her closer with enough torque to pull her off her feet. She was faintly aware that her tongue was poking out of her mouth with her increasingly frantic gasps as she staggered toward him. This would make for an ugly corpse.
She had been right, in her inexplicable delirium. She would not die at the hands of an alien monster.
David had said something in the Engineer's tongue, but as the room began to sway, she could only focus on the huge, rough fingers fiddling with the base of her helmet. Wait, was he going to remove it? On an alien world, with the sort of air that would kill her?
She snatched at his fingers with a whimper, eyes darting about the room again in search of oxygen reserves. She'd packed them in the bag with David. He was right there. All she needed to do was break free and get to them…
A frustrated growl rippled through the room as a mighty hand clamped down on her hipbone, rocking her against her unsteady legs. The other resumed its fiddling as she reached outward, pointing a feeble finger in the direction of the bag. Her voice was little more than a rasp. "In there, in there!"
With a familiar bip, the helmet's mechanism unlocked; in a heartbeat, both Za'il's immense hands were pressed against it, yanking her forwards as he twisted it free and ripped it from her shoulders.
Fresh, cool air flooded her lungs in an instant, and she found herself loudly, reflexively gasping at it as she collapsed forward, fingers digging at his armoured chest as she crumpled. Firm hands pried her loose by the biceps moments later, steadying her as she wobbled on her feet and resisted her scrabbling, dazed grasp.
What...what the Hell had just happened?
With nothing but the sound of her own roaring gasps for air in her ears, she steadied herself as she swayed, glancing about the room once more, arms hanging limp beside her. Both sets of eyes were upon her, silently observing as she scrambled for composure.
Pausing to tug his gloves from his hands, Za'il looked her up and down for a drawn moment before grasping her upper arms again and gently, gently shaking her. He'd murmured something in earnest, and she could only assume it was to express his concern given the matching expression written across his face. He paused to glance at the weapon he'd thrust aside before muttering something else. She all but fell into the black of his stare as he looked her dead in the eye once more.
Her fingers tingled as she shakily raked the matted mess her hair had become from her face, distantly aware she was slick – no, sopping wet – with sweat. Za'il had returned to the matter of the rifle as she gradually returned to reality, plucking it from the ground before hunting about a series of hidden panels not far from the airlock for an appropriate place to stow it. He'd said something, and before she could scrape up the words amongst her racing breath to query David as to what the ever-loving Hell was going on, the android elaborated. "Elizabeth, the creature is outside the vessel. It can't get to us in here." He offered a saccharine smile. "We'll be alright."
Vessel, she mused silently as the gears turned. Then it finally dawned on her. The entire point of all this planning, prepping and panicked running was to get to the abandoned Engineer vessel buried underground! Swallowing hard as she sought to regain at least some dignity, she responded to the android – though her eyes were upon their larger companion. "You're certain?"
"Absolutely," David enthused. "Our friend insists we preflight and launch the ship, after which he will give us a brief tour."
Za'il murmured something as he half-turned to face her; it was familiar, although not as familiar as the infernal apologies that had littered their interactions days earlier. Given the concern still pressed into his pale features, she assumed he was asking her if she was alright. A feeble smile was all she could think to offer in response as she ruminated those apologies and her indignant responses to them. At this point, a few of those would slide down a little more easily than they had.
What hadjust happened?
Squeezing her eyes closed as she drew a long, measured breath, the chaos that had enveloped and constricted her briefly threatened to return; the long, endless tunnel seared into her eyelids oscillated wildly between immense, arching blackness and the gunmetal-grey steel of the lifeboat's airlock, never sure quite what it was, but surging forward with relentless pace regardless. Even as her boots remained glued to the ground, she felt as though she was still sprinting from death; even with her eyes pressed firmly shut, she still saw panel after panel screaming past her in a whirlwind of frantic motion.
She was going crazy, wasn't she?
As the Engineer reached down to pack the severed head back into the pack it came from, David had briefly offered the most polite of verbal resistance – while the words were entirely alien, his facial expressions were easily read – before yielding with a dramatic sigh as he disappeared amongst canvas.
"You'll finally reassemble me once we're enroute, won't you, Doctor?" His voice was muffled by the bag, but the plaintive indignity oozed through. There was a faint clunk as his head met his shoulder, the Engineer apparently disinterested in taking any real care of either item of luggage as he hefted the lot onto his back with a nonchalant swing.
"Of course, David," she enthused with a reassuring grin he could not see, a grin that was perhaps more for her own sake than his; with it came a discernible chill, albeit not an unpleasant one, drawing her from the enormous arches outside and back into the silvery, brightly-lit dome of the smaller Engineer ship's interior. Its sparseness, almost clinical, was a welcome change. There were, upon refreshed observation, next to no places a creature of the monstrosity's stature to hide; this room, this bare room, contained nothing more than herself, the Engineer, her pack, and the pieces of android, and with the curved bulkheads reaching above her featuring little apart from flat surfaces and thin, metallic ridges between them, she doubted she'd find anything as small as hitchhiking spiders here, let alone whatever the Hell had pursued them.
The Engineer had murmured something softly as he meandered toward the hallway leading away from the room, beckoning calmly with his free hand; as he nudged his helmet and gloves toward the middle of the room with a boot, she did the same with her own, reasoning she would retrieve it later when she was in a far more assembled state, and fell in behind him as he entered the arched, dimly-lit corridor leading from the dome-shaped room.
Everything about this vessel seemed different from all she knew of the Engineers so far. There had been a distinct style about the huge, snaking corridors below ground that Za'il's warship had shared, with the intricacies etched into many of the surfaces appearing almost organic in nature and yet oh-so-deliberate, steeped in meaning and yearning to be decoded. The darkness that accompanied them had been consistent enough to be assumed, and yet, here she was, almost squinting in the light that flooded these pale, silvery hallways.
That light, she noticed, seemed to follow them as they progressed through the hall; spreading an ambient glow from hidden recesses in the curved bulkheads, the corridor ahead remained in near-darkness until they drew close, then faded behind them as they passed by. Makes more sense than lighting the entire ship, she mused as she shadowed the Engineer in silence. Pleasingly, little of it was more than gentle diffuse illumination, and any harshness was absorbed by the dark, matte flooring. The very definition of utilitarian, this vessel seemed destined for vastly different work than the two warships she'd visited thus far.
There had been doorways along the subtle gradient of the corridor, their arched frames dark and largely devoid of decoration, the smooth, grey doors themselves vaguely reminiscent of what she was used to seeing aboard the Prometheus. Other paths had split from this one, wandering in a perplexing series of concentric radii to and fro. Distantly she hoped there were maps of this blasted thing; the layout was unfriendly to a mind as scrambled as hers presently was.
Before long the corridor abruptly ended in a sprawling arch, opening out into another dome-like room. Its upper third to its apex immediately drew her eye, enshrouded in glossy black above more dull, silvery bulkheads; once more she was reminded that, while at least structurally similar, this vessel was notably different to Za'il's. The apparent lack of straight lines was one point they shared in common, in contrast to the ship she had arrived on board, but scale – in this case, an apparent lack thereof – was one thing they did not.
To the right of the corridor's terminus sat a scooped, oversized chair enveloped by an expansive, crescent-shaped console; immediately in front of it, a structure she did not recognise. The base, perhaps, appeared to be an almost organic, sweeping curve arching from left to right before the huge chair; much of the rest of the structure pointed upward in a telescopic barrel. Needless to say she could make neither heads nor tails of it, particularly in her present, exhausted frame of mind, and would sate her curiosity later.
Content to watch from afar, uninterested in straying far from the exit back into the hallway, Elizabeth quietly tugged the sticky, salty mess of hair from her face as she watched Za'il prop the bag and android body against each other between the central structure and what she could safely assume was the Captain's console. Spinning it around, the Engineer sank into the enormous chair with an unceremonious huff, a couple of calm, deliberate pokes of his fingers bringing life back to the long-dead, dust-caked interface.
Except, with him sitting in it, that chair wasn't so enormous, was it? The narrow curve of its broad back barely reached above his head, and as he swiveled it about, she noted its base came nowhere near the backs of his knees. More than anything, the union had made him look less than enormous, too. And yet, should she clamber into its vast base, she would be all but swallowed whole. The omnipresent nag in the back of her mind had cleared its throat, making sure she never forgot that she was dabbling in matters vastly beyond anything she had a right to. She would have to grow used to existing in a world where she was utterly, unquestionably inadequate for the task.
He had said something, she realised, noting his dark focus was upon her as his fingers lingered above the console. Brow furrowed, she stepped toward the pile of dismembered android as he patiently observed her. "David, what's he saying?"
"He's asking if you're alright, Doctor," he replied in a pleasant tone.
"Oh." But of course. Offering the Engineer another forced smile, she crouched by the bag and began wrestling with the fastenings. "You can reassure him I'm fine. I just...I just need a rest once we're underway. It's going to take a while to process everything that's happened here – it's been a long day."
"Understood," David enthused as she pried his head from the bag. She assumed he was passing the message along as he spoke, briefly, in Za'il's language.
Rather than respond, the pale giant simply gazed across at her, seemingly chewing at his lower lip in thought for a moment before pressing himself to his feet with a huff. Rotating the chair toward her, he gestured his other hand toward it before saying something, his gaze still fixed upon her.
Drawing a breath, she hefted herself up into the chair as it swiveled about below her knees; as apparent as it had always been, these were not designed for Human backsides. The curve swallowed her wherever she tried to sit, leaving her awkwardly crouched no matter her position. Finally settling in a cross-legged slouch toward its rear, she watched in silence as Za'il reached down to grasp David's head between two large hands and marched toward the structure in the middle of the Bridge.
After a brief exchange, the Engineer swung himself into the central, low-slung section of the unrecognisable structure, perching David's head against his chest as he all but completely reclined against its surface. In the name of assumption, she reasoned it must have something to do with navigation – little else was critically necessary aboard a starship, and she was currently occupying the post that would apparently perform every other function.
As the two bantered between themselves, the incomprehensible language lost its grasp upon her and her attention gradually fell to the array of buttons, displays and dials littering the console before her; it was slowly, gradually dawning on her that this vessel would be her home for the next indeterminate stretch of time, and she had better become familiar with each of these quickly if she intended to survive her next adventure.
A dull rumble echoed throughout the halls and through the base of her chair, its depth such that she felt it in the pit of her stomach rather than heard it. Across the room Za'il seemed notably busy, with both hands flying about the overhead console with expert calm before David's intent, steely gaze – it would have made for a humourous site at any other moment, the severed head resting against the armour of the immense creature that had wrought the damage in the first place, apparently deep in matter-of-fact discussion regarding what she imagined must be ship operations.
The rumbling gradually raised in pitch to the point she could finally hear it. She watched with distant interest as it jarred the thin veneer of dust from the console before her, drawing her eye to the plethora of lights beneath the round, bulbous buttons along its expanse; there were, upon second glance, inscriptions in the surface of some, but not others, that she would undoubtedly become more familiar with over the next...God-knows. Right now, the question of her future was one for the back of her mind. Right now, they had surviving to do.
Or did they? By this point they were about as safe as they'd been for days and days. They were no longer aboard a crippled vessel, and there were no unwanted guests aboard this one. The Engineer and the android were in the process of beginning their escape from this world, on the cusp of leaving the death and destruction of the Prometheus behind them.
And, she mused, after all that had happened, she had at least established that the pale alien was an ally.
But for how long?
That was another thought she quickly relegated to the back of her mind.
"Doctor, we are about to leave the hangar; are you ready?" David had raised his voice to the verge of shouting over the rumbling din of the ship's engines.
"Yes I am," she called out as her fingers scrabbled at the edges of the Captain's chair. "Let's get on with it."
In the next breath there was a thunderous increase in the noise that flooded the Bridge, followed by a discernable lurch that momentarily pressed her down into the seat; for all that she could tell amongst the persistent rush of air outside, the creaking and groaning from the bulkheads as the dormant vessel shuddered to life after more than two millennia, they had wasted little time in simply getting going.
The flurry of activity, she noticed as she stared, had at least some rhythmic tie to the occasional shift in direction she could feel in her gut. With no way of seeing what was going on beyond the Bridge, the swaying changes in motion had begun to leave her feeling somewhat queasy; reasoning she could ask David about piloting the vessel at a later date, she opted to follow some old advice she'd heard in passing many years ago, riding out the increasing green-gilled waves of motion sickness by pressing her eyes closed and simply imagining what was going on outside by the movements she felt.
If the complicated route out of here was anything to judge by, it was now obvious why they hadn't simply dropped in as they had hours earlier with Za'il's chosen vessel. It felt as though they had slowly, carefully been snaking their way out of a parking building, though she was left wondering just how they got the blasted ship in here in the first place. Navigating in and out of an underground network seemed far more complicated than it was worth, surely.
A distinct yellow tinge had permeated the room beyond her eyelids. Blinking her eyes open, she squinted through the golden, dusty haze toward the Engineer and the android; beams of light had erupted through the glossy upper section of the grey dome, the hallmark of sunlight attempting to cut through the thick layer of dust and debris caking the exterior of the vessel. The afternoon sun! They were finally outside, free of the base. She shifted in her chair as she heaved a relieved sigh.
The vessel's roar, she noted, had also somewhat dulled as she stared upward at the murky edges of clouds hiding beyond the film coating the glass dome. Much of it, she reasoned, must have been from navigating a confined space.
Finally, a deep thud nudged her from below, echoing throughout the Bridge and down the halls leading from it. An unfamiliar, despooling whine followed as a potent stillness engulfed the room, the Engineer's hands gradually slowing against the console above him. He had, she realised, been speaking to David throughout the flight, but as the thrum died down, she could finally hear them.
"Doctor, we're about to take a tour of the vessel," David enthused as the Engineer sat up and swung his legs free of the navigation array. "Za'il would like to show you the amenities you'll find useful during our travels."
"If there's a shower and a warm bed among them, I'm all ears," she grumbled, staggering down from her awkward perch before running her hands through her rather bedraggled hair once more.
David had apparently passed on the sentiment. A snort of laughter had escaped the pale alien; he shook his head with amused disbelief as he handed David to her.
Without another word, Za'il had simply motioned for her to follow him with one hand before heading back out into the corridor that led them to the Bridge, sauntering down the first right-hand intersection they happened upon and continuing in what she realised was in fact a concentric arc, as she had previously surmised, tracing the rotund curves of the ship's exterior. Perhaps it was the persistent, nagging state of arousal that refused to leave her, but this ship felt particularly small; there was little to each curve in the path before it merged into the next, the bare panels racing by as she marched to keep up with the Engineer's pace – even if he seemed to be deliberately taking his time.
The hallway widened as they came upon an intersection. As tall as these corridors seemed to her, their arc more than double her height at their apex, this section seemed even bigger, having risen a foot or two to make way for a sprawling archway in darkened gunmetal; beyond it stretched a broad, circular room, peppered with oversized tables and chairs that immediately presented a predictable problem: they were far, far larger than she was.
Glancing between her and the furniture beyond, Za'il had potentially made the exact same observation. There was a faint quirk about his lips that, by now, she recognised as heralding such thoughts.
With no mind for wasting time he'd wandered over to a nondescript port in the far wall, motioning for her to follow as he poked at the console next to it. Though she understood not a word of what he'd said as he pointed slowly and demonstratively at different sections the panel as they appeared, the mystery quickly unraveled itself as, with a faint electrical hiss, a bowl of something appeared out of thin air, at first presenting as beads of white light swirling about a concave shape, then settling into the form of something vastly more tangible. Fascinating… it appeared to be a significantly more technologically-advanced take on a food dispenser.
"This is a food replicator, from what I can roughly translate," David observed from his position cradled between her arms. "He believes it can be programmed to show images rather than text, as ours did, but doubts it will be particularly useful."
"I had wondered about that," she mused aloud, "Given there's not a lot to compare against between our cultures. Sweet and savoury, salty and spicy, it's all rather challenging to figure out just by looking." She paused a moment. "Heck, there's so much variety even on Earth as to what's appropriate for breakfast, and what's for dinner."
"Time to experiment with new things," he offered.
"Just as I was getting bored with food from home," she grinned.
Tracing the curved wall as he sauntered onward, Za'il appeared to notice the row of bottles lining the dark, scooped shelves; after a breath he murmured something softly, reaching up toward the second-highest of the shelves, tracing his fingers over several of the bottles before lingering over a slim, purple-hued example. Pulling it down from the shelf, he stole a moment to blow the dust from the bulge beneath its neck, then tugged the metallic fastening from it with a tell-tale ponk that reminded her, unsurpsingly, of home.
After taking a casual sniff, he reached downward and offered it to her, aiming the neck toward her nose; glancing up at him, she leaned in and inhaled.
Just how it had remained liquid after all these years was beyond her, but there was no questioning the sweet, fragrant aroma that met her was alluring. Perhaps there were perks to taking this vessel after all.
After re-capping the bottle and placing it on a lower shelf within Human reach, Za'il motioned for her to follow once again and led her from the domed room and back out into the corridor. Onward they wound through the tight maze of hallways and intersections; she was left wondering just how she would memorise the layout of this rabbit-warren of a ship, having grown accustomed to the far more perpendicular design of the Prometheus, and the open plan of the lifeboat. This vessel, at least, exuded the no-nonsense feel of Earth's vessels, even by way of colour and notable lack of ornate detail.
Their next stop, apparently, was a pair of arched, metallic doors that slid open almost silently as they approached. Hardly the hemispherical expanses of the Bridge and the Galley, this room was far more of a box and featured little other than two opposing walls of square, ridged panels, and a console above a sizeable slot facing the door they had walked through.
Za'il had begun talking, and once he had David's attention, set about poking buttons on the console and pointing out different sections of the pale blue text it presented him with. She had to wonder what on Earth could be so important about such a small, featureless room – granted, it was hardly claustrophobic to someone of her stature, but it certainly felt rather busy being crammed in here alongside a nine-foot-tall alien.
"Ah, I see," the head in her arms began after a moment, "This is...I don't know how to translate it, I'm sorry, Doctor. But it is another device that creates matter out of energy. This specific unit creates clothing to the size of the wearer – including the civilian version of the suit he is wearing."
Shaw wrinkled her nose. "I'll be damned if I'm going anywhere near a stasis unit any time soon. But good to know."
For some reason, that very moment only served to remind her of how she was very nearly forced into a stasis unit aboard the Prometheus by David himself – if nothing else, it sought to steel her resolve in avoiding them entirely.
Another thing to discuss with him once in orbit.
Several other rooms of minor note passed by as they meandered the halls, Za'il pausing to point out the crew recreation lounge, a small cargo hold, the shuttlebay – although, he had noted with amusement, missing its one, singular shuttle – and the engine room. The latter, apparently, would need little to no attention from either of them. She felt David make a face beneath her hands as he repeated the Engineer's remark regarding the low likelihood of them understanding the technology anyway.
The last room they stopped by was, according to Za'il, the late Captain's quarters. Stepping inside, it appeared significantly more utilitarian than she had expected, its curved walls as featureless as the rest of the vessel apart from a light over the enormous bed that glowed a deep purple and cast geometric patterns against the bulkhead above it. There was little else in the room apart from a plush reclining chair – vastly too large for her, beyond doubt – and a long, low glass table against the far wall. There were no windows, no skylights and no decoration, but it hardly surprised her.
Za'il had set about tearing the bedding from the mattress as she continued to explore, shifting David within her grasp as her arms began to complain about the constant weight; not far from the main door she found a second, and as she approached it, it retracted back into its alcoves to reveal what she could only assume was an ensuite.
After a quick word from the other end of the room, David's translation confirmed that theory. "Bathroom, Doctor."
"I was hoping we'd encounter one," she remarked with a wry grin.
Another comment followed from the bedroom, and after brief banter backwards and forwards, David continued. "He believes the shower won't be as nice as the one aboard the lifeboat; I believe this one uses inaudible sound waves rather than water." He paused. "Remarkable technology."
She couldn't help but release a disappointed sigh. "Not what I was hoping to hear, but it'll have to do."
"Quite right."
Turning back toward the bedroom, she noted a pile of ripped, half-disintegrated, powdery sheets in a pile in the middle of the floor, while Za'il had set about rather tidily making the bed with fresh bedding. Two thousand years, she mused, must not be kind on plush surfaces, even in a stable, inert environment such as this.
The halls leading back to the Bridge, in comparison, seemed borderline pristine; the wispy film of dust each footfall disturbed would soon be swept aside with regular-enough use, she figured. It would be the least of her problems.
At the other end of the scale was the Engineer's demeanour. She had noticed his moments locked in thought drawing out as they explored the vessel, the lingering stares, the increasingly regular sighs as he fought for words in silence. Admittedly, she wasn't much better as she forced herself to concentrate on the task at hand, refusing to allow herself to muse the inevitable that lingered closer and closer; this ship, this strange, alien ship, would be her new home for an indefinite period going forward, and it was that she ought to give its due respect.
But onward the drumbeat of loss pounded, tugging at the lump forming in her throat.
Why was it David she was exploring the Galaxy with?
The march back to the Bridge had been in stony, deafening silence. Heat stung her cheeks as she stepped through the archway behind Za'il, desperately wrestling with a clamour of thoughts racing to find ways she could have the android and Engineer tolerate each other and leave in just one ship.
The heat intensified as she realised just how selfish that thought was; he had far different goals once in orbit. She had no right to his presence. She ought to cherish it rather than presume it.
And yet, after so much time confined in each others' company, the still knew so little about each other.
And forever it shall remain.
Biting back on the rising wall of emotion, she continued to the navigation console and placed David's head against the flat, cushioned surface below the overhead console. How absurd; there was no point in getting tied up in knots over someone she'd barely gotten to know – particularly someone she couldn't even bloody understand.
David's body swiftly joined his head by the navigation console, the Engineer placing it below the tattered remains of his neck with a familiar lack of grace before pacing away, exhaling heavily, lingering about the centre of the Bridge momentarily before distracting himself with the Captain's console.
Elizabeth found herself barely able to look at either of them, instead watching flecks of dust dancing in the rays of golden light the roof of the dome allowed in. It seemed like the most twisted, counterintuitive concept to have intruded upon her yet, but in the strangest way, she already missed the moments huddled aboard the lifeboat, staring out at the truly immense mountains beyond, quietly enjoying the ethereal presence of the pale-skinned giant she'd awoken from millennia of slumber, trying her damnedest to unpick the mysteries of the universe from the confines of this foetid world. If anything, she regretted not living in those moments nearly enough.
Regret was as toxic a notion as it seemed.
Why was it that she refused to live in this moment?
Drawing and expelling another heavy breath, the Engineer finally pushed himself away from the Captain's console, gingerly sauntering toward her as she stood dumbly in the middle of the Bridge. There was an undeniable intensity about his dark gaze as he remained transfixed upon her, drinking in every detail – there had been a time where she had ruminated on his determination to all but ignore her, but right now, she felt all but bare as she remained the one, singular thing in the universe before him.
Swallowing hard, he sank to one knee before her, resting a hand against the other as he continued to observe her. The haze in the air did little to diffuse the afternoon sun, staining his skin with a golden glow; determined to commit every detail to memory, she allowed herself to pluck over every inch of his face – so alien, yet so recognisably Human – and marveled in the scent of him as she sucked in a breath.
If nothing else, this only galvanised her determination to find the rest of his people.
Out of the blue he tilted his head to the side, offering a heavy-lidded smile as he clapped a hand against her upper arm. Words seemed to briefly fail him, but eventually they found purchase as he uttered something quietly but firmly, indulging in a far broader smile as he gently squeezed her arm.
It struck her as the first genuine smile she'd seen on him – not a smirk, not a grin, but a smile.
She couldn't help but return it, chewing on her bottom lip as his stare seared into her soul.
And just like that, he was done; pushing himself to his feet, he stood with the military poise that had become so familiar and, with one last glance, turned on a heel to march from the Bridge.
Only, she noted, in his languid pace, it was far less of a march and more of a shuffle of the damned.
She could barely stand to watch as he traversed the hall, never looking back as he finally rounded the corner and disappeared from view. And yet, she could not look away.
Eyes burned into the very last of what she saw of him, her words came as a feeble whisper. "David, what did he say?"
"He said 'fly safe', Doctor," David responded in hushed tones. Somehow, she found herself wondering just how much of the message survived translation.
"Alright, so the two other backpacks we left behind and your repair toolkit," Elizabeth repeated as she wrestled with the oxygen refill canister that refused to stay in her grasp.
"I imagine there is more in the backpacks for you than there is for me, but I would be immensely grateful if you retrieved my toolkit," David responded pleasantly enough, though his steely gaze refusing to leave her.
"Should be two trips, maybe three." Tossing the canister back into the bag, she turned her attention back to the fading afternoon light beyond the glass canopy. "I can't see the warship any more – how far away is he?"
"Not far away, the Juggernaut has only begun ascending."
She paused. "Juggernaut?"
"That's what those warships are designated," he offered with a gentle smile. "This, upon inspection, is a civilian supply ship, conversely."
She raised both brows. "Appropriate, I suppose. Anyway. I'll fetch the rest so we can get this show on the road."
After collecting her helmet and exiting the airlock, she found herself scarcely able to believe the disjointed, confused state she'd entered the vessel in as she reflected on the past few hours. It had all seemed so surreal, borderline intangible.
In fact, as she traversed the short stretch of barren land between the looming Engineer vessel and the ragged, forlorn and vastly smaller lifeboat, she found herself wondering if it was, in fact, all a bizarre dream. The whole ordeal just seemed so divorced from reality that it seemed only right to pick at her apparently questionable sanity.
The Engineer, she noted, had set the vessel down very close to the lifeboat indeed. Perhaps he had anticipated her rushing back to it to pick up the packs she couldn't carry in the first trip. Regardless, as she bordered jogging across the landscape, she found herself immensely thankful for his forethought.
Whether it was residual adrenaline or a sudden jump in fitness was moot, but she had powered through the first trip to and from the lifeboat with both packs hardly slowing her down. Perhaps it was a sense of urgency to simply get going, to leave this death-ridden rock behind. God knew stepping back aboard the lifeboat had been more jarring than she'd been prepared for, noting the rings of magazines still sitting in perfect mathematical order behind the piano and the scattered sheets of paper sprawled from one end of the coffee table to the other. There was still a pile of broken glass by the bar and the remains of more bottles peppered behind it; without removing her helmet, she could imagine the heady, sticky scent that must still permeate the atmosphere in there.
Much as the tinkling, pondering, rising, pounding, roaring cacophony the piano, that bloody piano, had exuded these last few days.
With belongings littered about the vessel from one end of the other, acidic burns etched into the floor by the medbay, and scrawlings in a multitude of languages, she had little doubt the vessel would make for an utterly fascinating but endlessly perplexing discovery for someone, somewhere.
The second load had consisted simply of David's toolbox, but that alone was a significant weight that, in the fading pink-and-orange of approaching sunset, threatened to just about finish her off for the day. By the time she clambered aboard the supply ship once more she was left gasping for breath, and opted to leave her spoils by the entrance to the hallway to sort out at a later date before marching back to the Bridge sticky with sweat.
"Glad to see you back aboard," David enthused as she stepped onto the Bridge, releasing her helmet and propping it against the bag by the Captain's console. "We've just received a message from the Juggernaut."
Despite herself, despite every ounce of composure she could muster, her heart skipped a beat. "What does it say?"
"It says, 'Expedite your departure, CSX-7821'," he responded, matter-of-fact. After a pause, he wrinkled his nose. "Seems he's waiting in orbit."
Somehow, despite not being surprised, she found herself irritatingly disappointed. "Think he's waiting to join us or something?"
"He's probably making sure we're actually leaving," he reasoned with a quirk of a grin. "Which is, to be fair, what we should likely do next. Are you ready, Doctor?"
It was an odd question with a complicated answer, if she dared think about it. Was she ready to leave the eldritch horrors of this nightmarish world behind? Absolutely, lest she never sleep a wink again. Was she ready to leave the utter terror of the Prometheus' demise here, alongside the blinding, indescribable loss that accompanied it? In a heartbeat, for there was no room in her chest for quite so much sorrow. The death, destruction and nightmare-fuel deserved to rot alone, lost in time for millennia more. But the planet itself deserved more, its magnificence parallel to the greatest Earth had to offer. The Engineers deserved more, too; it felt strange, as an Archaeologist, to leave such a mysterious site untouched, leaving answers behind and seeking questions elsewhere.
But there was nothing here worth saving.
"Yes," she eventually enthused as she clambered into the Captain's chair, "Yes, I am. Let's get out of here."
It had struck her, minutes ago, that she had never been given the opportunity to see stars racing past at faster-than-light velocities aboard the Prometheus; the entire time they were enroute to LV-223 she had been in stasis. Now, here, she found herself staring upward as she curled up in the Captain's chair, watching the silvery streaks tearing past in long, meteoric lines through the glass canopy above.
"David, did you spend much time watching the stars fly past when you were passing time on the Prometheus?"
"Those aren't stars," he quietly observed from his prone position in the navigation array, "It's just debris. Bits and pieces of space. The stars don't streak by quite so fast."
"Oh," she murmured after a pause. "Well, that's somewhat anticlimactic."
"Is it?" He smiled. "I thought it to be rather interesting. Empty space isn't quite so empty."
"I suppose that's fair."
Silence once again consumed the Bridge, and as the resulting exhaustion of the day finally threatened to consume her, found herself disappearing into the subtle warble of the ship's engines and the distant, hushed hiss of the environmental systems. She would need days, if not weeks, to process even a quarter of what had happened now that she was safe.
After an extended pause, David spoke again with his signature, manufactured warmth. "Elizabeth, you must be tired by now. Perhaps you'd better rest."
The mere suggestion ripped a mighty yawn from her chest. "I'm pretty stuffed, to be honest. But I don't think I'll be able to sleep for a while yet." Gazing back down at the blinking instruments before her, she shifted in her seat. "So, what's our heading, now that we're no longer pretending to head back to Earth?"
"We were headed for Orion Spur, where Earth is, but we've diverted about thirty degrees to head further up the Perseus Arm."
Arching a brow, she observed the severed android head in all his irritatingly smug glory. Even reconnecting just his power conduit had left her feeling torn and vaguely dirty – no, tainted. "Uh, okay. And where was Za'il headed?"
"In almost the complete opposite direction," he offered with a growing smirk. "He is traversing the Perseus Arm, headed toward its outer reaches."
This, she realised, she would need to approach carefully. If nothing else, she needed to learn how to operate this vessel quickly. Heaving a sigh, she changed the subject while she silently mulled her options. "Oddly, I think I'm going to miss him."
It was David's turn to raise a curious brow. "Why is that? You shared nothing in common with him, and he seemed relieved to have dropped us off at our ship."
"I wouldn't say that," she countered with a vague scowl. Chewing her bottom lip in thought, she shifted against the blasted chair again. "I mean, admittedly I still know next to nothing about him, but...there were moments. He seemed fascinated by our culture, or at least what little of it he could find in the stack of books aboard the lifeboat. He loved the piano. I get the feeling the Engineers are quite musically-inclined."
"I, too, love music," he quietly mused. "You play beautifully, Elizabeth."
"That's a given, really, isn't it?" Her scowl had hardly budged. Perhaps she was more exhausted than she cared to admit. "It felt quite special to have that with an alien. I mean, the rest of him was so different to you and I – clearly he's a soldier of some kind, from a world we're yet to discover, and...I don't know, I'd have liked to have truly gotten to know him."
"From what I can gather," David offered with another smirk, "He was quite a sarcastic little devil. Rather impatient. He had little time for us."
Something about that observation didn't sit right, but she had to concede it may well be true. He had shown quite a slurry of emotions toward both of them, and there was an omnipresent fear within her that she'd permanently damaged their fledgeling friendship when she'd dragged David's synthetic carcass aboard. "I suppose."
The sensation that things may have been very different if she'd simply chosen a slightly different path was persistent, refusing to leave her for long.
"There will be other Engineers," the android added brightly after a lingering pause. "I believe I may have found something. At the very least, it's a candidate for their homeworld."
The chaos in her mind froze momentarily as her heart damn-near skipped a beat. "What, already?" She sat forward in her seat. "Tell me more."
His smile grew. "It's a small world, mostly mountainous and subtropical in the inhabited zones. It would only be a few months' voyage in this direction at high velocity."
Chewing at her bottom lip, she let that information steep in protracted silence. It made sense that he could have found their homeworld while attached to the navigation array, and it also made sense that they should head for it. She felt no reason to disagree. But something about it refused to sit right, refused to make total sense, as she pressed her eyes closed and pictured the mighty crescent-shaped vessel heading away from that world at high velocity. Surely he was headed for exactly the same place. Shouldn't they be shadowing him, just out of sensor range?
Two thousand years was a long, long time.
She really, really needed to learn how to control this vessel.
"Can't hurt to take a look, I suppose," she eventually observed, unable to shake the grim tone in her voice.
"Even if it isn't the world we're searching for," the android added, "It would make for a fascinating study in extraterrestrial life."
"Living things aren't really my domain," she offered with a crooked grin. "I mean, I'm still searching for the Engineers themselves – but short of discovering them, I'd prefer to find ruins. Not a nest of whatever the Hell those things are on that moon."
"All life is interesting, Doctor," David soothed gently, "Even that which we do not understand. In fact, the more we observe the unknown, the closer we come to truly understanding creation."
Both brows shot up. "Huh?"
"Life," he continued wistfully, "is something preternaturally curious for someone like me – created from parts assembled by Human hands, Human minds, left to decode the creation of the biological in those terms. I would very much like to know how it occurs elsewhere in the Galaxy, how much more perfect it could be."
Something in her stomach twisted. Why was this treading on familiar, uncomfortable ground? "Sure. But first, we're visiting the Engineers. Once we've done that...sure, let's go explore life at large."
"Yes, of course. The Engineers first."
A/N: And that's a wrap.
Those Whom Fortune Favours is the tale of an alternate escape from LV-223, and with Elizabeth and David enroute the Hell away from this cesspit, this story has drawn to a close.
Rest assured, however, that this isn't the end.
There is a direct sequel in the works, and you can start reading this by checking out The Redemption. (FF makes it impossible to link to, and difficult to find crossovers - you may need to find this story by looking at my stories under my profile.)
There is also an alternate version of this story in the pipeline, written from the Engineer's perspective - you'll find it under Intrepid. Again, you may need to hunt for it under my profile/bio.
The original intention of this story was to allow me to practice my writing, hone my skills and get me back in the game after years of hiatus. I originally intended to write The Redemption, albeit under another name, but used this to expand instead - needless to say it's grown a life of its own, and my writing has changed substantially as the chapters progress. As such, keep an eye out in the coming months; I'll be rewriting sections of it, improving chapters, correcting spelling and grammar horrors, adding extra detail, and if you're extra good, there might be a wee bonus once I get to the end.
Thank you all for reading, you've been a truly wonderful audience. For those of you that want to stick around, there will be both the above stories as well as a revival of several other old works of mine - just don't hold your breath for blazing speed, because I still haven't quite mastered this work-life balance stuff and find myself often working 6 day/50+ hour weeks!
Ka Kite Ano, and thank you for having me.