Tactile sensations were the first thing to come back to Feo. Everything felt soft, warm, like she was laying on top of a warm cloud. She felt a heavy weight on her body, but gosh, was it so comfortable! Her ears flicked as she caught the sound of that same kind of gibberish she heard before, back when… Wait.

Her eyes flew open and she bolted upright, looking around nervously. She was in a small room, and through the narrow window across from her, warm sunlight streamed through onto the bed she was laying on. A heavy quilt of some kind had been draped over her, while combat uniform had been replaced with what she assumed to be pyjamas. She wriggled her fluffy tail a little in annoyance, since it was stuck down one of the pants legs; they were definitely not made for Aeteri, she thought. She looked over at where her clothes had been folded and placed neatly on a chair next to the bed, then to the giant scorch mark over her right shoulder. She glanced down inside her new top and her heart sank at just how close she had come to being killed. Beside a small pendant on a leather string, a large, circular hole sat right underneath her shoulder, with the scent of burnt electronics emanating from the wound. She closed her eyes and did a short self-diagnostic; nothing major was damaged, other than the joint itself. She still had some minor movement in the arm, but she wouldn’t be lifting weights with it for some time.

“Feo! You’re awake! Thank goodness, we were so worried!” came a sudden squeal of delight, and suddenly three miniature versions of herself popped into her vision, each a different hue.

But far from being concerned for her mental wellbeing, Feo just sighed good-naturedly, “Come on, Sen, do you really think that a plasma bolt would be enough to take me down for good? With the redundancy these bodies have?” she replied, inside her mind rather than aloud. She glanced between her AI assistants, from Sen, the slightly yellow one, to Mar, the reddish one, then to Ela, the blue one, “Any transmissions from the Gladius? I’m sure they’d be worried by now,” she asked.

Mar shook her head as she floated in space, “I’m afraid our long-range communications were knocked out by the blast, it fried all the necessary circuits…”

Feo cursed under her breath, “Do you guys have any good news to report?” she asked, shuffling over to the side of the bed and starting to rummage through her clothes for her gun.

“Well, there seems to be a planet-wide data transfer grid that we were able to tap into from a local hotpoint-” Ela began, before Sen suddenly piped up, “Gosh, you wouldn’t believe how insecure it is! They don’t even use fractal prime keys for authentication!”.

Feo sighed, “Come on, girls, focus!”

Ela shot Sen a grumpy glance, before continuing, “ANYWAY, we gained access, and the good news is, that from what we’ve been able to decipher, our crash landing has gone entirely unnoticed!”

Feo nodded, “Small comforts then, I guess,” she said softly as she found her pistol still in its holster tucked among her clothes, “Do you know what happened while I was unconscious?”.

Before any of them were able to reply, a soft knock on the door immediately drew her focus. She growled softly and snatched up her pistol, before tucking herself back against the corner of the bed as best she could and aiming squarely at the door.

It slowly opened, revealing what appeared at first glance to be a mostly hairless primate of some kind. It was undoubtedly male in appearance, and when it saw Feo huddled against the wall, pointing her gun at him, he raised his hands above his head, in what was likely an attempt to show that he was unarmed. He spoke softly to her, albeit in some weird language that she was unable to understand, but she knew the tone he was using; one of trying to de-escalate a situation. To try to calm a wild animal down. She growled at him, causing him to take a few steps back, “Who are you! What do you want?” she yelled, but if he understood her, he did little to show it. In fact, his very demeanour, from his confused expression, to the way he had his head cocked to one side, seemed to speak volumes to such effect. He started speaking again, still in that same gibberish, but obviously in an attempt to communicate.

“Feo, based on his syntax and his articulation of key words, we think he’s speaking English, as it’s called on this planet,” Mar pointed out, “It appears to be one of the main languages. We’re feeding it to your translator now.”

The change was immediate, and for lack of a better word, weird. In an instant, what this person was saying went from complete nonsense to absolutely comprehensible, despite nothing in his words changing, “-sure if you can understand me, but I’m not going to hurt you, okay? Just lower the gun, and we can work something out…”

Feo raised an eyebrow at him and slowly lowered her pistol, causing the man to blink a few times in surprise, “You know, I didn’t actually think that would work as quickly as it did…” he muttered to himself, causing Feo to sigh a little louder than she meant to.

“I can understand you, you know,” she replied, wincing a little at how alien the words felt in her mouth. Oh well, the first time was always the weirdest.

He took a step back, obviously startled by this revelation, “Oh god, I’m so sorry! Err… Why were you growling and yipping at me before, then?”

Feo rolled her eyes and tapped the side of her head, “It took a while to get an accurate translation of your language. Interstellar linguistics aren’t an instant thing, you know?” she retorted.

He leaned against the side of the door, “So you are an alien then!” he exclaimed, “What about that thing that was shooting at you?”

Feo nodded quietly and rubbed at her shoulder absentmindedly, “Yeah… He was hunting me…” she mumbled, her brow furrowed a little as she scanned through the data her AIs were bringing her.

“I’m so sorry, where are my manners! I’m Sam,”

She glanced up at him, extending his hand towards her in what she could only assume was a greeting gesture. She looked at his hand in confusion, before glancing back up at him with a slightly bemused expression, causing him to hesitantly pull his hand back, “Sorry, Earth greeting stuff, I guess…” he muttered self-consciously.

Feo chuckled softly, “My name is Feopre Asilion, but I guess you can call me Feo. I assume I have you to thank for saving me?” she inquired.

Sam nodded, “Yeah… I saw that guy in the tree taking aim at you, and I don’t know, that was my first reaction…”

Quiet descended upon the room, with only the soft chatter of the television behind Sam breaking it.

“I have to ask,” Sam began, “But who made you? You’re obviously far, far ahead of anything we have here on Earth, and I admit, when I went to try to treat your wound, it caught my attention. I’m an engineer, this sort of stuff is my passion,”

Feo sighed a little and leaned back in bed, tossing her pistol back onto the chair, “Technically, while this body was constructed by my people many, many years ago, I was still born like all life was, from parents of flesh and blood…”

“Feo!” Sen piped up, hovering next to Sam’s head, “Are you sure you should be telling him this? The Prime Laws! We’ve already interfered enough, haven’t we?”

Feo threw her head back in frustration. She was right, of course, but at this point, she didn’t have much choice. And besides, what was the harm? No-one would believe him anyway, “Sen, I can handle this, okay? I appreciate the input, but can you please get back to trying to get in touch with the Gladius?”

Sam looked at her, confused, “What are you talking about? WHO are you talking about?” he asked, obviously perplexed by his guest’s apparent sudden bout of hallucinations.

Feo blinked a few times, before facepalming, “Gosh, that was aloud, wasn’t it?” she replied. At his nod, she sighed and flicked her wrist, bringing up the holographic display connected to her AI’s datastream search. Long chains of data flowed from top to bottom, scrolling endlessly, but this was suddenly interrupted with a joyful squeal as Sen suddenly burst out from the middle of the stream, like someone poking their head out from a waterfall’s stream. Both Ela and Mar poked out from behind either side of the stream of data, looking curiously at the newcomer who could now very clearly see them.

“These are my support AIs. They help me manage my systems, as well as to act as adjutants in any cyber-warfare I need to engage in. They’re also good company if I ever get bored.” Feo added with a smirk, “Right now, we’re really just scanning your data web to make sure that we weren’t discovered thanks to our little crash landing…”

Sam chuckled, “Anything interesting on the net? Or is it just porn?” he asked, snickering a little to himself.

Feo raised an eyebrow at him, “Well, it depends on your definition of interesting, doesn’t it?” she replied, shaking her head a little.

Quiet returned to the room as Feo turned her attention back to her search, while Sam glanced around, a little unsure of what exactly he should do. However, the sound of breaking glass from the other room dragged his attention. He poked his head back through the door and saw a small cylindrical object tumbling onto the floor. He cocked his head to one side and glanced back to Feo in confusion, but she was already in motion. She leapt off the bed, snagging her pistol on the way past the chair, and tackled Sam square in the chest. She kicked the door closed a split second before the brightest light Sam had ever seen blasted out from under the door, followed quickly after by an ear-splitting bang. The lightbulb above them flickered and went out a scant moment before they heard the front door get kicked in. The heavy pounding of boots filled their ears as what seemed like a substantial number of assailants pushed into the cottage.

Feo quickly got to her feet and glanced down to Sam, “Stay down, I don’t want them shooting you, and once they see you with me, they likely will…” she cautioned, before moving gingerly towards the door. She slipped to the other side as it too was kicked in, revealing a heavily built, heavily armoured, and heavily armed individual. He was wearing full body, jet black combat armour, as well as a helmet that covered his face. He glanced around as he stepped cautiously in, apparently missing the vixen crouched next to the door just out of sight. It was all Feo needed as she jabbed her pistol into his side and pulled the trigger twice, causing him to collapse in a heap with a groan. She stood up and peeked around the corner, only to be greeted by the sight of three other soldiers aiming their rifles at her.

Feo dived through the door as shots were fired, landing in a slide beside the recliner. She scrambled to her feet using the momentum of her slide and took a few shots at the soldiers; one was hit in the breastplate but deflected off the armour, while a shot connected with the knee of another, sending him toppling to the ground and howling in agony.

More shots were fired by the soldiers, filling the walls of the house with holes, but they missed their marks as Feo ducked and weaved around, always seemingly the slightest moment ahead of her opponents. But her luck couldn’t hold, as her assailants eventually herded her into a corner, both of them aiming squarely at her chest. There was no possible way that she would be able to get out of this, she thought, and she closed her eyes awaiting the end.

Two loud blaster shots were heard, but she didn’t feel any searing pain that would signify being hit. She gingerly opened her eyes to see the two remaining soldiers collapsed on the ground, dead, and behind them, the barrel of her rifle in Sam’s hands still glowing slightly from the heat of the shots. He flashed her a toothy grin, “That’s twice you owe me now, huh?” he asked with a slight smirk, causing Feo to chuckle quietly.

“Yeah, I guess so,” she replied, glancing around the room. There didn’t seem to be any more soldiers around, at least for now, but a soft moan from the middle of the room caught her attention. She made her way to the soldier she downed earlier in the fight, the one she shot in the knee, and ripped off his helmet. What met her was the steel grey, canine-esque muzzle of a Serani, quivering slightly from pain. An earpiece was tucked into his ear, while his emerald green eyes stared at Feo defiantly. “How many more men are on their way here?” she growled at him, digging the barrel of her pistol against the underside of his chin. When he didn’t respond, she pulled her pistol away and shot him in the other knee, causing him to howl out in pain.

“Fine, fine! I’ll tell! I’ll tell!” he managed to choke out through the agony, “There’s another two squads on the way! They’ll be here soon. But they’ll arrive to a smoking crater!”

He held up a gloved paw, revealing the live grenade he was holding, his thumb depressing the detonator switch.

Feo’s eyes went wide as she punched him square in his jaw, causing him to slump back to the floor, unconscious. The grenade tumbled from his paw and started flashing rapidly, getting faster and faster with every passing moment. She turned tail and sprinted back at Sam, tackling him for the second time in as many minutes. The instant they hit the floor, the grenade detonated with an earth-shattering explosion. The shock wave blew out every window in a shower of fine, powdered glass. It obliterated the inner support columns of the house as well as a good part of the roof over the inner house. The rest hung suspended in the air for a moment, before gravity inexorably began pulling it down again, causing a chain reaction that collapsed the roof to the foundations.