Gavin moved with the other sailors and a couple soldiers toward the captain’s pin on his Techbit. The Techbits could show the relative location regarding you and approximate distance but that was it without some help from the ships AI or input devices like drones. It also showed vital signs which in this case indicated the captain was alive and had elevated levels of adrenaline. It wasn’t a perfect system however and couldn’t monitor for injuries such as a broken bone. There were several other crewmen around her, but they were stationary, so Thritz had sent one of his doctors along just in case. While they moved, they searched for survivors and any technical equipment that Gavin could use to restore the ships LAI or any drones they could launch. Gavin was walking beside two crewmen who were in an argument about what had happened to the ship.

“I’m telling you it had to be them; they’ve been doing bombings and kidnappings for years.” One man shouted excitedly while the other berated him.

“The FPD is a fucking myth man the CEOs are full of shit. It was probably a rogue asteroid or something.” The man shouted back. The FPD was the Free peoples for Democracy, basically a terrorist association that had popped up a few years ago trying to bring democracies back and free the people from the oppression of the companies. Gavin had to agree with the second man to be honest. He doubted the FPD had balls to pull something like this off. There had been news reports from the neighboring company’s holdings maybe 10 years ago of some Democratics rising up and taking over a single planet. Apparently, they had broken out into civil war within a few months. CEOs liked to remind people of that any time they have to pull off a planet leaving it to die. ‘See this is what happens with democracies, they all fail. You could have that all the chaos or the stability of free markets.’ They really needn’t have bothered, people knew the histories how the governments of old earth had collapsed, and companies had taken over and ushered in a new era of prosperity in space. Gavin tried to ignore the two. It was a common conspiracy theory that the Democratics were coming to get you and your children if they misbehaved. Anytime something went wrong people brought out the same old stories.

Eventually Simms came over and reprimanded them for making up bullshit to scare people. Gavin found where he estimated one of the Cargo bays had landed behind a bulkhead and motioned to Simms. The man came over and directed for everyone else in the group to look for any supplies lying around. Gavin in the meantime started looking around for a way in. There was a tear in the structure about 20 metres down, so he went that way he found a long hallway full of door going straight up. The one on the left should lead to the cargo bay and it was only 10 metres away from him. He motioned to Simms that he was going to start climbing up the shaft and the big man came over to look.

“I’ll send a runner to Thritz, and he can get people to try to open this. We need to make for the captain. I’m kind of worried that they haven’t moved at all in the last little bit.” A crewman was sent, and they continued to move toward the captain and the rest of the officers. It took them 15 minutes of further walking to reach the bridge. The front of the ship was constructed of a clear material that was shaped like a dome so the command crew could get a 360-degree view of the space around them. That bubble had been shattered upon planetfall and now lay in shards around them the glass fading to opaque. A black foam spilled out like juice from a melon. The foam flooded the command module upon impact to save the flight crew. As they made their way forward through the ocean of shattered glass, their boots crunching as they walked, they could see from their techbits that Captain Alvarez was somewhere inside the dome. All the other flight crew around her had since developed grey icons around their names and the captain's icon showed her with an elevated heart rate.

A roar suddenly rang out from inside the dome and the search party all stopped in shock. “What the fuck was that?” Gavin thought but it was Simms who actually said it aloud.

“Weapons out tactical formation people.” Simms said, all business as he entered first. Gavin drew his pistol bracing for anything as they slowly got closer to a crack in the dome where the sound had emanated and where their captain currently resided. The room, currently set at a 45-degree angle with the planets surface was laid out with terminals and chairs surrounding the captain’s seat and terminal on a raised platform. At the back of the room stood the most horrific thing Gavin had ever seen. It looked like a giant gorilla standing at 3 meters tall with oily black skin. It was powerfully built but it looked like every limb was made up of multiple disjointed bones of the same type making the thing look like a man with elephantitis only, instead of fat it had horribly disfigured bones. It had no eyes that Gavin could see but the top of its head was covered in delicate blue glowing feelers that moved constantly back and forth as if blowing in an invisible wind. Its mouth was perfectly circular with teeth along the edge and what looked like an inverted sucker inside the cavity. It reminded Gavin of a maggot's mouth. The monstrosity was pounding on a door at the back of the module until, that is, Gavin tripped on the metal floor as they moved inside the space and gave a startled curse. The beast turned and roared deafeningly at them with an underlying high-pitched warbling sound. Its mouth cavity vibrating as it produced the sound. Then the creature started toward them with giant talon arms raised.

“Open fire!” Roared Simms as he stumbled back firing his rifle point blank into the creature. However, Gavin and the others couldn’t get a clean line of fire while Simms was in the way and the thing moved amazingly fast. In long loping strides that seemed somehow graceful, it charged towards Simms even as he blasted chunks off the creature and its blue blood spattered the walls.1 The monstrosity smashed a giant clawed limb down on Simms who screamed in agony. It then lifted the poor soldier up a meter off the ground, clamped its maggot like tongue down on his head silencing his screams, and with a great heave and a horrible popping sound, ripped Simms’s head clean from his shoulders. Gavin and the others stood stunned for a moment before they all opened fire on the creature which had already been severely wounded by Simms. It disappeared in a cloud of superheated slugs for a full minute and even then, they kept firing until the creature had been reduced to a pile of steaming goo with the vague shape of what it had once been. They probably would have kept firing except that a commanding voice roared out.

“HOLD YOUR DAMN FIRE, YOU IDIOTS.” Gavin and the others looked up to find the captain marching toward them her uniform disheveled and her steel grey hair whipping in the wind. She had come from the barricaded side outside the bubble, a large metal panel was lying beside the door indicating she and the other officers who were now making there way from that room had barricaded themselves inside to hide from that creature.

Captain Alverez was a short woman with an angular severe face. She surveyed Simms body with frown then turned toward Gavin and the rest of her crew. “I want a situation report.”

Another soldier stepped forward and updated her on what had happened to their group over the last hour since the crash. The captain listened in stern silence occasionally interrupting with a question. Once the story had been told she instructed them to take her to Thritz.

Gavin raised his hand. “Uh, Ma’am I’ve actually been ordered by Doctor Thritz to get the communications back up and the … uh map system. To do that I’ll need to access the bridges computer and see if the LIA is still functioning enough to help with any of this.” Gavin said nervously as he had never spoken to someone of such high rank and was still shaken from the horrors he had just witnessed.

“Fine, get to work the LAI system is in the room we just left. His names Joe.” Gavin gave her a befuddled look.

He hesitantly asked, “Does Joe stand for anything Captain?” To which the woman barked a laugh.

“No, its just what we call him.”

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Gavin made to go in that direction instructed and stumbled once again, his legs had suddenly become weak. The adrenaline dump had caught up with him. The captain came over and helped him to his feet.

“Are you alright? Did that thing injure you?”

“No Captain, just nerves getting to me I guess.” She nodded clapping him on the shoulder.

“I understand son, but we need to get back to the others. We will get some food into you okay. Is this your first-time seeing combat?”

“Yes, Captain. I've only been out of basic for about 6 months, I’m in the maintenance department.” The captain nodded knowingly.4

“Everyone feels shaky after seeing combat and they usually don’t have to fight giant alien monsters. You did good son but remember that old saying, a minute lost is profit lost.” Gavin felt that statement didn’t really help him, but with the captain’s help Gavin shakily got back to his feet. He grabbed a ration bar from his pack and made his way toward the LIA storage room.

The room was small with black panels covering the walls and, in the centre, there was a small hexagonal dais about a meter tall and as wide in diameter as his hand.5 He checked for power first and found that it was still flowing. The LIA served an important function, so it probably had its back up power installed somewhere in case the crew all died and there was no one to restore the main grid, it had to be able to autopilot the ship back to company space. He asked it what was blocking communications and it simply responded in a mechanical voice that all comms systems were offline. Then asking it to find the fault it had, the computer replied that it didn’t have any. Gavin looked through the programming for the system and found the computer was right in that it had no faults, but it still couldn’t access the system. He tried what every maintenance person since computers had been invented always tried first, he power cycled the system. It might be able to see what the problem was then if it was able to reboot. He flipped a switch on the inside of the dais and the room went dark. Waiting a few seconds then turning it back on, he watched as the computer booted back up.

“Joe, can you access any of the comms systems now?” The computer responded by stating that the long-range comms systems were offline and the short-range comms systems didn’t have enough power from the ship to function properly. Gavin smiled and remembered when Danny had once told him this of power cycling ‘50% of the time it works every time.’

“Can you bounce a signal off drones and get our comms up that way?” The computer replying that it was possible but that it could only access a limited portion of the drones. If they wanted more systems online, they would have to get more drones up and running. The computer the queried as to if he wanted to remotely access the drones to start them up. Gavin gave an affirmative and the computer was able to start about 300 drones from various launching bays all over the remains of the ship. He could hear the roar of the engines as hundreds of drones took to the sky and started a surveillance protocol. It took a minute after that before he saw the basic comms system come back to life. Now able to reach the captain on his Techbit and pass on the good news, various other systems started to come back online with his workaround and the drones continued to paint a map of the surrounding area.

“Joe, can you tell me which planet we are on?”

“We are currently on the 4th planet of the Carellio system going off our last known position.”

“Any idea who owns it?”

“This planet is not currently registered with any known company.” Gavin frowned. It was exceedingly rare to come across a planet that could support human industry and not be owned by any company.

“Any human settlements or comms other than our own you’re picking up?”

“Nothing within my current range.”

‘Well, that’s more than I expected I guess.’ Gavin thought.

“Loss of four drones southeast of this position. Now five. Now six.” Joe said. Probably another fucked up animal. Captain will probably want to know about it though.

“Show me final video logs.” Joe found the required feed then brought it up linking to his Techbit. The holo showed the drones camera sweeping over a vast forest that stretched to the horizon, mostly consisting of the same oddly colored trees that were in this area. Terrain was largely dense forested hills with a line of mountains off to the north. As the drone panned its camera in a circle, it brought into focus some sort of low-lying red cloud. Much like the other clouds Gavin had seen on this planet, but this one was darker somehow. The cloud was a few kilometers in area and roughly 300 high. Probably some sort of storm system. The drone flew into it and its feed almost immediately went dead. He pulled up the feeds from the other lost drones and he found the same thing. They flew into this cloud and their feeds all went dead. Probably losing signal from interference from whatever fucked up weather this planet had.

“Designate one of the drones to track that cloud but maintain distance of about 5 km and start scanning it.” He thought about it for a moment then added, “If the drones aren’t too damaged from the fall, see if they can be restarted when that weather pattern dissipates or moves off.”

“Acknowledged.” Gavin quickly checked where the cloud was in relation to them, about 800 km away from their current position moving in the opposite direction.

“How long before a map can be rendered?”

“Approximately 5 minutes and thirty-two seconds”.

“Okay contact me when its ready.” He would get a copy, but he also set it to go to the navigators and the captain.

Gavin left the control room unsteadily due to the flooring’s angle and made his way outside again. The captain was still outside talking to various officers to coordinate search and rescue, as well as the setting up of a base camp near their current position instead of where Thritz was. All remaining crew were currently converging on this position. Gavin saw a few familiar faces amongst them and sighed with relief. Danny and Trevor looked dishevelled but alright. His colleagues having been the only people who were nice to him since he was stationed in the maintenance department of this ship. Danny was a middle-aged woman with short dark hair and her uniform was usually crisp and maintained. Currently there was a rip in her jacket on the left side, she was covered in dirt, and there was dried blood on her face. She maintained the standard required PT training for all soldiers, so she at least was trim and fit. Trevor on the other hand was a short bald man with wisps of grey hair poking out of his head. His disheveled uniform had probably been that way before the crash, and he was one of the few crew members who was fat. Gavin moved up to them.

“Of course you would survive.” Gavin joked as he punched Trevor lightly in the arm his anger from earlier having faded with relief at seeing them alive. “When was the last time you actually serviced the escape pods you dick?”

“About the time I was servicing your mother you little shit.”

“As it’s been a few decades since a woman last looked at you, I can believe that.”

“Trevor is basically a cockroach; atomics might singe off his remaining hair.” Danny pipes in.

“Eh fuck you guys.” Trevor said with a smile. Danny explained what had been happening to them since the crash. Apparently, they had been at their posts in the maintenance wing playing cards when the alert had gone out so they’d grabbed some of the first escape pods. Unfortunately, Trevor’s pod got buried in the soil upon landing and they had had to dig him out.

“Did you get the comms back up?”

“Yeah, just finished messing with Joe. The drones are building the map now and there’s some kind of weird storm over there.” He indicated the direction the red cloud had been in. As if on cue, the map icon showed up on his feed, so he was able to grab the icon with his hand and flicked it toward the two of them. They all opened it up to examine the full color 3d rendered map that the drones had delivered after covering the first 1000 square km. There were two sections that were fuzzy red indicating the drones couldn’t get a clear picture of those areas for whatever reason. Gavin frowned as he did a quick check that he hadn’t lost anymore drones, so what was that other blank spot? He heard someone calling his name and he looked up to see the captain beckoning toward him. He, Trevor, and Danny made their way over to the cluster of officers surrounding her.

“Oh fuck, Trevor you survived. I’d hoped we would have at least some good news today.”

“Good to see you too captain.” The captain turned to Danny. “Chief warrant officer Taylor can you explain to me what these red patches are?”

“Captain if I may?” Gavin interjected after a nod from the captain and Danny he continued. “This one is some kind of weather system that blocks drone signals we lost six drones to it before I redirected them. I’ve got them monitoring it from afar.” He pulled up the image to show to her. ‘That’s funny from this map it looks like its closer to us now. Wind must have changed’ Gavin thought. The Navigation officer interrupted them.

“Captain, I think your going to want to take a look at this.” He stepped up beside the captain and pulled up the feeds from the drones closest to the other anomaly. Gavin peered over the captain’s shoulder and felt hope for the first time that day. The other anomaly turned out to be a city.