Galactic Odyssey
Flash Fiction from the Vault.
Tom Elias found himself in an alien paradise named Varillian Four. Several Ground to Orbit Shuttles, GOS, called ‘goes’ dotted the terrain, with survivors milling between crash sites.
Above a raging purple sky, where high clouds writhed, always hiding the Varillian sun, this zone tossed their GOS around like eggs in a blender before the damaged craft found the still air below and made a hard landing.
The same unpredictable energy crippled the Galactic Odyssey as it attempted to scan the surface, skimming the atmosphere. The damage proved so catastrophic that their captain ordered his crew and passengers to abandon ship, even as he remained at the helm trying to save her.
Lieutenant Elias assessed a Ranger Class vessel called the Star Pioneer. Designed for interstellar travel and planetary landings, she crashed almost two weeks before, and Odyssey’s mission to locate and rescue any survivors following an SOS now proved disastrous, too.
Kaye served in the Ranger; as a doctor, he performed triage, tending to the injured new arrivals.
A sudden cry—something seized hold of a child’s arm. Elias sprinted, snatched a jagged rock, and brought it down with a wet crunch. Once. Twice. The serpentine body continued thrashing until blue-black fluid painted his forearm. A civilian passenger, she shouldn’t even be here, Elias thought. He kept hitting the alien until it stopped writhing.
They found themselves in this place—shipwrecked.
Kaye sampled the girl’s injury; a handheld diagnostic tool tested for toxins as he stemmed the bleeding.
“Damn snake-thing is like a big mosquito, a vampire; the wound is not clotting.”
His smart-case contained agents for multiple medicines for fabrication on demand; with the tox-screen complete, Kaye loaded a needleless syringe to administer the custom anti-venom.
The long Varillian day drew to a close, and the turbulent atmosphere shifted to a deeper reddish-purple. The survivors gathered at the Star Pioneer.
“Nights,” Walsh said, eyes on the darkening sky. “What are they like?”
Kaye gave a tired laugh. “First one we’ve seen.”
Walsh turned to Elias. “And the GOS?”
“They’re all No GOS.”
“The Star Pioneer fared better. The lifting wing shape helped her glide down, but the GOS pretty much fell, and emergency parachutes deployed, but the storm wrecked them.”
“You realise we carry three times their crew complement?” Walsh stated.
“We might cram everyone in, but we’re adding mass to a damaged vessel.”
Elias shrugged. “Well, six shuttles made it down.”
“There’s a chance salvaged parts could get the Star Pioneer off the ground—if we put her on a diet.” Walsh agreed.
“And before it gets dark,” Kaye said.
Walsh nodded. “Twilight should be maybe 72 hours - standard time.”
“Enough?” Kaye asked.
“You bet.” Elias glanced at his hand; a smattering of blue viscera splattered his skin; the snake creature’s fluids. He developed a plan.
Laborious mechanical work, but at last, absent a pile of gear, Elias figured the Star Pioneer wouldn’t miss; her engines engaged, and she floated.
Outside, blackness, and as the thrusters burned, the white light of hot gas illuminated the night; the once-pristine paradise writhed—a sea of squirming serpents.
The Star Pioneer, filled to the gunwales with hopeful survivors, punched through the tempest like an old-fashioned bullet; Elias gave it everything the ship possessed, killing the antigravity motors before they entered the storm zone so the nuclear engines alone could drive them upward, enduring the cruel G-force of escape velocity. The deck plates thrummed with raw power as brutal weight slammed everyone back into their seats, lungs burning under the sudden crush of acceleration. Their passage proved violent but short, and when Elias saw the stars, he knew his people flew free of this other Eden.