When the menu alert flashed before her eyes, Sina halted the swing of her hammer and lay down among the brown leaves of the bushes feeling extremely frightened.

War with the Ark Andulan tribe

An Ark Andulan raiding party have entered your territory. Your current standing with the Ark Andulan is -100 (hostile). You are at war with the Ark Andulan.

Reward: retain your life and freedom.

If she hadn’t seen this alarming message, Sina would have thought the day a pleasant one. Clear blue sky; charming birdsong; progress in the building of their camp, or base as the menu put it. Now a sense of menace caused her stomach to clench with fear. In her life on Earth Sina had been warned about kidnappers and robbers but had never encountered any genuine threat to her freedom. Here, the menu told her that she was in serious danger. Retain your life and freedom. Was her death at hand? Was some terrible tribesman about to leap upon her with a lethal dagger or spear?

For public events back on Earth, there had always someone from security to turn to for advice. Regretfully, Sina had to admit that she had always been cold towards her bodyguards, scorning them because the prospect of being assaulted had always seemed so remote. The most that any of her security staff had ever needed to do was to gesture away members of the public who were too keen to get a selfie with a princess. Now though, Sina desperately wished for a companion who was an expert in combat, who could be counted on to do their best to protect her, and whose instructions she could follow in order to survive.

Where were the raiding party coming from? Should she run? But which way? It would be all too easy to run straight into an Ark Andulan slaver instead of to safety. Crawl deeper into the bushes then? But that would make some noise and it might already be too late. Best be perfectly still, as though she was a child again playing a game of hide and seek.

Listening intently, ready to take off should anyone rustle among the branches, Sina heard a distant whistling sound followed by a crack – like a tree branch breaking – and then a soft thump. Soon afterwards footsteps ran past her about ten metres away, moving along the stream from the forest toward the sea. That was towards the direction of the cracking sound. When the running stopped, there came voices, indistinct, about a hundred metres away.

Slowly, ever so slowly and carefully, hardly breathing, Sina crawled beneath the lowest branches of the bushes until she could glimpse through a dense network of leaves to where a group of people were standing together, looking at something on the ground. There were three of them, no four: two women; two men. And they had Marcus! Her companion was lifted up from the ground and a noose was around his neck. Poor Marcus.

The slavers moved away southwards, a small man with a gun walking backwards and looking around as he did so. For a moment it seemed that this man’s gaze had met hers but with a wave of relief he carried on southwards without hesitation. A shameful thought occurred to her: thank God these people – the Ark-Andulan presumably – had captured Marcus not her. Of course, she could justify that feeling: a woman prisoner was more likely to be raped than a man; Marcus was smart, he would find a way to escape; it was best if Sina was the one of them who remained free as she was more able to complete the quests here for their base. But it was no good. As much as she could be, Sina was always honest with herself. And being honest, that was a terribly selfish thought. A decent person would sacrifice themselves to save their friends. Marcus. Was he a decent man? He was a little touchy and like all men, somewhat given to taking charge. But he did seemed to be good at heart. And where he had fallen was in the opposite direction to the base. Had he deliberately tried to move the slavers away from Sina?

Finding her teeth grinding together, Sina realised a wave of resolution had passed through her. She would do all she could to rescue Marcus. Practically, though, what did that mean? There might be more of the slavers around and they had guns. She had only a spear and no experience in how to use it. Charging after the slavers would be hopeless. In fact, she wasn’t even sure she could bring herself to stab someone, even a slaver. Yes, a good person would try to rescue their companion. But not recklessly. Letting out a long breath that she hadn’t realised she had been holding, Sina turned her thoughts to the game menus and quests. If she was going to rescue Marcus it would be by learning more about these and using them to her advantage.

Ever since they had obtained tools from the Kanagarans, several new options had appeared on her menus. The main dashboard now offered ‘Zones’, ‘Buildings’, ‘Furnishings’, ‘Transport’ and ‘Community’. The submenus for Zones were Residential, Industrial, Agricultural and Stockpile. Those for Buildings included House, Barn, Timber Yard, Water Mill, Windmill, Pottery Kiln, Smithy, Bakery and Tailor Shop. Out of curiosity she opened House to see several more options and from them she selected Hut.

A Basic One-Room Hut

With a door and one uncovered window.

Requirements: Residential Zone of at least 5 square metres; 25 units of timber; a saw; a hammer; 360 nails; a borer; a file, Construction Skill 1.

With suitable furnishings, this simple hut can nevertheless provide an effective shelter in which two people can eat and rest.

Most of the requirements were green, but Residential Zone and 25 units of timber was grey. The hut wasn’t a priority but it pleased Sina that it seemed possible for her to build such a structure. She’d never built anything real and substantial before arriving on this planet.

Still waiting quietly beneath the bushes, feeling cold now despite the blue skies above, Sina no longer felt fearful. It was too soon to risk moving, but whether by turning her mind to the menus, or whether because being panicked for so long was simply unsustainable, she had regained control of her emotions and her mind had grown calm. There was another thought that consoled her too. Back on Earth when a girl of six, she had developed leukaemia. During the worst of the fevers following chemotherapy an angel had floated down to her hospital bed through the ceiling of the roof and placed his hand over her heart. At that moment Sina had felt the sickness leave her body and she had known that everything would be all right.

No one had believed her, well, her parents had said they did, but they were not convincing and never referred to the angel unless Sina brought it up. Sina, however, had felt the reality of the angel’s visit to have been as vivid as any other experience in her life. And even now, in a completely different body, on a planet that was not Earth, she believed that the angel who had saved her in the past was watching over her and would not let her be harmed. Despite this comforting thought, it was still up to her to find a way to rescue Marcus and Sina continued flicking through the menus, noting several new building options as well as a dozen items of furniture (oh, how luxurious it would be to have a bed) that she could assemble with her Construction Skill of 1 and the tools they had obtained. None of these, however, seemed worth spending time on just now though.

The Community menu had as its top level overlay information that was deeply discouraging.

The Fins

Population: 1

Happiness: 15/100

Stockpile: not constructed

Residences: none

Industrial Buildings: none

Energy sources: none

Agricultural lands: 1 small animal pen

Mines: none

Armoury: not constructed

Prisons: not constructed

Happiness 15? Did the planet continuously read her mood? Well, her happiness might have been low but she was sure her determination was up in the 90s. Was it safe to move? She wanted to get started, there was so much to do.

Crawling backwards as far as her lean-to, Sina eased herself up to a sitting position. Where should she begin? Perhaps with the stockpile. Not only was there the implication in how the menu was organised that a stockpile was a very fundamental feature of a base, there was also the description of the items in her personal inventory to take into account. They were all listed as degrading for resting directly on the ground.

After a certain amount of frustrating experiment, Sina discovered that if she selected Zones, then Stockpile, a square overlay appeared on her vision, one that turned green when she looked at certain areas of grass but greyed out over others. It wasn’t entirely clear to her what made the difference, but the green areas were flat and without too much vegetation. By keeping the square active and moving her hand, she mapped out a rectangular zone, about four metres by ten metres.

A box appeared, inviting her to start creating a Stockpile zone. Should she take it and risk the possibility that more slavers were in the vicinity? Yes. It was time to get moving.

Immediately on approving the construction of the stockpile, she had that extraordinary sleep-walking sensation of her body moving without her direction. Back and forth she went, keeping a wary eye on the horizon, while her body prepared the area by cutting through the top layer of turf with the pickaxe and then peeling sections of grass away from the dirt.

After an hour or so of this work, she had cleared all the root-filled topsoil and had exposed a patch of dark earth. It was just after regaining control of her body to take a drink that Sina got a new system message.

War with the Ark Andulan tribe

The Ark Andulan raiding party has left your territory. Your current standing with the Ark Andulan is -100 (hostile). You are at war with the Ark Andulan.

Reward: You have retained your life and freedom.

Back at work, it took another hour to clear rocks and stamp down the Earth before Sina obtained the message that her stockpile was complete. It was very satisfying to labour hard to such good effect. If only her family could see her now, they would be amazed. She then placed Marcus’s space suit, his parachute, all their food, timber and tools on the compact ground and covered everything with her parachute. Good. A check on her personal inventory showed that it was now empty apart from her space suit, while a new Stockpile menu listed her items.

Space suit (spare) 96% Degrading very slowly (environment resistant materials)

Parachute 92% Degrading very slowly (stockpile with no roof)

Timber, 7 units 87% Degrading slowly (stockpile with no roof)

Rittle Berries, 2 units 84% Degrading slowly (stockpile with no roof)

Viabrand Nuts, 3 units 99% Degrading slowly (stockpile with no roof)

Metal Saw (large) 82% Degrading very slowly (stockpile with no roof)

Metal Saw (medium) 59% Degrading very slowly (stockpile with no roof)

Metal Saw (small) 66% Degrading very slowly (stockpile with no roof)

Metal Hammer 88% Degrading very slowly (stockpile with no roof)

Metal Sickle 49% Degrading very slowly (stockpile with no roof)

Pully 91% Degrading very slowly (stockpile with no roof)

Set of Chisels 72% Degrading very slowly (stockpile with no roof)

Borer (large) 83% Degrading very slowly (stockpile with no roof)

Borer (Small) 65% Degrading very slowly (stockpile with no roof)

Set of Gouges 76% Degrading very slowly (stockpile with no roof)

Bag of 74 Metal Nails 95% Degrading very slowly (stockpile with no roof)

Bag of 52 Screws 96% Degrading very slowly (stockpile with no roof)

Coil of Rope (44m) 38% Degrading slowly (stockpile with no roof)

Coil of Rope (52m) 91% Degrading slowly (stockpile with no roof)

Jerky, 4 units, 86% Degrading slowly (stockpile with no roof)

The fact that timber and food were degrading more slowly than before was an important improvement, although clearly the report indicated that she needed to add a roof to the stockpile at some point. For now though, Sina took a break and ate some nuts. What next? Seeing the Jerky at the bottom of the list reminded her of the Otaxel Pet quest.

Quest: Otaxel Pet

Tame an Otaxel.

Requirements: Animal Handling 1; meat.

Reward: A useful guardian and companion.

MAP

To judge by the position of the sun, there was time enough to reach the crash site, but perhaps not enough to get back before dark. What was that new icon though? MAP? Sina concentrated on the new option and the map opened, with a green dot on it. The dot was moving! This was surely the Otaxel. Once again Sina reminded herself that this was a strange world: a world in which one should use all the information that the planet was providing through the menus.

The dot wasn’t so far away, near the edge of the forest to the north east. Heart skipping with a burst of excitement, Sina decided to face the creature. This was an adventure more to her taste than sweaty work or worse, crawling under bushes in fear of her life. Picking up a bag of jerky, Sina first went to the stream and drank her fill of the cold water. Then she set off across the grasslands, using the map to guide her towards an encounter that she feared, yet which also offered hope.