Alpha Colony - Chapter 4

Please bear with me on any editing mistakes, this was written on a phone with a keyboard and editing was rather difficult. I'll clean it up when I have the opportunity! 

Lucas stared down at Sara’s body, wide-eyed. 

He’d never been out in the wilderness before. It was dangerous. Half the flora caused wild and sundry allergic reactions that could permanently kill you, and most of the fauna was said to treat you either as prey or an adversary. Xenologists went in teams, with large packs of gear and a lifeline to call in for help should something go wrong. 

It was, in a word, dangerous. 

And here he was, alone. No food, no water, just a suggestion of a shelter… somewhere. Covered by floral bloom to make it impossible to see. 

And he still hadn’t gotten to clean up after pooping his pants. 

Pacing, running his hands through his hair, Lucas tried to keep his breathing calm. “You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re-” 

He wasn’t buying it. No amount of repetition could convince him that he wasn’t going to meet his end out here in the woods, one way or another. 

That’s when he noticed the eyes. A set of six glistening, cold eyes were watching him through the woods, nestled amongst the low polyps and bushes, blinking occasionally. Staring. Calculated. 

I need a weapon. Looking around, Lucas tried to see something he could pick up to fend it off. A branch, or a rock, but something that wouldn’t have a toxic reaction with human skin. Nothing obvious was around, unless the creature was scared of moss and deep purple flowers. 

It shifted, raising up, showing more of its chitinous body. It lumbered towards Lucas, powerful limbs leaving remarkably little impact on the ground as it walked. It was in no particular rush, but even its relaxed lope was quicker than Lucas could run, not that it mattered. 

He was paralyzed by fear as the creature got closer, staring at him, then staring past him, at Sara’s limp, motionless body. 

The alien lifeform tilted its head, then stepped forward, prodding the lumpy mass in the seat of her torn pants with a delicate limb. It chittered in what Lucas could have sworn was a sigh, then scooped her up, tossing Sara’s body over a shoulder. 

It started to walk away with its prize, then stopped, looking back at Lucas. 

“Wh-what?” He stammered. “Do you… Do you want me to follow you?” 

All six of its eyes rolled, and it kept shuffling away. 

Without an idea of what else to do, Lucas followed. 

It didn’t make any sense. They were supposed to be on a Class C planet - housing developed life, but no species with intelligence above that of base animals. And yet, the creature had looked at him with recognition.  

What is it, anyways? He recognized it, though he couldn’t place it beyond a general ‘Big chitinous mass’. If he had a chance to stop and look it up on his communicator he could probably figure it out, but now didn’t seem like the time. 

They shuffled through the forest, making a strange procession, going about a hundred feet until they came to an embankment covered in blooming flowers. The creature set Sara down, loped to the side, and dug into the dirt a bit with its appendages, lifting up a concealed doorway. Picking up Sara one more time, it set her down inside the doorway, looked back at Lucas one last time, and them lumbered away. 

“What…” Lucas mumbled, in confusion. “I don’t… um…” 

He looked back at Sara. Right. Injured woman. Help her now, figure it out later. 

The doorway led to an enclosed living space, something that seemed more like a starship’s interior than one of the prefabricated apartments of the colony. Stepping through the doorway, Lucas got his arms under Sara’s, dragging her inside. She was surprisingly light, maybe a hundred twenty pounds at most, not counting the weight dragging down the seat of her diaper. 

First, leaving Sara for a moment, he took stock of the space. The entrance looked like some sort of airlock that had been rigged to stay permanently open. Past it, a hallway, with a half dozen side rooms and finally a cockpit at the end. 

The captain’s chair was tossed to the side, and the control panels were missing. In their place, a hammock was strung up, with a chair and a digital display off to the side. 

He checked the side rooms, peering through the windows on the doors to see what was inside. One was storage, another was a compact bathroom. The rest were former seating areas, but one had been converted to house a fridge and an electric stovetop, one had a high, reinforced, padded table next to a waste reclaimer and a package of diapers, and the last two were simply stripped clean to serve as storage. 

Lucas put it together. They were in one of the escape pods from the OSC Griffin. Most of its pods had never been recovered, and if the air filtration and computers were still working, it’d make a nice little hideout. 

Returning to the airlock entrance, he got his arms under Sara again, pulling her towards the bathroom. He didn’t know field medicine, but he could at least get her clean, even if it was going to be a particularly awkward process. 

Blushing, he began the task of pulling away her clothes. 

The top wasn’t too difficult. She was limp, and it was just a matter of tugging at it until her limbs came free. Two dark, mottled scars were visible on her back where the wings had grown, and two more purple wounds were plain to see around her midsection. Bullet wounds, but already sealed up more than seemed possible. 

Pressing on, he unclipped her bra, pulled off her boots, and finally started tugging down her pants. 

It came as no surprise, but her diaper was in awful condition. Even with all the most modern absorbent and elastic materials, it was straining to contain the sheer bulk of her various accidents. 

Pulling her body into the shower stall, Lucas pinched his nose, pulled at the tabs, and let the diaper flop away from her body, displaying the muck inside. Quickly, before the smell could infect the whole escape pod, he bundled the whole thing up and tossed it into the bathroom’s waste reclaimer, leaving only the muck still clinging to Sara’s thighs and butt. 

Gently, not wanting to get water in her mouth, Lucas turned on the hand sprayer and started cleaning her off. 

It wasn’t hard. Ship hygiene was efficient and compact, so as not to waste any resources or filtration time, and the water had microscopic detergents that broke down the waste easily. Lucas only had to spray her off, then switch to pure water to rinse away the detergents, and then she was clean. 

He didn’t know what to do from there. He couldn’t exactly perform surgery on her injury, if she even needed it. He’d have to wait until she woke up, which might take hours, and might see her having more accidents. 

Blushing, her pulled her body to the first of the reworked crew seating rooms, the one with the padded table and the diapers. Panting to lift her body, he heaved up and got her onto the table, catching his breath before he went for the pack of diapers. 

Gingerly, he folded it in place around her waist, stuck down the tapes, and then stepped back. She was as cared for as he could make her, in the short term. Now it was his turn. 

Stripping clean, he showered, washing away the muck on his own body. 

For his clothes, things were a bit more difficult. There wasn’t any obvious laundry space he could find, and putting back on the old, smelly clothes would have defeated the point of the shower. 

He went to check one of the storage rooms, but the door was sealed with a credentials scanner. 

Standing around naked wasn’t really an option. He didn’t want to seem like a creep when Sara woke up, but since the only other clothes he knew of were Sara’s own, equally dirty ones, that left him only one real option as far as garments went. 

Blushing, he walked back to the changing room, covering himself with a hand in case Sara woke up. HE took another diaper from the pack, hurried out, and turned it over in his hand to orient it the correct way. 

It wasn’t as bad as he expected. The diaper was bulky, sure, but it didn’t impede his motion much. He was able to walk freely, the modern materials conforming to his movement to provide accident protection without getting in the way. 

Settling in on the hammock, he resolved to wait for Sara. He still had too much adrenaline and anxious energy to sleep, so he pulled out his communicator and tabbed to the encyclopedia.

It took ten minutes to find the creature he’d encountered in the woods. A Thulut. Isolated except during mating season, it was, reportedly, little more than an enormous crab. No intelligence beyond base instincts. 

He double checked the pictures. It was the same creature, unless there was a second, identical species. 

To be certain, he pulled up a video, but it showed what the encyclopedia described. No apparent intelligence, just a lumbering creature, nibbling on the local growths and bushes and the occasional small, slow animal. 

Frowning at the display, he leaned back. He still wasn’t tired, but… 

Zzzzz