Codename Alpha

Chapter 13

My brain suddenly kicked into gear. "Get the camera," I ordered, trying to keep my voice down, so as to not scare the animal away. "Somebody get the camera and start recording," I said less than a second after, in a more urgent tone.

Vance woke up as well, quickly bending down and grabbing the camcorder from the bag. She fumbled with it for a few seconds, trying to get it facing the animal, before starting the recording.

"Can you talk to it?" I asked, immediately realizing the sheer stupidity of that question. This animal was obviously a wild creature, and despite its apparent similarities to Ensign Vance, there would be no reason for her to be able to talk to it.

"Look at that," Jack said, quietly, pointing at the animal. "It doesn't have opposable thumbs."

"It doesn't walk on two legs either." I couldn't tell if she was joking or not. "As if this planet couldn't get any weirder..."

The animal watched us for ten seconds before walking towards us. I felt amazed that it was still walking on all fours, but I internally hit myself upon immediately realizing that there was literally no reason for that to have changed.

"Oh my god, I think it's gonna sniff us," Jack said. "I had a friend whose Bojana Dragon would do the same thing whenever they, uh..." He trailed off.

"Uh, hold on. Vance, try, like, greeting it like a pet or something," I said, stumbling over every word.

"You mean holding out my paw for it to smell?"

"Yes, yes, exactly."

"Alright," she said, passing the camcorder to Jack. "As weird an order as that is, it doesn't sound half bad." She squatted, and held out her right paw hesitantly.

"What happened to this thing?" Jack asked, examining the screen which I had just realised was lightly cracked. He kept the recording focused on the animal.

The animal slowly came closer, watching us all curiously. Thousands of questions were rushing through my mind, compounding on those I already had about the alien civilization. As if it wasn't statistically impossible enough for there to be intelligent alien life, here was a seemingly wild animal that quite closely mirrored an extinct race of foxes from Valdera's bloody history.

The animal began to sniff at Vance's paw. She was holding remarkably still, given the situation. It seemed to become more comfortable with our presence, but only slightly.

"Should I try petting it?" She asked. "Maybe this is an escaped pet or something, so it's already domesticated."

"Strange thought," I said, still staying focused on the creature. "It doesn't look like a pet to me. Looks and acts more like a wild animal, if I'm being honest. It does seem to..." It stopped sniffing Vance's paw. The animal turned to look at me. "Seem to be more comfortable with us, I guess. It's still skittish, but not as much as I..." it came a bit closer to me, and began to check out whatever scent I had. I slowly moved my paw towards it. It sniffed my paw once before letting out a shockingly loud shriek that sounded like a howl and somebody's tortured scream mixed together, then immediately sprinting off back into the forest and disappearing out of sight.

I jumped back out of shock, tripping on the log and falling onto the ground. "Damn!" I shouted. I caught my breath and stood back up. Jack had a similar reaction, standing up, still holding the camcorder, trying to record as much as he could of the animal which had already disappeared.
He just stood there, flabbergasted, while it now recorded the forest. The whole thing seemed even stranger in immediate retrospect.

"Right... I don't think this planet can get any weirder," Vance said, as she straightened her back and turned towards us. "First we get shot down by an intelligent alien civilization, and now we find some... devolved version of ourselves walking about. Scratch that, weird is an understatement. This is something that should be impossible. Is impossible." She placed special emphasis on the 'is.' I nodded in agreement. "Xenobiology, or whatever the appropriate field may be, was, less than a day ago, limited solely to the intelligent alien creatures we found on Veta. But now, we're here with... that. I expected that alien life was bound to exist somewhere, but that animal?"

"Do you think we're in a parallel universe? What if whatever brought us here sent us to a version of Valdera where complex life - well, that is to say we, never evolved, and some other life form took our place," Jack said, in an introspective tone I rarely ever heard him use.

"Parallel universe theory is an unfortunate can of theoretical worms we can probably do without opening. Worth noting that the star charts said we were about 11.4 light years from home, and if we were in fact in an alternate universe, it wouldn't make much sense for us to not... well, it just doesn't make much sense. I don't know how to explain it," I said.

"No, no, I see what you mean. It'd be rather arbitrary for the trip here, as rough as it was, to only put us 11 lightyears from another arbitrary location and not anywhere else in the universe," Jack said.

"For the time being, let's just put any of those theories behind us." She sighed, and shook her head. "Just because it looked like a devolved version of... me, does not mean that we share genes, or anything of the sort. We didn't get any blood or fur samples, after all."

"Right. Doesn't stop that from being weird as hell, though," I said.

"Yeah, no point in denying that. I feel like I just saw something I wasn't supposed to. Just... unexplainably wrong, you know? Opens a whole lot more questions than it really should."

"God, and we've only seen a tiny fraction of it. Like, what, a few warehouse parking lots and a hill? Who knows what else is here," Jack said, motioning broadly around the forest. "Hell, maybe animal copies of me. Of all of us."

Nobody spoke for a few seconds. "Well," I began, breaking the silence. "Just another existential thing to add to the list. We can deal with it once we're off this planet, yes?" I said, in an attempt to raise their spirits somewhat.

"Absolutely," Jack said, in a satirical tone. Vance didn't respond, rather just nodding.

I thought about our predicament. I briefly considered trying to steal a shuttlecraft, but then quickly realized that these people likely lacked shuttle technology. And as much as I enjoyed the idea of becoming a missileman stealing an old chemical-based space shuttle, there were many hurdles to that goal, particularly how it was just a bad idea overall.

Looking up to the sky, I tried to spot the moon, as if it would suddenly grant me a plan to get us off this planet. The only way I could think of would be to call for help on the distress radio. That would raise the problem of giving away our position to any sort of orbital satellites, meaning that we'd have to actively give our position to an extraction shuttle, in turn giving our position to anyone hunting for us. Additionally, we were just flat-out out of range for communications.

"Hmm..." I said to myself. "Jack, what's the maximum effective range of the distress transmitter?"

"Well, uh... let me check." He picked up his backpack from the ground and looked inside, then pulling out the instructional book that came with it. After a few seconds of page turning, he had the answer. "Says here that the maximum effective range is 25 thousand kilometers at the maximum. Communications becomes difficult to understand at around 18 thousand."

"And it's safe to assume the moon is too far away for that. The orbital maximum of the Valiant is pretty high, but it's definitely not enough to be able to reach them, and the comms array is fried from what I heard. Now... we were just an advance team to scout out the area to find any good campsites, and warn them if there are any brain-eating parasites on this planet. Of course, there weren't, just advanced aliens with the capacity to shoot down shuttlecraft. He said that even if we don't respond or come back, he'll be sending crew members down to set up camp, with or without us. So we just... wait a week, and try to get in contact."

"How do you intend on keeping them from being shot down?" Vance asked. "I'm certainly not a pilot, but I know that evading missiles and whatever else could be thrown at you is no easy feat."

"We just need to warn them ahead of time about where we are. Remember, I intentionally slowed down so as to not appear as intimidating pf an aircraft on their radar. If this shuttle goes fast enough, they should be able to get ahead of the jets, pick us up, and find somewhere with no civilization to set down in."

"Wait, so we're just going to settle somewhere else?" Jack asked, sounding incredulous.

"Where else are we going to go?" I then said, not getting any responses. "I'm sure that these aliens don't inhabit every nook and cranny of their planet. There's probably an island or patch of tundra where they aren't." I then yawned and involuntarily stretched.

"Someone's getting sleepy, huh?" Jack commented, then yawning himself.

"Are we really just going to go to bed in broad daylight with the sun above us?" Vance asked. "I mean, it's not like we have other choices, but it's just... weird."

"Thankfully, not on pine straw and bare dirt," I said, pulling out the plain gray thermal blanket, and holding it above me, letting it unfurl like a flag. "Here's to the founders of the... Susiid Colony, I guess."

"Susiid People's Commune has more of a ring to it, if I'm being honest," Jack joked, making me laugh.

"Good lord," Vance muttered, in good humor.

I got up and laid out the blanket a few meters away from the log, in the shade. "The bugs are going to love this," I said to myself. "There will be no bedtime stories," I yelled, as Jack and Vance watched me with amusement. I laid down with exaggerated movements on the far left of the blanket. "Looks like there's enough space for everyone. Just hold perfectly still when you're asleep and it won't be weird."

"I see you're really going all out with the weird commune-dweller vibe," Vance said, as she walked over, laughing.

Jack stood up and walked over as well, quickly laying down next to me, laughing all the while. "At least we're not sleeping on the actual ground," he added, with a tone of seriousness, then quickly swatting away some unidentifiable black bug flying around. "Could do with a privacy screen, if I'm being honest."

"Air conditioning, too," I said.

"Right. Is anyone going to stay awake to keep watch?" Vance asked, sitting down on the blanket. "Secluded as this is, it does look like some sort of campsite."
"Right," I nodded, pulling out my pistol from its holster. "I'll keep this by my side, just to be safe. Safety... on," I said, pretending to flip the switch to safety, although it was already on it. "Jack and I already got some sleep, so... I'll stay awake for three hours or so and then let him take over. Does that sound good?"

"Sounds good."

"Alright. Sleep tight, then. You too, Jack."