Native Life Chapter 5

Shaking his leg, Jerry made the mistake of glancing down in panic. The hands of his team were all that was preventing him from falling into the abyss as complete fear paralysis overcame him. They were too far up to see the bottom of the column in the growing darkness and the creature that had a hold of his foot glowed a faint purple as it glared up at him.

"Is that a dragon?" cried Lauren in alarm, helping Erica haul Jerry up the last bit and dumping him onto the floor of the maintenance room they were crowded into.

"I don't think so," panted Craig, kicking out at the creature.

It had black and purple scales that covered its body, much like a snake, but the purple seemed to glow softly in the gloom. It had locked its teeth into the sole of his boot, wrapping its front legs around his leg. Along its back six appendages fluttered like wings, trying to right it as it got dragged up onto the floor with him. Its back legs scrabbled at the edge of the hatch weakly, trying to keep it from falling back into the pit.

"It must have climbed up after us," said Erica in wonder as it finally let go of his leg and lay there gasping.

"It's gorgeous!" whispered Lauren, stepping over Craig to see it better.

"It's probably just trying to regain enough strength to eat your face," groaned Craig, kicking out at it again.

His boot caught the edge of its muzzle, and there was an audible crack before it stopped breathing.

"Did you just…" gasped Erica in surprise.

"No way…" choked Craig, sitting up and looking at his boot as if it had done it without his consent.

"It's dead," said Lauren sadly.

"I didn't mean to actually… I mean, I meant to kick it back through the hatch…" trailed off Craig, looking around at the others as if to defend himself.

"How could you have killed it so easily?" asked Erica, reaching out to touch it gently.

"It seemed… it seemed to be in distress already," struggled Jerry, coming back to himself as the panic receded and he managed to scoot further from the hatch in the crowded room.

"Wait," murmured Erica, gently flipping it over. "There's a dart!"

"Like a manmade dart?" asked Lauren, drawing closer to see herself.

Erica plucked the tiny dart out from behind the wing-like appendages and held it up for everyone to see.

"That does not look man-made to me," said Craig, latching on to anything to distract from having killed the thing.

"So, there is sentient life here," mused Erica, setting the dart down and digging in her pack.

"What are you doing?" asked Jerry, turning to study the door his back had been up against.

"I want to save this as proof there's life here," she said, pulling out a small container that held several pills.

"Is that a good idea? We don't even know the status of this place and there's obviously a lot going on here," said Craig hesitantly.

"I concur with Craig," said Jerry, pulling himself to his feet. "But you can hold on to it for now. It may come in handy if we encounter any of the natives."

"You think we will encounter things this high up?" asked Lauren, watching Erica gently place the dart in among the pills.

"Absolutely," sighed Jerry, as Erica shut the hatch and stood up.

Grabbing the handle for the door, he waited for the others to gather around behind him before opening it.

Inside the corridor before them, vines coiled around the walls and floor. Lights from the colony ship still glowed faintly through the leaves and flowers.

"We have to assume everything is dangerous, even the plant life. Try not to touch anything and be on your guard," said Jerry softly, stepping through the door and trying not to step on the vines covering the floor.

"The mainframe should be straight ahead of us, but it won't be that easy to access it," said Erica, following right behind him.

Lauren and then Craig followed behind, as they quietly made their way through the tunnel of vegetation. Cracks in the panels must have given the plant entry into the ship. Jerry wasn't sure how the colony ship would react to so much native life invading it when they reactivated its colony building protocols. He just hoped it didn't see them as invaders and attempt to eradicate them as well.

With the atmosphere being different from Earth atmosphere, the colonists would no doubt have been modified to breathe it easier, raising the risk of the ship seeing them as intruders.

"How similar is this to the colony ship you were born on, Erica?" asked Jerry, pausing at a branch of corridors.

She frowned as she peered down the new route then shook her head.

"This one's more like a modified battlecruiser, which was common after the third intergalactic war. The government sold a lot of the unused cruisers to the highest bidder, which was often the colonizers. They made tons of money off the common people just trying to get their own space away from the overcrowding from the baby boom of the war."

"But is it similar enough for you to lead us to the mainframe?" asked Jerry patiently.

"As long as we keep following this corridor, it should eventually meet up with a main throughway and we should be able to access some kind of computer system there," said Erica.

"At least the plants are starting to thin out," grumbled Craig from the back as they continued forward.

"I'm just glad we have enough light from the emergency lights to not need the flashlights," said Lauren, brushing a strand of her long hair out of her face.

"I just don't want to run into the people pods in our travels," Jerry said with a frown.

"We shouldn't. The cryo-units should be higher than we'll need to go. The base area on this level and just above us will be the building and construction supplies. Then there would be the storage of food stuff around the beginning of the mainframe. The higher you go, the more livable you will find it."

"Why would the food stuff be down near the construction equipment?" asked Craig. "Shouldn't it be up near where the people are?"

"Oh, it's not for the people to eat, I mean it's like the farm animals and crops for the new colony," explained Erica with a chuckle.

A noise from ahead of them had them all pausing. It was something mimicking Erica's chuckle.

They all but held their breath as they waited and it came again. Her chuckle quickly followed by a very male cough. Then another voice spoke quickly in a language none of them recognized, followed by a very soft purr.

Out of the gloom ahead of them stepped a tall feathered bird. It stood over six foot tall, and ruffled its black feathers as it looked at them out of one of its black beady eyes.

"Caution, danger ahead," it said in a very mechanical voice.

"Is it repeating things it's heard before?" whispered Lauren, the first to speak in the following silence.

"Caution! Caution!" it cried loudly, flapping its large wings, and turning to dart back the way it had come.

They listened as its heavy footfalls echoed through the corridor before fading away to silence again.

"That was one of the aliens, wasn't it?" asked Craig from the back.

"I… yes, I believe so," nodded Jerry.

"Do you think it was actually trying to warn us of danger?" asked Lauren.

"If the monster alien thing is ahead, that's probably a safe assumption," growled Craig.

"We have no choice but to move forward," whispered Erica. "If we're going to get to the mainframe before them, we can't afford to hesitate."

"My question is: was all of those voices from the bird, or were some of them from the other two?" asked Jerry.

"You would know better than any of us," said Erica giving him a look.

"I know; I know. But if any of them are smart enough for us to talk to, we might be able to prevent anyone from getting hurt."

"What are you going to do?" asked Craig sarcastically. "Apologize for throwing them all in cages and hauling them off to some gladiatorial fighting ring? Offer up your services as an intergalactic taxi to take them all home? I don't think they pay very well."

"I don't know," mused Jerry. "Our lives are pretty expensive to me."

No one said anything to that, and he turned to continue moving forward. Just around a bend, the corridor ended and Jerry wondered if the bird wasn't talking about something else entirely as the area before them opened up. In the dim glow of the emergency lights, they could barely make out the immense space filled with everything the ship would need to build a new colony and right in the middle a village of some kind had been erected.