Page 2 of Flower of Seshana (Tales from the Darvel Exploratory Systems #1)
Chapter
Two
A lexandra groaned as a steady beat throbbed through her head. Her hand went instinctively to her head and then froze when her gloved fingers immediately sank into the thick thatch of her short blonde hair. Her fingers worked their way over to her glasses. It was dark enough that she couldn’t see anything clearly, outside of a faint light not too far away, but she was relieved to feel that they were still in place despite somehow losing her helmet. She turned her head toward the light, and she sighed with relief as she scrambled over to where her helmet lay on its side. She turned it hastily in her hands, looking for any sign of damage that might suggest how it came off. Surprisingly, it wasn’t broken. Aside from the lamp being left on, it didn’t look any different than it did any other time she had taken it off during training or the few times she had ventured very briefly outside of the colony.
“Strange,” she murmured.
“Ssss…tahhhhnge,” a deep voice hissed from the inky darkness.
Her head snapped up in the direction of the voice and she froze. “Hello? Is someone there?”
Something rasped against stone, and then she heard it again—the drifting vocalizations of hissed words drifting to her, this time in a distinctly alien language that her translation implant latched onto.
“Female… strange,” came the broken translation. “Soft, tender… not meat. What… place? Why… here?”
She got a sense of the alien moving in place as the rasping sound scraping against the stone continued but got no closer or farther away. She rubbed her brow as she recalled a long serpentine tail. She had assumed it was a cave-dwelling predator. Although she hadn’t heard of any sort of sentient beings inhabiting the planet, it was comforting to imagine that their collision had possibly been a mistake rather than the thing hunting her. The fact that it clearly recognized that she was not meat was a huge relief. Had it also mistakenly plunged into the depths of the cavern? She recalled that there had been a storm on the surface.
She swallowed nervously as it continued to hiss to itself in a low voice, and she mentally prepared for the strange sensation that would come from the other half of her translation device implanted in her throat. She had never gotten used to the way it felt whenever it manipulated her vocal cords to make the correct sounds to respond to other species.
“Who are you?” she shouted and then recoiled hard enough to fall back onto her butt by the shrill sounds that ripped from her throat. She immediately snapped a hand over her neck and grimaced in pain as the alien shrank away—or so she assumed based on the loud rasp of something heavy scraping against stone. “Don’t go,” she tried again. “Please.”
Without a doubt she would have been berated by any of her superiors if they had been within hearing distance, but they weren’t, and she was suddenly terrified of being lost alone in the cavern. She ran her hands along her waist and sides, and her stomach dropped. She was missing almost all her rappelling equipment. To her relief, the sounds of withdrawal halted, and she could almost feel its curious regard seconds before a pair of brilliantly glowing yellow eyes appeared to stare unblinkingly at her.
“Please? Strange,” it murmured in a volume that suggested it was speaking to itself despite the echo of the cavern.
It was no wonder it had reacted so negatively. She couldn’t even imagine how horrifying that shriek would have sounded echoing through the chamber, especially if the alien hadn’t been prepared for it. That it almost sounded puzzled by her request threw her, however. It clearly had such words in its language but did not expect it from her.
“Yes. Please,” she repeated. “I am frightened. Please don’t leave me alone.”
It hesitated, its indecision evident as those yellow eyes suddenly blinked at her. “You are alone?” it finally queried.
Alexandra bit her lip and prayed that she wasn’t sealing her fate in this moment. Telling an unknown being that one was alone sounded like the height of stupidity that she would have scorned just yesterday, but she didn’t have much choice but to show a little faith.
“I am alone,” she agreed.
“A lone female. How strange,” it repeated, but this time in a tone that registered to her as surprise.
“I came down here to study the plants in the cave system,” she explained in a low voice. “But… you fell on me.”
“Yes,” it agreed after a long moment and let out a long hiss of sound that was likely the equivalent of a sigh. She made a mental note to write a glowing review from the implant used by Corp. “I dropped into the cave to escape the storm but became disoriented. Those of the Vahel do not come into Seshanamitesh territory,” it added. “A female of the shinara would seek to kill any Vahel male who invades her territory.”
“That… sounds unpleasant,” she croaked as she cast an uneasy look around. “There is another species that inhabits the caverns?”
“Yes,” it hissed. No, not it—the alien identified himself as a male. “Divided by generations, the Seshanamitesh dwell beneath ground. The Vahel dwell above.”
“Okay,” she murmured and tried not to shiver as she peered into the surrounding darkness. “I can see a species living in the caves being missed, but our people have never come across anything like you. If you live above the ground, why aren’t we aware of your presence?”
Another exaggerated rasping sound followed as he shifted in the darkness once more.
“I won’t tell,” she quickly assured him. “Aliens aren’t my department so I’m not under any obligation to report back to base anything that you don’t want me to. Well, I do have to tell them that I encountered an alien species, as that would be a matter dealing with our colony’s safety, but I won’t tell them where you live. Really, I’m only interested in plants. But… I am curious.”
A leathery rustling sound echoed through the cavern, and then the susurrus of what she now knew was scales sliding against stone filled the air as he moved toward her, his yellow eyes growing brighter. A beautiful bioluminescence speckled his sides, and a fanned fringe webbing shaped like scalloped plates ran down his back and tail. The full details of his build and appearance came into focus moments later when he intentionally moved into the beam of her lamp. Alexandra gaped as her eyes fell on his inhuman face and the scaled length of his body that terminated from the pelvis down in a long, thick serpent’s tail.
He was more different than she had imagined.
Although he was built powerfully, with a broad chest and well-developed shoulders that were at least humanlike in shape, his features when put together were startling. His tail was a long rope of muscle, his webbed wings even more massive than she remembered. His face had somewhat recognizable features, given that the nose, mouth, and eyes were in the same places as those of a human, but his eyes were larger, his nose flattened and slitted, and his facial dimensions were far more angular, lacking the soft roundness of human faces. The combination was something like a gargoyle mixed with a serpent. Even his ears, where the leathery skin had numerous flexible segments that resembled feathers, seemed both strange and fitting for him. And that was not even touching on the fact that he had a tail where, even amongst most aliens known to humans, it was more common to see legs.
His mouth parted on an exhale, and she shivered as she caught sight of his sharp teeth. He was not hunting her, but he was definitely a predator. As strange and deadly as he appeared, however, he was not without his attractive features. Although his scales were ivory and cream, his luminescent scalloped webbing glowed a pretty hue of creamsicle orange that immediately made her nostalgic for home.
Alexandra swallowed tentatively as she peered at him. “I’m Alexandra. Do you have a name?”
Yellow eyes blinked at her, and the slitted pupils shrank even smaller in the light of her lamp.
“Kethan,” he replied. His head cocked as his eyes skimmed her speculatively. “You came here to seek plants. I can show you plants. In doing this I can show you where I come from far more easily than I can explain it.”
“Oh!” She sucked in her bottom lip, suddenly uncertain. “I don’t know if that would be a good idea. I should get back to the colony.”
Twin orange crests of the same webbing rose as two bony spines on his brow rose. Lowered as they had been, she had mistaken the markings for something like hair, but now that they’d been lifted, she could see her error clearly. She had no doubt that the webbing conveyed subtle communication cues, as the slightly raised crests seemed to be an expression of inquiry. It certainly didn’t seem to be an aggressive display.
“Did you not leave your nest to see Seshana’s plants? Will you return before you see even one?”
She squinted at him, uncertain if he was mocking her. His question seemed genuine enough.
“You have a point,” she relented. “And this is likely to be my only chance. When I return, I have little doubt that Director Hudson will revoke my access codes for the foreseeable future.” She gave him a suspicious look. “Are you certain you can show me plants? All my research indicates that they’d be found in the caverns.”
His grin stretched his mouth far too wide, illuminating the serpentine structure of his jaw and mouth as he revealed an even better view of his unnervingly sharp teeth. “For much of the planet, you would be right… except for when it comes to the Zir Mountains.”
“You have plants in your Zir Mountains?”
It hardly seemed likely. The dark mountains that rose above the desert were usually heavily shrouded with fog. Only their lowlands and summits rising above the fog were visible at most times.
He hissed gently. “More than you can ever imagine. More than the Seshanamitesh could even imagine in their squalid caverns deep within the earth of Seshana.”
Her eyebrows rose with interest.
“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to see,” she murmured and then nearly jumped when his crests flicked and snapped merrily.
A nervous laugh escaped her as he drew closer. She was stupid. She knew he would have to carry her to help her escape the caverns, but she still couldn’t help the tremor of something she couldn’t define as he glided toward her with the graceful winding of his tail. And when the inhuman heat of his arms surrounded her, she leaned into him and closed her eyes as a shiver rushed through her.
Yesterday’s Alexandra would never have believed this. It seemed that she was getting a real adventure in the field after all.