Page 8 of Alien’s Retrieved Mate

Then I threw up everything I'd eaten in the last twenty-four hours, which was basically whatever was left of my last jungle MRE and the nothing else I'd eaten since yesterday. It wasn't a lot but my stomach was committed to the effort. I braced my hand against the smooth bark warm to the touch, definitely not Earth bark, and heaved until there was nothing left.

When I straightened up and wiped my mouth on the back of my hand, the alien was standing exactly where I'd left him, watching me. Those glowing lines on his visible skin—his hands, his neck above the armor—flickered.

"I'm fine," I said, even though he couldn't understand me and I was definitely not fine. "Totally fine. Just a little interplanetary motion sickness. Happens to the best of us."

I looked at the pod. I looked at the jungle. I looked at the alien. I looked at the sky, which had two moons visible even in daylight — two actual moons, one larger and pale gold, one smaller and slightly pink, and okay THAT almost made me cry because two moons meant this was absolutely no-room-for-denial not Earth.

"So." I put my hands on my hips because I needed to feel like I had some control over something, even if it was just the placement of my own hands. "What now?"

He tilted his helmeted head at me. Mechanical sounds came from whatever speaker system was in that helmet. Words, probably. Alien words I couldn't understand.

"Right. Language barrier. Awesome." I made an exaggerated shrug. "We're stuck on an alien planet and we can't even argue about it properly."

I sat down on a piece of the pod's hull that had broken off during the crash. My legs were done holding me up. My whole body was done, actually. I was exhausted and nauseous and my tongue hurt from biting it and I had bruises forming across my chest from the restraints and I was so far from home that the distance couldn't be measured in any unit I knew.

I looked down at my mud-caked boots. Still Colombian mud. The boots, the belt, the watch, the ruined dig clothes on my back — everything left of Earth on this entire planet, and all of it filthy. My eyes stung and I blinked hard because I was absolutely not going to cry in front of an alien I couldn't even communicate with. I was Taylor Jennings from Minneapolis, Minnesota, who had survived a jaguar, a collapsing slave ship, and a terrifying crash landing, and I was not going to fall apart now.

I sniffed once. Wiped my eyes with the back of my wrist. Sat up straight.

"Okay." I stood back up and pointed at the pod, then made a sweeping gesture at the jungle. Then I pointed at him, then at me, and made a walking motion with my fingers. "Where to, Darth?"

He stared at me for a long moment. Then he turned and started pulling supplies from the wrecked pod.

Fair enough. Figure out the plan later. Survive right now.

I knew that drill. I'd been doing it all week.

5

KEL

Situation assessment.

Escape pod: destroyed. No possibility of repair or secondary launch. Salvageable components: emergency ration supply (fourteen days at single-occupant consumption, seven at double), one thermal blanket, two collapsible water containers, basic medical kit, a functioning scanner, two perimeter sensors, a carry pack, and my personal weapon cache — sidearm, short blade, and the pulse rifle I'd brought aboard the Saurok ship. Comms unit: damaged, intermittent signal at best.

Physical state: functional. Bruising across my ribs, minor thermal burns along my forearm, and a shoulder scrape from the pod's torn hatch frame. I treated the scrape with antiseptic and dismissed it; her condition was the more urgent unknown.

I activated the scanner, swept it across my own torso so she could see what I intended, then pointed to her and waited. She watched the display, held both arms away from her sides, and nodded once. The scanner found no skull fracture, internal bleeding, collapsed lung, or acute spinal injury. It did flag extensive bruising, a bitten tongue, dehydration, and the electrical stress left by the force field. Its model of her species was improvised, not certainty, so I checked her pupils, gait, grip symmetry, and breathing as well. All were stable enough to move, with repeat scans required. Starting the trek without that minimum would have been negligence.

Location: Zha'kari, northern continent, based on the star positioning and the scanner's fragmented planetary data. Jungle biome. The oxygen-nitrogen mix fell within broad contact-species tolerances, but the air sampler registered dense alien pollen and fungal spores. For a Valorian, negligible. For her species, unknown. I would need to monitor for immune reaction and respiratory irritation. The scanner's medical database had no baselines for her species, so I would be watching blind.

Water was the more immediate concern. Zha'kari's freshwater sources carried microbial loads that Valorian digestive systems neutralized automatically. Her system would not. The medical kit contained broad-spectrum purification tabs — three sealed strips of them, designed for Valorian-compatible biologies. They would likely work on whatever pathogens threatened her. Likely. I had no way to confirm.

The scanner classified the region as Class Three predator territory, but every danger it listed fell within my training profile. I had crossed worse.

The trading outpost at Vel'kari Station was on the far side of this continent. Estimated distance: four hundred and seventy vekt. At my pace, twelve days. At her pace — I looked at her small frame, her shaking legs, the way she'd just emptied her stomach against a tree — significantly longer. The ration supply was calibrated for Valorian metabolism. Her caloric requirements were an unknown variable. If she burned fuel faster than the rations replaced it, she would begin losing function before we reached the outpost. Another thing to monitor. Another variable the mission profile had never accounted for.

And then there was the larger problem. The one I had no tactical framework for.

I crouched beside the pod and sorted supplies into a carry pack while monitoring her through the resonance bond. Her emotional state had shifted from terror to a kind of grim determination that I found... notable. She had purged her stomach, wiped her face, squared her shoulders, and stood back up. I had watched seasoned soldiers handle crash landings with less composure than this alien who appeared to weigh roughly half what I did and had no apparent combat training.

She was pointing at things now. At the pod, the jungle, herself, me. Moving her small fingers in a walking pattern. Attempting to communicate. Her mouth was moving constantly, producing sounds I assumed were her language, though the translator embedded in my helmet was still cycling through calibration protocols. The Saurok ship's database had contained no reference for her species or language. The translator was building its framework from scratch, analyzing patterns, syntax, phoneme clusters. It needed more input.

She was providing ample input. She had not stopped producing sound since we'd landed.

I focused on the pack and not on the low thrum of the resonance bond that pulsed every time she moved within range. Which was constantly, because we were in a crash site barely twenty paces across and she was pacing and touching bark, crouching to examine soil, picking up a leaf and holding it up to the light.

She was investigating her environment. Not hiding. Not crying. Not curled in a defensive posture waiting for rescue.