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/ Unknown Structure/ Water Chamber

  Galactic Standard Time / After 1620

  Zevortro

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  As they moved through the tunnel, Terra kept looking around. Maybe she was trying to find anything on the screens, something important. Behind her, Zevortro didn’t care.

  With Jessie leading them all and Bryke behind him, his job was to keep Terra moving. Not that he was paying attention to her beyond keeping her moving. His mind was wondering what could have happened to the ‘thinkers’ here, and if that could happen again. The sheer bravery it took to keep living with only wooden weapons at most or rock weapons? It was beyond him and he was proud enough to admit it. But the way the flyers had fought each other until the roar, that bothered him. He was starting to get an idea, one that he hoped was wrong. But as they moved away from where the answers to his question could be, he didn’t care.

  “Amazing, nothing’s here,” Terra muttered in awe as she looked around the screens.

  Zevortro looked at her and followed her gaze, seeing that the wall showed shallow water and more of the thin fish.

  “What’s so amazing about that?” Bryke asked with an edge to his voice.

  Zevortro sighed and shook his head. While most people would have thought Bryke was angry, Zevortro knew his friend enough to know what he was feeling. As much as Zevortro didn’t want to admit it, he was feeling the same thing, fear.

  “Most societies have this, need to make the places that they send off their dead stand out. It’s either not here or above the water. But this had to have happened after they crashed here, and that’s a bit worrying. I mean, what happened?” Terra asked as she looked around the corridor.

  Zevortro only looked at her for a moment before he shook his head. Terra was like a child at their first VR arcade, and she had all the games to herself. He could understand that she had a love of this stuff, but there was a time and place and this was not it! They needed to be on edge, there could be anything down here that could attack them!

  “Maybe that place was where the blighters escaped when those monsters attacked them? Right now, that doesn’t matter! What does is how we can get back to our own!” Bryke bit back from the back.

  As Terra looked at him for a moment before turning around, Zevortro heard her sputter. He hid a laugh, that was his friend right there. He always was one to stick to the bare bones and strike at the heart of everything. Be it work or just social things, he was always going straight for the bull's eye.

  “Hate to say it, but he’s right. And we’ve been walking too long. How far have traveled?” Zevortro asked and ahead, Jessie looked over his shoulder.

  “We’ve been walking from the circle for around twenty minutes. But I can’t tell the distance we’ve gone. Something is blocking my nanites from tracking me. I’ve got a basic Travel Log, but that’s it. I don’t like this,” Jessie said before he turned his head back.

  Zevortro swallowed and he heard Bryke muttering curses under his breath. He understood, Travel Log Nanites were one of the best personal trackers around. For them not to be working?

  “Just keep calm. The worst enemy is your mind. Just keep calm and we’re going to get through this. Just keep moving forward,” Jessie said with a small smile.

  Zevortro could only sigh and shake his head, there was something about Jessie. The man wasn’t former military, but he seemed to know how to make people believe in themselves. But maybe he had learned that from someone, but when and who? And where had they learned this?

  He looked up and then went still as she stared at the left wall. “What in the name of the Black Hole!?”

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  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Bryke

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  At his friend’s cry of shock, he looked up. Following Zevortro’s gaze, Bryke felt his heart stop for a moment. They were looking at a cloud of red in the water that was slowly spreading towards the right side. But that wasn’t what bothered him, it was the head that still had skin and eyes on its right side.

  The thing they were looking at was something small, maybe from a body around two feet tall. It had what looked like three eyes in an upright primed formation. The head wasn’t attached to a body so there was no way to tell if this thing had been able to think and reason, to imagine. But the only thing that stayed the same was that the water was still shallow.

  “Is this recent?” Jessie asked in a no-nonsense tone.

  “I can’t say. The flesh looks fresh and it might be a few days old at worst. Hours on the other side,” Terra said with a scowl.

  Bryke felt his heart freeze as he looked at Terra, hoping that he had misheard her. But no, he had. She was saying that this was recent? As in the killer was still alive and near them!?

  “Great, so we might run into whatever did this then?” Zevortro asked with shock in his voice. “So we talking about sentient eaters here or something?”

  “For all we know this was an inter-tribal conflict or a lawful killing. We just don’t know anything about this place that could explain anything! So don’t jump to judgment now!” Terra said sternly. “It could be a beast for all we know!”

  “And we keep moving, and hopefully we’ll find the answer. But we need to rest and how many supplies do we have?” Jessie said from the front.

  “Dalila had half of those supplies. So maybe we have enough for a few days,” Zevortro said as he looked ahead.

  “Wasn’t there a Portable Bio Scanner to see if food was safe to eat? So we could kill or gather some food?” Bryke asked.

  “There was, but Dalila had it,” Terra said softly.

  Bryke blinked and looked at the others, trying to understand how this was possible. The facts before him painted a terrible picture that made him want to scream, but he kept quiet. There was a lot that could be said about this, but he didn’t want to. The way that they had gotten into this mess was beyond anything that could have been planned for. So now all they could do was handle this and keep going.

  “Okay, anyone have any idea how deep we are?” Zevortro asked, hope in his voice.

  “No, but if we’re lucky we can find a way out of this hell before the day’s done. Otherwise…… I don’t want to think about it,” Jessie said with a hard edge to his voice.

  Bii3 looked at Jessie and tried to follow the man’s logic, but he failed. There was something in the way he spoke that caused him to want to not know.

  “Hold on, there’s something ahead. Go slowly and keep your eyes open,” Jessie said suddenly.

  Bryke swallowed as he moved after

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  ??????????????????

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  The drone moved back along the tunnel, still trying to find any of the genetic codes it was hunting for. It didn’t ‘think’ it missed any, but it had to keep going. There was something down here with those genes somewhere here, and it would find them. This time it was scanning the walls and ceiling as it slowly moved.

  The shackles the mind within the drone was bound by kept the drone from following the logic that it had recorded. But that wasn’t the drone's problem, it was the problem of the mind that sent it. All the drone ‘cared’ about was to keep moving and following its orders, that was all that mattered.

  Moving back towards its base, the drone kept scanning. It would make sure that nothing escaped its notice, all for what sent it out.

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  Jessie

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  As he led the way into what they had found, Jessie tried to keep calm as he saw another piece of the puzzle, the final piece. They had come out into a large circle chamber over fifty feet wide and another corridor across from them. Here and there were remains of old metallic tables and benches that had decayed. And the final thing about the circle was a chamber set into the wall to the right. It was large, around forty feet wide and ten feet high. It ended at a counter at the back with an open doorway four feet wide beyond.

  “What in the stars is this? I mean this place is a bio-weapons factory, right?” Bryke asked shock in his voice. “Because this looks like a food court back aboard our ship!”

  Jessie took a deep breath and then released it, and then he looked at the others. “It is a bioweapon factory, but it didn’t start as one.”

  “I’m sorry, what!?” Zevortro demanded.

  “It was right there for all to see. I think this thing was made as a cruise ship, and then it was converted,” Jessie said with a hard edge to his voice.

  “Converted!? I’m sorry, what!?” Bryke demanded shock in his voice.

  Jessie understood what he was saying. The idea that anyone would convert a cruise ship into what he said it was? It didn’t make sense at all, but everything seemed to be pointing to that. And he could see what might have driven whoever built this to do that.

  “It’s not too far out there, is it? I mean this place, whoever built it first might have filed for bankruptcy. And if a bioscience company bought it after that. Well, just think about it,” Jessie said as he looked around. He saw the moment that everyone suddenly realized the truth in his words, the shock hitting them.

  “Okay, that’s something. Really,” Terra said after she shook her head a few times. She stepped past him and moved her body around, taking in everything there was around them.

  Zevortro and Bryke moved toward the side chamber. “We’ll check out that area. Maybe there’s another door or something that we can use.”

  “Ehhh. We lose nothing by looking, right?” Bryke muttered as they passed by Jessie.

  Jessie looked back down the corridor and tried to keep calm. So something about how dark it looked from here bothered him. It was probably a clone of a technique used on the ship, but he had to trust his feelings. He knew that the drone or robot that had almost found them was probably heading back towards them now. If it saw the tracks they made going this way, then it might come after them.

  “You know, this is interesting,” Terra said softly from behind.

  Jessie turned and looked at her, seeing her look at the walls. He opened his mouth and then closed it as he saw what Terra had. Without saying a word, Jessie joined her as they looked at the walls. Under their gaze, the screens were cycling through different views every few moments.

  “Think this is from before or after this place was converted?” Jessie asked as he looked around the room. As his gaze fell on the tables, he stopped and went still looking at it more closely. His eyes found the marks that something had cut into it, and on the destroyed bench there. For a second he was shocked, and then he looked down at the floor.

  He stared and winced as he realized just what he had missed and cursed himself as a fool in his head. It was right there, metal didn’t decay like the tables and chairs looked, something had to have done this. And with how their luck had been, that thing might be coming back soon.