Castaway Planet

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

Days after of Crash landing/ 1

Uninhabited Island / Clearing of Escape Capsule # 405

Galactic Standard Time / 1000

Racha stood along the mouth of the crater, a horrible feeling going through her. A while back one of the lookouts had spotted smoke in the distance. Smoke that to her absolute surprise, was in the direction of the grove of fruit trees.

The smoke had caused Duncan to order every passenger back inside the capsule. He h asked for volunteers from the deckhands to guard the top of the crater. The last thing they needed was for a fire to kill them, but they still had people out there so they needed to watch for them. He then called for nine volunteers to protect the capsule by defending the top of the crater. Racha had stepped forward first, others after her until there were enough. Duncan had only looked at her before nodding and putting her in command.

Racha didn’t know what to feel about that, something about the way he looked at her. If the captain had told him about her, then that would explain everything. But if he didn’t know, then if she talked about it she would break her cover, something her orders were totally against.

Racha and two others were facing the fire and she was trying to think of anything to keep their morale up. She knew from experience, that sometimes the greatest threat was fear and what might come from within.

As they all stood at the rim of the crater, they waited for anything. Most of them had no idea what the fire might cause to come toward them, but they were all scared of the worst cases they could think of. From live forms on fire to pirates, most of them were barely keeping it together, while Racha was handling it the best.

Racha was flashing back to a mission on a forest moon where the native beasts were as deadly as the pirates she had been hunting. For a moment she flashed back to the way the creatures there had killed people armed with military-grade technology, not college students with security-grade tech! She wished she had some of her old gear, even just her old plasma pistol alone could have turned the tide but she was stuck with a laser rifle.

If the gathering party had been attacked, then they could have caused the fire fighting back. And she knew about some plants that needed fire to procreate, so there was a chance that the fire was natural. A kind of way to allow plant life around here to gather the energy they needed, the chance was low but it was there.

“HELP!” Jones’s strangled cry caused those thoughts to die down hard. She looked towards the forest and slowly raised her weapon.

As he stumbled out of the forest, Racha saw that his face had blood flowing from wounds above his eyes. A second look saw his right arm was hanging like it was dislocated, and he was dragging his foot. He made it about five feet, still twenty from the crater when he stiffened and fell.

The deckhand next to her tried to get to him, but Racha grabbed him. As he glared at her Racha met it with one of her own. “Stay here! Can’t you see it’s a trap?!”

The man looked at her with a scowl but Racha only shook her head. She heard motion from her left and saw one of the other deckhands from the side next to them start to move.

“STAY!” She barked and everyone looked at her. She looked at them and tried to keep her face calm. She had seen tactics like this before, but she hadn’t expected something like it here!

“We can’t leave him!” Someone from her right called out.

Racha scowled, this was why professionals hated amateurs! They believed in the stories the filmmakers put out, and how people could save everyone! What most of the movies didn’t show was how evil pirates and beasts could truly be.

This was just like the moon, one of the beasts there had used ambushes like this, and she could see something on his back. It had to have been what brought him down, but she couldn’t see anything that might have shot it. She looked at the trees at the edge of the clearing and was about to say something when she noticed a rustle. She blinked and saw a small window appear in the lower right vision and after a moment the rustling was enhanced and she saw what looked like a stinger.

She raised her rifle and slowly made a show of looking around before suddenly firing to the right of Jones.

A yell of pain suddenly came from where her shot had gone before five of the reptilian scorpion things charged from every side of the pyramid.

“FIRE!” Racha called out and with yells, the others opened fire with their riffles!

As the first few died by their fire, the lizard scorpions were soon all dead, but roars from beyond sight caused everyone to know that this wasn’t over.

Racha looked at the creatures, the holes made by the lasers still smoking. She looked at the corpses, trying to understand what she was seeing. They looked like the kind of hybrids she had seen on a mission against a mad genetic engineer. But they had nothing on them to send data back to a possible maker, so were they natural lifeforms?

“We can’t leave him out there! It would be murder if one of those things got him!” A voice to Racha’s back called out and Racha heard the mutterings around her and knew she had to get him.

Racha looked at where Jones was and scowled. Somehow he was without anything covering him. But between them and him were the bodies of the lizards. If just one of them was still alive and playing dead, anyone who went to help him could be in danger of being killed themselves.

“Fine, we won’t. But I want shoots into the heads of all those things first! And call two deckhands to take him once we return or to take our place!” She said and at the looks they sent her she scowled and yelled. “DO IT!”

The others looked at each other before they fired. One of the lizards on the side to Racha’s left made a sound before it died, and the howls from the forest grew louder.

“One from each side with me, you’ll carry I’ll guard! Everyone else watch your sides! You see anything you burn it down!” Racha barked as she ran towards Jones.

As two of the other deckhands followed her, Racha’s eyes were on the forest. She noticed a bush swaying, she fired into it. Moments after this from the other side one of the lizard scorpions lunged for her. Before she could react a red tentacle shot out of the forest and wrapped around the lizard-things body before it was pulled back into the trees.

Racha stared as a large burping was heard before other roars sounded from within the forest and a screech came from where the tentacle came from.

Racha stared in horror, she swallowed. She slowly grabbed Jones’s arms and looked at the other two Deckhands who were as scared as she was. “Grab his legs! I don’t know what’s in there but we need to get back to the crater now!”

The other two nodded, each grabbing a leg. As they ran towards the crater Racha looked over her shoulder and frowned. She hadn’t even heard of land-based creatures with tentacles that hunted, but then the lizard alone was beyond what she knew was possible. But something told her the origins of all the creatures, from the worms to the lizards all had a common point.

As soon as they reach the rim of the crater and handed over Jones's body, the cries in the forest died down.

As they turned to look, a tree was pushed to the ground. What came out was a monster, unlike anything any of them had seen before outside of a video game.

It was large, at least ten feet tall, five feet wide, and ten feet long. It had white fur, and it had a tail that ended in a bone ball with two sickle-like horns pointing away from the body. It carried itself on six legs that ended in bird-like talons. It had a centaur upper body that looked like it was part cat. Its mouth had two saber-like fangs and four red tentacles below its chin. Its hands ended in half-foot-long claws that glinted in the sunlight. It had three eyes with the third in the middle of its forehead, and each of them was looking right at them!

Something about it was bothering Racha, something about it was wrong. All her training and instincts told her something horrible was about to happen. As the creature started to gain a black energy aura around its paw hands, Racha reacted.

“DODGE!” She cried as she pushed the person to her left before she lunged to the right, tackling the person there. Before they could react, the centaur creature roared and slashed down with its right claw, sending a crescent of black energy that was as tall as it was, and it shot toward them!

The crescent raced towards the crater, cutting through the ground. When it shot by them, it only missed the deckhands by mere centimeters! As it left the dirt, it was revealed to go down ten feet and sliced through the top twenty feet of the capsule, the deckhands on the other side barely getting out of the way.

“Creation. TWO FROM EACH SIDE SPREAD OUT! RUN AND GET GIVE IT MORE TARGETS! EVERYONE ELSE FIRE!” Racha barked and ran towards the left, firing as she moved.

However, before the shots could reach the monster they disappeared. After seeing that most of the deckhands were struck dumb but two of them followed her orders without thought, leaving the crater rim. As they ran to the left and right, firing as they ran the others started to

Racha barely reacted beyond gritting her teeth and yelling. “FOLLOW MY LEAD! THIS THING IS ALIVE! IT HAS TO HAVE A LIMIT!”

Before the others could react the two horns on the beast's tail glowed purple and it roared at the crater. As soon as they heard its roar, all of the deckhand's eyes dilated and they went still, not moving at all.

She kept firing at the beast, only to curse as her shots were absorbed by whatever was blocking them.

The beast roared as it turned the deckhand who had gone left, only for him to have ducked behind a dead reptile scorpion. The deckhand popped up and fired at it, only for his shots to be absorbed as well. The beast took a deep breath to roar again only for a shot to get through from the other deckhand, hitting its front leg. The beast staggered, the shots were blocked again it stood there.

Racha meanwhile had kept running, not looking back until she reached a tree to hide behind. She turned back and saw the beast staying still as the only two people fired at it. She looked towards the crater and saw how everyone there was staying perfectly still and she was shocked. She scowled but before she could say anything she saw one of the flying worms shot from the forest from the far side of the clearing. She watched as it flew straight at one of the deckhands, its stinger raised to kill.

“Move you fool!” Racha bellowed as she raised her rifle.

However, the deckhand didn’t move, the worm stung him. He stayed upright for a few moments before falling to the ground, the bee disengaged as the man started to fall.

As the worm flew upwards Racha look on in shock as no one moved. The woman stared in horror before she finally reacted. She fired a single bolt that went by deckhands, missing them by inches before it hit the worm before it stung anyone else, and killed it by destroying its head.

Racha only stared at how no one who had her shot passed by them reacted. She paled in horror as an old memory played behind her eyes. On a mission a year ago, she had seen something like that before, and it had killed most of her team. If this beast was like that monster, plus that shield it had, then they were probably already dead.

“What’d we miss?” Jinn’s voice from behind her caused her to turn and see him, Al, and Sara running toward them.

“Another creature!? And it’s not a bug!?” Al said in shock and Racha stared in horror as she realized what that comment meant.

With a roar, everyone saw that the beast had suddenly shot out one of its tentacles shot out. It wrapped around the male deckhand’s arms and body. As he was dragged towards the beast it opened his mouth and he screamed. The woman fired but her shots were all absorbed by whatever the beast

“NO!” Racha screamed as she fired at the beast, her shots being intercepted like the others.

“JINN!” Al called out in horror and Jinn smirked.

“GOT IT!” Jinn called out before he gained an energy aura and shot toward the beast. She could only stare as he moved faster than she thought a human could run. And then there was that energy aura around him, like a comet. She had only fought Ancients who had skills like that, and each time it was a worse time than the ones before it to survive.

But if humans could learn skills like that, then everything changed. Once the thought of having the Ancients be in an alliance would only stop the fighting between them. But if people could learn those same skills that let the Ancients be so deadly? Then she had to find out how Jinn could do what he did…… the possibilities were endless!

Racha shook her head, her thoughts had run wild like they did sometimes. They weren’t important, she had to stay in the now and kill that beast!

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As he closed on the beast, Jinn pulled out his dagger, and the blade transformed into a sword before he leaped at the beast’s face!

Moments before the beast bite down on the captured deckhand, Jinn leap carried him there. He slashed down with his blade, severing the tentacle as he passed by before anything or anyone could react. The deckhand fell, his body still had the tentacle around him. The beast didn’t react for a second before it roared in pain as it bleed white blood from the severed tentacle, the others recoiling around its head.

As soon as Jinn landed he turned, dashing towards the fallen deckhand and with his free hand grabbed on. Moments later he and the deckhand were with Racha and the others, and a moment later his aura died away as he put the deckhand down.

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Racha stared in shock at this before she looked at Al. “Explain! How!”

“Long story, I’ll explain later!” Jinn said and looked at the beast as it screeched in pain and took steps backwards.

“Wait, why didn’t the others react!?” Sara demanded, causing Racha to wince.

Racha took a deep breath, looking at the beast as it roared in pain and stepped backwards.

“I think they're paralyzed. I’ve…. Seen something like it before,” Racha bit out and Jinn went still and looked at Racha out of the corner of his eyes.

“Yeah, I’ve fought something like it once. We need to kill that thing. It dies, its effect is gone,” Jinn said and Racha looked at him in shock.

“You what?” Racha asked in shocked horror. The planet where the creature had been still under quarantine, there was no legal way he could have fought it. If there were more of those creatures within the Federation’s territory, then Intel would have known. She had to talk to Jinn about that, but from the look in his eyes as he watched her he felt the same thing.

Jinn was about to say something when he cursed. “EVERYONE MOVE!”

As soon as he spoke the others all scattered, however the rescued deckhand stayed there blinking, and the beast roared at him. He was trying to move and he fell to the ground, his body locked and they had their answer on how the beast was freezing people. However while it had roared, the beast had gotten shot in its right eye by the female deckhand.

As the blood flowed from its eye socket, Racha stared in shock. For a few moments, she couldn’t understand anything. How could Jinn have cut through its tentacle when all shots had hit a shield? Then why was the shield down? What had been different about both times? Then she had figured it out, she finally understood. The shield was the beast had only worked if it didn’t use its roar, that means they had a chance after all!

“What do we do?!” Sara asked in horror as they all looked and realized what had happed.

Jinn grinned.“You keep firing at it Racha, I’ll make my way to its right side and try and take out a leg. Once it’s down I’ll go and kill it with my blade. I’ll try and get those people at the crater down, get help!”

Sara looked between the monster and then the stunned deckhand by the trees. “I’ll stay here and try and find a counter to whatever it did! I just have to hope that the trees can block the roar or whatever it uses.”

Jinn looked at her before nodding. “Stay safe!”

“If it starts to roar, hit it with everything you’ve got!” Racha called out and out of the corner of her eyes, she saw the others nodded.