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was almost glad he was the lone survivor, although he had not escaped unwounded. The scars were evident on his face and body. His escape from this desolate planet had been so near. He could have overpowered every damned human onboard, and forced them to fly him home.
    He could have tried harder, he knew that. But somehow, seeing the small craft lift into the sky was a relief.
    His sigh was long and heavy. For the long years he had been stranded here, loneliness had been a terrible burden, but leaving had never been an option so when a chance came, without time to think, he seized it. But now he realiz ed that allowing the spaceship to take off without him wasn’t as unintentional as he had first believed.
    He had not returned to his cabin after watching the humans” small craft disappear into the sky. His confused emotions needed him to be outside with the elements, and not sandwiched in confining walls.
    He looked briefly at his shelter, badly storm-damaged from the long winter. Now the meteorological conditions were settling he could start repairing the damage. He intended to build it stronger than before. The environment wouldn’t catch him out again.
    He squinted up at the sky. The brightness of the suns hurt his eyes; it had taken months before he had become accustomed to his sunny new world. Would the humans come back to it? He pushed a scarred hand through his long black hair. They would. Maybe not in his lifetime, but they would.
    He knelt, dismissing them and, using claws that extended from the tips of his fingers, he began to deftly skin the hoofed animal and disembowel it.
    Her fingers uncurled from around the bottle and it fell harmlessly to the floor. Jenny, her face flushed with alcohol, slept peacefully.
    His kill was roasting on a spit over a roaring fire. He ripped off a leg, and his teeth tore into the flesh, splashing blood over his face and hands.
    Eating his fill, he smothered the fire with the carcass and dragged the remaining uncooked meat back to the ship. Dropping the kill inside, he moved forward.
    In the corridor, he eyed the two stinking bodies. These were the last to be disposed of on this floor. He had wanted no reminder of the people he had fought against, and ridding the spaceship of the bodies also dismissed them from his mind.
    Strad was the overseer, but he hated him, and had a certain perverse satisfaction of stepping over the rotting body, knowing he had survived while the other man had not. He took hold of the fetid ankles of the other body and dragged it out.
    On the edge of the forest were the graves. He dropped the body and began digging another with a spade made out of animal bone and wood. The head of the spade broke several times and he mended it without fuss or anger.
    Jenny replaced the bottle on the table. She felt slightly inebriated, but the light-headedness had dulled the overwhelming sense of being left stranded.
    With the aid of the alcohol, she felt eager to explore and find food of some description. She left the cabin, dimly aware that once the effects had worn off she would feel as vulnerable and as useless as before.
    She stepped over the body in the corridor, and once in the navigation room she began looking around. She finally relieved her itch and touched the computer module. But nothing happened. The ship, as she had known, was dead. She moved forward, then stopped short.
    Slowly, with a frown marking her brow, she turned and faced the dark corridor.
    One body?
    Maybe she was more intoxicated than she had thought. No - there was definitely only one body when there should have been two.
    Her heart began thumping, and the air around her felt too thin. She ran blindly towards the exit, motivated by the desire to leave as fast as possible. There was a fresh patch of blood beside the stain, and next to that was the mangled body of a large animal.
    She fell, skidding to her knees. It had been skinned and dismembered roughly, as though torn in some angry frenzy.
    Jenny