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THIA'S LOG. ENTRY COUNT: 772
I have been on Genna now for two years, forty-one days, six hours, and fifty-nine minutes. In all that time, I’ve discovered all sorts of unique and fascinating things about this planet and all the creatures who call it home.
I can also confidently count myself as one of said creatures now, not just as an invasive species, and for that, I am truly happy!
Dek, Bud, and I will have been our own little clan of three for exactly one month as of later this afternoon, and we’re all doing just great down here!
Since Tessa killed the Kalisk, and as it was the only one the company had in their databanks, the mission was deemed a failure. MU/TH/R and those at Weyland-Yutani had no other reason to invade and have not tried once to contact their Bio-Weapons Division following the grand battle that led our ragtag tree-o to “conquering” the planet Genna.
I use “conquering” as more of an allegorical sense. Of course, the planet isn’t “ours-ours”, not in the sense that we hold any form of ownership over it or anything, but the three of us have been managing to survive here with— well, “ease” might not be the correct word either, but the time has been manageable, and despite all hostilities, our small clan has managed to thrive here together.
Dek has been really, really dutiful in his leadership role, as well as to the repairs made to his ship— or, sorry no, to his brother’s ship. He was very adamant on that one. As our time here continues, he is more motivated to finish the repairs and return to his home world to challenge his father, avenge his brother, earn his cloak, and finally become Dek of the Yautja.
Dek’s brother must have been pretty amazing, and from the stories Dek’s told, just a really great brother! The other day we even found out that he had a set of armor on his ship hidden away in Dek’s size, meaning it would have been a hunting present, if not a graduation gift once he became blooded. He said it must have been Kwei’s when he was smaller, but his brother completely refurbished it to be like new. Despite the touching gesture, Dek has refused to wear it yet, not wanting to sully it before the meeting with their father. First and foremost, they needed to finish the ship, and then the little details like clothing and armor could come later, he said.
Thanks to the materials and tools left behind by the abandoned Weyland-Yutani research stations, they had all the spare parts they needed to make sure the spacecraft could be good as new.
The company likely deemed it too costly and too little reward to retrieve any of it, and after already losing so much in the fight, I deduced this as their most logical course of action. The corporation really did just abandon everything down here, leaving the equipment and synth corpses littered about. Amazingly enough, what parts they didn’t salvage for the ship had been claimed by the local flora, so their relationship post-mortem could be seen as more commensalistic. If you squint?
I don’t know… I thought we were doing good down here when I was a part of it all, but now I think we were merely doing good for Earth and the company, maybe even fewer people than that. The regenerative abilities of the Kalisk would have changed the game for human evolution forever, but… if being on Genna has taught me anything, life and death are a precious cycle, and immortality isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
It’s a good thing they never discovered Bud to be the Kalisk’s child. If they had, surely more waves of synth drones would have hunted them all across the planet in order to steal her away. They would have had a whole other issue than just an ecological footprint if they tried that since neither I nor Dek would allow such a thing to come to pass.
Thankfully, no one has to consider those what ifs now. The Yautja would never come here aside their own singular hunts... which were already pretty rare before Dek’s arrival. The humans wouldn’t come here since they would all die within a day. Then another research team was unlikely, since the reward for the costs was (to their knowledge) gone now. So, effectively it was just the three of us making it work on our own, a clan of three, three best pals against the whole universe, a band of misfits against the—
“Thia.”
At the familiar sound of his voice, her eyes rolled to the front of her head, her daily log stored away alongside all the rest.
“Good morning!” she grinned. “Ready to start the day? What’s first on the agenda, chief?”
“Not chief.” He corrected automatically. “Alpha.”
“Yeahhh, doesn’t quite roll off the tongue like you’d think. I’ll find a nickname we can both agree on eventually.”
He let out an indignant huff like he normally did, but still held out his arm to help her to her feet.
“Going training. You should work on repairs.”
“Is that all you plan to do today?”
He made a face, obviously recognizing that she was hinting at something with her tone, but in true Dek fashion, once he realized he had no idea what it was, he deemed it of little importance.
“Yes.”
He walked off and Thia let her arms slap against her sides.
“What? Really, Dek? There’s nothing else that’s maybe special about today that you want to you know... acknowledge?”
He gave her that studious look again, eyeing the clouds above and sniffing the air before looking back.
“I do not smell rain?”
“Just forget it.” She rolled her eyes. “Enjoy your training. Again! I guess.”
She was upset about something. In all their time, Dek had known Thia to be upset with him only once and it was when leaving Bud the morning after slaying the Luna Bug. Her type of synthetic was capable of this much more human-reaction but Dek was not human, and he found he understood very little of her passive-aggressive remarks when she made them.
He shook his head and instead wandered off, seeing the trees swaying faintly in the distance where Bud was seemingly chasing something to turn into food.
Was it food? It wasn’t time he needed to eat again unless he was just getting greedy about it. So, was it for her? Thia didn’t eat sweet meats, or bone bison, but they had been on Genna now for almost thirty rotations. Even for the most famished of hunters, that was still triple the length one went without eating after a successful hunt. He and Bud have made good use of the bone bison for meals in all this time, and had tried other things since then, but it was always a meat she claimed she could not consume.
He growled to himself.
Well, if she was hungry, she should find something that could sustain herself! She’s the one who claims to have thrived here for two years. She should know how to eat! She never accepted any of the food he offered her. She was too picky!
He paused with another thought.
What do things like Thia use to power themselves? She was built like a tool, inorganically, so did that mean she consumed fuel or electricity like a ship and not food? Even with all the scrap leftover from the Weyland-Yutani campsites, could Thia actually be starved for sustenance and saving most of it for their ship?
The consideration gave him a sinking feeling in his chest. Would Thia sacrifice her lifeforce just to see his mission through?
No. He wouldn’t allow that. Already too many lives have sacrificed themselves so that he might survive. What sort of a yautja was he? Take, take, take, was that all he was good for? He was the wolf, the alpha, he was supposed to protect the pack and here he was letting one of them starve themselves.
Another snarl.
Thia wasn’t about to trick him into sacrificing herself for his sake. He would just have to make sure she got enough power to stay alive while also fixing the ship. Even if she argued, he would not allow her foolish plans to come to pass.
And without another thought about it, he stomped angrily through the forest in the direction of the Kalisk’s former nest.
“Dek’s sure been off training for a while, hasn’t he?” Thia looked up at the sky, saluting the clouds as she watched the sun setting to the west. “It’ll be dark soon. I wonder what he’s up to?”
Bud didn’t respond aside to shrug, the gesture something she’d copied from Thia’s expressive arsenal instead of Dek’s. It made her smile, though that was short lived as concern overwrote the action in her processors.
In the month that they’d been together, Dek had proven himself to be a capable fighter with the ability to learn quickly and correct his own mistakes to improve himself and evolve as the dominant predator of this planet. That sort of adaptability made the millions of organisms along this deadly rock pose little threat to him now that he had already overcome and “conquered” most of Genna. At this point, there were probably few things he didn’t know how to prepare for or counter, and she’d been exceptionally thorough in teaching him every single factoid about the planet that she’d studied.
So then, where did he go?
“Maybe we should go look for him?”
At this Bud stood, already her body a whole meter taller than when they first met. It was clear the weight of her all-too-common growth spurts were a heavy adjustment, this causing her to walk less on two feet these days in favor of the more comfortable four like her mother. To think, one day Bud would be that big and ferocious.
She hiccupped once and shot Thia a toothy smile, reaching out a hand to take and hold hers before moving them forward.
But for now, she was still such a cute little thing. Thia grinned. She was also worried about Dek too. Though the stubborn yautja would get grumpy with them for daring to worry at his expense, at least with Bud on her side, he was outvoted 2 to 1 that their clan was allowed to be concerned about his wellbeing. She’d tell him as much if and when they found him and he decided to argue that they were being overly sentimental. Again.
“Let’s go find Dek.”
They took all of three steps into the tree line before an awful scraping alerted them to a strong presence closing in. The girls immediately got into an attack position, Bud sniffing the air a few times before settling back into nervous caution as Thia scanned the shadows. She relaxed as well as soon as she saw the familiar heat signature outline of the fellow in question approaching, ropes contoured around himself as he drug a machine twice his size towards their base.
“Dek?” She called. “What in the world are you doing?”
He ignored her and drug the panel between them, not stopping until it was nearly to the ship before he unfurled his ropes and cracked at sore muscles, showing off the indentions of weight imprinting along his skin from the effort.
“Dek?”
Again, he ignored her in favor of catching his breath.
“Where were you?” She tried again.
“Kalisk nest,” he finally answered, his voice sounding unimpressed with his own curt response.
“Wh-why were you all the way over there? I thought you said you would be training today?”
“Brought food.”
She and Bud tilted their heads in tandem.
Did he hit his head out there today, or—?
“Uh, what?”
“Food for you,” he clarified with a huff.
Her first rection was confusion, that much overwritten by the sweet sentiment at her expense, and finally the realization that this large chunk of machinery was a part of the wall from the container where she hooked in to repair her legs. At the realization, her thoughts returned to feeling touched.
“Aww, you brought this to put on the ship just for me?” She allowed her biggest smile to spread, not wanting to sully his efforts by pointing out all the other parts they would probably need to get this panel fully operational, as well as the fact she would need to find a way to divert power to it in a way that fully synchronized with the yautja spacecraft. “Well, thank you. This will certainly come in handy whenever I need a quick repair. You didn’t need to do that!”
“Wolf,” he said, using the term as his explanation as he often enjoyed doing.
At the same time, Dek rose to eye her down with some suspicion in his expression, though Thia wasn’t sure why given the context of their conversation.
“Now you do not need to conserve energy to repair the ship.”
She blinked.
“Excuse me, what?”
“Your plan to go hungry and power the ship so I can leave.” He pointed, his voice accusatory at having “supposedly” seen through her schemes. “Won’t have to now.”
She couldn’t tell if his feelings were hurt or if he was being smug, but he maintained some sort of calm as he retrieved his ropes and wrapped them cleanly around his forearm.
Again, she tilted her head, her eyes squinting the results of her confusion for all to see.
“I don’t follow?”
His mandible clicked once in irritation. “Don’t lie!”
At that, she stood a bit straighter and shot both hands to her hips. “I am not lying! I have absolutely no earthly idea what you’re talking about!”
“Do not eat bone bison! Have not done anything to fuel yourself in thirty rotations. You’re made of machinery. You need power to function and have been sneakily putting it into the ship at my expense. You’re not the alpha! I am the wolf. I protect the clan!” His mandibles clicked more fervently, his anger over her trying to take this title away from him paling in comparison to her ideals of self-sacrifice. He jabbed a finger her direction and made sure his point was clear. “I protect you!”
Thia could actually hear the gears turning through her mind as she processed his words, wrong as they were, and then, when it all finally clicked into place, she began to laugh.
The sudden burst of amusement caused Dek to jolt, Bud joining in though she didn’t know what had made Thia so amused. She silenced when he shot her a glare, returning that look to Thia who was practically doubled over now with the sound.
“Not funny!” He grumbled, his pride sore as he tossed the newly furled ropes off to the side.
“It is though!” She chuckled. “All this time, and I taught you everything about Genna—” She sucked in a breath she didn’t need to laugh some more. “And— And I never told you how I work! Hahahaha!”
He snarled and at that she petered into a more subdued sigh, wiping imaginary tears from her eyes as she finished her grandiose display of humor.
“Dek, I am a highly advanced model. I don’t need to recharge like a ship would. I get power in the sun, the breeze, my generators. I was torn in half and never lost any energy, remember? Even though I was trapped in the vulture’s nest almost two weeks before you arrived. Even for as long as we traveled together. I didn't look like I needed more power then, right?”
Energy to speak and energy to survive did not mean the same things. She could still be trying to play off her intentions. Wanting to say as much, he instead scrunched his features, shoved the remark down, and asked a follow-up question instead.
“Not powering the ship then?”
“No!” She chuckled. “I couldn’t power this ship if I wanted to, we’re two totally separate types of power! But I was specifically designed so I could maintain myself on Genna for as long as necessary. Hmm…” She ran a personal calculation in her mind before automatically responding. “If my math is right, I think I could keep going for approximately three hundred sixty-five million two hundred fifty thousand—”
“So don’t need power?” Dek interrupted.
“No, Dek. I think my parts will wear out decades before I’d ever officially run out of power. I’m not going anywhere. Well, not unless my vitals are severely damaged or something? Then the chip would fry and I really would shut down for good.” She shot him a look. “Why did you think I was secretly syphoning off my energy to the ship?”
“Angry this morning. Spoke about today being important. I thought it might be the day you finally needed to eat.”
She started to laugh again but one swift look and a growl from Dek forced her to swallow it back down.
“I’m sorry I worried you. I just meant that it was our one-month anniversary of becoming a clan! I thought we should maybe celebrate it, that’s all.”
“Cel-e-brate?” Dek mimicked the word, obviously not understanding in the slightest.
“It’s a human thing, we like to commemorate special, life-changing occasions! Birthdays, weddings, anniversaries—”
“Every month!?” No wonder humans hardly ever advanced.
“Well, every year,” she shrugged. “But a lot of times, one month is considered more than enough time to—"
He sulked into that exhausted, stale look where a glaze filmed over his eyes; the one he got whenever he was fed-up with her inconsistencies and became uninterested in how to respond. It has since come to be cataloged into her processors as “The look”.
“Don’t give me the look! I just thought it’d be nice to acknowledge our little clan lasting the whole month is all!”
“Too sentimental…” he grumbled, walking away now with little interest towards anything happening around their campsite anymore. “Can celebrate when the mission is done. When repairs are complete and I get my cloak.”
“Well alright?” She shrugged. “If that’s what you’d rather do. I guess we can wait.”
“How long will repairs take as of today?”
She looked over and ran the numbers, factoring in the supplies they had on hand, the spare parts strewn around from the company, and the resources needed to fully repair all of the outward damages.
“About a year. A little less if we’re lucky.”
“And if we attach the repair panel to the ship?” He pointed.
“Maybe another day or two? Not long.”
Dek nodded, content with the answer. “Then we celebrate in a year. Until then, don’t count victories before they appear.”
She chuckled. He was still being a grump, but it was a sweet promise considering who she was talking to, and the fact he’d be willing to wait a few more days just so she could have something specific to her integrated onto the vessel with them.
“Deal. I surmise that’s more than enough time for us to make repairs in order to get ready to face your father again and earn you that cloak.”
“Father is unlikely to do so without a fight. Need more training.”
“What better training grounds than Genna? By the time you go back… no matter what he throws at you, I doubt anything will stand in your way.”
His chest puffed out with a bit of pride.
“It’s kind of exciting, isn’t it?” she continued. “I wonder what all we can accomplish by the time we leave? I bet there’s tons of research we can obtain before then, and Bud will probably have grown to her full adolescent size by then too! Just think! One whole year to kill.” Thia sighed, contentedly. “This is going to be so much fun!”
“Will kill much longer than one year.” He lifted his brow. “But, yes, I imagine I will have many accomplishments before leaving Genna. The challenge will be fun while it lasts.”
She opened her mouth to clarify, decided against it, and merely smiled, rubbing atop Bud’s head as they split off to finish their tasks before the night.
“I bet you will, Dek. I bet you will.”