Illiya - Taylor Neeran Chronicles #1

Chapter 8 - Divide and conquer

Into the forest

Taylor took an experimental breath as she stepped out of the airlock. Fresh, clean air, almost minty. A range of unfamiliar scents assaulted her nose, but none were unpleasant. She glanced at the forest surrounding the clearing. The trees on the near edge of the clearing were smaller than those behind them, and ranged between five and eight metres in height. They had small ridged leaves with dark green centres that faded out to a pale green rim at the edges. The leaves shimmered in the slight breeze.

A variety of bushes and grasses grew beneath the nearby trees, hiding most of the forest floor behind them.

The forest canopy transitioned to taller trees with short green-gray needles uniformly spread along the branches. They might be evergreens, but any of the trees could shed their foliage. It was easy to make assumptions.

She took a deep breath, held it, then let it out slowly. No adverse effects yet, so she might not die from breathing the air. And frankly it smells better than the ship.

She hesitated for a moment, then walked across the clearing in the direction that Carla and Henry had been taken.

Squilm followed Taylor out of the airlock, but halfway across the clearing she flickered and disappeared. A translucent image of Squilm re-appeared half a step later, then vanished completely after two more steps.

Taylor had just entered the forest when a movement caught her eye. A humanoid form separated from the shadows of a nearby tree as an Illiya approached her, arms held loosely at their sides. Taylor stopped and watched the Illiya as it approached.

The Illiya had two brown eyes set to either side of a broad green nose, with hairless eyebrows and a long forehead. A small central ridge started halfway up the forehead and continued over the top of the skull.

The Illiya's proportions were humanoid, with eyes designed for stereoscopic vision. Its ears curved outward from the sides of its head, each ending in a blunt point. There was no hair that she could see. The Illiya wore no clothes, other than a long green belt-like garment wrapped around its waist that covered the top of its legs with numerous hanging pockets. It had six digits on each hand, with four inner fingers between two identical opposing thumbs. The shoulder, elbow and wrist joints were also humanoid in design, though the bones in the forearm were proportionately longer than that of a typical human. The Illiya was tall at just over two metres, its rounded chin sitting above the level of Taylor's head.

The Illiya's torso was slim but well muscled, with a broad rib cage taking up half of the torso, tapering down through a soft abdomen to slender hips. The Illiya's skin was smooth and unblemished, with no defining marks or features other than the outlines of the ribs and musculature underneath.

Each leg had a single knee joint below the narrow hips, again humanoid in construction, descending to an ankle that connected to a broad foot with six digits at the front edge. Each foot had one large toe on the inside and five smaller toes, but all were longer than human norm and looked long enough to grip objects if needed. Other than being tall, the proportions of the Illiya were not unsettling to the human eye - she had seen far stranger aliens in her classes at school. The Illiya wouldn't have earned a second glance wandering the halls of Ganymede U.

Taylor stood perfectly still, waiting to see what would happen next. The Illiya stopped in front of her and peered closely at her face. It raised an arm and poked at her backpack with a finger, then lifted the strap between the two thumbs of its left hand. It examined the fabric for a few moments and let the strap fall back down on her shoulder.