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I have seen old footage of a lot of mating in my time. It is a particularly popular section of our cultural archives, referred to affectionately as ‘the hub.’ I am yet to experience the ritual of mating myself. Reproduction is a classified and restricted activity. If I had been chosen for one of the very rare breeding positions, I would have had any number of offspring now—not that I would have known them. We don’t tolerate tedious ‘parenting.’ Our small ones soon work out which tube of their personal pod is for nutrition and which is for waste, and we have many instructive and educational videos for them to watch as they grow to full size.
I ease the ship a little lower in orbit. There is decent cloud cover. I’ll be fine. They won’t see me. These creatures show little in the way of human intelligence. I imagine they are no different mentally to many of the other automaton-like creatures I observe, going along predetermined patterns of behavior without much in the way of thought or concern.
The audio isn’t good from this distance, even if the view is better. It would be nice to see from an angle other than top down though, there’s only so much I can glean from the top of a bobbing head. I need to see expression, I need to hear reactions.
At this distance, it is impossible to tell if the female is in ecstasy, or if the males are taking their pleasure at her cost.
I should get just a little closer. Another few thousand feet and I will be in audio range. I’ll also be close enough to have to use the thrusters to avoid gravity. Out of orbit and into range I go, barely thinking about the additional risks I’m incurring.
Wet slapping and animal grunts suddenly burst over the speakers. Oh, yes. Those are the sounds of a vigorous mating in progress. There is no way these creatures speak Intergalactic English, but by sheer coincidence some of their vocalizations sound familiar. The noises they make are deep, rough, and gritty. Wait. Am I imagining it, or are those words I recognize from old language classes? The ones the Patron said were a waste of time because nobody spoke twentieth-century English anymore, nor would they ever again.
“Bend over. Pussy up. Now.”
The words rumble through my speakers and I feel excitement slice through me. Those words hold a power, a raw intensity. I know they’re not really words in the way I might use them. They’re mating calls. I can tell, because I am an experienced observer of animal life and also, in all the years we have been observing other planets and systems, we have never found a species as sentient as our own.
These aren’t people, I have to remind myself. Even if they look like people, and sound like people, I have to avoid anthropomorphizing them.
Boom!
Something impacts the left engine of the shuttle. My eyes are locked on the scene below, the carnal viciousness of the male’s actions so utterly spell-binding that I am halfway across the shuttle, thrown by the impact, before I even know it has happened.
Warning: Projectile lodged in engine, the ship grates in my ear. Losing altitude.
I crash into the far wall, then into the ceiling, then into the floor again as the shuttle spins. We’re close enough to the planet that there’s gravity. Goddammit. I hate gravity.
In seconds, I am in free-fall. Whatever hit me knocked my flight systems offline and that means I’m no longer in a shuttle. I am now in a big hunk of metal hurtling toward the ground, fighting controls that are calibrated for the seamless resistance of space and that barely respond in the thick, oxygen-rich atmosphere of the planet.
The best I can do is slow my descent enough to the point when I impact the ground, I hopefully don’t die immediately. I manage to strap into the chair tight enough that my body is held securely, the emergency systems doing their best to cushion the shock of a terminal speed impact.
There is noise and rumbling and motion, a sense of intense speed even though I am actually moving slower than I have moved in months. Hitting the ground is like being knocked out of my body. I have never felt anything like it. I feel as though I have been crushed out of existence.
Chapter Two
Tselia
The impact knocks me senseless for I don’t know how long, but when I come to, I am alive. My shuttle is destroyed around me, but I am here. I take a breath and I check my body for pain. The systems deployed decelerators and cushioning devices designed to keep me in one piece. They worked. I am not only alive, I am unharmed. But I’m also on the surface of a foreign planet without authorization. If I get caught down here, I’m done for. They’ll take me away and put me in stasis. This is the definition of interfering in an ecosystem. I’m not supposed to get close enough to be able to crash into the planet. I’m supposed to stay in orbit; that way, if there are any issues, I circle the place rather than smash into it. Not even three hours into my new assignment, I have fucked up. Badly.
