The next day, Nick was more alert. He still couldn't look left or think about the accident without a lot of pain, but the pain in his legs was gone, and he could move them fine. He wiggled his toes to check, then needed a short nap to recover.

  I could totally get beaten up by a blind kitten right now. Nick sighed and schooled himself to patience. It'll get better. I'm on the mend.

  It was interesting seeing his status changing. Petra ranked his health at 15% and climbing. A large part of his head was lit up in blue, and that was the main injury left. He had lots of bruises and aches, but they seemed to be getting better. The flares of color on his legs had shrunk down to almost nothing.

  Several times, some fuakalas Nick didn't know came in and just stared at him for a while, talking to each other in low tones in Kthufu. I am the first alien they've ever seen. I feel like a zoo exhibit.

  Kathy stopped by again, and went back to explaining the situation. Nick did his best to follow along. Most of what she had said the day before hadn't stuck at all. He had to ask her to give him the short explanation again. This time, it felt as if it might stick.

  She told him how Rockhunter had made its way back to the silver mine, and then to Petra's dungeon, carrying the 100 units of vanadium he had ordered her to get. It was unclear whether Ktheg!lik would have eventually beat the sicknesses on her own, but she didn't really start getting better until Petra made her some medicine.

  They built a bus, and brought most of the surviving fuakalas to Petra's dungeon. Kathy had been put in charge, and she got Petra to set up living quarters and make blankets and stuff, but first and foremost, food. They had finally gotten ahead on the food supply to the point where they had a two week margin.

  Meanwhile, Kathy had done the smart thing and built a bunch more printers. They were up to nine of them now. She used four of them to build a whole bunch of medical gear none of the fuakalas understood. Eventually, Petra decided that she was ready—it was safe to bring Nick out of suspended animation or time freeze or whatever, and operate on him.

  He had a couple of big bald spots on his head now. Nick held onto the hope that his hair would grow back in those places without difficulty, but even if he ended up looking like one of those medieval monks, it would be worth it to survive that crash.

  Apparently, ten of the other fuakalas had gotten sick in the first month after being exposed to Nick's old germs lying around the dungeon. Or maybe it was exposure to Ktheg!lik, they weren't sure. At any rate, Petra was able to cure all of them. Kathy and two others still needed to take a pill every day, though. Nick wasn't quite sure he understood, but he thought Kathy was saying that she was allergic to him.

  You're not the first girl to tell me that, he thought but didn't say. Jokes would probably take a really long time to translate, and that one wasn't worth the effort.

  Petra's dungeon now had twelve levels, with smaller tunnels dug all the way down to the water table. They had an alien arboretum, too. Well, Nick's was the alien arboretum, but apparently someone had managed to keep a few native plants alive until being rescued. He got the impression that they were more like mushrooms than trees, but he'd have to get the details when his brain had more stamina.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  They had four flying scanners searching the countryside, trying to locate more survivors. The fuakalas refused to give up the search, even though they hadn't found any more people in the past six weeks. Given the plight all of them had been in, in their respective refuges, Nick totally understood the determination to keep looking for survivors.

  The menu was a little more varied. Some of the survivors had different kinds of food stockpiled, so Petra had more designs to replicate. Apparently, Petra also was able to produce what sounded like a “generic nutrition bar,” from a recipe already stored in her memory, but Kathy confided that it tasted pretty bad. Still, food was food, and hunger was finally a thing of the past for the group.

  The stockpiles looked pretty decent, from Petra's report. Apparently, a mission for getting element 92 and a bunch of related ones had gone well, and Petra had built what Nick suspected was a nuclear reactor down on Level 12. At any rate, they had plenty of power to run all of Petra's “monsters” and more.

  The bus they had built to go rescue survivors also helped them conduct salvage runs. They had driven to four different towns, digging through the ruins for everything from hairbrushes to cards and board games. There were even a few precious books. Nick was glad that they could think about things beyond mere survival these days.

  The fuakalas had big dreams for Petra. They actually wanted to build a spaceship someday. Nick could relate. They also wanted to contact any nearby alien civilizations, although opinions varied on that point.

  Finally, a bit of politics reared its ugly head. Apparently, fuakalas could be just as stupid, stubborn, and blinded by grief as humans. Several had protested the efforts to heal Nick. They thought all aliens were bad, and some thought that Nick was to blame for somehow ruining their sun and turning it deadly.

  Others were reasonably afraid of what other germs a healed Nick might breathe on everyone. There was even a faction calling for Nick to be placed in quarantine basically forever in his own separate cave system. However, it seemed that Kathy was the absolute dictator of her people, on account of her being the highest-rank person who could give Petra orders.

  The idea that Nick could outvote Kathy and tell Petra what to do was yet another reason waking him up was controversial. But Kathy had laid down the law, and huge resources had been devoted to building machines that Petra used to heal him. Hm. Maybe now that I'm on the mend, that will free up a lot of resources and people will have less to grumble about. Yeah, dream on, Nick.

  Nick stated for the record that he was happy with Kathy handling things and wasn't planning on reversing any of her decisions. He wasn't great at reading fuakala body language, but he got the impression that some tension left her after he said that. She thanked him more than once for it.

  Kathy started to tell him little bits about some of the people—who had supported her, who was being difficult, who was popular and who was doing the most to help others. He was interested, because he wanted to learn about the people he was trapped with. At that point, though, Nick had to plead exhaustion again, and Kathy good-naturedly took her leave.

  * *

  On the third day, by Earth reckoning, Nick was feeling noticeably better, and Petra recommended that he get up and start moving around. He took a slow walk around Level 5, and even climbed up to Level 4, taking a shower for the first time in too long. I hope I wasn't smelly the whole time I was in time freeze.

  That was about as much exercise as Nick could handle, so he settled down in his room, which seemed...recently vacated. He couldn't tell fuakalas apart, mostly, but he had a suspicion that Kathy had been using his room as her quarters. He didn't mind, it was like the captain's quarters on a ship.

  I guess I'm the absolute ruler now. Well, I'm not doing anything but taking a vacation until I feel better. Kathy seems to be doing a fine job running the place, so I have no reason to change anything. He settled himself and went to sleep, glad things were going so well.

  So, of course, Nick was woken up that night by someone stabbing him in the chest.