Cave Alien (Ancient Earth Aliens 1)

My mind is still working on catching up with events. This is not what usually happens in battle. Usually I find myself coated in the blood of my enemies, or flying my shuttle through their remains and the debris of their scuttled ships.

I do not trust the evidence of my eyes. The likelihood of space warping and the battlefield becoming a big green field is so low that it can’t have happened. I must be hallucinating. Perhaps my ship was blindsided by some Galactor scum and I was knocked unconscious and… no. I let out a burst of rough laughter at the very idea. It is more likely that this planet formed in an instant beneath my feet than I lost a battle.

The deer raises its head at the sound of me coming, but it doesn’t move.

This isn’t right.

Me. Vulcan. Scythkin warrior. Unable to frighten a prey creature?

“Get out of here,” I growl.

It puts its head back down and keeps eating.

I look down at myself, wondering if perhaps I am no longer ten feet of biological swords and steel, a multi-ridged creature of fang and bone. But everything is as I remember it. I am a massive beast designed to do damage to other beasts. Apparently, the deer in front of me has never seen a predator like me.

I start walking across the plain. There’s nothing else to do. I have no ship. No way home. Nothing to communicate with. I have absolutely nothing at all, except my body and the ability to move it. So I do that, in the hopes that it fixes something.

There is a mountain spewing ash and flame on my left, and a river down on the right. This plain lies between them, a rolling, grassy expanse bordered here and there by forests from which small animals emerge and then return. This place is a paradise, untouched by any dominant species. It exists in obvious balance, and that means there is opportunity here for a creature with the intelligence to exploit the natural world to take these resources and claim them for his own. I am already beginning to imagine all the ways I could make this place mine.

I walk, and the breeze blows. With the breeze comes a song. It is melodic and lyrical, rising from the throat of a human female who I see after brief inspection, is standing in the middle of a dense field of grassy grain.

A human?

There should not be a human here, wherever here is. Humans are limited in the universe, mostly extinct. There is no reasonable explanation for encountering one here. But existence, I’ve noticed, is rarely reasonable, and has become much less reasonable in the last five minutes.

The music she is making is enchanting, like no sound I have heard before. Her song is innocent, sweet, and yet melancholy. The only music I thought I liked was the screams of my enemies dying, but the trilling melody emanating from this beautiful young woman resonates inside my hardened heart, penetrates the armor which covers my body, makes me feel stronger and weaker at the same time.

I am not very familiar with humans. In the past I have refused to have anything to do with them. The rest of my clutch is currently babysitting a small simulation rife with the animals. But seeing one here, in the wild, singing to herself, I feel immediately and completely different.

My feet keep moving, closing the distance between us. She is much shorter than me and cannot see over the tall grasses between us. I can see her, however, the flash of red hair draws my eye through the brown seed tops, and the deep cream of her skin is accented by the flash of brown eyes which do not meet mine, but are turned toward the lightly erupting volcanic mountain in the near distance. It was likely disturbed by being suddenly yanked into existence, all its tectonic fury impotent compared to the strangeness of space.

My presence here is a mystery. This planet’s existence is an even greater one, but both issues pale when I listen to this pretty female sing with such passion and intensity I feel an immediate, primal connection to her. The longer I listen, the more intense the feeling becomes until it is a physical force inside me, urging me toward her.

I try to resist it. I know better than to disturb a sentient being on a settled planet. It always ends in war. Humans are sacred. Special. The one species we are not allowed to destroy. I should keep my distance, but I find my feet moving me toward her, parting the grass and grain as I see more and more of her beautiful form.

I do not know how old she is, but it seems to me in this moment that she is eternal. There is something indestructible about this girl. In this place, at this moment, she is femininity itself, a succulent, curvaceous archetype of all that which is beautiful and ripe and desirable in creation. Her entire body moves with her song, full hips swaying, eye sparkling. She is nude, but unlike other humans, does not seem ashamed of it. Her braids are coming undone, the natural curl of her hair as wild as her song, sung in time with the growling of the volcano.