Sci-Fi Short Story: 1,228 words
Somehow Cas was conscious throughout the dive through the atmosphere and the crash amid the crags and canyons of Geor-X. The dwarf planet was the kind of thing you’d only notice when you’re looking for a place to crash a spaceship and be able to breathe if you still can afterward. The surface was about 88% elevation changes due to the magnetized core and its tendency to cause major quakes during certain parts of Geor-X’s revolution. Cas’s vessel had crashed broadside near the top of one of these mountains. While huge pieces of debris tumbled downward, the pilot pod and its emergency-emergency-proof casing had stayed intact enough that said pilot was indeed still alive and conscious.
Cas, a short, stocky space-variety human with a dark brown Mohawk and gray eyes that looked red-brown against the rock, moaned grievously as they shed their crash helmet. It was cracked. Great. Better that than their skull, they supposed. They took a moment to get their bearings, although the exterior of the pod was scratched to hell and a cannister of adhesive had come loose from the safety kit and smashed against the interior, right in the middle of the viewport. Properly cattled.
Click! Cas freed themself from the safety harness. They dropped to their hands and knees on the dashboard, cursing again as a joystick jammed into a soft part of the thigh. The emergency beacon had activated automatically, though a fat lot of good or would likely do. Cas trudged over and popped the hatch, which got stuck, requiring them to crawl and wriggle out through a space that wasn’t quite wide enough. They were bruised and already aching, and the prospect of being broke down on this ugly nothing of a planetoid was helping nothing.
Cas surveyed the damage grimly. The shuttle might shelter them for a while, but there was no hope of getting airborne again.
They turned to assess the landscape. There was a soft rumble underfoot, swelling and fading in intensity but handleable for now. The craft had slid down to the bottom of one of the jagged dips, and there were signs of foliage – no, moss – shoved in the cracks. There had to be water for there to be moss. Cas looked up and around, finding more strips and patches of stringy moss all over the rock. Further off from the site, there were signs of small things moving from patch to patch. Little round elongated shapes, like pillbugs, but the size of a rat. Nothing else of use that Cas could see.
They cursed, then began to climb, wincing as their bruises announced themselves again. It’d be easy to see a way forward from up high. They kept out of their mind that there was no sentient life recorded here. They did their best to ignore when the inclined ground began to rumble. Just a bit more, and a bit more…
The very tip of the jagged rock broke when Cas set their foot on it. This resulted in their foot sliding out from under them and putting them into a very uncomfortable and hard sit. The jagged rock got to hear more curses on it and its mother, which Cas began shouting in frustration as the ground shook yet again. Harder this time. Way harder. Hard enough that as Cas tried to stand again they were dragged down, the rock beneath them shifting upward fast. Cas clung to the ground now, fear starting to overwhelm the discomfort. Up again and backward the terrain shifted, trying to buck them like some kind of bronco.
When the ground went back to its usual gentle rumble, Cas gritted their teeth and crawled back up to the peak. They looked over it to where the shuttle had been resting and found that they’d turned quite far from it. Another grumbling scramble brought them toward it again, but both sound and movement stopped when they caught sight of something new.
Something was touching Cas’s craft. It looked like a long, curved branch or a ringed, flexible arm of a machine. It stuck out from under a gap that had opened at the base of the rock and prodded at the emergency pod. A moment passed and it prodded, then slid up and over. Cas swallowed hard and inched forward to see better; there were two of these things. They got longer as Cas watched and slid over and over the craft and the debris around it, moving in concert and yet independently.
What kind of technology was this? Was it even tech? Where had Cas seen a structure like this before? This was a bizarre place, so this had to be something…bizarre. They crept forward some more, dislodging bits of rock and moss, watching with wary fascination as these two mechanisms inspected their shuttle.
Cas was halfway down to the craft when something else poked out from under the giant rock shard. Shorter, thicker, a pair of dark tubes that, like the arms, moved independently in the shuttle’s direction like a scanner. What in the name of the Sun was happening here? Cas began to cautiously slide down the steep slope, figuring that if some underground mole people existed here, it might be nice to be recognized for making first contact.
Their foot slipped with another rumble from underneath, and a large patch of moss was dislodged and tumbled down, hitting one of the shorter tubes and bouncing to the ground. Cas froze again. Slowly, the tube bent upward, extending slightly so it could wrap around the rock and see what had happened.
An eye. There was an eye. It was an eyestalk.
Horror began to creep up Cas’s spine. They knew they had been familiar with those shapes, but normally on a much smaller scale. The earthquakes made sense now. This great crag of rock was the back of some kind of giant…hermit crab.
The surface under their feet jerked upward again. A great spiny leg with a grasping claw on the end came out from under the rock shell and up toward Cas, who had fallen to the ground. They watched, paralyzed with fear, as the claw moved toward them, tiny eyespots framing it.
It was surprisingly gentle. The claw closed carefully around Cas’s waist, and then they cried out as it lifted them and brought them back down to where the shuttle was. The eye on the big stalk came closer, weaving back and forth over Cas, and the claw gently pushed them forward so it could look at them from all angles. Their heart was pumping so hard and fast that it sounded like a harmonic of the great rumbling of the planet. One of the antennae of the giant creature pulled back into the shell so the tip could examine Cas as well.
Suddenly, with another great shake of the world, the creature pulled back into its shell and the rock slammed closed. Cas yelped, then frowned. Just when they were getting somewhere. A faint sound from above made them look up; a shuttle was breaking through the thick cloud cover.
Of all the times for the beacon to not only work, but work quickly, this could’ve been the worst.
Cas sighed and trudged over to the remainder of the shuttle. There were going to be a lot of forms to fill out.
Words of Steele 