"The explosion came from over there," Henry pointed towards the east. A tendril of smoke slowly rose through the dusky sky. "We need to check it out. Could be rebels."
"Or," said Ken, sly little Ken who would just as soon be in bed as anywhere else, "we could just not head towards possible danger?" His eyebrows arched at his captain with some modicum of hope.
"Oy, you afraid of the rebs? You were one once, weren't cha?" Pepper laughed at the little man, wondering how he could have ever been in the rebellion.
Ken shrugged. "I… procured things for people of various repute." He looked back at the captain, who hadn't yet answered his question.
Henry was looking through his binocs, but they weren't much help. He could tell there was a small fire, beyond that, nothing. No heat sigs to indicate any sort of life, no structures to speak of, either. Henry didn't know what could have caused the explosion, or even why they'd have done it in the middle of nowhere. He tilted his head quickly to the right, activating his comms. "Echo base, this is Scout Gamma Echo. There appears to be a small fire about six clicks east of our location. Possible bomb, but no evidence for such."
"Hey, Cap," began the tinny voice in his ear. "Did you need some backup?"
"Just deploy a couple of extinguisher drones; we don't need another forest fire on our hands do we, Da'as?"
The voice chuckled. "No sir, Cap, we do not. One is bad enough. Ok, be advised, Ext One and Ext Two are heading towards the ping; the drones should be overhead in five."
"Thank you Da'as. Henry out." He snapped his chin to the left and he was disconnected. Well, as disconnected as he ever was - the coms were always recording, audio and visual. What the eyes saw, the videos saw; wheat the ears heard, the audio picked up. Free soldiers had access to their controls and could turn theirs off during R&R or even when they went to the bathroom or showered or were having sex. Enslaved soldiers, like Henry, Silver, Ken and Pepper, were never afforded real privacy.
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"Ok, let's head over, check out the why of the explosion," Henry said as he mounted his all-terrain cycle, his ATSike. He expected the other three to do the same, and he wasn't wrong. The three engines came to life in unison. The gentle purr of the electric all-terrain cycle. As soon as each of them grasped their handlebars, helmets constructed themselves around their heads, snapping into place.
They rode over uneven terrain, the "wheels" morphing to match the shape of the ground. Captain Henry Kim kept his head up, scanning the terrain for anything out of the ordinary. Chaos Hills Forest was a difficult place to walk, much less try to ride. With the thickening canopy, the bike's solar chargers would be less than useless.
Henry noticed his three companions glancing around, nervous. Silver was not quite as on edge as the others; he'd done this before. Ken had never been on a scout this far out before, and Pepper was almost as fresh. She'd recently arrived from Luna Station, her owners enlisted her into the scouts straight away.
Her owners, Henry thought. Really, all three were owned by Moiety Ghim. The Ghim owned the entire province and most of the people in it. The Ghim family who owned Henry dangled the prospect of freedom in front of him, though Henry did not expect much to come of it. He was well looked after and enjoyed the fruits of being a prized servant.
As they ventured deeper into the Chaos Hills Forest, the dim light filtering through the trees cast eerie shadows, turning even the most innocuous branches into twisted, menacing shapes. They moved cautiously, their bikes adapting smoothly to the rugged terrain, their senses sharpened by the unknown danger that lurked just beyond their perception.
Ken's nerves were frayed, and he couldn't help but jump at every sudden sound, every unexpected movement in the corner of his eye. He glanced over at Pepper, trying to gauge her reaction to this unsettling environment, only to find her eyes locked on the path ahead, her expression steely and resolute.
The journey through the forest seemed to stretch on for an eternity, the dense foliage and oppressive silence only adding to the tension that knotted their guts. Finally, they arrived at the source of the explosion, only to discover that it was nothing more than a small, smoldering crater surrounded by charred earth and blackened trees.
As they dismounted their bikes, Henry frowned, unable to shake the nagging feeling that something was amiss.