Marooned

This is the first entry in a new series about the absurd dreams my CPAP-addled brain has come up with. Here, I am using my dreams as fodder for writing exercises, and to keep my creative juices flowing. 

The recollection

When I awake from an extra lucid dream, I immediately make my way to the computer to get the memories of it into a document before they fade. These are quick bullet points of recollection that I use a sort of outline to fill out the rest of the story. I figured it might be a fun part of this project to share these bullets. This is what I jotted down for this particular dream:

• Exploring alien planet
• Try to leave in spaceship
• Attacked by flying monsters and crash land
• Desperately trying to repair ship
• Monsters come to attack again
• Get saved by friendly monsters
• Friendlies are trying to rebel against tyrant monsters on planet
• Join rebellion
• Live in a super regular-looking house

Obviously some points are more central to the story below, but that’s the fluid nature of storytelling, isn’t it? I simply took what I remembered from my dream and used it as a framework for what I’ve written.

So, with that out of the way, here’s what I wound up with.

Marooned

The mission had gone according to plan. A quick recon job—observe the native lifeforms and get out. It was an uncharted planet, at least as far as the Wizened’s logs were concerned, but the crew’s flyby had revealed a thriving, sophisticated civilization. They couldn’t risk discovery by staying too long, but the brief glimpse had left Jack in awe.

This is no lifeless planet at all, he had thought to himself. These…things, these creatures, were far more advanced than the derelict station in orbit had suggested.

Jack’s mind had been frantic as he piloted the ship to the launching vector. He was to keep low to avoid unwanted eyes and radar detection, but the dense canopy of alien foliage had made it difficult; it may as well have been ground for as solid as it looked. Further complicating their escape was the demanding nature of cloaking technology. Most of the refractor engine’s fuel had been depleted as the ship hovered above the town taking video footage of the architecture and citizenry.

The reserves ran out just a handful of clicks from the launch vector.

Almost immediately, the Wizened shook with plasma impact. Inside the cockpit, Jack set the pilot’s seat into the evasive position and jerked the yoke hard. As a scouting ship, the Wizened was quick and nimble, but the initial cannon fire had taken a chunk out of the hull before Jack could react.

The communicator buzzed to life on the dash.

“Jack, I’m looking at open air down here!” Pons was yelling over the deafening sound of rushing wind. “Do not try to launch! Repeat, do not engage the thrusters!”

Then what do I do? Jack thought.

Before he could formulate a plan, an enormous figure rushed into the air ahead. A winged beast filled the ship’s view, its brown, leathery form hovering in place. Compared to this monster, the Wizened was miniscule, nothing more than a bug to be swatted.

The thing reminded Jack vaguely of a dragon out of a storybook, but its proportions were all wrong. And there were six legs. The hindmost were the largest—bulky, muscled limbs that appeared to weigh the creature down. Each subsequent pair got smaller toward the beast’s front, with the forwardmost appearing thin and toothpick-like in comparison. Still, they looked capable of tearing the Wizened apart thanks to some wicked-looking claws.

The thing’s head was enormous, and possessed bat-like qualities. A narrow muzzle ended in a mouth lined with rows of sharp fangs. The thing drooled profusely, and its hissing sent tendrils of saliva into the canopy below. A pair of sharp ears stood atop the head, the openings pointed squarely toward its prey.

By far, the most dominating feature was its wings, all four of them at least twice as long as the Wizened. A semi-transparent, leathery membrane stretched across a series of bones, each ending in a tight grip of claws. Filtered sunlight shone through the brown skin, illuminating a web of veins coursing with blood. The entire presentation had a chilling effect, and Jack felt himself shudder against the imposing form.

Mounted to the creature’s back was a plasma cannon, itself the size of Jack’s ship. If that was what they had been hit with, it was nothing short of a miracle that the Wizened remained airborne.

Jack gripped the yoke tightly. Ahead, the beast continued to flap in place, almost challenging the ship to a game of chicken. Something atop its back caught Jack’s eye then, up near the cannon–a vaguely humanoid shape that he couldn’t quite make out at this distance. From here, it looked similar to the lifeforms he and Pons had observed while scouting the town.

“What’s the plan, captain?” Pons’ voice crackled on the intercom. Jack could barely hear her over the alarms that were bouncing around the cockpit.

After taking in the data on the control deck, Jack knew it was inevitable that the ship was going down. He couldn’t control that any longer. What he could control, though, was where they crashed. Not far to the west, a mountain range loomed, its sharp peaks stretching into the clouds above. The Wizened didn’t have much time left in the air, but Jack saw an opportunity. He switched on the intercom.

“Pons, hang on down there,” he yelled. “I’m going to try to lose this thing in the mountains.”

Jack jerked the yoke to the left, sending the ship into a sharp banking turn. The thing lurched with the effort, the hull breach playing with its aerodynamics. Ahead, the monster’s cannon fired just a second too late; the Wizened narrowly avoided the plasma blast.

Jack pointed the nose directly at the mountainside and waited for the ship to level off, but it refused to exit the turn. His arms ached with the effort of trying to correct course. The yoke became slippery in his sweat-soaked palms. Every sense was bombarded by the sounds and smells of fatal engine failure, and he squinted against the sting of smoke.

The ship was spiraling now, directly downward toward the canopy below. Somewhere in the distance Jack heard a roar, plainly audible over the cockpit’s din of alarms and Pons’ frenzied calls over the intercom. Desperately, Jack pulled back on the yoke. It didn’t budge.

A scream escaped his throat as he pulled as hard as possible. He felt a snap in his left shoulder and his vision blurred from the pain. Ahead, the canopy rushed forward to meet the nose of the ship, but just before impact the yoke relented. The Wizend’s bow caught the air and Jack’s world spun ninety degrees. The hull of the ship made first contact with the ground-like canopy, and Jack fell into darkness.

He awoke to a deep breathing directly overhead. As he opened his eyes, he was greeted by the barrel of a plasma rifle.

“On your feet, invader.”

Holding the rifle was a humanoid figure, one of the planet’s natives. Jack recognized the form from the scouting mission—and the one manning the cannon atop the dragon-like creature—but this was his first up-close look.

Like a human, it was bipedal, had two arms, and a head. Aside from these similarities, though, it struck an unrecognizable form. The legs bent backwards instead of forward, the arms were jointed in two places instead of one, and the entire shape was covered in rough, brown scales. Jack posited that it matched the texture of the skin on the flying beast that had shot the Wizened out of the sky.

Also like the flying beast, the creature’s head was indistinctly bat-shaped; a sharp, narrow snout, two pointed ears, a mouth full of razor teeth. At this proximity, Jack could also make out a fine fur all over their body, but it was denser and more apparent under the nose and jaw, almost like a beard and moustache.

“I said stand up!” the thing said in a deep, gravelly voice. They jabbed the rifle forward for emphasis.

Jack’s aching head relented to a single cloudy thought. How am I alive?

And then he remembered Pons, her station in the hull, the Wizened’s first point of contact against the forest canopy.

Jack bolted upright, but was tugged back down by the safety harness of the captain’s chair. “Pons!” he called as he fumbled against the restraints. “Pons, are you okay?”

The creature holding the rifle stepped forward and effortlessly ripped the restraints from the chair. “Your companion is dead,” they rattled in that rough voice, the weapon still aimed at Jack’s face.

Jack’s stomach dropped, and a melancholy wail escaped his throat. He collapsed forward out of the pilot’s chair and directly onto his shoulder. He was greeted by a sharp, hot pain all through his arm and vaguely recalled the sensation of his shoulder snapping in his fight against the ship’s yoke.

Jack felt his brain dull under the weight of the pain and his sorrow for Pons. He left his body and found himself floating, adrift in a river of broken scoutship components and plasma rifles; scrap metal and flaming wreckage; trees with trunks as thick as an Earth skyscraper; wood and cloth.

He awoke again, this time inside a building of some sort. He was sitting in a chair in a dark room. It was cramped here, maybe seven, eight feet square. Squinting, he could make out wood paneling on the wall directly ahead. His feet were bare, and he could feel coarse dirt under his toes.

Jack moved his arms, but found that he had been tied to the chair. He struggled against his restraints, but the sharp pain in his shoulder forced him to stop.

His shoulder! He realized that it had been bandaged and splinted, forced into a natural position and secured to keep him from moving it around too much. It still hurt a great deal, but Jack could tell his captors had taken care to mend it just so.

He was ruminating on this thought when a door opened behind him. Light flooded the room, forcing his eyes closed. Heavy footsteps sounded against the dirt floor and came to a stop in front of him. Jack opened his eyes and saw the now-familiar shape of the planet’s native lifeform looming. They leaned in close to his face, their noses nearly touching.

“I am called Doa,” it rasped. “You will tell me your name.”

Jack gauged his options. If Doa wanted him dead, he would be dead. They had had two chances to kill him by now, and they had made an effort to mend his shoulder as well. Seeing no other recourse, he responded.

“Jack.”

“Jack,” Doa said, once again standing upright. “Your companion, the one you called Pons. What were they to you?”

The memory of Pons churned within his stomach and he felt tears forming. “A friend,” he said softly.

“I too know this feeling of loss,” Doa said. “The ones who killed Pons have also taken friends from me.” They gestured to the room. “This place is safe from their eyes, deep in the darkest part of the forest, beneath an opaque canopy. If I cut your restraints, will you attempt to flee?”

Jack shook his head. He had no fight left inside.

Doa produced a blade, leaned forward, and freed Jack. He rubbed his wrists absently.

“Come.” Doa gestured for him to stand and follow.

Doa led him out of the small dark room into a larger one, bright with sunlight that poured in through open windows. Outside, he could see the thick trunks of miles-high trees. The wooden walls of the building had been hastily assembled and painted brown, and a small collection of furniture—a sofa, a pair of chairs—lent a surprising sense of comfort.

It wasn’t the furniture that stood out, however, but the room’s occupants. Several of Doa’s kind had taken refuge here, each and every one in a state of disrepair. On the sofa, one with a missing leg grimaced in pain as another bandaged the stump. Another, this one with an eye patch and a braced arm, dozed in one of the chairs. All around the room, injured figures had been scattered as if dropped carelessly by an enormous hand. A truly disheveled lot.

“What is this?” Jack asked.

“Those that you observed in the city, they did this to us,” Doa said. “What you see here are the common folk, displaced by wanton violence perpetuated by a cruel and unfeeling leadership. They rule without pity and use us as examples of what happens when we step out of line.”

Doa pointed to the legless one on the sofa. “That is my brother. They took his leg for attempting to protect a child against city-sanctioned capital punishment. The one without the eye, she was disciplined simply for observing a trade deal decreed illegal by the very government that was participating.”

Doa gave Jack a moment to observe the room, to take in the suffering begotten by the same monsters who had killed Pons. He felt a stirring then, a moment of connection with Doa, who had experienced similar loss a hundred times over.

He knew this was Doa’s intention.

“I show you this to earn your trust, so that you may know that not all of us are monsters,” Doa said softly. “For two generations the Centralized Public Ministry has terrorized the ordinary citizens of this planet. They use fear and violence to keep us under heel, just as they did to assume power in the first place.

“But we have been fighting back. Growing our numbers. Striking from a distance,” Doa continued. “As an off-worlder who has experienced loss at the hands of the CPM, you would make a strong ally. Earning the trust of a formerly objective party would go a long way in motivating those that want to fight back but have been too afraid.”

Jack looked at the sorry group assembled before him and thought of Pons. Sorrow arose from where he thought he had none left. It was accompanied by a new feeling this time: hatred. It was hot and sharp within his gut, and his limbs tingled with it. The sad, pleading eyes of Doa’s loved ones fueled it.

Jack turned to Doa, seeing for the fist time not a captor, but an ally and a friend.

“I’ll do it,” he said.

Doa reached out a hand and Jack took it.

“Thank you,” Doa said, “from all of us.