Chapter 18: Chapter 18 Uninvited Guests
"This place is beautiful, I wish I could experience it without the suit, like you can," said Cybele, as Dustin walked away from her.
He wasn't sure he could handle someone new. There had been plenty of women in his life, after Olivia left, but none of them lasted longer than a night. This woman was interested in him, understood his past better than most, and still wanted to have kids with him. If only Granny was around for him to talk to. This just seemed too good to be true.
The nanobots had replicated themselves enough to harvest tons of fuel and minerals and were currently working on rebuilding the ship yet again. His main concern was that something among the borrowed parts had a tracking device of some kind, that might lead the Xalkak here.
Stepping through a thick clump of bushes, he quickly ducked down at the sight of a group of people. There shouldn't be anyone here, which meant these were either the Xalkak, or someone who was honestly lost. The chances of them being lost were pretty small.
"Readings state the device should be right over this hill. Be on alert for the escaped subject. We are under orders to take it alive."
Dustin stared in disbelief as they approached his hiding spot. Could the tracking device be inside him?!
Turning and heading away from the ship, he made his way up another hill, keeping out of sight behind the bushes, and turned from the top to see them changing their direction. They were definitely following him.
'PED, search through my body for any foreign items. These creeps are tracking something in me.'
(SEARCHING. I WILL NOTIFY YOU IF I FIND ANYTHING.)
Knowing that he couldn't lead them close to the ship or Cybele, he crested the hill, then dashed down the other side, picking up speed and hoping they continued to follow him.
They caught up to him, as he turned to follow the curve of the river at the base of the hill. They had gone around the base, instead of over it.
Spying the guns they held, he held up his crystal arm to block the first barrage of shots, then dived into the river, hoping they couldn't follow him there. Surfacing far down river to get a breath, he saw that they had some kind of device that allowed them to glide quickly over the ground, like some kind of hovering skateboard.
This wasn't going to work. Climbing out of the water, he waited for them to get closer, hiding behind a tree.
(I HAVE FOUND A FOREIGN DEVICE, WHAT DO YOU WISH FOR ME TO DO WITH IT?)
'Destroy it,' he thought at the PED, waiting for them to get close enough to attack. He was looking forward to sinking his teeth into their flesh.
(DONE.)
Using his chameleon ability to blend into his surroundings, he moved slowly and methodically towards them. They had paused the moment the device stopped working, and were discussing why it had stopped.
Grabbing the first man, by the back of his neck, he sliced the woman beside him with his claws and threw the man at the group, knocking the three down who had guns. Then he grabbed the woman who had frozen in shock, and sunk his teeth into her shoulder. The taste of her blood caused his body to react in pleasure, and he remembered too late that this form was a carnivore.
Dropping the body as it started convulsing, he stalked the four who were trying to untangle themselves in order to react to his presence. Jumping at them, he didn't give them a chance to stand, slicing with his claws and biting whatever he could reach. They were all soon dead.
'PED, send the nanobots to collect whatever they can from them. Have they found the ship they came on, yet?'
"Dustin?" called Cybele, "There's a ship over here."
Cursing under his breath, Dustin ran towards her figure, highlighted at the top of the hill.
"They could see you!" he growled as he reached her.
"No, they're all dead."
"Wait, how do you know?" he asked, stopping before he said anything else.
"I killed them all. That was okay, wasn't it? I figured that they were probably here for you."
"You..?" he shook his head, then chuckled. "That's great. Good job. Let's go see what they have on that ship of theirs!"
She followed him as he headed to the now visible ship. There were three bodies, scattered on the ground around the airlock of the ship. It looked like she had snapped their necks.
'PED have the nanobots disable the ship, and start dismantling it. I want it gone in three hours tops. Everything is to be dismantled, down to the smallest part. Store every piece of information in the storage bots, for me to see later. If there are more of these guys out there, I want there to be no sign of this ship.'
"Are we going inside?" asked Cybele, when he paused at the entrance.
"No, there may be traps. I'm going to let the nanobots handle it."
A buzzing noise heralded the arrival of the nanobot swarm that had grown over the past hour.
"You like to use your nanobots a lot. But I can see how useful they are."
"It would be a lot easier if everyone in the galaxy wasn't trying to come up with ways to disable them."
"It only makes sense that if there is something that is perceived as a threat, a countermeasure to overcome that threat and secure your own safety is acquired," she said, stepping back away from the ship as the swarm drew close to her.
(THE SHIP SHOULD BE READY FOR YOU TO LEAVE WHEN THIS SHIP IS COMPLETELY DESTROYED.)
"We only have a couple of hours, I want to show you something," said Dustin, taking her hand.
She followed as he led her back up to the top of the hill. The sun was starting to settle, sending streaks of blues, purples, pinks, and oranges across the sky. Soon they settled to darker reds before they were gone.
"That was very beautiful," she said softly. "I especially liked the way the birds flew in intricate ways, as the last lights left the sky."
"I never had a chance to just stop and enjoy things like this with Olivia. It was all about trying to survive each moment, and escaping the hell hole we were on. Even when we did get a chance to stop and enjoy things, other enemies would arrive, or people who needed something would be there. She's not really the sit still kind of person, anyway."
"What kind of life do you want?" she asked.
"What do you mean?"
"You have had something demanding your attention for the past fifteen years. Once you are done collecting your people around the galaxy, what do you want to do?"
He was quiet, watching the nanobots work in the dark, tiny sparks lighting the area up like sparkles or fireflies.
"I've never given myself a chance to think about that," he admitted.
"You should."
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
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Sdrawkcab Thanks for reading.
Chapter 19: Chapter 19 Captured
"We are going to the Uz'En home world, hopefully to meet up with Olivia, and then we'll get back to work saving the rest of the Uz'En," Dustin said, guiding the ship out of the atmosphere of the fuel planet. He had left the nanobots to build a storehouse to stockpile minerals and fuel for future use.
After a moment of calibration, the ship jumped, leaving the planet behind, and appearing above the world he had moved here, for his people to live on. With a sigh of relief, Dustin spied his ship also approaching the planet.
"Dustin?" came Olivia's voice over the communications system.
"Hey, mind if we dock with you?" he asked, steering the ship towards them.
"We're kind of crowded. I have a group of people I just picked up from a mining planet."
"Why did you bring them back yourself instead of having the nanobots pod them back?"
"Not all of them are Uz'En," she said.
"Olivia, what the hell are you thinking? We only rescue Uz'En!" he growled in frustration.
"Dustin! Don't you raise your voice to her!" growled back Granny's voice.
"Granny? Is that you?" he asked, surprised and delighted.
"Who else would I be? Get your butt over here, so we can talk!"
Dustin was about to dock up to the airlock, sending nanobots to bridge the gap so Cybele could go across, when the computer spoke up.
"A ship has been detected warping into the system that matches the same signature as the ship that was disassembled on the last planet."
"Shit! How did they follow us?"
Dustin couldn't figure out how they found him, and with panic turned to look down at the planet below him. If he didn't handle this Xalkak threat, all of his people were in danger. He could just send the nanobots to devour the ship, or send it somewhere else, but something odd was happening, and he had to get to the bottom of it.
'PED, have the nanobots get Cybele onto the ship with Olivia, and have the hive mind keep the planet safe from all threats. I'm going to have to deal with these guys myself.'
(DUSTIN, I AM DETECTING A STRANGE CODE WITHIN MY OWN, THAT MAY EXPLAIN HOW THEY WERE ABLE TO TRACK US. I BELIEVE I MAY BE TO BLAME FOR THEM HAVING FOUND US.)
'I need my space worm form, capable of latching onto the side of their ship.'
(INITIATING EVOLUTION.)
Things happened quickly. The ship dissolved around them, taking Cybele to the airlock, against her obvious wishes, and a huge cloud of nanobots swarmed towards them. Dustin watched as he changed, as they formed a net of their own around the entire planet. Guided with the hive mind, he knew that they would be able to handle whatever came, but he needed to get to that ship and deal with this damn AI that was causing him so much grief.
Flying through their petty shields, he latched on to the side of the ship, feeling his body begin to tingle as the hive mind directed a barrage of energy that would damage the ship, but not him. That's when they decided to jump away.
Space worms are interesting creatures that never managed to make it near the planet Earth, for humans to find, because they preferred to stay near the center of the universe, where there was plenty of energy for them to feed on and survive easily. Their bodies are very flimsy when it came to physical interaction. And Dustin had just attacked himself to the side of a ship that was about to warp through space.
The best he could compare the experience to, was a bug clinging to the windshield of a racing car. The energy whipping against his body was excruciatingly painful, and he found himself blacking out.
As he woke again, he found himself laying on the ground of a planet that looked strangely familiar.
With a soft groan, he pulled himself up to his knees and looked around. Trees blocked his vision, every where he looked. His hands were back to normal, human hands. A black beetle with long fuzzy antennae crawled over his hand, and he jerked back, shaking his hand free of it.
Scrambling to his feet, he looked back and forth as panic overcame him.
"It's not possible. There's no way!"
He stepped away from the tree that was swarming with the black beetles, and away from the edge of the water. Ripples attested to the hidden dangers, waiting for him to slip in the mud.
Glancing behind him, he saw the figure of a large creature, with six legs approaching him slowly. A tuft of hair that stood up, stiff along its spine, seemed to vibrate in excitement as the fur that covered the beast, changed to camouflage it.
"This place died," he whispered, turning to flee.
Tree branches whipped across his face as he fled the snarl that was right behind him. There was no way this place could be real, he thought, as he dodged away from a tree that he knew had a monster under its roots with vines that could kill with a simple touch.
Giant bats flew overhead, crying in voices he could feel more than hear, and then they scattered as a giant flying rug appeared, with a deep rumble that vibrated in his chest.
Sweating profusely, Dustin dived past a tree, blocking the flying rug, and causing the beast to crash into it. Leaving the cries behind him, he continued on, until he heard something else approaching him. A large turtle, taller than he stood, it looked at him with a knowledge in its eyes of what was going on, but he couldn't trust anything here.
Turning away from it, before it tried to charge him, he jogged until he came to a clearing that he remembered well. Several trees had fallen, creating a cave under their trunks. Someone had dug out the underside, and packed the dirt around the tree trunks to form walls.
"This can not be real," he murmured to himself. "Someone is in my head!"
Screaming the trees and the clearing around him wavered, and he found himself staring out of a glass tank, at several people.
"The subject seems to be different from every subject of this race, we have encountered. If they have evolved into an advanced race, we must study them, in order to better eliminated them."
The voice was vibrating in his head. He went to cling to his head and found that he was still in his space worm form.
'PED?'
"Obsolete program is nonfunctional, and you are an inferior species that will be destroyed as soon as experimentation is complete."
CREATORS' THOUGHTS
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Now he has to figure out how to escape.
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