Galactic Calendar 259872/ 2000 [ Sol Year 4387/ Day 155 of 365. Sol standard year]

  Days after of Crash landing/ 4

  Uninhabited Island / Clearing of Escape Capsule # 405

  Galactic Standard Time / After 1320

  Vivian

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  As she sat in Duncan’s office, Vivian kept her eyes closed. So far, the drones Dalila had lent her had been able to track Jones and Bradford.

  Bradford was a dead end. Besides talking to himself as his Augmented Reality nanites played something. She had even watched him sleep that night in the main chamber. He had made a big show about giving space in the empty storage rooms for people who snored.

  Now, Jones, that was interesting. The man had two attacks where he had been sent to his knees. They seemed to have been triggered by something about Jones's body. There was nothing external that could have triggered it. Even with everything that they thought about Jones, something was bothering her. The attack seemed to be something that he had set off by doing something.

  She sighed and shook her head. “I WANT to hate him, but there’s something about him. It makes me pity him more than anything.”

  She sighed and looked back into her memories. She had been on hunts where she had been forced to fire at kids who were brainwashed by Cults. And the Order was like the others said, a bad day away from being declared a Cult. Jones had probably grown up in the Order, and that meant that they had brainwashed him as he grew. What others saw as right and wrong? Jones might have been taught the opposite.

  A knocking on the door caused her to look up, and then cycle back to her watcher. Outside the door was a female passenger in a modest black dress with blond hair. And for some strange reason, there was something about her that seemed familiar. Something that seemed to be beyond the memories she had of the parties she had snuck into to get close to Bradford.

  “Come in!” Vivian called out, a strange feeling going through her as she ordered the drones back to her.

  The woman walked into the office, looking over her shoulder as she seemed to keep smiling as her yellow eyes looked around. “Ahh, hello. I….. was hoping that I could talk to the Chief?”

  Vivian looked at the woman before her and tried to keep a scowl off her face. The woman before her seemed like all the other gold diggers that she had seen. The number of times some woman tried to use her body to get ahead! As a woman, such behavior disgusted her.

  “I’m sorry, but the chief is busy. Can I take a memo?” Vivian asked coolly.

  The woman looked at her and then her whole body language transformed. From a woman who seemed to be so weak to someone with nerves of steel. Her eyes became as hard as diamonds and her lips became a scowl. “Since this pod has the database it does, there’s a section that says authorized personal, right?”

  It was all that Vivian could do to nod before the woman walked towards the bio-scanner in the corner.

  “Hey, hey! What are you doing?!” Vivian demanded as the woman put her hand on the scanner. A beeping from Vivian’s console caused her to turn and stare at the screen. She whipped her head around to look at the woman who stood there. “A company inspector!?”

  “Tatrina S. Qin, not at your service. I’ve been tracking a smuggler using the company's ships for a while now. The one thing I couldn’t figure out was how they were moving things. Now I did,” Tatrina said with a scowl.

  Vivian looked at her and tried to understand what Tatrina meant. Then all at once, everything suddenly made sense to her.

  “Wait, the supplies! They put them in the escape pods and they're removed when a repair ship docks, the goods are removed!” Vivian exclaimed, shock in her voice. “That’s why all these things are here. And why there’s a Hibernation Cell here!”

  “A WHAT!?” Tatrina exclaimed, horror in her voice. “One of those abominations was on the ship!? Who’s in it!?”

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Vivian only looked at her and chuckled. “We haven’t exactly found out yet. We have bigger concerns beneath us.”

  “Yeah, and that’s why I’m offering to join in. I’m a pretty good shot after all,” Tatrina said with a shrug. She looked down at her dress and then up at Vivian. “Got a spare jumpsuit?”

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  Duncan

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  Duncan looked down at the hole into the structure, trying to understand what was happening here. He had sent people down into the belly of that thing, and he had lost them! The ground they had fought on gave way for some of them, and then the others had done after them! He wanted to be mad, but he understood exactly what they were thinking. He agreed with it on principles, but why did those fools go right after them!? “I was the worst kind of armchair leader of them all!”

  In the past, Duncan had kept fighting and almost lost an arm during the last war. Once he would have been the first to charge and attack. But no, here he was, standing at the back while others went in! And those fools were most likely dead by now! Those brave idiots were gone, people he had depended on! And now they had a hole in their defenses, one that was as dangerous as the forest around them!

  “Chief!” Dalila called out from his right.

  He looked up and saw her walking towards him, a grin on her face. “I was looking at the shield generator’s specs again! I think I can modify it to cover the hole! It’ll take a bit of time, but we can do everything! This will keep the robots out!”

  “And it will keep our people out of it as well, won’t it?” Duncan said bitterly. He looked up at her and shook his head. “No way to recover their bodies? Of course not. We would have to defeat all those robots and destroy their source”

  Dalila looked at him and then she blinked. Her mouth

  “Wait, you think they're all dead!?” Dalila asked, blinking as she suddenly gained a look of anger. “I never told you, but I heard a splash from something that fell into the hole. And Jessie was one of mine! We don’t let others die that easily!”

  Duncan looked up, his mouth falling open as he felt a spark of hope. If she was telling the truth, then the others were still alive! That meant that they just needed to hold the doorway until they got back! “Thank you. That makes my orders that got them into this mess easier to accept.”

  “Sir, you didn’t have a choice at all. With everything we found out, we had to go down into that thing!” Dalila said with a hard edge to her voice. She at him for a few moments. “Sir, before you were the security chief, you weren’t in command in the War, were you?”

  “No, lineman for the entire conflict. Never lead anything more than a fire team,” Duncan said with pride.

  “Commanders who do it behind the lines, they all have to learn. Sometimes, you have to send people into harm’s way. That’s the only way to save more lives. There’s nothing else you can do sometimes,” Dalila said softly.

  Duncan looked at her and then he sighed, shaking his head. “Yeah, I’ve seen the lessons about that. One of the reasons I was going to take a vacation cycle. Needed to accept it. But then this all happened. So how long and where do you need to set up the generator so it’ll work?”

  “A few minutes, and then we have to make sure the cables will work while I power it up. And it needs to be right there at the hole, just within that thing. That’s the only way,” Dalila said with a scowl on her face.

  “Of course. This is going to be harder than I thought, won’t it?” Duncan sighed as he looked down at the hole. There were four of the other deckhands, making a nice little kill box to take out anything.

  A kill box that was going to have a trial by fire within moments.

  Before anything else happened, five of the flying three pyramid robots flew out.

  Duncan didn’t even say anything. He only drew his pistol and fired three shots. Two of them hit two of the robots, and the other deckhands' shots hit the other three.

  “What the nova?!” Dalila exclaimed before looking at the wrecked robots. “NO! They’re attacking us!? How can they even know to leave that thing!?”

  “Simple programming. The worst enemy is one that is stupid but acts smarter than it seems. They're probably programmed to kill anything not authorized!” Duncan snarled as he aimed down at the hole. “Get ready for the next wave!”

  “What next wave!?” Dalila asked horror in her voice.

  Duncan only shot her a bitter smile. For a moment, nothing happened. Then ten of the climbing robots charged out with five more of the pyramid robots above them.

  “Keep firing!” Duncan bellowed as he drew his other pistols and started to fire. As the five deckhands on overwatch joined in, Duncan saw Dalila raise her rifle. “NO! You go get that shield generator ready! New plan! Make it generate a box over that hole!”

  Dalila might have looked at him in shock, but he never noticed. All he did was keep firing as the climbing robots moved closer to the slope. With expert marksmanship, Duncan shot one of them right in the stalk as it was gathering energy to fire. The resulting explosion destroyed three more of the climbing robots as the last of the flying tri-pyramids were destroyed.

  Looking over the remains, Duncan looked at the hole the robots had come from. Part of him wanted to just close it up but who knows how many of them could break it down? No, they had to hold it off until they could get a better defense ready. They just didn’t have a choice in this.

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  Blorspi

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  “Elder, something’s happening!” Recor’s voice caused Blorspi to wake up. Gazing at his younger tribe mate, Blorspi looked toward where Recor was looking. He stared in shock and horror at what he could see. The strangers were fighting against the same kind of creatures as the Watchers. The stranger’s weapons could even hold off monsters like those horrors? He thanked the Ancestors that they had wanted to take him and the kid as captives.

  “What are those things?” Recor asked awe and fear in his voice.

  Blorspi only nodded. “You know as much as I do kid. But what is that hole their coming out of? I saw the strangers going in. Did they disturb a nest?”

  “But Elder! Why build over an enemy nest? Why not clear it out first?” Recor asked, a questioning tone in his voice.

  Blorspi opened his mouth before he felt his eyes go wide. That was it, the one thing that he had been missing. The single most important thing that explained so much about the strangers. But for the single question about them, it answered, it created so many more.

  “I don’t think that they had a choice, my friend,” Blorspi said as he looked at the stranger's round nest. The more he looked at the hole it was in, the more he cursed himself for not seeing it sooner. It was right there, and there was no reason for him not to have noticed.

  “But Master Blorspi, that makes no sense!” Recor exclaimed, shocked so much his eye was wide. “Why wouldn’t they have a……..? No. That’s impossible!”

  “The Great Elders say we were stronger once. This might be part of it. And that one that watched us! He’s trying to learn our language!” Blorspi exclaimed and looked around, seeing their Watcher going to join its comrades. He had a choice to make, a big one. That one was trying to understand what Language the tribe used, that was clear now. But that made it clear, that these being wanted knowledge from him and the kid. So should they try and help them learn the tribe’s tongue? Or hinder it, keeping knowledge that might hurt the tribe away from them?