Castaway Planet

Galactic Calendar 259872/ 2000 [ Sol Year 4387/ Day 153 of 365. Sol standard year]

Days after of Crash landing/ 1

Uninhabited Island / Ruins/ Unknown Builder

Galactic Standard Time / 1200

The hallway they had escaped down was a lot better than the room behind them, but it was still decayed. The hallway was lit up by crystals in the corridor, but this time they were completely in the light. The lights showed the walls and floors were made of a reddish gold metal. It was a strange dark metal that seemed to drink in the light. The three of them were moving with Rodolphe leading the way, Bryce in the center, and Zane at the rear.

As Rodolphe led the way, behind him Zane was looking at Bryce. He didn’t know what to think, but Bryce being a Student? That was out of the void. He thought that Bryce was….. well. He blinked as he realized that he hadn’t thought that Bryce was anything but a normal person. That was surprising, he was usually a lot better at this. but if Bryce was like his old friend, then it was to be expected.

“You know Bryce,” Zane said, his voice echoing off the walls. “You’re the last person I expected to be a Student, good job!”

“So, you met Alpha Lambert Blue Five? I thought he was dead you know?” Bryce said softly and Zane chuckled.

“Yeah, the punk was hurt badly when we found him. Some of my Cousins were out in one of our freighters. We found ‘em about a week after your escape I think. Man fought us off when we brought him aboard, thought we were some of them. Once we were able to get it into his head we weren’t, he let us help him,” Zane said absently as he shook his head.

He remembered the way his friend fought them all off, and how much damage was dealt. Some of the cousins wanted to keep him knocked out until Grandfather decided what to do with him or space him. Zane argued they should get out of the sector first. They had only been an hour’s flight away when a fighter squadron had appeared. They had barely made it to FTL before the fighters could get a read off them. After their medic discovered Alpha's beyond cutting-edge biotech, the others reacted. Some of the others wanted to space him and others just wanted to kill him. It had taken a lot of fast talking from Zane to calm them down. They had compromised in the end, Alpha would stay in a coma in a locked room until they made it home.

When they made it back to their world, he had stayed locked up and asleep until Grandfather got there. Once Alpha was sure that they weren’t the people he was running from, he had calmed down. Even when he had calmed down, Grandfather had figured out that he had nowhere to go. After a few minutes of talking, Zane had a new recruit to train. It had taken a few months to even get half of 'Albert's' story. And then Zane had to almost die saving him from bounty hunters to get the rest. When Grandfather had heard, he had exploded. He had been so angry that such filth were nearby, that he ordered any one of them caught to be killed on sight.

“I….. thank you. I thought I was the only one of us who got off-world. To think he’s still alive, that’s a balm on my soul,” Bryce said softly and Zane nodded.

“Yeah, and he’s going by Albert nowadays. Something about not forgetting where he comes from,” Zane said and Bryce only shook his head.

Zane could tell that Bryce knew Albert, just by that head shake. Albert was a friend, Zane had thought that he had such a complex about him. When Albert told them everything about where he had come from, well that explained a lot.

“This Student thing, is it anything like Sleepers?” Rodolphe asked from the front. Zane and Bryce looked up, seeing Rodolphe looking back at them with a strange look on his face.

Zane blinked and looked at Rudolphe in shock. “You thought he was a Sleeper?! I mean….. yeah. I can see where that came from. Wow, way beyond what I thought.”

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Bryce looked from Rodolphe to Zane, a question in his eyes. He had never heard of anything called a ‘Sleeper’, but it didn’t sound good. He had seen and heard of a lot of strange things since he escaped from the School, true. But he had never heard anything with that name, ever. All he could do was wonder if he should even ask when Zane spoke up.

“Maybe the opposite of Sleepers, maybe. But you’re not with the Federation then?” Zane asked and Rodolphe nodded.

“Yeah, and you’re not a spy then?” Rodolphe asked and Bryce could hear Zane stop walking, probably in shock at the question.

“NO! A spy? Why would, how would you have even thought that was possible?!” Zane demanded and Rodolphe shrugged.

“You’re hiding something. I’ve got a friend in the profession, and you’ve got most of his tells. You’ve gotta know someone to see them,” Rodolphe explained.

Bryce found himself agreeing with Rodolphe. The first time he found a spy for the Teachers, it was so easy to see the tells in others. But sometimes he saw phantoms, things that weren’t there. It was hard, but he had learned to ignore anyone with only one tell.

“So what are you? Bounty hunter, pirate?” Zane asked and Rodolphe laughed a little.

“Rebel really. I was scouting the Spirit, finding the best places to sabotage it,” Rodolphe admitted.

Zane and Bryce blinked and looked at each other, the same question in their eyes.

“How safely?” Bryce asked sarcastically but all Rodophle did was shrug.

“Why I took all those lone repair jobs. All to plant bombs on the outer hull, and hack into the ship’s system to show that the damage was worse when they blow. Once in the chaos, my team would have breached near our target thanks to my data. We attack, get our target, and get away. All before anyone could figure out who we were after,” Rodolphe said with a level tone and Zane whistled.

Bryce stared at Rodolphe in horror. He was no civilian, he had killed before and would again. But the way he was talking about killing thousands of people. And that wasn't even talking about deaths from the explosions.

“Who are you!? What are you fighting for to do something like that!?” Bryce asked in shocked horror and Rodolphe sighed.

“A son of a murdered mother,” Rodolphe said softly.

“A rebel….. you’re not fighting against the Federation, you’re on the Spirit, and you had a target to catch on it. You’re from a Corp-world, aren’t you?” Zane asked in an awed tone that set off Bryce’s alarms.

He looked at Zane over his shoulder, a wordless question in his eyes. All Zane did was look at Bryce and shake his head, and part of Bryce understood that he wasn’t saying a lot.

“What do you mean?” Bryce asked, completely clueless as to why those words were emphasized.

Rodolphe looked at Zane who nodded after a few moments.

“After the Corp War…. You know about that right?” Zane asked and Bryce nodded.

Ahead Rodolphe just stopped and looked back at Bryce, shock visible on his face.

“Some parts, but a lot of lies were thrown in. I guess that in the end, they didn’t drop biosphere weapons on a lot of worlds? Weapons that caused a lot of people and beings to mutate?” Bryce asked and Zane shook his head.

“No. They did almost create a super weapon, but no they never deployed anything. During the peace treaty some of their worlds were prepared to fight to the death to stay 'free'. After a while they compromised and the treaty was signed. Those worlds would continue to have the cooperation that ran them, but they had to do so by the Federation’s rules. It made a lot of people happy, and most of the time it's okay. Sometimes, there are a few bad apples that spoil everything. And I guess Rodolphe is from one of them?” Zane said, causing Bryce to look at Rodolphe with shock.

Rodolphe shrugged and looked back at them. “Yeah. My world was one of those planets. About a hundred years ago, my corporation colonized a moon. Rare metals were there, and they made it so the people forgot about everything off-world. Everything you take for granted, we didn’t have. We gathered resources to sell to the corporation for food or medicine, and we barely survived!”

“Take for granted? Nanotech and modern medical. They kept that from you all?” Zane asked in horror and Bryce felt horror. As bad as the School had been, they still had medical care.

“Yeah. By the stars, the number of lives that were lost because of them! My friends, my aunt when she was my age! My parents’ generation, found out the truth. We’ve been fighting back ever since, an uphill battle with some of the others fighting against us! About ten years ago my people captured a pirate ship, me and mine went off-world to get help. But then they were one step ahead of us,” Rodolphe said bitterly and Bryce felt his stomach drop.

“Why did you say….. they lied to the Federation, said you were all pirates, didn’t they?” Zane asked and Bryce felt a spark of anger.

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“Yeah. I….. can you understand it? We discovered everything we thought we knew was wrong! There was a government that we could get help from. How they treated us was illegal! We were so happy, we went there without looking back. But what happened,” Rodolphe said and a tear escaped his right eye as old memories played behind them. “We found the nearest Federation sector capital, and we went to get help with all the evidence we had. I mean, by the stone and the rock! We went to get help from them, but they attacked us! I….. I lost my parents in the attack, we barely made it away.”

“So one of the people who run your world, they were on the Spirit?” Bryce asked and Rodolphe grinned.

“Not just one. the CEO’s whole family was there! They were celebrating something, but we never found out what. Could you imagine? One more strike, just one more! We could get everything we needed to save our people!” Rodolphe said bitterly as he looked at them.

Rodolphe didn’t want to admit what they had to do to survive a universe that was so big. How they had to find space stations operated by criminals and rebels to live. How they had to take jobs to get enough credits to buy food. The things they had to do, the lines they crossed. Sometimes, in the dead of night, he wondered if all the sacrifice was worth it.

That one last charge against their enemy to get back onto their world wasn’t the right thing to do. They would probably only get some of them to escape pods, and everyone else would probably die with the ship. Who knows what the Corp did since they left to keep their world a prison? But if the plan to finally get justice didn’t work, what choice did they have? Rodolphe was so caught up in his thoughts, that he never noticed Zane walk up and put a hand on his right shoulder. Looking up, he saw a note of understanding in Zane’s eyes.

“I can’t believe it. That sounds like bad entertainment. But are you sure the Federation didn’t know who you all were?” Zane asked

Rodolphe only looked at him Zane shock, a strange feeling going through him. Part of him wanted to believe that the Federation had just acted because they were tricked. The only other answer was too hard to believe. That meant, that there was no hope for any of his people, that nothing they did would matter. “What are you saying?”

Zane looked at the “I know just how dark the Federation can be. How vile and heartless they are.”

“Zane, what do you mean? What happened to you?” Bryce asked and Znae looked around, sighing as he did so.

“I’m not with the Federation either. To tell the truth, I’m a criminal myself,” Zane admitted and Rodolphe only looked at him.

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“You’re what!?” Bryce asked and took a step back, forcing his heart to slow down. He hadn’t had much luck with criminals, what with the robbers who attacked him. But they had shown him where to get forged documents, and they had shown him how to get space-rated. All in all, if he was honest, criminals probably treated him better than the Teachers did.

“So the Federation’s darkness?” Rodolphe asked and Zane looked at him before sighing.

“About a hundred years ago, my world was thriving. We had good food, a few rare minerals. We could make enough that we were looking into getting a few defense monitors. Even with taxes being what they were, we were all so happy. For a small moon, the only inhabited world in our system, life was good. Then the attack came,” Zane said bitterly, a haunted tone in his voice.

“What happened?” Bryce asked softly.

“First there was an orbital bombardment, it destroyed most of the buildings. It was Founders Day, everyone was at the settlement. We thought it might be a meteor shower, and then the drones attacked. Never saw the like, and still haven’t. They had plasma guns and spikes, a body like a manta ray. They flew faster than the watch drones back on the Spirit,” Zane said bitterly.

Rodolphe looked at Bryce and tried to say something. “That’s classic tactics, take out the enemy and send in the disposable troops first. What happened, how’d you survive?”

“Wasn’t easy. After me ma died. My da made a makeshift electromagnetic pulse generator. We knew we had only one shot, so we had to bring the drones in close. But they killed him as he activated it. About half an hour later the survivors trying to get a message out, then it happened. Federation Drop troops appeared, and they killed anyone still standing. I barely made it to a hoverbike. I escaped to my family’s homestead under fire. I got into the long-range fighter dad had,” Zane said and Rodolphe looked at him before shaking his head.

“No way, how’d you get away from what dropped the troops?” Rodolphe asked softly.

“Easy. I flew to the other side of the planet below scanner range. Once I broke the atmo I escaped into FTL,” Zane said with a shudder as he looked at the others and smiled bitterly. “I flew for about six hours until something caused my ship to drop out of FTL, and then two bombers appeared. They attacked me, I destroyed one of them then a freighter that under my Grandfather’s command got the other one. We heard later that raiders had killed everyone at my colony. A month later a Corporation announced a new mining colony on my world.”

Bryce looked at Zane, a confused look on his face. He felt nothing but horror and shock at what happened to Zane and Rodolphe, but something about Zane’s story bothered him. How did being saved by his grandfather end with him becoming a criminal?

“So what? You joined a gang of pirates?” Rodolphe asked.

Zane looked away, blushing. “Grandfather is the head of a gang that raids commercial shipping, pretty big.”

“Oh. So, we bared our souls, what about you Bryce? What’s a Student?” Rodolphe asked point blank.

Bryce looked at him and took a deep breath. But before he could say anything, they all heard a large crash in the distance. Looking towards it they saw they were coming to an intersection.

“Later, tell me later! We go to or away!?” Rudolphe barked as he aimed his rifle ahead as Bryce and Zane did the same.

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The creature had felt nothing but anger when it realized its prey wasn’t this way. It had run down the path, always looking for its prey even when it kept going down. Finally, when it reached a large open chamber it realized that its target wasn’t down here. The vile thing must have tricked it. It was going to turn and hunt down that fool trickster but then. It had only moved an inch when a delicious-smelling scent came drifting to it. It turned around, trying to find where it was coming from until it had it.

The creature looked towards the scent, into a dark corridor that was thick with it. For moments it just stayed there, wondering what to do. If it went after the scent before it, then it might lose its prey. But the smell of this scent was unlike anything that it had ever sensed before. It couldn’t explain how, but it knew that if it ate the source, it would grow so strong! The scent didn’t smell like Flyer, Walker, or Bug but instead, it was like a blending of all of them. It had to make a choice, go after its prey or go towards the scent. It felt like all it needed was more food to grow so strong, and the scent seemed to offer it. But the Strength its prey had, would let it fight and kill so much better.

And with that thought, the creature chose to go after its prey. As it turned to go back up it stopped. There in the distance was the sound of something coming towards it, something flying. It sent out its other sense and found it, there in the distance. Another of the Creator’s Hunters was between the creature and the source of that scent. They weren’t moving….. they were there to guard it!

With that discovery, the creature slithered away, not upwards but into the cavern. It needed to track down a way to get around the Hunters. If the Creator’s forces were trying to keep it from the scent, then the scent was something it needed to eat! All it needed to was find a way to get around the Hunters, and then it would feed. The Strength and might that it would gain from the source of the scent might be nothing, but its body sang. It had to do this, and with the power it would gain, it would rule.