It was supposed to be a fun vacation. Key words: Supposed to be.
But when our airship was suddenly struck by lightning, losing balance and careening down into a forest on a planet designated as a nature preserve...
...Those happy thoughts died, and were replaced with abject despondency.
When I came to, all I smelled was the crippling acrid odor of burned plastic and metal. And flesh. The crackling of flames nearby signaled that I was lucky to have woken up at the time I did, as my nose and throat stung from the chemical-laden smoke and fumes filling wherever I was. Right above my head was a steel beam. Looking to the right, it seemed it had swung down in front of me. Yes, I was lucky. Had my head been just a bit closer in that direction, I would have ended up like the person sitting to my right. It was not pretty, and my stomach churned with nausea at the sight.
Quick body check. Legs, intact. Arms, intact. Body covered in cuts, scrapes, and bruises, but otherwise intact. My entire body hurt like hell, but it was a dull pain. Shards of glass and pieces of metal had torn through clothing and skin, but I was very much alive.
As noted before, I was lucky. Very lucky.
I managed to climb out of the wreckage. My head ached - I had clearly hit it hard, since I had been knocked out for some time. But it was only when I managed to get out, following the light from outside - er, a hole in the side of the collapsed wreckage - that I realized just how bad things had been.
The airship, the Benevolence, was a sightseeing vessel, equipped for 200 passengers. It was a large, luxurious craft. The tour package included several stops on this planet, to see its waterfalls, sparkling caves, and other beautiful sights. For me, it was meant to be a fuck you to my company - I was planning on quitting soon, and had decided to burn three hard-earned weeks of paid vacation days on this trip just to spite them - they'd be lost if I quit due to labor laws in my region of employment.
...So much for that. The ship was totaled. Metal crumpled up in bad positions. Splintered structural elements, with the sound of steel creaking as the heat of the flames took their toll. Some things were still on fire, blasting acrid fumes upwards into the sky.
How long had it been? Would help come? And - were there any other survivors?
Those first two hopes were quickly dashed. I had gotten cheap seats at the back. It turned out that the rear portion of the vessel was the only part that looked even partially intact. The front half was a total write-off, having taken the brunt of the impact. The middle was still on fire.
I desperately looked around for signs of life. But... no.
I sat down, staring blankly at the wreckage. What... what even was this? What did I do to deserve this? I was going to die here, right? Alone? Hungry? Left to the wilderness on this planet I only knew anything about because of travel brochures and spacenet reviews?
"H...human."
Huh? A voice? A... ribbity kind of voice?
I stood up, looking around. But I couldn't see anyone.
"U...up here..."
As I turned my gaze up, I saw a body tangled in the tree branches, crimson blood dripping from where their skin had been slashed and splintered.
A Ranaria. Large bulging eyes. A wide mouth meant for swallowing prey whole. Green skin with pearly white and orange accents. Webbed hands. There was some convergent evolution that resulted in that humanoid yet frog-like species, but how it worked was beyond my comprehension.
Still, a survivor. Holy crap. But I had no way to get them down easily, other than-
Ah, yes. The collapsible ladder I had developed, and which was supposed to be with my luggage.
"I... I'm going to get something really quickly!" I shouted upwards.
"H...hurry up! Don't you know who I am?!"
I stopped in my tracks. Oh. A self-entitled asshole, clearly ignorant of their current predicament.
"No, I don't." I said it as bluntly as I could. So much for the momentary excitement of having found a survivor.
"I am Sir Gallatry Vasrana IV! I am the son of the minister of finance of-"
"Yeah, yeah," I sighed, cutting him off. "And my name is Gordair Ravenstorm."
"Human, rescue me!" Gallatry demanded, eyes bulging and mouth wide. I couldn't understand his body language very well but there didn't seem to be even a nanogram of gratefulness in him. There was panic though, which made me feel a lot better than it should have. He was being put in his place, and a part of me wished I could have put my boss in his place. Not the best time to be reminiscing about what could have been though.
"My name is Gordair. Not 'Human'."
"I couldn't care less about you human paupers' names! Now-"
Now that pissed me off. I swung around, turning to him.
"Paupers? Really? So you want to be rescued by this human pauper, but aren't even willing to give them the respect of calling them by their name? What should I call you then? Frog?"
Now that pissed them off, judging at how they gaped back at me, completely unable to respond. Served them right.
...But thankfully, the rational engineer side of me gave me a painful slap to the face. Shit. This was an emergency. I needed to wake up. I needed to do what was needed. What was rational. What was necessary to save my life - and his too, I supposed.
Salvage. Retrieve all of use. And with the way the fire was burning, I had better hurry up.
I gritted my teeth, trying to put Gallatry's ridicule behind me. Ladder. Get it, get him down, and then have him do his fair share.
Thankfully, somehow, my luggage was mostly intact. It had been stabbed through with a metal bar, all right, but I was relieved to see that the ladder, as well as several other gadgets I had brought with me, were all fine. Why did I even bring them with me? Well, I was planning on going to a trade conference straight after this trip so that I could try and land a new job, and these had been for that. Not that it seemed I'd make it.
Anyhow, I quickly unfolded the ladder, putting it up against the tree Gallatry was stuck in.
"Yes! Now hurry!"
I climbed up, glad that my shoes were intact. Otherwise I would have been sliced by all the metal lying around.
"Hum-er, Gordair. Now help me!"
"I know. Stop complaining so that I can get you down."
It took a bit of time, but I managed to untangle him from the branches. By tearing his clothes that were stuck.
"Those robes are more valuable than-"
"Not more valuable than your life," I retorted, which shut him up immediately.
And soon I had gotten him untangled, and he followed me down the ladder. To my surprise, he didn't complain about that bit, and also didn't trip or anything. I would have expected him to fall at least once.
"Let's get anything of use or value out of the ship before it all burns," I commanded.
"...I don't take orders from humans," Gallatry complained. But he quickly got to work regardless. It seemed that he had some level of pragmatic common sense, at least.
In the end, there were no other survivors. We pulled out food, clothing, and all manner of usable items before the fire consumed the remainder of the ship. Sitting down, exhausted, we looked at the conflagration.
"...Well then. It's just us, I suppose," I said flatly.
"...Hu-er, Gordair. What do you plan to do now?"
His voice had calmed down, and was tinged with realization and worry. He still tried to call me 'Human' but he corrected himself, so I didn't mind.
"Shelter. Then we find a stable source of food and water. The resources that we have here won't last forever."
There was brief silence.
"...You're different from the humans I know," Gallatry muttered. "...More intelligent and resourceful."
"I think I'm quite average for a human."
"..."
He didn't complain or retort. Despite what it may have seemed, he was actually smart and a rational thinker. He had retrieved things from the craft carefully, based off of the utility of each item. It looked like he still based things off of whatever entitled upbringing he had, but I was relieved that he wasn't complete dead weight.
We soon found a shallow rock cave and firewood, just far enough from the wreck that we could carry things over but not smell the fumes. As the sole sun of this solar system began to set, I took a stick and kindled a small fire, to his shock.
"You can create fire with just your hands?"
He looked at his own webbed fingers. Nope. The webbing would get in the way of something like this.
"Yes. It's pretty standard for outdoors activity. At least for humans."
"...Hmm? Your outdoors activity has you do this? You do not carry a portable heater?"
"Well, we could. But what's the fun in that?"
By fun, I was referring to back when I went on camps as a child, thank you very much. As a working adult, I did in fact use a portable heater, because kindling a fire like this required time and effort, and each hour of my vacation was hard-earned.
"I do not understand. But just this once, I will thank you for your knowledge of these rustic practices."
Still, he refused to let me patch his wounds, and insisted on wearing his torn robe instead of changing into other clothing.
"These are the robes I was given for my ascension to adulthood as a member of the Ranavie. And I do not wish for a human to touch me more than is necessary."
The Ranavie was the upper crust of Ranarian society. They had formed a society so stratified that the different social classes had begun to become subspecies due to a refusal to mingle with lower classes. As they were at the top, the Ranavie were therefore the most entitled. Now that I thought about it a bit more, on their homeworld, humans were equivalent in social class to manual laborers, weren't they? Something something mass refugee crisis from a wartorn planet, something something most humans on their homeworld being uneducated masses?
"Your social status means that much to you? Even if you're shivering from the cold?"
"Indeed," Gallatry replied. The flimsy torn robe meant for use in warm, climate-controlled environments was entirely inadequate.
We were silent for some time as we ate some of the provisions.
"...For my first excursion off of the homeworld, this journey has been quite... eye-opening," he finally began.
"...Probably not in the way it was intended."
"Most certainly. But I have never encountered a human as knowledgeable and resourceful as you. Earlier, you stated that you considered yourself average. Yet you are completely unlike the humans on my homeworld."
"Maybe it's just that the humans on your homeworld haven't been granted the same opportunities as others? In fact, I'm surprised you're out here far from your homeworld yet I'm the most competent human you've ever met."
"...This was my first journey away from home. My butler ensured that I only interacted with those of a similar or higher station on the journey. Alas, he did not make it. I am glad they were a recent hire, or else I would not have had the fortitude to abandon them and jump out of the airship without them."
Well fuck. That's how he ended up in a tree.
There was a period of silence as we watched the sunset. The sun of this solar system was bright and warm, but as it disappeared beyond the mountains, the only lights remaining were the fire and the stars. Gallatry seemed to be deep in thought. But then, he gulped, and faced me.
"Er, Gordair. I would like to apologize. It would seem that parts of my worldview are quite more biased than is acceptable outside of my homeworld. I have judged you as per the standards I am familiar with, but as an engineer, I must consider things from a rational and scientific perspective. I may have mistaken you for a servant at first, but now that I know that not to be the case... I would like to try treating you as an equal, to the best of my ability. I expect that I myself will have difficulty doing this. But I would like you to give me a chance."
With that, he placed his head to the ground, bowing towards me. Whoa. It was a complete 180. But I could tell that there was doubt and conflict within him. He was gritting his er... not teeth since he didn't have them, but... yes - his fists were clenched.
"Sure. It seems that you know quite a bit, so starting tomorrow, let's work together to find a way home."
"Everything's destroyed," Gallatry declared, having inspected all the accessible parts of the wreckage. "All of the electronics are irreparable. None of the communications equipment is salvageable. There is no way for us to send a usable, constant signal outbound. We will have to hope that rescuers know our last ping location and that a crew is assembled to retrieve us."
The next morning, we had immediately set out to the wreckage at dawn to see whatever else we could retrieve now that we weren't choking on fumes and covered in blood. Gallatry, who to my surprise and relief was actually a trained engineer and not a self-proclaimed one or one who had only ever worked with theory, seemed to know what he was doing, so I let him handle things as he wished.
In the meantime, I had organized all of the materials we had managed to retrieve, and they were now stored within the cave. Preserved foods were treated with care, and anything fresh was to be consumed immediately if it could not be pickled or otherwise made to last. Gallatry was unaware of most of these processes, but he was not afraid to get his hands dirty. This helped considerably. He had a 'do it better' mentality that was invaluable, and was surprisingly cooperative in addition to being well-organized.
It also helped that he was capable of cooking. In his words, for the Ranavie, excellence in the arts is expected, though as one might expect of the upper class, in a stifling manner. The culinary arts are considered an art for them as much as the visual or performing arts, and he had been trained to cook and present the most excellent of dishes the same way a human noble might have been expected to master the piano. He was sorely disappointed at the lack of fresh ingredients, but he did have a portable food analyzer on him - which he brought with the intention of scanning local fruits and plants. Knowing if something was poisonous or not was invaluable, so we were relieved that it was working fine and was also solar-powered.
"Inspecting the local flora was something I was excited for," he mused. "I might as well make the most of that excitement and see what local flora are edible."
Thankfully, the answer was a few, and so we managed to enjoy fresh fruit in addition to our other provisions that second day. Gallatry was also in a much better mood.
"Those fruit looked like they could break your skull if they fell on you, but they were pretty tasty, right?"
He looked pleased with himself, so I let him bask in his enjoyment. It kept the mood high and hopeful.
Our shared enjoyment ran out. After one week, we had managed to pull apart the charred wreck a bit more, and managed to salvage a working one-way communicator. Unfortunately, it could only pick up signals, but it was still something. The message playing from it, however, was when our hearts stopped.
"War imminent between the ABC Federation and DEF League. Civilian flights in the GHI system suspended indefinitely until further notice."
Nobody was coming.