Captured and Captivated

Chapter 11

Harper

The security harnesses crossed over my torso in a familiar X.

It was the tiniest of comforts. A simple reassurance that our two physiology wasn't so different after all. As if that somehow meant that now maybe- just maybe- my luck was starting to turn.

We were still crashing into a planet, though. That hadn't changed. The debatable secure harness would just make the inevitable impact... better? Survivable? Let's aim for survivable. The most I could dare to dream.

"Redacted means terraforming disaster."

I spoke on autopilot. Thanks to my ill-destined translator microbes the thought kind of appeared out of thin air inside my head. Mindless chatter was a defense mechanism to distract my mind from everything else going on. I hadn't bothered with the Krynn, but now that he could understand me? Time to start blathering, apparently.

My alien rescuer only grunted. It was neither a yes or a no. His eyes were closed and his hands were moving in a dizzying flurry of precision across two control panels in front of him. He wasn't even looking at what motions he was performing. Somehow our ship was still flying. Somehow we were still in one piece.

I'd flown on many shuttles this size, but clearly this was some advanced alien technology at work. The kind you read about in a holo novel. Re-entering atmo is one of the hardest things that can happen to a ship outside of a full on gunfight. The inside temperature around us was hot borderline miserable, the whole vessle was shaking, and the steady roar of a block of metal falling through thickening gasses was quickly transforming from distant to deafening.

In short, it wasn't so bad. Terrifying, sure, but I'd once had the displeasure of descending upon Venus during one of its infamous sulfuric acid storms. That had been on a ship four times this size and the landing had resulted in both shoulders dislocated and a week spent in medbay. Standard situational hazard they'd called it.

This planet was far worse then Venus. I'd never seen anything like it.

As we passed the radiation belt to start mid-atmo, the true nature of what we were about to crash into became clear.

We were descending at an angle right into the center of a hyrda-shaped electric storm. Continual bursts of lightening arched out from a central vortex, each ray of it holding a smaller whirlpool of energy of their own at the end. In the center of it all was a dark and swirl miasma. The apex of a whirlpool. Dark gold clouds of gas were continually being sucked into it, spilling down from the viewscreen into a pitch dark core in the middle of it all.

It was an odd thing to feel my own heart skip three beats. We were heading right for it.

"Eye of the storm," I breathed. Some say its the safest place to be. I'd never tried it.

"I will keep you alive, human."

The alien's eyes were closed again. His voice sounded far more robotic than before. His hands moved with purpose, every twitch of his fingers making the now bone-shaking rumbles of the ship just a little bit better.

The descent continued on its bone-rattling downward trajectory. It was impossible to say how high up we were, but I was starting to get glimpses of the surface.

Redacted. It was starting to make sense.

Spiraling mountains of black rock were broken up by a grid of massive hexagons far too vast and perfectly even-sided to be created by nature.

Terraforming disaster. I got it now.

"What in the hells happened here?"

I had to shout it over the increasing noise. The atmospheric interference had only intensified as we made our way through the mid cloud layer. My alien opened his eyes just long enough to give me a significant look.