Galactic Calendar 259872/ 2000 [ Sol Year 4387/ Day 153 of 365. Sol standard year]
Days after of Crash landing/ 1
Uninhabited Island / Forest Near Escape Capsule # 405
Galactic Standard Time / 0745
They had made good time, not running into anything as they moved silently through the forest. Racha led the way as she tried and failed to keep the scowl off her face. For the last fifteen minutes, she had been on edge. Something about this place was setting off her instincts, they were in danger. She could tell how or why, but it was there. And that was making her look at the rustle of every plant, expecting a monster to come out.
The sound of buzzing ahead of them caused Racha to signal a stop. Moving slowly forward, she tried to find the source of the sound and after a few moments, she did. Moving slowly forward, she looked into the clearing. At the center ten feet away, five of the red worm-like creatures were flying around something.
Looking at the others, Racha signaled them to come forward. Pointing at the flying worms, she pulled out her pistol. The others understood and drew their rifles, aiming they waited as Racha pointed out their targets. With a nod from Racha, they all fired! They each hit one, the last two flew upward only to die from Racha’s shots.
Moving into the clearing, they stopped at the mass. It was a carcass that still had all its scales and limbs. It was a four-legged green lizard with two tusks pointing out of a mouth on a short face.
“Any ideas? You were in training to be a medic right?” Rodolphe asked Paige who shook her head.
Racha ignored them as she drew out a knife that she used to cut into the corpse's stomach. At the sound of cutting, they turned to look as a smelly brown mass of liquid and other matter spelled out from the cut Racha made. Paige and Rodolphe both covered their mouths and gagged as Racha just looked at the liquid and mass.
“Why did you do that?!” Rodolphe demanded. Racha looked at him and shook her head.
“To see what been eating lately. And look,” Racha said and pointed at a brown mass.
As they watched Racha cut it in half, showing fruit flesh within it.
“So this thing’s diet means it was at least an omnivore?” Rodolphe asked and Racha nodded.
Racha grinned at the others. “And it ate this recently, within the last few hours. So unless the trees by the capsule were where it at, there are more Fruit trees around here.”
“So any ideas to find these fruit trees?” Paige asked and Racha nodded, pointing to their left. Following her finger, they saw another path leaving the clearing and they turned back to look at her.
“The beast was killed looking the other way, so it might have come from that path. We follow that and we might find a clue for where the trees are,” Racha said and shrugged at the looks she received.
Rodolphe and Paige looked at each other and then Paige spoke up. “Well, it’s a better plan than just going in a line from where the other trees were.”
“Yeah. So stay silent and keep your eyes open, you see anything you let the others know and I’ll do the same. Follow my orders and we’ll stay alive,” Racha said, and she turned around and led the way. For the next few minutes, they moved through over low grass the same height as back in the clearing, something that Racha noticed absently.
A few moments later they came across a small stream that cut across their path. The stream was a good twenty feet wide and in the distance, they could hear the sounds of a waterfall. Looking around she saw a tree across it a good fifty feet to their right that went across it, but something about it bothered her.
“So a river, could the seeds have been carried over it by the wind?” Paige asked and Racha looked at it and then at the water. Racha could say that she didn’t like the look of the water, something about it bothered her.
Before she could lead them through it, she needed to check something. Looking at it closer she frowned, the water wasn’t clear, it was very cloudy. She had no idea what could be causing it was it natural, or the result of something upstream?
“ Over the bridge or through the water?” Rodolphe asked and Racha looked over her shoulder and smiled as she saw a dead branch. Not saying anything she walked over and picked it up, smiling as she saw it was over four feet long.
“And that’s for what?” Rodolphe asked and Racha stayed silent before she turned back to the stream.
Paige looked between her and the water, a look of understanding forming on her face. Rodolphe meanwhile looked lost and then looked between the two women, not understanding anything.
When she reached the edge of the river, she thrust the branch into the water, and almost fell in as the branch kept going down. “Deep, really deep.”
“Too deep to walk I’d say. We only have one way to continue going against the wind then,” Paige said and they all looked towards the tree-bridge.
Racha barely heard her as she looked at the stick, frowning. For a moment she felt something and wondered if she’d hit the bottom at last. But then she felt something through the stick, something was holding it in place.
“Maybe it’s not too deep. I think I hit something,” Racha said and as they all looked at the stick, Paige went pale and started moving backwards.
“GET BACK!” Paige screamed in horror.
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It had been sleeping in the moving thing for a while now. It knew the signs; soon another of the new ones would be released from the creators. After it fought the little ones and they took one of its limbs it retreated to try and sleep to heal. It blinked awake and felt that its pincer was still gone but the limb had healed some, what had roused it? Then it felt something through its armor, something was jabbing it.
Grasping it with one of its other pincers, it pulled whatever it was down to its mouth and bit into a piece of the green life. Looking upwards with its eyes it saw the outline of something it hadn’t seen before, but whatever they were, they were like the little ones.
With that realization, so too did a spark of anger and rage start to burn within it. It sent strength to its other limbs and angled to get out of the moving thing. It was time to kill, feed and then return to the healing sleep.
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No sooner had Paige yelled out in fear, than the center of the river exploded. As the three humans looked on, they saw a nightmare surface.
The creature was at least ten feet long and seven feet tall, all covered in a vibrate purple chitin shell. It looked like someone had taken the worst a bear, spider, and lobster, then combined them to make this. It had an oval-shaped head with a round maw of needle-like teeth with short foot-long tentacles just below the gum line. Behind it were three eyes on stilts, and two spikes on the sides behind them. Around its neck were two chitin limbs on each side. The ones on the right both ended in two long pincers but on the left, only the lower limb had one. The upper limb was broken and jagged with black flesh that pulsed as water drained from the hole. Behind the neck, its body was round, with four legs on both sides of its body that went deep into the river.
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“SCREEEEHHH!” With that one screech, it lunged for them with its three pincers.
Racha reacted fast, pulling out her pistol. She fired one shot that hit and burst the creature’s central eyestalk. As bluish-black blood gushed from the wound, Paige and Rodolphe pulled out their rifles. They backed away from the creature, firing as they moved. Racha joined her fire to theirs, but most of their shots reflected off the chitin shell.
As the creature finally seemed to have shaken off the maiming of its eye, it glared at Racha as it walked out of the river. As it looked at the humans from a height of ten feet above them, Racha risked a glance at the tree bridge and made a choice.
“Run to the bridge, move! We can get away from that river spider there!”Racha barked as she started to run. Paige and Rodolphe followed after her, with the creature screeching as it followed them slowly.
As she ran Racha looked over her shoulder, trying to understand just what she was seeing. The river spider was moving a lot slower than the humans, which let her figure a few things out. It had to have evolved to live in water and hunt along the shoreline. But it was too big for anything that lived in streams like this one, so what was it doing here?
As they reached the tree bridge, Paige turned and fired at the river spider as it came ever closer.
“GO! I’ll try and hold it! Once you get across cover me!” Racha ordered and Rodolphe turned and started to fire his rifle.
“Not a chance! We gotta keep it on land, into the forest!” Rodolphe said and Racha looked at him as Paige nodded.
“It came from the water, it’s not fast! We can get away from it!” Paige exclaimed and Racha looked at the creature, firing as she watched it come closer to them.
“GO!” Racha called out as she shot the river spider. Paige and Rodolphe ran ahead as Racha fired her pistol as she ran backwards. Each shot still bounced off the chitin doing nothing to it.
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When the creature first smelled the scent of the thing that had the power, it charged off without a thought. But as it moved it started to try and plan in the limited ways it could. It smelled the scent of something else, one of the creatures of the deep and cold that surrounded its home. They rarely if ever came this far from there, than this one might have come here when it was still young. Still, if it was there, then it was that much the better for it. The chance to get a better hide and whatever weapons it used, was very good. But if it ate the source of the scent then that power would be lost to it, and that was something that it would not let happen.
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As the three people ran, they heard the screech of the creature. As Racha looked at Paige out of the corner of her eyes, she tried to quiet her thoughts. She still couldn’t understand how she saw the creature before she did, and that was bothering her.
As they ran Racha kept a lookout for anything that might help them, anything at all. As they passed a small hill Rodolphe looked at it and stopped in shock.
“What is it?” Racha demanded and Rodolphe grinned and pointed.
The two of them followed his finger and saw a cave mouth five feet high and ten wide, at the base of the hill. All they could see was maybe five feet in before darkness blocked their sight.
“A cave! And it looks like it goes back a lot!” Rodolphe said as he turned back to the others and gestured to it.
A screech behind them caused Racha to grit her teeth. She knew that this might be the best place to make a stand, but if the cave wasn’t deep enough then they would die here. And the creature was coming after them, and there was a chance that they might not find anything better.
Another screech came from the trees, and this one was a lot closer than the previous one. Racha closed her eyes and nodded, making a choice that she hoped was right.
“Paige, go see how far, now!” Racha ordered and looked back at where the river had been.
Paige nodded, running into the cave as Rodolphe and Racha turned toward where they had come from.
Rodolphe grinned and looked at the cave out of the corner of his eyes as he drew his rifle. A smirk formed on his face. He hated to admit it, but he lived for things like this.
A screech came as the creature from the river came into view. It looked around with its eye stalks and when it saw them it glared, screeching as it charged.
Racha and Rodolphe’s weapons fired as the creature came at them, both hoping to hold it off as long as they could.
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As Paige ran into the cave, she released all the locks she made to hold back her abilities. In a pitch-black environment, she had to have all the advantages she could. She just couldn’t see any other way to find anything that was hiding within the cave.
As she ran deeper in, she ran into the edge of a soft blue glow. As she blinked in surprise, the glow only lasted a few moments before it died. She felt nothing from her senses, but she aimed her rifle ahead of her as she moved ever closer to where the glow came from. She turned on her rifle’s light and shinned it around, not seeing anything that gave a clue as to where the glow had come from. Ahead of her, the cave went on, far beyond the light of her lone rifle. After not seeing anything that could threaten them, she turned to tell the others it was safe.
But then she spun around, looking to her left and swallowed. She sensed danger, hunger, and rage coming toward her! She had only ever sensed half of that combination once before when she had been hunted in her homeworld. Even when she felt the river spider, she didn’t feel such a combination. Running towards the others she took a deep breath before she screamed out a warning.
“GET IN HERE, NOW!”
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“GET IN HERE, NOW!”
Racha heard Paige yell, smiling as realized the cave was safe. Rodolphe needed no other signal before he ran into the cave as Racha covered his retreat. As she backed up into the cave the river spider came after them only for a savage roar to sound from the top of the hill. The river spider stopped and looked upwards, growls came from its mouth as it snapped its pincers.
Paige came to the mouth of the cave as Racha entered, her eyes wide. “It’s here!”
Before Racha could ask what, a roar and a blur attacked the river spider.
Racha felt terror as the new creature was revealed. If the thing from the river was a merging of bear, spider, and lobster, then this had to be a wolf mixed with at least two other creatures.
It was over five feet tall and had six legs. Its lower limbs had black fur and ended in paws, but on the shoulders were ruby shells. Along its back was a line of spines that flexed as it stood there glaring at the river spider. Its head ended in a muzzle, and they could see on the side of the wolf-thing facing them a multifaceted eye. Its tail ended in a chitin point, and Racha thought it moved.
For moments the two creatures stood there facing each other. Then they charged at each other, each looking to kill! The river spider shot out its lower right pincers, hoping to grab the wolf's front legs. The wolf creature reacted and lunged downward to the right, dodging the blow as the claws went over its body. Before the river spider could react the wolf creature was behind it. It charged and opened its muzzle, biting deep into the backmost right leg. Its fangs bit through the chitin, tearing the leg in two, leaving a line of jagged chitin where the bite had happened.
As soon as that happened, the river spider leaned down. Before the wolf creature could move away, one of its legs was pierced by the jagged legs of the broken leg. The wolf creature screeched in pain and tried to get free but then the river spider flicked it away into the air.
The wolf hit a tree with a crack that caused the hit tree to break in two. The top half of the tree above the wolf creature fell backwards from the impact. The river spider was already moving to kill its opponent before it hit the tree. As the river spider moved closer, the wolf creature came back to life! It shot forward and jumped at the river spider’s head with its mouth open! The river spider tried to dodge but the wolf was faster. It bit into the left eye stalk, tearing it free as the wolf creature landed on the river spider's head. As the river spider bucked it screeched in pain but it threw the wolf creature off!
As the river spider thrashed about, the wolf creature landed and ate the eye.
As the deckhands watched in horror, the wolf creature’s body started to convulse.
As it howled, the wolf creature's eyes suddenly shot out three inches! The deckhands stared in shock before the eyes went back to where they were before shooting out an inch.
“By the stars……. Did it just mutate?!” Racha asked in horror. She had seen mutates before during her service, but so fast. Never had she seen anything like it!
With a roar, the river spider locked eyes with the wolf beast. They stood there, both glaring at the other before the river spider released a screech. At this signal and declaration of intent, the battle between these two monsters continued.
“This is great! That wolf must have been out hunting and found that thing! We can hide and then we can leave after it does. It won’t want to eat us after instead of that big thing!” Rodolphe exclaimed and laughed in joy.
Meanwhile, Paige just looked at the battle, her eyes wide. She saw how the wolf had kept one of its mutated eyes locked on the cave mouth. When it saw them, that was when she sensed a feeling of rage and desire from the creature. It hadn’t been out hunting, well it had but it was hunting them!
“No, the wolf wants to eat us! We have to fight both of them!”Paige said as she aimed at the wolf with her riffle. Rodolphe grabbed it and glared at her as she glared back.
“HEY! If you’re wrong, then whatever kills the other will thank us by killing us!” Rodolphe exclaimed and Paige shook his arm off and glared at him.
“But if I’m not wrong, then we’ll be worse off if the wolf wins! Then we’ll be facing a mutated wolf with armor that will deflect our shots!” Paige said and Racha nodded.
“She’s right, hollow my orders and fire on who I fire on! We’ll play both of them off each other!” Racha said as she aimed at the river spider.