“No, yeah, I get that. Bye bye, big blue planet. See you never,” Kat said. “I just don’t believe for a second that A, this mission is actually legit, and B, that they’re going to let us go home afterwards.”

I gritted my teeth against an onslaught of threatening tears.

“Don’t say that,” I managed to choke out.

“Sorry, dude, but I think it’s true. Think about it. This mission is so top secret that they literally had to kidnap us and drug us to get us here, you think they’re going to just let us waltz back into our lives afterwards? And what about the fact that we’re all women, huh? And the fact that we’re all young or students and definitely not the kind of experts you’d want on a mission like this? Why aren’t they sending the crème de la crème, top notch scientists and shit, to deal with this?”

I pressed the palms of my hands to my burning eyes. I had no answers for her.

But Melanie did.

“They’re not sending the best they have because they think we’re going to die.” Her words crashed through the air, heavy as stone. “They’re hoping that, if by some miracle, we can do something for them, then at least we have some knowledge that may be useful. But they’re not going to send their best scientists on a suicide mission.” Her voice fell, hard and low. “And the fact that we’re all women, well... I bet they’re hoping that if we don’t get murdered on sight, then maybe we’ll just get raped instead.”

“Oh my God, no, Melanie,” I said, sitting up and looking at her. She was laying still, staring up at the underside of Kat’s bunk. Her voice was a whisper when she spoke again.

“I don’t know about you guys, but if I don’t come back, if I disappear, there’s no one who would look for me.”

Kat sighed from above her.

“Girl, same. My mom’s an addict who I haven’t seen in years and my dad’s in jail.”

Theresa groaned. “Oh my God. Shit. Same. I grew up in the foster care system and I just moved to a new town and dumped my boyfriend, literally the only person who knows me there.”

Panic swelled inside me. No way, this couldn’t be true. I wasn’t like that, was I? Someone who could disappear and barely leave a trace? Somebody no one would miss? I had Grammy! Had Grammy. Past tense. But what about my PhD supervisor, Dr MacLaren? He would file a police report, for sure. But then again... What if my whole university was in on whatever this was?

My throat tightened painfully, and I bit down on my lips so hard I tasted blood. They were right. They were absolutely right. We were nobodies on Earth, and we were about to be nobodies who died on a faraway planet.

Hell no.

Everything in my body rebelled against that possibility. I got up, pacing the room, the other girls watching me.

“OK, maybe you’re right. You probably are. But I sure as hell do not plan to die in the middle of another galaxy.”

Kat sat up, her eyes burning with blue fire.

“What do you have in mind? I’m all for some mutiny.”

I laughed, a short, humourless bark.

“They’ve got armed soldiers every few metres in this place. I don’t think we stand a chance with something like that.”

“So?” Kat said. “At least we’ll go out in a blaze of glory. Go out on our terms.”

“Look, if we try something like that, we’re basically guaranteed to die. Melanie already outlined why we’re expendable. But what if we do everything we can to learn in the next few weeks, do everything we can to ensure our survival down there? He said we can breathe the atmosphere. Maybe we could escape and survive somehow.”

“And,” Theresa added, that heart-breaking note of hope back in her voice, “maybe the aliens will be friendly.”

Kat burst out laughing.

“You’re nuts! Did you see the thing in that photo? It’s not gonna be like some golden retriever at your vet’s office.”

“We don’t know that. We don’t know anythin’ about them. We do know whoever’s runnin’ this brought a linguist.” Theresa looked at me over the edge of her bunk. “So they must have reason to think the aliens have language, some kind of intelligence. Maybe we can communicate with them.”

“Yeah, that’ll go over well. ‘Hey, aliens. Please don’t try to fuck or murder us. By the way, will you give our military all the special energy juice your planet’s running on?’”

“OK, well, I don’t know,” Theresa responded with a huff, flopping back onto her bunk. “But Cece’s right. A mutiny will get us shot instantly. Honestly, I’d rather take my chances on the planet.”

“Shot by my own people or eaten by an alien. Who the fuck cares. Whatever,” Kat mumbled, lying down again. Melanie rolled over, facing the wall.

“Look, we don’t have to figure all of this out now,” I said, slowly lowering myself to my bunk. “But let’s just promise each other that we’ll do our best to get out of this alive somehow. That we pay attention, learn everything we can over the next couple of weeks, and give this thing the best shot we have.”

“I will,” Theresa said instantly from above me.

“Fine,” Kat said.

Melanie said nothing, but I saw a small nod of her head.

I swallowed, nodding to myself. Well, that’s something at least. I laid back in my bunk, trying to ignore the intense pressure building in my chest. Theresa’s words repeated over and over in my head. Maybe we can communicate with them... Damn. If anyone was going to have a hope of making friends with our new alien buddies, it was going to be me.

And, so help me God, if that didn’t light the hottest fucking fire under my ass.

OceanofPDF.com

OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER THREE Cece

The next two weeks passed in a fevered blur of eating, sleeping, and trying to decode the language of the planet we were rapidly approaching. After breakfast each day, we were all separated to different training rooms. Mine was a tiny dark office with a single computer and a set of headphones which played snippets of the alien language we’d recorded from our orbiting research vessel. The audio recordings, alongside very grainy photos and videos, had already been analyzed by Earth linguists way above my pay grade, but even they hadn’t been able to make much of it. So far, we had a list of nouns we were mostly sure about, based on where the aliens seemed to be and what they were doing in the accompanying videos and photos. Otherwise, the language was completely without context or clues. I listened, day after day, to the same static-filled recordings, trying to gain some greater kind of understanding of what we were about to plunge into. The aliens must have had fairly humanoid mouths, as I could sort of replicate the sounds, though with some difficulty. The sounds of their language were guttural, many of the consonants clicking at the back of the throat. And their voices were deep and booming. The first time I’d put my headphones in and pressed play, my heart had thrummed in my chest, my skin pricking with goosebumps, to hear such a strange, deep voice, a voice from across the universe, growling in my ears.

When the other girls and I crashed into bed for lights out each night, I remained awake, going over and over the few words I knew, trying to untangle the mess of the rest of the language. Long after the others had gone to sleep, I tossed and turned, anxiety building every day that we got closer to the planet and that I hadn’t made some kind of linguistic breakthrough. Our survival could come down to me and my communications skills. I had to do better. I had to do something.

But the two weeks came to their end, and I’d made very little headway other than identifying what seemed to be a few more nouns the other linguists had missed. Ablik, as far as I could tell, seemed to mean weapon. Or maybe stick. Or shovel. Valok was something on the ground that the aliens looked like they picked up and stabbed, then ate. Maybe a small animal that they sucked the blood and guts out of. Gross. I had about fifty other nouns stored in the back of brain, words I’d memorized with anxious intensity, repeating them over and over as I walked the halls, as I showered, as I ate the crappy space ship food, even as I peed. But that was it. That’s all I had. A handful of nouns to try to negotiate with an alien race. No pressure.