After nearly a full day of walking, I finally approached the area where I believed Ro’s crash site was. The billow of smoke had all but disappeared but I still had the bearing of its direction which I followed religiously. Despite exhaustion and dehydration setting in, it had been an interesting trek so far. The landscape had a striking resemblance to Earth but with slight variations or completely alien type of Flora and Fauna.

I had started to tread carefully around the shrubs that occupied the dry and arid landscape, their bright but matte coloured flowers packed quite a punch which I had found out earlier while trying to pick one to inspect it closer. It sent a shock of electricity through my arm, leaving me with a bad ache throughout my muscles.

The large open face of the flowers followed the sun as it moved across the sky, reaping the full potential of sunlight throughout the day. They seemed to capture energy from the sunlight much like solar panels had back on Earth. Energy storing plants? That’s insane I thought to myself. What was even more insane was the soft hum of all the plants that kicked in as the daylight started to disappear - like a natural power grid.

I found myself bumping into these shrubs more often than I would have liked as my attention kept being drawn away by the forest over on the horizon, appearing way closer than they probably were which led me to believe that the forest was larger than anything I could imagine. I hadn’t come across any wildlife yet either. At times I was sure I had seen something out of the corner of my eye like a little reptile, but I was either seeing things or they were too quick for me to catch a proper glimpse. Every rustle in the bushes made my skin prickle. I hadn’t even considered what kind of creatures roamed this planet—or where they ranked in the food chain.

There was a kind of an excitement around being on Biterra now and I had found that time passed a lot faster as I played a game with myself, called, would I find that on Earth?

After hours of walking under the setting sun, I finally spotted a trail of debris and tiny plume of smoke that wasn’t there earlier. Could it be?

My heart raced as I picked up my pace over the crest, praying the wreckage ahead belonged to Ro’s ship.Looking down from the top, sure enough I could see the wreckage and hull of one of Mortiferas fighters. It had to be Ro!

I ran down, all I could see was a body laying still next to the small fire and the wreckage. As I got closer the body sat up and turned my direction, I was drawing in heavy breaths by that stage and stomping my feet in exhaustion so it wasn’t a subtle approach at all.

“About time you showed up Carter” Ro said with a smile, in her smart-ass tone.

I couldn’t believe it, I could finally breathe a sigh of relief and let the tonne of anxiety that was hanging over me that she hadn't made it and that id be all alone down here. She was alive and in high spirits of course, even though we had both fell to Biterra in a fiery mess.

“Ro’s cove?” I quizzed to which Ro agreed with a nod.

We sat around the little make-shift fire for the rest of the evening discussing the battle we just had endured, our crash down to Biterra, and how we plan to find our way to Ro’s Cove. We decided our best bet was to make our way to the coastline where water and food were more likely to be.

We watched the sky as it got darker, there was still an occasional flash or two across the sky that looked like just a flash of lightning but it only appeared when we saw the lights from the mega ships, all still circling Biterra in orbit.

As the conversation drifted off with Ro, I kept my eyes fixed on the unfamiliar night sky wishing that Lilly my daughter was with me. I just wanted to know that she was okay, and to tell her I had made it off Earth too. It pained me knowing she would be thinking I was dead or would be soon. At the end of the day it was Lilly that gave me the strength to push through pain, to somehow defy odds just so I could hug her and tell her I love her.

—

The next morning I had woken up from a chime that would go off every few minutes. I let out a frustrated groan before I snapped up and realised it was my slate, I had totally forgotten that I slipped it into the emergency bag. It was a message from Jeremy. At some stage during the night they must of been able to secure a connection as they passed over and I had never been so happy to get a message on my slate as I had been then.

'Carter,

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

I don’t know if you’ll receive this or if you even survived. We won this battle but the Dominus and some of its fleet managed to slip away, including Kai. Kai and Bill weren’t the only traitors to Salvation and Miltech either.

Find Ro and try and make it to Ro’s Cove. The Salvation Civ settlement successfully set up communications and will be able to assist getting you both back aboard Salvation.

We tracked your trajectory the best we could and believe you are somewhere around here. '

Jeremy had sent a map with pin points of where Salvation suspected we had crashed and it didn’t look good. Ro’s Cove was on the Southern landmass and to the East. Our crash sites sat on the Northern landmass and we were way over to the West. It would take weeks to walk and I had no idea how we were going to cross the river-ocean.

—-

It took about three days before the gigantic forests started to appear in their full glory. The trees were as wide as buses , and as tall as towers, heck to me they even looked as big as that rocket that took me to Salvation. It had layers upon layers of trees, vines, shrubs and ground cover - so dense that I doubted we’d even be able to enter it. A symphony of bird-like noises, screeches, breeze catching branches, and unknown sounds grew louder as we hit the edge of the main forest. It was dark inside and had an eerie feel to it but was the only way forward so we had no time to hesitate.

The ground cover curled in on itself over a radius of a few metres, almost like it was trying to move out of our way, as did any other bits of vegetation that had some flex in it.

“Must be some sort of defence mechanism,” Ro muttered, crouching down to examine the curling leaves, her brow furrowed.

Whatever it was, it sure was helpful because it made it possible to even get through the thick vegetation.

The noises began to deafen as we walked further in, replaced by noises of tree branches moving and cracks of twigs. There was some kind of mammal jumping from tree to tree that we had spotted

“What is that, like a monkey or something” I whispered to Ro.

“It could be, the animals are weird here..”

We continued under the watchful gaze of the monkey-like mammals as the canopy of the forest had almost plunged us into complete darkness. All I could make out was the monkey like figures that the glowing Fluorescent eyes were attached to.

We both spoke in whispers in an attempt not to spook the creatures but also not to attract unwanted attention from any other animals that may be in the forest with us. It was hard to remain quiet due to the magical glow inside this forest. Mushrooms and other fungi lit up sections of the forest floor and stretched up the ancient trunks of the trees.

Finally, the trickle of water was welcoming and led us down to a larger river that was flowing with the most clear and refreshing fresh water - unpolluted and clean. We stopped to refill our canteens and take a quick break, still being watched from high up in the trees. As we followed the river the forest slowly whittled down to a more coastal state until we finally reached the open beaches and fresh salty air of the ocean.

“Alright let’s set up camp here for tonight” said Ro

Ro and I set up our make shift sleeping arrangements and scouted around to prepare a fire. We had picked some fruit and manage to snag some alien looking fish that we wanted to try. Thankfully our emergency kits had testing kits for food which enabled us to find out the makeup of anything we found and told us if it was in known safe thresholds to consume.

“Quick cover the fire”

Way off in the distance I saw tiny lights flickering on an off, lined across a level ground then up what I assumed was a cliff against the ocean. It didn’t seem like natural light, although it wouldn’t surprise me here if it was, we’d have to keep walking a day or two to get close enough to confirm.

The following morning we packed up and moved out, heading east and toward the lights we saw the night before. It had taken us another couple of days to get to a location close enough for us to strategically camp out and observe, we had no idea who or what it was that we had to pass by to continue our journey to Ro’s Cove but we took it carefully.

“Are they from Salvation? “

“I don’t think so” I said

These ‘people’ looked almost exactly like us but they were taller, tanned, and each had unique coloured eyes of purples and deeps blues.

We spent days camped out observing them to count how many there were, their movements, and whether they looked hostile or not - noting everything down on our slates to hand over to Salvations settlement.

They had started building out a little settlement probably much like ours in Ro’s Cove but they had also started constructing the base of what what I could only assume was some kind of megalithic structure which they had dedicated much of their attention and time to.

We cleaned up our camp, trying to erase an visual cues we were there and continued our journey, giving them a wide berth on our way past.

As we passed to the North East back through a section of forest we heard rustling ahead of us, and sure enough a group of three tall, tanned males were walking by us quite close but hadn’t noticed us yet. They were talking to each other as they walked. It’d be easily forgiven if you thought it was just another language from Earth. I felt myself holding my breath as I took a step backward, and a loud crack echoed out as I planted my foot straight onto a branch.

Ro and I dropped to the ground as they snapped on guard, certain they would have spotted us but they didn’t. We weren’t exactly camouflaged for our landscape, but still it seemed as though they struggled to see under the darkened shade of the forest canopy.

They couldn’t see us but they knew we were there. Spooked, they shouted out and fired some sort of charge weapon that singed the foliage around us in an attempt to scare us off before they quickly retreated back toward their own settlement.

Once the coast seemed clear we crept the rest of the way through the section of the forest until we hit the open dunes and beach, where we picked up to a run too put as much space between us and them as possible.