Life Unfamiliar: Survival on a New World 1 (Patreon)

I tried not to fidget as I got the recording equipment set up. I was lucky that I’d found as much salvageable equipment as I had. After a minute, the red light lit up, and I took a breath before I started speaking.

“This is Tobias Angwin, researcher on the TMS Lemuria. The ship was waylaid by pirates and all hands were forced to jettison. I got into the cryobed, and lasted just long enough to see the Lemuria blow up as the cryostasis kicked in. I have no clue how long I was in stasis or if anyone is even receiving the pod’s distress signal, but I’ll keep making recordings of my observations for as long as I can,” I narrated, before picking up the datapad I’d been making notes on.

“I have landed on a planet with a nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere suitable for human life, and a low gravity. I don’t have the equipment available to make an exact calculation, but it is enough to be noticeable. I’ve spotted two moons that I’ve dubbed Viridius and Rubigo, the latin words for green and rust respectively, on account of their colors. Obviously I don’t have the equipment to confirm, but I suspect that they’re mostly composed of copper oxide or iron oxide.”

The next hour or so continued like that, as I recited all the major things I’d observed of this planet so far. A twenty one hour day cycle, samples of the plants I’d found (mostly a light green, but there were a couple fern-looking things that were purple), and sketches of the reptile-looking bird things I’d seen flitting about. Thank god for survival training before I’d been assigned to the Lemuria.

The things that I'd been taught during that training were the only reason I had survived the last week. That, and the fact that the local wildlife was edible. I hadn’t gotten the scanner to full functionality, but it functioned enough to tell if something was edible or not.

After I shut down the camera and put away my notes, I rubbed the heels of my palms into my eyes. Seven local days since I'd crash landed, and while I would like to think I did pretty well for a lab tech, the twenty one hour days were starting to get to me.

Standing up, I walked out of the escape pod turned lab space, ignoring the almost viscous feel of the air. I didn’t have the resources or equipment to figure out a precise number of how much denser the atmosphere was, but it wasn’t so much denser that it felt like I was drowning. Taking the stone stairs up to the top of the hill I'd decided to make my base camp, I looked out over the landscape. It really was gorgeous, even if it still felt alien. I was on an island, but I hadn't ventured much further than the area immediately around the escape pod.

“The sunsets are pretty spectacular,” I mused quietly, staring out into the distance.

I let out a sigh, before turning around and making my way over to the shelter I’d set up. The trees here were massive, helped by both the lighter gravity and the frequent mist and fog that had been present each and every morning I’d seen so far. Some looked like they could be potential sources of food, but I hadn't been able to take proper scans so far. The soil here definitely looked fertile, which was good.

It was probably a good thing I found a place with a decent amount of vegetation available. I could only imagine how long it would take me to hunt down anything here. There was a small stream near the tree line that was running through the valley I was in, but I hadn't had much luck in spotting any fish. As I made my way over to the shelter, I glanced back once more at the view.

It wasn't anything even remotely fancy, just a bunch of branches and fallen leaves set against a fallen log, but it kept me dry and blocked the wind, so it worked. Setting my pack down carefully, I opened it and pulled out a bottle of water. With a sigh, I took a sip of it before setting it aside. I'd have to ration that, there wasn't nearly enough bleach to disinfect the stream water for too long. I knew it would eventually come, but for now, I would just have to suck it up.

I pulled a blanket out of my pack and draped it over my shoulders as I stepped inside the shelter. With a grunt, I pushed myself up against the log, resting my back against it and letting the blanket fall open. I was tired, that was obvious, but sleep was something that I was going to have to work at. I'd never had trouble before sleeping outside, and even though this wasn't quite the same, it still wasn't something I could afford to ignore. I had never been the type of person who could fall asleep at the drop of a hat, and now with countless new and alien lifeforms to study, my brain was going to take forever for it to shut up enough for me to go to sleep.

I stared up at the ceiling of branches, looking up through my eyelashes. I had no idea what time of year it was here, but there wasn't even a hint of the faintest color of pink in the sky. There were faint, wispy clouds drifting lazily overhead, but it looked like it might rain. I hoped the ground would still be reasonably dry if it did. This whole planet felt like it was constantly under the threat of rain or dew, whether it was raining or not. Or maybe it was just this particular biome. Whatever it was, my clothes were damp all the time.

[hr][/hr]

“Well, I suppose I’m having a land-lobster for supper,” I muttered as I stared at the vaguely crustacean looking creature. It had been alive when I found it crawling around in a hole in the ground, and I'd decided to bring it home to examine it. “And a couple of plants, since the vegetation is edible enough.” I pulled away from the pile of dirt, taking some dirt samples from the hole.

The creature was about the size of a small sized dog, and was covered in a thick shell. The head was round and had two large eyes staring out at me. A long tail curled back, a lot like a lobster’s, but missing the side fin things the overpriced shellfish on Earth did. Its shell was a pale green with speckles of brown and purple along it, and it was currently sitting in a bowl I’d pulled from the survival kit in the escape pod while I looked at a sample of the dirt it had been rooting around in.

Well, I call it a sample, but it was really a big handful of sandy dirt. But taking another look at it, I got to wondering. Pulling the survival knife from my pack, I picked up the lobster-thing, fit the tip of the knife behind its head, and stabbed down. After twisting the knife a bit, the head popped off, and it stopped wriggling. That taken care of, I held up the right, massive pincer and carefully examined it.

“Huh, this is shaped kinda like a shovel,” I noted as I leaned in for a closer look. “Your shell was dry, you were well into the tree line, this claw is designed for digging… you’re like a crustacean version of a pig, aren’t you?”

Taking a few minutes to gut and clean the pig lobster, I stuck it back in the pot and filled it with sea water. Next stop was hanging it over my campfire to cook. While that was happening, I cut off a sliver of the meat that had been in the head and set it on the scanner. I didn’t have a data library for comparative DNA analysis, to see if it was descended from a seed population from Earth, but it would still tell me if it’d give me food poisoning.

Fortunately for me, it was safe. I glanced back at the pot, before turning to look at the trees and undergrowth around me. I still had no clue how long I’d been in cryo, but at a guess, I was probably on a terraformed world. I’d heard talk shortly before I was assigned to the Lemuria about a new technology that would make terraforming worlds something that could be done in a single lifetime instead of being the work of generations.

Given the fact that the escape pods did not have anything approaching even Tug Class Sublight Drives and the Lemuria hadn’t been in a system with a habitable world, it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that terraforming technology had advanced to the point where a previously barren world had been terraformed in the time between the Lemuria being attacked and coming out of cryo. Which meant if I had to be marooned, this wasn’t the worst place.

As I watched the pig lobster boil for a moment, I noticed something in the grass to one side. Something that had been covered by the grass in the short time I'd looked away, but that was starting to poke through the soil, as if it'd been there for days, weeks. Looking closer, I spotted the same pattern of brown and purple speckles on the creature.

I took a few steps forward, until I was only a couple of feet away from it, then picked up the little creature in my hand. It was about the size of my palm. Tiny black eyes peered out at me as if it was surprised to be discovered. It wasn’t a crustacean, instead it looked something like a mix between a toad and a mudskipper. At a guess, I’d say it was some kind of ray finned fish that had evolved to fill a similar niche as frogs and toads.

With a slight chuckle, I set it back down on the scanner and it promptly hopped to the ground. After looking around for a bit, I found a small hole in the dirt, and dug down, finding a bunch of them. There were at least three of the little guys, and while they weren’t the most appetizing of meals, if things kept going the way I was thinking, they might be one of the more plentiful food sources I'd encounter. I made a mental note of their location.

The lobster was now boiling nicely, so I took it off the fire, added a bit of dehydrated pepper and started eating. The meat tasted like a mix of fish and chicken, and not at all like the lobster I'd had back on Earth. I was able to eat most of the lobster, though I left some of the larger pieces for later. After I finished I took another look at the scanner. The scan had come out pretty good; I might be able to get the local biosphere to grow food for me. As the sun began to go down, I settled down for the night. That was starting to become a little bit of a problem, since the loss of three hours on this planet was utterly ruining my circadian rhythm.

The little toad fish seemed to do its job keeping the bugs away, and I was grateful for that as I slept. However, a few hours after I woke up, I was awoken by an extremely loud buzzing sound. It made me start awake, but then it kept buzzing and I slowly realized that it sounded awfully loud for it to be a fly or any sort of bug like I was used to. I peeked my head out of my lean to, and in the greenish light of Viridius my jaw dropped.

Any doubts I’d had about this planet being terraformed versus coincidental convergent evolution died a hard death as I stared at a dragonfly the size of a cocker spaniel flying off with one of the toad fish.