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What the hell? I let out a groan. Everything hurt. My back, my arms, my legs, my head—especially my throbbing head. My eyeballs felt sore as I peeled open my lids. Grayish light revealed a topsy-turvy chaos of crunched metal. Why am I hanging upside down? Pins and needles pricked at my dangling arms. I winced as I raised—lowered them—to grip the armrests of my seat. I was belted in.
Memories filtered into consciousness. We’d crashed. I did not remember the impact, but I remembered screaming as we fell through the sky, and, in the final seconds, the ground rising up at lightning speed. Miraculously, I’d survived—
“Nadir?” I croaked. “Are you all right?” I twisted my head. His seat was gone. “Nadir!” Could he have been ejected from the shuttle? “Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead.” Above me, a yawning gap in the hull revealed open sky. Don’t be dead. “Nadir!” Where are you?
I tugged at the restraints, getting nowhere. Recalling he had pushed a button to activate the safety belt, I jabbed every button on the armrest, but the harness held fast. I’m going to die here. Tears of fear and frustration trickled from my eyes to my hairline, the saltiness stinging a cut over my eyebrow. I’m trapped.
Wouldn’t it be a cosmic irony for the restraints to have saved me from a shuttle crash only to result in death by starvation?
Hell to the no. I did not survive abduction by aliens to die like this.
I pulled at the straps, creating a small separation between the belts and my body, and, little by little, managed to wiggle free. I dropped to an exhausted, aching heap on the floor, formerly the roof.
At the rear of the craft, eyes closed like he was sleeping—except for the blood congealed around his face and head—Nadir lay strapped into his seat, which had snapped free of its base. An illuminator, food pouches, water bags, and other items flung from compartments were scattered around him. A knapsack had landed on his chest.
“Nadir?” Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead. I dragged the heavy pack off him and knelt in a puddle from a burst water bag. I pressed my ear to his nose and mouth but felt no puff of air indicative of breathing. No! No!
Every insult and rude comment I’d ever hurled at him came back to haunt me. I’d taken great delight in mocking him. What had he ever done that was so terrible?
I palmed his chest. No detectable heartbeat. You can’t be dead. Maybe I just couldn’t feel anything through his thick fur, heavy blood-stiffened tunic, and the seat restraints. I wiggled my hand under his tunic to press against his furry chest. I went weak with relief when I detected a steady beat.
Thank god; thank god. I curled my fingers into his soft, thick fur. I continued to stroke his furry chest as tears slid down my cheeks...and then realized the examination had morphed into caressing. I yanked my hand out from under his shirt. Sorry. Sorry. I didn’t mean to go all pervy on you.
For further verification of life, I pressed my fingers to the pulse point on his throat. Also steady. Good. Good.
“Wake up. Please, wake up.” I shook his shoulder gently, afraid to jar him. He’d gotten conked on the head hard enough to render him unconscious. What if the injury was critical? What if he’d sustained serious brain damage? Head injuries bled a lot, but this much? His seatback and tunic were stained with his blood, his temple sticky with it.
I fingered the goose egg on my forehead. I’d been hit by flying debris, too. But, I’d awakened while he was still out cold. Please, wake up.
I needed to examine his injuries. I ransacked the closed cabinets for paper towels or a cleansing cloth but found nothing. Letting out a huff, I tilted my head and gazed at the dreary sky through the gap punched in the underbelly, now the roof. Dangerous glass shards littered the floor from the shattered view screen. The nose of the ship had folded up like a pug’s face against a stone barrier. Or were we against a building? If it was a building, then someone should have investigated. Why hadn’t rescuers come? How long had we been here? The gray sky gave no clues. Was it morning? Or afternoon?
I had to wake him up. I started to use my shirt to wipe his face but then spotted his cape on the floor. I shook it free of debris, and, after taking a long drink from a water bottle, liberally soaked a large corner of the garment. Kneeling at his side, I dabbed his temples and ridged forehead and then rinsed the corner of the cape. I kept dabbing and rinsing until I’d cleaned away most of the blood and could survey his injuries. He had an enormous knot and an ugly gash, but the wound wasn’t bleeding anymore.
He groaned.
“Nadir!” I doused the cape again and wiped his forehead. “Wake up! Wake up!”
He opened his eyes—his beautiful yellow-green eyes. He blinked; I could see his confusion. He squinted at me then shifted his gaze to take in the cockpit. Person, place, time were the questions to ask to determine alertness.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“You don’t know who I am? I’m Nadir. You don’t remember?”
“No, no. I do. I was trying to determine your degree of alertness. You got smashed in the noggin pretty good.”
He nodded. “We crashed. Are you all right?”
“I think so. How are you?”
“I don’t seem to be able to move.”
Oh fuck, he’s paralyzed.
Flailing his arms and legs, he strained against the seat belts.
Not paralyzed, buckled in. “It’s the restraints.” Cough. Hysterical laughter bubbled up in my throat. Cough. Choke. I bit my lip.
With his claws, he sliced through the bands like they were made of gossamer and sat up. “How did you get free of your restraints?”
“I had to wiggle. It wasn’t easy.”
He bounded to his feet with more energy than I’d expected and then picked up his bloodstained cape. “What did you do?” he shouted at me.
Well, that didn’t take long. “I used it to wash away the blood so I could check your injuries— You’re welcome!”
With a horrified expression, he inspected his cape. “You desecrated it.”
Was he for real? He could have died, and he worried about an article of clothing? An ostentatious, prissy article of clothing? “It’s a cape. It’s not like it’s the royal flag.”
“It is the official garment of the Advisor Most Loyal to His Majesty the King of Araset. This cape has been handed down for twenty generations of advisors and entrusted to me when I was anointed.”
Well, crap. It was like the royal flag. “I’m sorry.”
He cursed in Ara-Cope and stomped over broken glass to the console.
Getting knocked in the head hadn’t improved his personality. How was I supposed to know the cape held such significance? Sure, he wore it all the time, but I assumed it was because he was a flamboyant, pretentious boor.
“Can’t you run your cape through the ionizing cleaning unit?” The garment couldn’t have been passed down twenty generations without being laundered, could it? There was a cleansing capsule at the rear—I knew from having stowed away in it. Boy, did I regret that now.
“Would if I could. Electronics are shot.” He glowered at the control panel even more fiercely than he’d scowled at me. He patted his sides and then swept his gaze around the shuttle.
“What are you looking for?”
“My handheld.”
“Right here.” I spotted the device on the floor and handed it to him. Despite having been tossed around the shuttle, it looked intact. The screen wasn’t even cracked.
Nadir’s expression darkened as he swiped his finger over the visual display. “Dead,” he pronounced grimly. He retrieved my device from the cabinet, and after giving it a once over, flung it aside.
“The crash was no accident,” he said. “We were temped.”
“Tempted by what?”
“Temped—we got hit with a Targeted Electromagnetic Pulse. Someone took down this shuttle deliberately.”
“Somebody tried to kill us?” Well, kill Nadir. I would have been collateral damage. Nobody knew I was on the shuttle.
“Whether they intended to kill us or crash the ship and abduct us, I don’t know. We have to get out of here before whoever shot us down comes to investigate.”
Would this nightmare never end? First my vacation of a lifetime ended with me getting abducted by aliens. Then I got rescued, but on my way home, the shuttle I inadvertently boarded through no fault of my own got shot out of the sky, stranding me with Nadir of all aliens.
No wonder I never won the lottery. I had the worst damn luck.
“Wouldn’t they be here by now?” I had no idea how long ago we’d crashed, but I sensed it had been a while. Hours, maybe?
Cocking his head, he studied the sky. “Judging by the light, it’s morning,” he said.
I didn’t see that, but he read clouds better than I did.
“We’d entered the atmosphere yesterday afternoon, so we’ve been here overnight. However, they would have shot us with a long-range TEMP to avoid frying their own electronics. Given how long we’ve been here, my guess is they’ll be here soon. I would prefer not to meet them.”
