Kapitel 19: Chapter 19: Silver Monsters
Roy and Orie came to the lake around dusk and decided to make camp for the night. As Roy set up camp, Orie went looking for some wild herbs. He wanted to spice up the stew they had gotten from Rowley because he found it rather bland. There wasn't much to set up camp. All Roy had to do was secure the Kanis-steeds in a spot where they could eat some wild grass, lay out the blankets and dig a hole for the firestone pit. Trying to remember how Zohn had done it, Roy scraped at the ground with a flat rock until he had what looked like a good hole about six inches deep. He then clapped the two fire stones together and dropped them in. To his surprise, they worked, glowing brightly and giving off a comfortable heat. As he sat warming his hands by the glowing stones, his thoughts drifted to Katreena. The connection between them was growing stronger, and he could no longer dismiss it. He understood that the bond was how he could understand the language and other things so well, but more than that, it was having an effect on him. He felt different in a way he couldn't describe as if discovering an old journal, he found himself thinking more about his past and remembering things that he had not thought about in years. Many of his thoughts were about Sarah despite the fact that he had successfully trained himself not to think of her. Something had pulled down that wall and was forcing him to remember. The smell of her hair right after she washed it, the way she would smile when he would bring her wildflowers and the feeling of her fingers running through his hair when they were together, and there was nothing more to say. Losing her was the greatest pain he had ever known, but it was the first time since her death that he had opened himself up to missing her.
Roy took a deep breath to help clear his head and looked up at the dimming sky as the stars were starting to come out to see if he could figure out which star was the one he called home. Over the past few years, he had not looked for it because home had been little more than a steel bunk and a footlocker. Yet the absence of family and a place to call home was almost an overwhelming feeling at that moment. He thought about Sarah again, particularly how she could say how much she loved him with just a simple smile and the light in her eyes. Without Sarah, the idea of home was lost to him, and he wasn't sure where to look for it. The wind picked up with a chill in it as he was not too far from the lake. The memories of Sarah had become so intense that for a moment he thought she was there with him as he turned and started to ask her to hand him his scarf from their pack like he used to do when they went on nature hikes. Stopping himself, he was stunned. He had never made that mistake before. A shiver ran down his back as he wondered if he was losing his mind, but he dismissed that thought as just being cold, tired and a bit disoriented by the mind thing with Katreena. His thoughts drifted back to Sarah, and he decided not to fight it, but instead try to focus on the happy ones. It wasn't pleasant to long for someone who was never coming back, but it was liberating in a way to at least feel something. He had been so cold and detached from the world around him for so long that feeling anything was at least feeling alive for the first time in a long time. It even opened up the possibility of having more of a life again. For a moment he even considered the possibility of feeling something for someone else.
Suddenly Roy heard Orie screaming from the woods. He picked up a stick and ran towards the sound as fast as he could. The forest was rather thick making it impossible to see Orie and the echoes on the walls of the hills made it hard to follow his screams. Roy stopped and tried to find a clue to what the right direction was. Then he saw the top of Orie's hat through the branches of some nearby trees. Running as fast as he could he knew that he could be running into a fight with another large animal, but no matter what it was, he wasn't going to let anything happen to the boy. Punching his way through the branches, he found Orie standing on a tree stump holding a rock and looking as white as a ghost.
"What is it?" Roy shouted.
"There!" Orie pointed.
Roy looked over at a large stone and didn't see anything at first. Then sparks flew out of it with the sounds of drilling. Orie was terrified, but Roy found the sound familiar. After a moment a silver, crab-like, repair-bot climbed over the rock near them and extracted more metal ore from a vein in the rock.
"It's alright," Roy said. "This is one of the things I was hoping we would find." He walked up to the bot to get its attention. "Command Function 5 1 Alpha 1 2." The Bot stopped working, walked up to Roy and opened a flap on its head to communicate.
"Available to accept verbal commands." The bot said. "Please provide identification and security clearance."
"Lt. Commander Roy O'Hara. SC-Beta, Alpha 2 1 7 9 Gamma." Roy replied.
"Identification and security accepted and confirmed. Awaiting your orders Commander."
"Status Report."
"Seven Bots are operational. Fighter craft not operational. Superstructure at 43%, Engines offline, Power is 7%, Sensors are 30% repaired, Computer is operating at 22%, Communications are offline. Weapons are offline. Life Support is at 32%. Estimated repair time eight days and nineteen hours."
"Location of fighter craft?" Roy asked.
"132.7 meters south by south-west of this location."
Roy looked around to get his orientation from the direction the suns were setting. "In the lake?"
"Affirmative." The bot said.
"Well, at least it's out of sight," Roy said to himself. Then he turned back to the bot. "New orders. Focus all repair efforts on communications. Also, locate and retrieve emergency pack and supplies."
"Orders understood. Emergency pack and 70% of supplies located three days ago, collected and buried in a secure location 1.2 kilometers from this location." The bot reported.
"Very good. Retrieve pack and bring it to my location."
"Commands understood."
"Execute all commands," Roy ordered.
The bot closed its panel and scurried away to find the pack of supplies that it had buried. Roy then turned to Orie who was still holding the rock and too afraid to move.
"It's okay, come on down, and I'll explain everything."
They walked back to the camp, opened the Alie and Roy did his best to explain.
"First the good news, okay. I am human, just like you. I'm from the same planet that your ancestors were from. It's called Earth. Now we don't have these magic like rocks that you do, so we had to develop technology to do all of those things, and we kept building. We built ships that could travel the stars. We even met aliens from other worlds. Some became friends, and some became enemies."
Orie was scared and curious at the same time. The elders would often warn of the day the Serpent People would return, but no one ever thought people from the old world would ever find their way to the new world.
"Did you ever see the Serpent People?" Orie asked.
"Yes. They're called Serken, and we are currently at war with them. As a matter of a fact that is how I ended up here. I was chasing down one of their ships that attacked us when my ship was damaged by one of those lightning bursts between those rocks up there."
"Ships? They have ships here?" Orie asked not understanding.
"No. We have ships that fly through space. I was around those moons up there when my ship lost power, and I crashed out there in the lake."
"Oh," Orie said as he wasn't sure if he understood what Roy was saying or not. Considering what he did understand he asked, "Are they coming back here?"
"I doubt it. The ship I was chasing flew into your solar system to try to get away from me. I destroyed it before it could send its location to its fleet. The problem is I didn't have a chance to signal my fleet either, which is why we are here tonight. That little machine that you saw me talking to was a repair-bot. It's not alive. It's basically a complex tool that fixes things and whatever else I tell it to do."
"So if you told it to hunt down a beast it would do it for you?" Orie asked.
"Well, no. They are built in a way that prevents them from harming anyone or anything. But if I told it to climb a tree to pick some fruit, it could do that."
"Really? Wow."
"Among other things. I'm sorry I had to lie to you and your family, but I didn't know how you would react to the idea that I was from another world."
Orie was starting to relax as he was becoming comfortable with the idea of spaceships and people from other planets. He thought about what Roy had said and laughed a bit in agreement. "It would have scared my mother to no end. Father would have probably taken you to the village magistrate. So I think you did what was best. What I don't understand is who the woman was who left you with us."
Roy couldn't help but smile a little as he thought of Katreena, but he still wanted to keep a few facts to himself.
"I don't know. What I told you about her was true. I had been attacked by an animal, fallen off of a cliff onto a tree and then down into a river. When she found me I was near death. She took me to some kind of cottage and nursed me back to health. Then before I could get to know more than her name she left me with you."
Orie decided he was more interested in learning about other places than some girl Roy met. "What is it like on your world?"
"Well, not too different than this one really. The cities are much bigger. Most of the work like farming and building houses are done by machines, and we get around on vehicles that can fly. But take away all the tools and technology we are just like you. Most of us grew up in families with mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters. We go to school, some go to church, we fall in love, some get married, and some have children, and those who are very, very lucky get to spend their lives around the people whom they love. At least that's how we try to live our lives. It's become harder to have lives like that since the war started." Roy realized he was getting off topic. "Okay, remember those animals I told you about that sounded so crazy you thought I was making them up? Well, all of those were true. Let me tell you about the Zebra." Roy spent the rest of the evening talking about animals, jungles, deserts, and anything else he could think of that wasn't about the war.
Geschenke
-- Geschenk
erhalten Wöchentlicher Energiestatus
-- Power-
Rangliste 
-- Power-
Stein