It’s all I can do to keep from running outside first thing this morning and check the plants. The last four nights, something miraculous has happened when the sun was down: my crops actually grew.
This planet doesn’t grow very much, despite claims of it being a perfect human settlement, similar in most ways to Earth.
Similar to Earth? Yeah, right.
Even in the blighted, devastated ruins of Earth, we had rain, sunlight, soil.
People.
Things you take for granted.
This settlement was started fifty years ago, as a secret haven for those with means to leave Earth. Its coordinates were kept a secret. You had to know someone who knew someone to even get a chance to talk to the leaders of the settlement.
Oh, and cash. You had to have lots and lots of cash.
But cash can’t buy rain. It can’t put nitrogen in the soil. And it sure as hell can’t change the way the atmosphere scatters the light waves from the odd, red sun.
I force myself to slow down. To make my bed. To wash my face and brush my teeth. When you live alone—and I mean alone, I often go days without seeing another settler—it’s easy to neglect things like that. But I hear my mother’s words in my head every morning and feel guilty: looking good and feeling good often go hand-in-hand. She’s right, of course. Was right. When she was coughing up blood and little rubbery pink pieces of lung tissue, she didn’t look or feel very good.
I put some pellets into the stove and light the fire. They smell horrible, and I don’t want to know what they’re made of. The guy who lands here once a month to sell supplies insists that the fuel chips are a type of coal. I’m pretty sure he’s lying and the fuel chips are dung from a foul alien creature.
I warm my hands at the stove, flexing my fingers to try and work the cold out of them. This planet does not have an axial tilt like Earth and therefore we do not experience changing seasons. We only have one continuous season: cold.
After I set my water to boil and comb my hair, I wrap my cloak around my shoulders and step into my boots. I’ll get properly dressed after I come back inside and wash, but right now I have to check the plants. I can’t wait any longer. The last four days the tomatoes have gone from little hard green nodes into plump green fruits. The corn sprouted too; the stalks are thin and wispy as blades of grass, but that’s okay.
This is the most success I’ve ever had.
I concocted a new soil mixture and—for once—it seems to be working. Our planet orbits huge red star that is magnificent, especially at sunset, but only gives off dim yellowish light. You step outside and it’s like the whole planet is lit up by someone’s oil lantern.
I remember my childhood on Earth. The sunlight was bright enough to make you squint and put your hand up to shield your eyes. To compensate for the weaker light, I have tried everything to get the plants to grow. Soil mixtures. Various pH concentrations in the water. Nutrients. One of my early attempts even involved rigging a glass above the seedlings to magnify the sun’s rays. Needless to say, it didn’t work.
I brace myself for the cold and it doesn’t disappoint. I wrap my cloak even tighter, but the cold seems to have tiny little fingers, agile and adept at finding a way through the tight weave of the fabric. Underneath I’m just wearing my threadbare nightgown, which I sewed out of an old flour sack three years ago. Out here, you have to make things last.
I jog to the rows I’ve planted, telling myself it’s to warm up, not because I’m overflowing with hope.
Because hope doesn’t pay. Hope is merely the precursor to disappointment.
I crouch down ready to see my recent success… and there is nothing but brown, shriveled husks where the tomatoes were. The corn stalks are brown too, the leaves crisp and papery.
I feel sick. I can’t stand another disappointment like this. I was stupid to let myself hope.
Back to the drawing board. Again.
Except, I don’t have time to start over. I’m running out of the money my parents managed to smuggle off-planet. Soon I will have nothing valuable to barter when I need more grains or fuel chips or lantern oil.
Nothing, of course, except my virginity.
Soryahn, the traveling salesman who brings us the fuel and other supplies, has made his intentions clear. When my parents died, he offered to take me with him. “I’ll do right by you,” he says, “I got a little place with my mom and sister. They’d help you take care of the babies.”
I see him once a month to buy the dried pieces of manure he swears isn’t manure, and already he’s got me bearing his children. I suppose if he’s fantasized about me long enough, he’s already progressed to that stage of our relationship in his mind.
Soryahn is at least forty—almost twice my age—and not the sort of man a young woman dreams of marrying.
But he might be my only hope. If I stay on Yrdat long enough, I’ll starve. Or freeze.
Probably both.
I don’t want to run. I’ve had to run before. That’s how I ended up here. When I was twelve and got my first menstrual period, it was required Earth law that I submit my DNA for testing. Less than one percent of human females have DNA that is compatible with Zalaryn DNA, so of course I thought nothing of it.
What twelve-year-old girl wants to think of a life as an alien breeding vessel? Copulating with the big red bald creatures who run outposts on our planet. Giving birth to one of them. Giving birth to five or ten of them.
That’s the beauty of a child’s mind. The purity of optimism. The surety that nothing bad will ever happen to you.
Two Zalaryn aliens came to our house, gave my parents a copy of the test results, then held me down and tattooed my shoulder with a barcode. My mother fainted dead away. My father seethed with impotent rage, vowing vengeance that everyone knew would never come to pass. The aliens said that I was too young now, but on my twentieth birthday, I would be summoned. I would leave Earth forever to become mated to one of their kind.
Before I was born, when my grandparents were still young, the Earth was invaded by ruthless, scaly, humanoid things. The Kraxx. They have arms and legs, lungs and blood—but that’s where the similarities end. I would call them animalistic in their brutality, but animals are simple creatures. They fight for territory or resources. They hunt for meals. Animals do not force one captive to flay the skin from a fellow captive while the rest of the town is made to watch.
The Kraxx do.
The humans of Earth fought back, firing every nuclear weapon in the silos. Which was a lot. The effect on the Kraxx was like the effect of a few bee stings on a bear who’s gorging himself on honeycombs. It was futile.
Then the Zalaryns came to our aid. Not out of the goodness of their hearts. I’m not sure if those red barbarians even have hearts. Oh, sure, they have something that pumps their blood. But their only emotion seems to be anger.
And lust. Can’t forget about that.
Why else did they fight the Kraxx? So they could have their pick of young, fertile Earth females.
My parents did the only conceivable thing. They sold all their land and property, sold off precious jeweled heirlooms, liquidated their entire estate—which was substantial, considering that most people on Earth lived in ramshackle huts banded together in tiny villages.
They heard about the Yrdat settlement off-planet and spent a small fortune getting us here.
Then they died.
I’m glad. At least they died thinking that they’d sacrificed everything to keep me safe. That Yrdat would soon become a thriving settlement and I would begin the new chapter of my life.
They didn’t live long enough to realize how barren the planet is. That nothing grows in the dim sunlight. That nothing can take root in the stony, dry soil. That, as soon as new settlers show up, they take one look around and set out for anywhere else.
My parents didn’t live long enough to see their only child spend the rest of their money on dried chips of dung and moldy sacks of grain, to be propositioned by the old trader into a life much like the one that would have awaited me on planet Zalaryx.
But I can’t think about that now, not with this crippling disappointment. I really thought it was going to work this time. The settlers are counting on me to grow something. Just a few tomatoes or an asymmetrical ear of corn would be enough for morale. There’s not many of us left here—just the stubborn ones.
Or the stranded ones. Like me.
I sift around in the soil, trying to figure out what went wrong. I thought for sure that this time it would work. I’ve been testing various soil mixtures, and when I saw the little green nodes pop up on the tomato vines, I assumed success.
Stupid me. I should have known better.
I feel a wave of despair wash over me. Even if the tomatoes had grown larger, even if my corn had shot up six feet in the air—then what? I’d still be on this planet. Alone. Working myself to the bone. And for what? Word has already spread that Yrdat is a dead settlement—no amount of corn is going to attract new settlers.
But I keep at it. Even if this might be ultimately pointless, I’m compelled to figure it out. I can’t let this damned planet win.
And that’s when I hear it. I feel it. The deep reverberations send a weird fluttery tremor through my chest. Then the whooshing sound of a ship. A real ship—not the little two-man pod that Soryahn flies.
I look into the sky and see it, high up in the clouds. The way the ship reflects the image of our sun. Deep rich red. It looks like the sky is breaking. And bleeding.
My parents took me 1.4 billion miles away from Earth to hide me from the Zalaryns. And here they are.
The sky is bleeding, and soon, so will we.
I run into my little house as fast as I can. My parents ran drills like this when I was younger, unexpectedly shouting for me to stop everything and hide. When they died, I stopped practicing. I never really thought that the Zalaryns would come for me.
I guess I’m wrong.
I don’t lock the doors because my house doesn’t have locks. Not that a little bit of iron would do much good against those alien barbarians. Their weapons are said to vaporize. To turn a grown man into a pile of dust with the push of a button.
Once inside, I stop to carefully take off my boots and carry them with me. I don’t want to leave big muddy footprints for them to follow, but I don’t want to leave them by the door either—an obvious sign that I’m inside the house somewhere.
I go into the closet and feel for the thin leather strap. It’s hard to find. My fingers stumble across it, and I pull—lifting up the trapdoor. Underneath the house, my parents dug a secret hidey-hole. I haven’t been in here in years.
I climb down and then fit the wooden panel back in place, careful to conceal the leather strap. It’s dark and cold, and I don’t want to think about the things that live down here: the creepy, crawly creatures who are upset that I’ve disturbed their nest.
It’s quiet, nothing but the whoosh of blood in my ears. The sick pounding in my chest. My frantic, panic breaths. I try to slow it down, but it’s impossible.
There’s nothing to do but wait—keeping track of the time by my own erratic pulse.
My hand is on the cold dirt, and I walk my fingers across the span of the hole. It’s not big—only about four by four by four. Just big enough to crouch and wait. There isn’t any food or supplies. Nothing, except one thing.
A knife.
Use it if they find you, my mother said. A deep cut on each wrist. It will be a much kinder fate.
I don’t doubt that. I’ve heard what those aliens do to the girls they Mark.
Human females on their planet are stripped naked, caged and forced to service any male who wants a turn with them until they are impregnated. After giving birth to a freakish monster, it’s back to work—chained with your legs forced apart by several different alien beasts each night.
I have no problems with the knife. I’ll be able to open my veins if necessary.
These brutes want me for my body. They see human females as valuable vessels of the flesh… And I’m prepared to destroy what they want. To let my body expire, so it’s no use for them.
I grip the handle of the knife, and it’s a comfort. At least this day has come. The day I’ve feared.
Whatever happens today, at least I’ll be able to rest.