✅ Project SETI Trilogy

Chapter Three - Part I - Landfall

          Nova wordlessly watched the young blue-crowned Daxut scale down the ladder from the engine room. She moved slowly, like her clothes were wet and heavy and weighing her down. Nova wanted to say something to her, to console her, but he was grappling with his own strange sense of guilt and grief. Temet didn't have to say it—he knew something had happened to Novala. Even though he hadn't known him for very long, there was still a sense of attachment and loss that he wasn't quite sure how to process. Novala essentially was him... but he wasn't at the same time, and the other clones were still back on the Temetor One...

          "He—he's gone," Temet stammered. She hung her head. "N... nothing left."

          Nova felt his lip shake, and all he could think of to do was step over and embrace Temet as she began to vibrate with grief again.

          "It's okay," he whispered after a beat. "I—we are here, okay?"

          Temet gathered herself a little more and stepped back from him upon being reminded of Gabriel. She could hear the still-battery operated monitor he was attached to and the fast beeping it emitted, and beneath that, she could just make out his slight and wheezy respirations.

          "I... I guess we should... uh... I mean, I'm going to turn the ship back on," Temet said awkwardly in monotone. The reality of her situation was fully setting in now and she felt like she was drowning in the gravity of it.

          Nova's face tightened when he heard Gabriel's heart rate speed up even more. "I'll be in here," he gestured to the medbay as Temet sauntered away.

          "Okay," she whispered.

           Nova rushed back into the dark stall where Gabriel was. His lips shrunk into a tight line upon seeing his tachycardic heartbeat on the trace, and he could hear him breathing hard and fast too, almost as if he were trying to keep up with his racing heart. Soon after observing the monitor, power was restored, and the lights above flickered to life. He thought he looked pale in the blue-washed lights—too pale—and his concern was only potentiated when the waveforms showing his breathing suddenly grew shallower still.

          "Gabe," Nova kneeled down beside the low-set gurney and reached up to hold his hand. He noticed he was shaking, and he worried that it was the beginning of a seizure or a symptom of something worse. "Don't fall asleep... I think you have a head injury."

          Gabriel's eyes fluttered open and he rolled his head off to the side to look at him in an abrupt, awkward movement that made Nova tense up and lean back.

          "She—did bad things," Gabriel slurred hard. He struggled to find the words to articulate what had happened to him; he knew it was going to be relevant soon, and while he could still think relatively straight, he wanted to tell him. "She did... bad things."

          "I know, baby... I know. It's okay. We're on Earth now, and help will be coming soon," Nova cooed at him and stroked his face. As he was saying the words, he thought that he should have Temet send out a distress signal. His gaze trailed down, over his bruised chest and to the thick circular puncture wounds on the sides of his significantly smaller belly.

          "I... I mean... blood loss," Gabriel spat the last two words and he stopped to try to steady his breathing, but found himself unable to. "And—and... and..."

          "Shh, it's okay," Nova squeezed his hand, "I'll tell them—you've lost a lot of blood."

          Gabriel nodded. He leaned back again and seemed to relax, but Nova thought it didn't look like a good kind of relaxed.