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You don’t see forests all that often anymore. Most planets remove them to allow more room for construction. Wood’s an unsought after commodity in the universe now, which makes sense because you can’t build ships with it, and that’s what life is these days. Interstellar travel. If you’re not moving, you’re not living.
I know they do have some tech, though. I’m pretty sure I saw a string of satellites as I plummeted past them. I am starting to get that little tingly feeling on the back of my neck. I don’t really feel fear, but I do get other indications when things are about to go wrong. There’s something about this planet that makes me think I’m going to have a hard time here, and I have to pay attention to that feeling. That’s the difference between surviving and not surviving.
I’m going to need to find a settlement of some kind. Not too far away, I can see something too uniformly shaped not to be a construction of some kind. That’s also very good. Someone’s built something, and that means there’s shelter and probably infrastructure, and even more importantly: something to steal.
I check the contents of my crash suit real quick. I’ve got water purification tablets. I’ve got a retractable field knife. I’ve got a few tight rolls of hydratable meals. Enough to survive a good week without food foraged from the planet. I’ve also got the hitchhiker signal, which is solar powered. And I’ve got about fifty other little tricks that don’t immediately relate to survival, but which will definitely potentially come in handy. This suit is covered in pockets, it’s basically pockets all the way down.
This suit was designed by a fucking pirate god, created in the case that a mutiny of some kind happens and a pirate captain is set adrift. When I first bought it, I did so as a joke. My crew laughed and laughed as I paraded it around. And now here I am. Adrift. Crashed. Alive.
This thing will keep me warm if I need to be warm, cool if I need to be cool, and worst case scenario I don’t make it, decomposition will trigger an external casing to appear from head to toe. You’ll end up looking like a person-sized opaque insect egg. That’s why some of my ilk call these things coffin suits. But I’m a more positive thinker — and so far that’s really paying off, because I am still breathing.
I set off for the building up the hill. It’s interesting nobody has come out of it to see what the almighty crash that must have just made the ground shake was. In some parts of the universe, you’ll draw a massive crowd that way. Other parts? The inhabitants of a planet won’t notice if you crash a hundred ships into it. There are all kinds of species in existence, and they’ve all got their own sensitivities and sensibilities.
The closer I get to the building, I start to realize a few things. One, it’s actually a lot further away than I thought, and it’s playing incredibly loud music. That explains why nobody came rushing out to see what happened. For all I know it might have sounded like a dull thud to those inside, if they heard anything at all. I can feel the marrow pounding in my bones as the bass thrums.
If I had to guess time of day, which is always difficult on any planet, I’d say that it is about three o’clock in the afternoon. Pretty early for this kind of carrying on, unless it’s a holiday. Or unless this is a very celebratory species. Or unless it’s the sort of place where there’s people who think really loud music is acceptable whenever, and the latter could be interesting.
Along the exterior of the building I can see a bunch of very large two-wheeled conveyances parked. They have big round rubber wheels, one in front of the other, and then a general sort of body with a seat for sitting on, and handlebars for steering. This is some very, very old tech. Ancient, really. No wonder Saurmos is classed as a primitive planet. These people are getting around like humans did all the way back in the late nineteenth century. We’re talking tech literally thousands of years old. I wonder if it runs on the old oil-based tech too? There’s definitely a scent about the space, some of the bikes dripping a thick black viscous substance onto the ground beneath them.
Wow. This is like being on a field trip to the past. I wonder if this is actually some kind of old human colony, one of the ones that got forgotten about. I wouldn’t be surprised. I’m on the very exterior final verge of the Settled Galactic Territories. Things get a little odd out here. There are planets that aren’t even on the official register. Saurmos looked like a legacy entry, though I can’t be sure because I didn’t have a chance to research it before my shuttle turned toward it and smashed itself into it.
I’m over here sneering at these old tech bikes, I think they’re called, but I bet these things don’t throw their riders into solid objects unexpectedly. Maybe I shouldn’t be so judgmental. Maybe I’m about to learn some wholesome lesson about the old ways being the best.
Having looked at the bikes, I turn my attention to the building itself. It’s made of wood, which is also very interesting to see. Pretty wild to make an entire building out of an organic substance that’s prone to catching fire and doesn’t really have much in the way of actual strength. These people are going to be backward as hell, I bet. Their clothing is probably woven from natural fibers. Probably has to be washed using water.
I’m smirking to myself, though I shouldn’t be. Because there’s one thing about all this construction that’s much more concerning than how backward it is: how large it is.
The building is made for creatures a lot bigger than I am. The door is almost twice my height. This is a real Gulliver moment, and I love it. There’s nothing like exploring new worlds, discovering new species, finding out who and what is really out there. Sometimes I even introduce myself as an explorer to new people. Usually right before I rob them, because I’m actually a pirate.
There’s a window I’d like to look in, but the lower part of the windowsill is quite a ways above my head. I reach up for the lower ledge and try jumping in the hopes I can grip the lower ledge and pull myself up enough to look in. This is a bit of a futile exercise, because I’m pretty sure I don’t have the upper body strength for that kind of pull-up. I used to. I used to be lithe and strong, and then I got good at my job and I got more than enough food and I got the body I have now. A body that bounces when I crash but doesn’t want to be yanked up a vertical incline.
Turns out my inability to scramble up the side of the building is a bit of a lifesaver, because while I scramble at the ledge, the window explodes as a massive beast is thrown directly through it. Glass shatters, wood splinters, and muscle, scale, and bone comes hurtling through the air, accompanied by a snarling yell that sounds like something between an angry bear and a furious alligator.
The creature lands heavily in the dirt, creating a depression in the relatively soft ground. He lies there for a second, and I get to stare at him. He has to be three hundred pounds at least. Maybe four hundred. Hard to say with alien species. He is wearing a green and black checked shirt that has been tailored to allow for massive bony protrusions that rise from his back.
I get the hell out of the way, diving into a brushy bush at the corner of the building. I don’t want to be seen. That would be stupid. Maybe not any more stupid than I have been these last few hours, but maybe the kind of stupid that would break my streak of survivor's luck.
The creature rises to big, clawed feet and turns toward the window it just exited. At first, he looked like a big scaled thing with a thick, long tail, complete with plates that sort of stick up from the top of it. What do they call those things… spikes? Back accoutrements? I don’t know. He has a lot of them, though. I thought he was some kind of straight-up beast, but when he turns around to glare at the same window he just departed, I see that he has a face very similar to that of a human man. Not a nice man, but a recognizable one. He has a broad face with two eyes and a nose and a mouth. The mouth is twisted in anger and rage, and the eyes are narrowed with the same emotion. Fire and fury blaze in orange-hued eyes that sport vertical slits.
Dangerous, instincts notify me.
Corduroy pants, my fashion instincts scream.
Everything about this place screams human civilization sometime around 1990, if I had to name an ancient year. Except for the actual occupants, who look like… I want to say oversized lizards, but a different word is forcing itself through my brain. A word with more significance, a word humans have always found fascinating:
Dinosaur.
Scales run up his neck and around his chin. He has a horn of some kind rising from his skull too. Not quite like a unicorn, but not entirely unlike one, either. This guy looks like a bad-ass, bad-guy, lumberjack fucking dinosaur.
Before he can say or do anything, another creature puts its head out the window. This one has iridescent blue scales and a thick shock of similarly colored hair. He’s wearing a black leather jerkin and has bare arms, big, jacked, scaled arms. God. It’s kind of hot. All of this is kind of hot.
“Get outta here, you filthy animal!” The guy who is still indoors shouts that at the guy who just found himself outdoors.
That’s good news. They’re speaking a simple, common galactic tongue, one of the five or so I’m fluent in. That’s an excellent sign. Maybe the planet isn’t as primitive as it seems. It has to be connected to trade routes for them to be speaking a recent language. I’m starting to think there could be a pretty easy way off this planet as long as I can avoid whatever drama is unfolding in front of me.
“I’ll be waiting for you, Tor! You can hide inside your little bar now, but you’ll have to come out sometime.”
“Gar, if I have to send the boys out after you, you won’t be going back to your poor mate. You’ll be going into the ground.”
