Chapter 6: Chapter 6 Sending them Home
The nanobots had taken over, removing the worm eggs, and possibly the worms that had already hatched, depending on the situation, when the ground started to rumble, and everyone scattered.
"This can't be good," said Olivia as the wall next to them split open, revealing massive claws breaking through the rock. Whiskers proceeded out of the hole before a massive nose sniffed the air.
Backing up, they watched as the creature pulled its thickly muscled body out into the open, then shook itself. As far as they could tell, this thing didn't have eyes. It sniffed around, until it found the eggs that had spilled from the dead taskmaster. They watched as it ate them, the dead worms, then started on the taskmaster itself.
"Must be the natural predator of those things," muttered Dustin to Olivia.
The thing paused, then turned towards them, sniffing. They retreated far enough away, that it returned to its meal.
"If it eats the eggs and larva, then it's no wonder the people ran," said Olivia.
As they sat watching, nanobots were returning to Dustin, with the news that they either didn't find any Uz'En, or almost everything they found had been Uz'En. Knowing that these things weren't exactly Uz'En, intrigued him. He started to investigate, and found that the response from the nanobots were determined by the type of nanobot. Some of them were able to detect the Uz'En precursors, and others couldn't.
"How do you intend to get all of these people out of here? We don't have a lot of time, before the pods you sent out, run out of supplies for that first group," said Olivia.
"I'm going to have to build another ship," he said, looking out over the open expanse of the cavern. "If all of these people are actually Uz'En, I can't leave a single one of them."
"Is there time?" she asked.
Dustin laughed. "I've gotten much faster at some things, since you left."
Raising an eyebrow, she kept her mouth shut.
Dustin turned his back to her, only a little disappointed she didn't respond to that, then sent his nanobots out in force. There was no longer a reason to hide them, and as Olivia pointed out, there wasn't a lot of time left.
"Those who have PED's, listen. Grab everyone you can, who is like you, and come to the place where you received your device. There is a ship there that will take all of you away from here. There's no time to waste, so hurry!"
He turned to her, as she stared at him, and shrugged.
"I upgraded a few things," he said.
"Why haven't you used that before?" she asked.
"Do you know how many people I had, asking me if I could spy on them with these things? If I ever did that on our home world, there would have been a mass panic and I would have had to flee."
She nodded slowly as she decided he was right. She didn't have a clue when it came to everything he had to go through, and it was one of the reasons she had left, he knew.
The shell of the ship and the immediate interior, where the people would be, were finished very quickly. The beast left through a second hole, once it was done with its meal, and the people started to pour into the area.
"You," he said, grabbing a man he remembered from just a while ago, "tell everyone to go inside, that they'll be safe in there. And if they don't have a device yet, they will get one inside."
The man nodded, and took a stance by the door, shuffling people inside.
"Will it be big enough?" asked Olivia, as more and more people arrived.
Before Dustin could respond, screams broke out, and group of the taskmasters arrived. Dustin didn't even blink before they were surrounded by swarms of nanobots. The people who had panicked, calmed down, and cheers broke out as they fell to their knees, then died.
Olivia followed him around, bored as he sent nanobot swarms throughout the caves, killing the taskmasters and freeing the people with his nanobots.
"This is why I didn't think you needed to come along," said Dustin as they loaded the last of the people up.
"I'm waiting to see how you get them all back home. There's a fleet outside this cave, waiting to blow us up."
"Oh, we're not going in the ship," he said, with a smile.
After giving a few commands, the ship began to shrink. The nanobots condensed themselves, until it was only the side of a modern bus.
"Wait, how did you do that?" she demanded.
"Everyone who went inside, was given a PED. I put them all to sleep, then forced them to evolve into ants."
She gaped at the ship as it flew up to the ceiling of the massive cavern, then began drilling its way out.
"It has boosters that will let it jump almost as soon as it gets far enough out of the atmosphere. Hitting a bus, that is cloaked, will be far more difficult, then they are expecting."
"Except, they have some way to detect nanobots, and that entire thing is made of them."
He glanced at the ceiling as the ship disappeared from sight. He hadn't remembered that.
With a shrug he said, "It's too late to stop it now. They either make it, or they don't."
Olivia shook her head.
"So how do we get out of here?"
"I thought we would look around for a bit, and see if there were any people that couldn't make it."
She nodded as he headed out. They had to dodge around several groups of those digging creatures, as they were busy eating the dead taskmasters. They finally came to a new section of caves, that were just as massive, but had obviously been mined out, because there were no glowing clumps of orbs. Instead, houses had been built out of slabs of rock. The orbs were used as lights, so they didn't have any problems making their way through the town.
Doors had been left open, in the people's rush to leave, and the few houses they peeked inside of, they found things scattered on the floor, food left on tables, fires left burning in fireplaces.
"What do you think they burn?" wondered Olivia.
"Maybe stuff from the surface?"
"Looks more like, wood, maybe giant mushrooms?"
"How would you go from wood to mushrooms? Why not some other kind of plants?"
Olivia held up a small mushroom, and he just shook his head.
"There must be a place around here, where they grow. Let's check it out."
He looked over her excitement, suspiciously. Every since that day she returned addicted, or mind-controlled, by those mushrooms, she had a very unhealthy interest in them. He knew that one of the first things she had done, after leaving him, was to search the world for them. But he knew that they were all dead. He had nanobots search them out and make sure of that.
Trailing her, they left the town behind and entered an even older section of caves. There was only one path leading into this cavern, but a soft green glow highlighted what was inside. Mushrooms. Giants as tall, or taller than buildings.
Dustin could see where they had been chopped down like trees, then taken bit by bit, back for use.
Olivia was ecstatic.
Chapter 7: Chapter 7 Sending the First Batch Home
As Dustin trailed behind Olivia, he watched her walk up to each mushroom and touch it gently. When nothing happened, she would frown and move to the next. Her reaction was so frustrating, he wanted to tell her to stop, but he couldn't decide if that was a good idea or not. Either way, it was damn creepy.
They had traveled far enough into the cavern by this point, that Dustin couldn't see where they had entered. If it weren't for the path they were following, he would have freaked out much sooner.
Ahead of them, he could see what looked like a well-tended garden, with a plot evenly spaced out, and little tiny mushrooms of various colors growing in rows. The only other place he had seen something like this was the mushrooms he had destroyed on their home planet.
Olivia paused when she spied the plot, then slowly approached it, looking around for anyone who might have been tending the garden. That's when they both spotted the mushroom man.
He didn't have any obvious mouth, and his eyes were just round white spots under the cap that looked like a hat. The moment he saw them, he raised his arms, that were covered in thick mushroom plates, and charged them. Dustin turned to run, but Olivia stood there transfixed.
Growling in frustration, he grabbed her arm and jerked her behind him as he turned to run again.
"What are you doing?" she cried, trying to break free.
"I'm saving your sorry ass! We're leaving!"
"But I thought you were looking for survivors!" she said, fighting his grasp.
The mushroom man had slowed his charge when it was obvious they were leaving, but was still following at a distance. Probably to make sure they weren't just going to come right back.
"I've been getting reports from the nanobots ever since we entered this damn mushroom forest. There aren't any others on this whole damn planet!"
"But," she said, glancing back at the man.
"No! Whatever your fascination with those damn things are, I'm sick of it. As soon as we get back to the ship, you're getting scanned to figure out what the hell is wrong with you."
She stopped fighting him, and followed in silence as they made their way out of the mushroom forest, through the abandoned town, and out of the mining cavern. He didn't let go of her until they were in the large cavern where he had built the ship for the Uz'En to escape in.
"There's really no other Uz'En on the whole planet?" she finally asked, as he started using the extra nanobots to make them a ship to escape the atmosphere of the planet.
"Not that I've heard. The nanos can fly pretty fast with the upgrades I gave them, and it's been hours since we got down here. Besides, I really need to get those pods I sent up collected together before they run out of air."
She nodded as the ship he was making started to take form. Glancing back one last time, she sighed and stepped into the small compartment. The ship was only going to be used to get them off the planet, then the nanobots would be used to tie the pods together, and to get them all home. They would get back to the ship in their energy worm forms again.
Using the same hole that the prior ship had used, they blasted off the planet, and managed to evade all of the ships that were hovering around, looking for them.
"I don't see any debris, so maybe the other ship made it out," said Olivia, looking around.
Dusting was too busy steering around the laser net they had thrown up, to look around himself. It was terrifying the number of ships they had floating around searching for his nanobots. This must be why the Uz'En on the planet never got their PED's.
"There are the pods!" Olivia said, directing his attention to one of the moons orbiting the trash planet. The pods had joined in with some of the debris floating around the moon, but there were smaller one-manned craft looking for them. The rate the ships were moving would have them finding the pods soon.
"I can get them out, but we're going to have a fight on our hands," said Dustin after a moment of studying the situation.
"Sounds fun," she said with a grin. "How much of a fight?"
"Didn't you say something about wanting to go onto some of these ships and causing trouble?" he asked, glancing over at her, before going back to dodging debris.
They just managed to get up to the group of pods, when the larger ship started to head their way.
"We've been seen! Time to change and have some fun!" cried Olivia, starting her evolution.
Dustin glanced over his orders to the nanobots one last time, before initiating his own evolution.
(INITIATING EVOLUTION)
As his frills formed on his space worm form, the nanobots ship around them fell apart and the nanobots flew over to the cluster of pods. It only took a few moments for them to pull the pods together and form a ship.
(EVOLUTION COMPLETE)
The Uvojic ship arrived just as the nanobot ship opened a portal and jumped the survivor's home. In his current form, Dustin was amazed at the amount of exotic energies that floated off the portal. He fought against the urge to rush over and start gorging, and thankfully the portal closed very quickly, leaving the Uvojic's floating in space alone.
Not waiting for them to notice him, he flew at the ship, and ate his way through their energy shields. The smaller one-manned ships were coming towards them, apparently sensing the nanobots within them, after the pods escaped them. Dustin wasn't sure what they were up to, chasing after them like they were, but wasn't going to wait around to find out.
(INITIATING EVOLUTION)
His skin started to become crystalline, and with Olivia following his lead, he punched a hole in the side of the ship.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS
Sdrawkcab
Sdrawkcab
Time to kick alien butts!
Weekly Power Status
200+ Power
Ranking 
0 Power
stone You may also Like
Paragraph comment