This story is written for Brian Reindel’s Prompt Quest #4. I stayed with sci-fi again, as with Prompt Quest 3.
“I don’t see why we have to call it Earth 2,” Mac grumbled to himself. He was the first one awake, and he had a few blessed minutes before the mission commander, Captain Rob J. Saunderson himself, woke up. Captain Saunderson knew exactly why they had to call it Earth 2, because they needed to Honor the Legacy of the Home Planet, etc. etc. etc. And so of course they would call the new world Earth 2, no matter how unimaginative it might be, or how much it didn’t look like Earth at all. The new place had pink water, of all things, and purple land. It looked more like a ruby hanging in space there, Mac thought, instead of the little familiar blue-green ball they’d left. (Not that there was much of the blue or green left anymore.)
But Mac was just the pilot, and Captain Saunderson was the captain, the captain, the hero of the Mars and Io missions. You didn’t argue with a guy like Captain Saunderson, you stood and saluted. Mac settled into his pilot’s chair. Four more minutes. He would’ve called the place something else. Anything else. Hell, he could’ve called the place Macworld. Who would know? The colonists weren’t scheduled for a while. He and Captain Rob J. Saunderson had to scout the place first and send back a report, and maybe by then the colony fleet would’ve thought of their own damn name for the thing. Or maybe they’d have found a whole different place and this whole mission would become one big write-off, and Mac and Captain Rob J. Saunderson would be Remembered as Heroes. That was the way it went. Mac figured the Captain was hoping for the latter; he’d had a funny look when they were talking about it before. If anyone had asked Mac, not that anyone would, he just wanted to land, scout the place, send the report, and think about the rest later. Focus on the job, that was all.
Time to wake him up, Mac noticed. Might as well: they were about to make atmo anyway. He pushed the button and heard the whoosh-hiss as the chamber doors opened. A minute later, and the Captain’s boots thumped on the deck. “Well, that was refreshing! Ah, Earth 2! New home of humanity! Anything I missed, officer?” He thumped a hand on Mac’s shoulder.
“Not so far, sir,” Mac said, sighting inwardly. “We’re just making atmo now.” He pulled back on a lever, cutting the burn engines. Slowly the dark of space faded and the skies of Earth 2- God, he was starting to call it that now- filled their viewscreen.
“Excellent!” the captain said. “We’ll land on the main continent just as we-”
The craft jolted violently. Then their comms erupted. A string of unfamiliar syllables flooded through their speakers. Captain Saunderson had skipped the Basic Xenolinguistics course in academy, but Mac hadn’t. He couldn’t make out most of it, not at first go, but he got the sense. “Cap, we gotta go, now!” he said, scrambling for the controls.
“No!” Captain Saunderson exclaimed. “I’ve fought aliens before, remember! The Io mission, I beat them once, I can do it again! For humanity!”
“Oh sh-” Mac said.
It would be the last thing he said. Captain Saunderson had forgotten in his excitement that the exploration craft didn’t have guns. The inhabitants of this world, however, did.
"You didn’t argue with a guy like Captain Saunderson, you stood and saluted."
But the captain's not that smart! Very nice, man. :-)
Loved it. But I still want to know what happens next!
(Oh, and these two characters deserve another story)