Zevortro
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As he lay against the dirt wall, Zevortro tried to get his heart under control. Once he had gotten down into the crater, whatever ‘spell’ on him had broken. And that was all he needed to blackout for a moment. But the impact had woken him and then he had grabbed the wall as he floated upwards. Pulling himself to the crater’s wall, he had tried to understand what had happened.
Then everything suddenly came back to him, and he remembered what had happened. He had woken up an hour early for some reason, and then he saw the time. The decent was going to start within two hours and he needed to be ready before that. So he decided to go on watch and let the watcher clock out early. Then a half hour later, the others all went crazy. They all started making cries of shock. He had just rolled his eyes and wondered what new horror this world was going to throw at them. When they had said what they were seeing, Zevortro only laughed. After looking down at the console before him and seeing nothing, he only shrugged. With whatever was there and zero drain there, he thought there was no threat. Then he turned after a minute of them saying what they were seeing.
Then he had turned and he had started to act drunk. He remembered walking around, then he talked to someone. Then he had gone here, and he had broken free of whatever. He took another deep breath and tried to stand up, and then he stumbled, spinning around to fall onto his back. He looked up at the shield and saw the blackness of it. He smiled, finally understanding what had happened. “good thinking.”
“Mind telling me what happened boyo?” Duncan asked, voice dripping with amusement.
Zevortro looked up and saw Duncan looking out from the doorway, Vivian and Leonator behind him. Bradford was standing to the left and he had a frown on his face.
“Sorry sir. Some kind of mind weapon that a beast used. Somebody made the shield dark to block it. Just got back to my senses a moment ago,” Zevortro said from the ground.
Bradford took a step back, his eyes going wide. “What!? One of those things had that kind of weapon!? How could a native have a weapon like that!? No! The Power!?”
Zevortro blinked and then looked at Bradford. The way he spoke, that was telling. And something to think about later. “No sir, I mean a beast. Some kind of horse with a horn.”
Everyone looked at him and then as one, they said one word. “What?”
“I can’t make this up sir. I just can’t,” Zevortro said as he slowly got back to his feet, stumbling a bit.
“Okay, that happened. So they had the shield up, and now it’s dark. That keeps the light out, and that stopped what the beast did. And means that the weapon was light-based. This is bad. Bad,” Leonator said, a bit of worry in his voice.
“I think so, and that’s bad. We need to find another way to look out the shield, without looking out,” Zevortro said, rolling onto his stomach. He slowly gathered his strength and pushed up. He looked down at the others. “If I start acting like a drunk fool, close the doors and fight to defend yourselves.”
Vivian was about to say something when Duncan put a hand on her shoulder.
Zevortro turned away and looked up. He floated above the dirt pile’s top and looked around. With a small smile, he down. “Everything’s fine! Everyone is either down or looking away from the shield!”
He threw his rope at the ground and pulled himself down to the ground. He saw Bryke holding his head, and Zevortro knew where to go.
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Duncan
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Duncan looked up and scowled as he pushed himself at an angle to grab the edge of the hill at the top. Turning, He looked down at Vivian and called out his orders. “Girl, help Bradford get up here! Leonator, use that rope you said you know how to throw once you make it up there!”
“Yes sir! Senator, please put this rope around you. Just follow my orders and we’ll be doing everything fine,” Vivian said with a smile in her voice.
Duncan only looked ahead and tried to think of what to do now. The kind of attacks that this was, purely mental? That was beyond any training that he had ever done.
Reaching the top, he looked around and saw Jessie talking to Terra as she was on the ground, sitting up. With a sigh, he started to walk over to them. Once there, he sighed to get their attention. “So, Unicorns?”
“Sir,” Terra said with a shaky smile. “Can’t remember much of it.”
“Not many of the others can. Those who could be those who looked away for a solid minute or more before turning to see the beasts. The attack they did, affected most short-term memories,” Jessie said with a scowl. “At least, that’s what makes sense to me.”
Duncan looked at him and shook his head, muttering as he looked around. From where he was, he could see that the others were all struggling to recover from what happened to them. He had seen shell-shocked soldiers before, and drunk ones. But these deckhands, these people under command now? They were all worse than special forces at the end of a five-day pass! Could he send people down into that whatever it was now? People that he knew weren’t ready for it? Could he send them in at the risk of their lives?
“Noon,” Duncan declared as he looked around the clearing, a scowl on his face.
“Chief?” Jessie asked as he looked at Duncan.
Duncan looked back and met his eyes, and Duncan saw a question in Jessie’s eyes. He nodded as he turned to see Bradford look around. “You’ll go down after lunch. We open at noon, you eat and then you go down.”
“Noon?” Terra asked as she looked at him.
Duncan saw her look from him to the others around, and then she winced.
He nodded as she turned back to him. “Noon, at worst. But you all need to recover.”
“I’ll look after the shield chief. At least we’ll know if those things attack us,” Jessie said with a scowl.
Duncan nodded. “Good. See if you can make a part of the shield see-through, something high up. I’ll go see if we can make a step ladder or something.”
Duncan only gave them a wave as he walked off before they could say anything. All they needed to do was find out if they could do that. And he needed to find a way to handle Bradford. The fact that he had let slip that they were going down was a calculated risk. And Vivian had told him that Jones had wanted to talk to Bradford that morning.
So far, Jones hadn’t said anything that might show them the truth about him. But Duncan had to say, that keeping the truth of Powers away from him was smart. They had to handle that truth carefully, and Bradford still didn’t know about Terra. As long as they could keep that from Jones, then they would have another card to play.
But as he walked over, he saw Leonator looking at the natives. He had to wonder if the man would be able to find a way to talk to them, but he knew the odds. But something was telling him that there was more to the natives than he knew. They needed to speak with each other if both groups were to survive.
He reached the group of Bradford, Leonator, and Vivian, each of them looking around. He coughed and nodded at them.
“Well, this happened,” Duncan said with a scowl as he looked around.
“Indeed! And to have our people attacked by these monsters! I can’t even!” Bradford said with a scowl on his face.
Duncan looked at him and knew that Bradford was trying to figure out how to use this, and he let him. There was nothing more offensive to Duncan than a politician trying to figure out how to gain power. But while they did that, it was something that he could figure out and plan for.
“Yeah. So I’ve ordered them to rest and recover. It’ll take a few hours, but by noon we’ll be able to go down there. It’s not the best, but that’s what we have to work with,” Duncan said with a forced scowl.
“Excuse me, sir?” Leonator asked as she looked at the shield. “I don’t mean to be a bother, but the shield? We have no way to keep track of what’s outside now, do we?”
Duncan looked at Leonator and released a deep sigh. “No, we don’t. Not right now at least. I’ve told the boy to figure out a workaround. So we should have everything ready to set up stations in an hour or so. That’s if it works of course.”
Leonator nodded and looked at the two natives. He frowned a little and then closed his eyes, then blinked them. “Well, the two natives seem to be okay as far as I can tell. And were you aware that one of them looks younger than the other?”
Duncan blinked then looked at them, cursing up a storm. “No, I did not. I think that we should keep that information secret for now.”
“Of course! The last thing we need is some bleeding heart killing us all! I’ll just say we’re trying to figure out how to talk to them! Do you have any idea of a timeline to figure out their language my boy?” Bradford asked as he looked at Leonator.
Leonator kept looking at the two natives until he registered what Bradford had asked. “Oh, that? No, I have no idea! I hope to figure out how they communicate today at least! Beyond that, I don’t know! I have enough space to at least record all the sounds they make. But this should take quite a while!”
“So no easy way to find out why they attacked us then?” Vivian asked, her voice sounding a bit hopeful.
It did, but Duncan knew she was acting. The two of them had created this plan to try and trick Bradford. The hope they had was that Bradford would try and bring Vivian into his confidence. To try and have her spy on Duncan for him. Duncan wanted Vivian to be a double agent, giving him false information that could help Jones mess up. They needed to know just what Jones and Bradford were doing, and this trick might work.
“I’m afraid not. I have a small library of languages and a few nanite strains to help me. But this kind of work takes decades at least!” Leonator said with a sigh as he looked up at the two natives.
“We don’t have decades, we have a week at most. So try and figure out anything that you can,” Bradford said with a sigh.
Leonator looked at Duncan and nodded. “I know chief. And we don’t know if they are truly natives after all. They could be descendants of fellow castaways,” Leonator said with a small smile. But that smile fell as he saw the effect his words had on them all. He looked from one face to the other, and then he blanched. “Oh by the stars and novas! You didn’t even think of that!?”
“No, I did not!” Duncan growled as he looked up at the two natives. For a moment he just stared at them, and then he turned to look at Vivian. “I want those blood samples to be run again! This time, check if they're related or if we can find their age! And have the cooks get the meals for the people up here ready! Master Leonator, get to work!”
“What do we tell the passengers Master Duncan?” Bradford asked as he walked towards the crater. “I believe that perhaps we should say nothing. Sometimes, the perfect answer is nothing at all.”
“Good idea,” Duncan said with a slight sigh.