Alienus

Capturing an Alienus

The sky was darkening on Mars and we were going to attempt contact with Earth again. I turned on the microphone, and got static. Emiley spoke about plant life on Mars, and (again) got static.

Jon decided to get right to the point and shouted, "THERE'S ALIENS!" In return he got a lot of feedback, a lot of very loud feedback.

"Ow!" Jon exclaimed.

"Ow!" Emiley and I agreed. Emiley smacked the microphone (which caused a serious dent and an unpleasant cracking noise) and gave an angry sigh. "Today pretty much sucked. We even managed to get our microphone busted."

"Your fault," Jon muttered, but Emiley pretended not to hear him.

"We lost *freaking* Earth contact, and *freaking* to top it all off, we found a bunch of *freaking* cannibalistic *freaking* aliens; we are totally *screwed*."

"Wow, I never knew someone could use that word so many times in one sentence," Jon said while rolling his eyes.

"Yeah, that's lovely. Real professional and stuff," I said. Emiley cracked a smile and decided to go along with it.

"I know, right? I'm so *freaking* ladylike," she laughed. Without pointless conversations like these, all of us would be too tense and worried to do much of anything. The real problem was definitely a good one for instilling panic. We would have to survive on Mars with no help from Earth, at all.

***

Lots of information had to be brought back to the ship. The entire crew agreed that Mission Control and the rest of Earth would appreciate it if we got more statistics about the alieni. The notes we were taking didn't seem to be informative enough. Jon not-so-subtly shared his opinion on our amount of info (or lack thereof).

"Come on, we could hardly even scrape together a C in eighth grade if we did a report on these things. There are nowhere near enough facts! We only have ten pages of notes, twenty-two pictures, and three samples. It's pathetic."

"What do you expect us to do about it," I asked, annoyance rising with each complaint.
"Yeah, it's like you think we should abduct an alienus for 'better studying' or something," Emiley added.

Jon smiled, "Actually, that's a really good idea."

I am a very animal-rights-hug-a-tree-save-the-Earth kind of person, so when I heard the idea of us taking a creature-even if it was an alienus-and subjecting them to 'testing' (which wouldn't be fun for the alienus) I flipped out.

"What did you just say!?" I asked in a dangerous tone. "Are you sadistic or something? This is a sentient species," I drew out the last two words. (A sentient species is a species that can feel and think.)

"That devour each other," Jon mumbled.

Emiley stepped in, "You know Louissa, it's not like we would hurt them, and we know they can't hurt us. Look back at what happened to that one guy who fought with Jon."
"But, it's... wrong," I protested weakly. My objection didn't stop Jon and Emiley; it was two against one, and not in my favor. The next day we were going off to catch an alienus.

My guilty conscious kept me awake half the night and the next morning I was exceedingly sleep-deprived. I was so distracted that I had a caffeinated coffee box the night before, which was a big mistake. With that caffeine in my system I couldn't close my eyes until two in the morning. I managed to drag myself out of bed. The ice cold floor of Crimson was just another thing that made me want to crawl back into the hammock and fall asleep. I stumbled around the little room where we heated and ate food-half blinded by the light-groping in the little cupboard for a coffee box to heat up.
Jon was already at the table, smiling with only his eyes. "Do you remember what we get to do today?" he asked.