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  Max studied the coming planet as it got bigger and bigger. He could make out a huge dark green continent streaking across the planet. As they got nearer, he saw blue oceans, white clouds, and its sun shining over it. Max knew it had a breathable atmosphere.

  Nevertheless, there were no space stations, no ships of any kind leaving or entering atmosphere, this was uncanny for charted regions.

  Riven 5 shook again.

  “Lord! Please watch over our shuttle and allow us a safe landing, in the name of the Christ!” shouted a passenger.

  The shuttle shook to-and-fro as it trailed into the dark side of the planet.

  A loud gushing sound was heard, and flames enveloped the windows, they were entering atmosphere.

  The flames vanished, and the ship glided across white clouds in a night sky. It was calm with the stars out. The ship shook again, as howls of air currents were heard.

  The clouds cleared, and Max saw mountains and forests. He saw a moon larger than earth’s moon with a noticeable crevice across its face.

  There were no city or landing pads anywhere.

  “Dammit!” Max shouted.

  “What?” Alex asked in fright, holding onto her armrest.

  The intercom came on.

  “This is Captain Broy, please get into your crash positions.”

  Alex squeezed her eyes shut and held onto Max’s arm.

  “Lord, please help us!” Max closed his eyes and murmured a prayer.

  “Yes Lord! Help us!” Alex added. The passengers spoke in panic-stricken voices and some cried in fright.

  Max looked out and saw the ship coming down on the forest top. He held Alex tight and closed his eyes. They heard treetops brushing across the bottom hull. One hit hard and someone yelled. A loud hum was heard, and Max knew it was the landing gears coming down.

  The ship hit the surface hard and the entire hull shook violently, rows of seats slid out of place, screams and hollers were heard. The left side of the ship was smashed by something, Alex screamed. The ship began scrapping its way along the ground, until it slowed to a stop, tipping on its side and sending some passengers flying to the front, then crashing down.

  Max saw smoke flooding the ship. He started coughing and heard Alex coughing too, he could barely see her. Max felt a lot of pain and could barely see. Someone opened two doors and Max felt the freshest air he had ever felt in his life.

  Max saw Alex lying on his right, unconscious.

  J.T. came to Max and took hold of Alex.

  “Come on Max! Let go of her!” Max slowly let her go. J.T. and another man in overalls pulled Alex out and carried her out of the ship. Max tried to move his left arm, but yelled in pain, it was broken. He felt his stomach wet and looked down to see it covered in blood.

  “Oh great,” Max whispered. He still heard whimpers and moans from the wounded passengers. J.T. and the man returned and lifted Max up off his seat.

  “Watch it! My left arm is broken!” Max yelled.

  “Okay!” J.T. yelled back.

  They carried him out and a streak of pain shot through his left arm, Max yelled. They carried him across the ship and out the door. Max smelled the pure air and it was bliss. He never felt air this good in the nearly dozen worlds he visited. J.T. and the man laid Max on the ground. Max saw dead grass, it must be Fall on this world.

  Max looked over and saw Alex lying unconscious. He crawled to her side and felt her pulse, still alive. He smiled and rolled over as excruciating pain exploded.

  “Aahhh!” He yelled out into the air.

  “We have to build a fire!” He heard a man yell.

  “By the tree over there!” J.T. replied.

  Max felt his lower midsection covered in blood, he felt a cut on this ribcage. He figured it was from the arm of the chair splitting into a sharp object and cutting him.

  A pretty, young woman came over him and stared down at him. She had dark blond hair tied-up. She held up a small square object and shot a wall of laser across him.

  She then began digging into a bag, as she spoke to him.

  “Hello, my name is Doctor Alberta Lackland. I worked at UEF Medical Unit 543 on Shin Bay, so I’ll take care of you. Just sit still.” She said shining a light in his eyes.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Max Wilkes.”

  “Relax Max.” She replied calmly. “You have a large gash on your left ribcage, no ribs are broken, one maybe a little bruised, but it’ll be fine once I give you a tablet. Your left arm is broken above the elbow.”

  She gestured with hers.

  She held up a small glue gun to his face. “I’m going to close your wound.”

  Max nodded. She lifted his shirt and rolled it up and pinned it to his midsection. A spray of alcohol came out from her sleeve to hit his side cleaning the area. She then took her glue gun and oozed foam onto the gash. Max felt it close and heal immediately.

  She took a headset out, put it on, and turned on a light.

  With a pair of scissors, she cut his jacket and shirt open.

  “I’m going to give you a little shot to numb your arm while I operate okay?”

  Max nodded.

  She held another gun to his shoulder and gave him a little shot. He gritted his teeth for a moment then, felt nothing. She yanked a sterile blanket out and slipped it under his arm.

  “I’m going to cut open your arm, mend the bone, and seal you up, it’ll take two minutes and you’ll have no scars.”

  Max nodded again.

  She turned on her headset lamp and began:

  She activated a plasma knife and cut Max’s arm open, he felt nothing. It did not bleed. She taped it open to the blanket and shot a laser at the bone from her headset. A magnifying glass came down over her eye, as she carefully moved the laser along the bone, mending it.

  Her magnifying glass went up. She closed the incision with her hand, which was covered in unseen plastic. She poured cream on the incisions. The wounds closed. The surgery was over.

  Alberta took off her headset and began putting her equipment away.

  Max looked at his arm and it appeared as nothing had happened to it.

  He looked at his ribs and no scars. Alberta handed him a tablet.

  “Take this, it should heal your bruised rib.”

  Max nodded and swallowed the tablet.

  He glanced over at Alex still unconscious.

  “Is she okay?”

  “Yeah, I scanned her. She has no broken or bruised bones. I think she fainted from shock, she should be okay. She has no signs of concussion, but I’ll check her out when she wakes up.”

  “Okay thanks Doctor.”

  “No problem,” Alberta said with a beautiful smile. She stood up.

  “The guys started a fire by the tree over there, I suggest you go and warm up. I have a heat lamp for your girlfriend and the other two wounded here, they’ll be fine.”

  “Okay, thanks Doc, really, thanks.” Max said sitting up.

  “No problem Max.” She said smiling.

  She walked over to another wounded on the grass and began work on him.

  Max looked around and saw the forest. He smelled the woody and earthy smells and loved it. He looked up and saw what looked like fir trees, tapering into the starry heavens. It was lovely.

  He slowly stood up and nothing hurt anymore. He turned and saw a campfire by a tree, and the passengers gathering by it.

  He started over.

  The passengers had made camp behind two giant fir trees at the end of the meadow the ship had crash landed on.

  Max reached the camp and saw the survivors sitting and standing around the fire, calm and quiet.

  J.T. had brought most of the injured passengers and left only two for Doctor Lackland. The grass smelled so fresh, Max loved it. J.T. came over to Max, holding a cup of tea.

  “Here drink some of this tea,” J.T. said giving to him.

  Max nodded.

  Alex came up to Max’s side holding her head.

>   “Alex!” Max shouted. “You okay?”

  She nodded slowly, narrowing her eyes in anguish, mostly at the situation. They sat down by the fire and Alex leaned on Max’s shoulder, their faces blackened.

  Dallas sat on a log staring at the fire, ash-smears across her face too, but appearing alright.

  Max saw nearly ten survivors and they all stared at the crackling campfire silently, he would only hear a cough now and then, and it seemed an hour went by without anyone saying a word. Some wore the Riven blankets around them and others drank tea.

  A pleasant looking middle-aged man decided to get up and speak.

  “Anyone know the protocol of landing on a new planet?”

  No one answered.

  J.T. walked into the camp coughing with his face still blackened by smoke, Max hadn’t even known he left. He threw a bag of food down, salvaged from the shuttle. One-man took the bag and opened it to find instant dinners and fruits. The survivors began passing the bag around and food items were taken. They would hit a button at the bottom of a Hot Plate and the dinner would cook itself in seconds.

  “Where are we?” A passenger asked.

  “We’re in a temperate forest.” The middle age man answered staring up at the trees.

  J.T. slipped a Link Unit (LU) out of his bag, sat down on a log, and turned it on.

  “Every planet in UEF and Core Databases have beacons. My LU has the databases, but I didn’t pick up any on this planet, so it means we’re on an uncharted world.” J.T. explained.

  “95% of the Milky Way has been charted.” The middle-age man commented.

  “I know.” J.T. answered.

  The Asian woman began sobbing and her husband gently held her.

  “Don’t worry mam, we’ll figure it out.” J.T. said to her.

  She covered her face crying. Her husband nodded for her.

  A young man with long bangs from across the fire turned to J.T., “with all our star charts and databases from our alien allies in two galaxies, we should find our way back shouldn’t we?”

  J.T. seemed lost for words.

  Alberta walked into the camp from the dark meadow and J.T. turned to her.

  “There’s a dead guy.”

  They stared at her not knowing how to react.

  “It said, ‘Tom’ on his overalls with a Logo of Shark Mining.”

  A man in overalls with a similar Logo buried his head in his hands.

  “I’m sorry,” Alberta said to him. “There wasn’t anything I could do. He died from massive concussions and head injuries.”

  She rubbed his shoulders.

  He unburied his head and looked up at her.

  “No, thank you. I didn’t know him well. We were on our way to our next job on Alpha.”

  Alberta nodded at him with a smile, before looking around.

  “Can we get introductions?”

  The middle-aged man stood up. “My name is Dr. David Hoffman. I’m the Director of Alien Studies at the University of Washington. These are my students Ryan Campbell,” he gestures to a young man sitting on the ground by him. He raised his hand, but his eyes could barely be seen under his wavy, brown hair.

  “And over there is my poor student Jenny Chang, recovering from wounds.” David said pointing to an unconscious woman soaking in a body-regeneration tub on the meadow.

  “We were returning from an anthropological fieldtrip to Shin Bay.”

  The Asian man stood up with his wife followed.

  “I’m Donald Wang and this is my wife Terry.” He gestured to her and they both nodded.

  Donald had jolly, bright eyes with a huge smile. His wife was a roundish, middle-aged Asian woman, jolly like him.

  “We’re just tourists,” Donald said.

  He wore a dark orange jacket and Terry a blue jacket with navy-colored fedora.

  “We’re coming back from Gai nay too.”

  Alberta put her hands up to the survivors.

  “Okay! I change my mind about introductions! Because I have some critical news, we have three fatalities and I believe those two are the pilots.” She said pointing to two people bandaged up on the meadow.

  “They’re not going to make it. They have internal bleeding and ruptured organs. I need human organs and certain instruments, and I need them now, and we don’t have them.”

  The news sent a shock through the camp. The passengers began chatters, shouting, and yelling. Alberta closed her eyes then raised her hands to them.

  “QUIET PLEASE!”

  “So, whose going to fly the damn ship?” J.T. yelled.

  “I can fly it.” Dallas calmly replied.

  “Okay we have a pilot, but is it flyable? Can we fix it? And where the hell are we? Can we contact the UEF or the Galactic Assembly? Or their allies?” Ryan added.

  David waved Ryan down, and turned to everyone.

  “How did we land on a habitable planet?”

  “The Navigation System,” Dallas replied from a log nearby.

  Alberta chimed in.

  “Before he died, Captain Broy told me the coordinate system was disrupted.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Dallas answered. “The Navigation system is a separately-hardwired subsystem that brings us to habitable planets, even if the coordinate system is not working. If coordinate system brings us to a random Jump Point, Navigation is automated to bring us to the nearest habitable world.” Dallas explained.

  The passengers were impressed. Dallas only returned a blank stare through her glasses.

  “Who are you?” David asked, stunned.

  “Dallas Zores, I’m with Alex’s crew, the Interstellar–Mining Guild, college intern for the Tech Staff specializing in Earth Computer Adaptations and Alien Technology.”

  Alex smiled at her.

  “How old are you?” Ryan asked.

  “Nineteen.”

  “Wow,” David replied, amazed. “A genius.”

  The camp looked on her with pride.

  Dallas slowly waved it off, blushing.

  “Are you part Off-Worlder?” Max asked.

  Dallas turned to him.

  “Yes, I’m part Coordusion.”

  “I figured. They’re the most advanced Alien Race in the Discovered Sectors.” Max replied.

  “J.T .is hardware and I’m software.” Dallas added.

  “Where is J.T.?” Ryan said looking about the camp.

  “I was inspecting the ship.” J.T. said coming out of the dark.

  “What’s wrong with it?” Ryan asked.

  J.T. sighed and rested his hands on his hips.

  “Most of the fuselage is intact, but forward port is crushed like a tin can. The engine wasn’t hit too bad, but the Forward Exhaust Ports are totaled, gone. I’m sure some of the circuits are fried. I would have to get in there and look.”

  “Not good news.” David replied.

  Ryan sighed and shook his head.

  “We have faith in you J.T..” Donald said smiling.

  J.T. smiled back and nodded.

  “I’ll do my best, but you have to remember, Dallas and I are civil engineers, not ship mechanics.”

  “You guys are our only hope at the moment.” David replied.

  Later, David paced the camp, thinking.

  Tents had already sprung up around the camp fire, some on the meadow and two under the arching willows. The Wangs and the miner had already retired into their tents and were asleep. The rest of the crew stayed up and discussed the plans.

  “We have to find civilization if there is any here.” David stated.

  “I saw what looked like a town back that way.” Ryan said pointed toward the meadow.

  “Does anyone have a compass? This world has to have a magnetic system.” David said looking around.

  J.T. took out a gadget from his bag, lifted up for everyone to see. “I have one better, a World Reader. It picks up computers, radio signals, and creates the geography immediately.” He said placing it on his lap. “It’ll take a few seconds.” />
  The LU let out a quick hum. J.T. then read: No Signal. He furrowed his eyes. “There’s no signal here, meaning no major technology.

  “What?” Ryan asked, shocked.

  Dallas came over and sat next to J.T.. “Maybe everything is encrypted.” She squinted at the screen.

  “No, World Reader is supposed to pick up popular television and radio signals too.” J.T. turned to her and explained. “Besides, if they were that advanced, we’d see Investigation Units or Police here by now.”

  “Yeah, plus I didn’t see any ships or anything in orbit.” Max added.

  “I did find directions, so this world does have a North and South Pole, the ship is directly South.” J.T. chopped his hand south.

  David turned to the crowd. “We have to find someone brave enough to go to that town tomorrow.”

  Alex lifted her head from Max’s shoulders and stared up at them. “Max is former Fleet!”

  Max snapped his eyes at her, bugged. She returned a smirk.

  “You were with Fleet?” David commented.

  Max slowly nodded, begrudgingly.

  “Cool, at least we have some protection.” J.T. said smiling.

  Alberta walked into the camp.

  Everyone turned to her as she gave a look of dread. “The pilots are dead.”

  # # #

  J.T. glued himself to his screen studying his LU, Dallas looked on, but then yanked herself away in frustration.

  The crew buried the pilots and the Wangs said prayers over them, the rest retired around the campfire.

  More food and supplies were brought into the camp and piled by the fireplace. J.T., Max, and Ryan had gotten firewood. Max sat staring at the fire with Alex asleep on his shoulders. He heard footsteps from behind and turned, David and another man came walking into the camp.

  Max had not seen the man before. He figured he had just woken up.

  “Listen up everyone!” David said clapping his hand. “Hubertus and I were trying to read the constellations. We did see the galactic core, so we must be in the Central Rim of whatever Galaxy we’re in.”

  He saw the tired faces of the crew, slowly batting their eyes trying to stay awake. He noticed some members had gone to their tents and were already asleep.

  Ryan sat chewing a cracker by the fire when he stopped and turned to David, swallowing. “Wait a minute…doesn’t the ship have an Interstellar Distress Call?”