Chương 3: Equipment Test

Having landed, we drew our weapons, Narchean took out his swords while Buvin and I took out our guns. I spun around and did a quick survey of the landscape. In the distance up to the north, there was a large mountain, while in the South there was a sudden drop. I wasn't quite sure how far it went, but it wasn't necessary for us to know right now. The reason we had chosen this site was that at one point, it had been the site of a Green Surge outpost. During the time that Buvin had in between the destruction of the colony and finding us, he had spent a large amount of time here, for shelter as well as finding parts. According to his knowledge, there were underground hangars housing space planes, as well as ground vehicles. We headed towards the mountain, estimating that it would take about a day to reach on foot. Around midday, we started to notice a that we were beginning to see more vegetation, and after a few more klicks we were walking through waist tall grass towards the edge of a forest. When we arrived at the forest's edge, we stopped eat and then call the ship to check how things were going up there.

"How's the patient Yalson?"

"Well, he is finally stable, but we are not sure if or when he will wake up yet. It appears that he has carbon monoxide poisoning, probably from his damaged ship."

"So where is he now? Still strapped to a bed in the medbay?"

"Yes actually, but I left my wife to stay with him while I get lunch, in case he wakes up."

"He is in good hands then, but if he tries to make a pass at her, Ruby may make it so he doesn't wake up again."

Yalson let out a slight chuckle "That may be true."

"Ok, Yalson, good talking but can you transfer me over to Kitt now?"

"Sure, see you when you get back"

Yalson patched us through to the AI pilot Kitt. what she told us nothing unusual and what we were expecting.

"The ship is maintaining the plotted orbit at thirty thousand eight hundred and fifty-two kilometers, we are moving at approximately thirty kilometers per hour. When you get back the sparring room is required to be repaired, it was damaged after two of the walls were destroyed in a sparring match, hull integrity has decreased by one percent. No ships have been detected in the area since we launched."

"Thank you, Kitt, when will you be back in range to pick us up?"

"I will be in range for pick up in 28 hours and sir."

"Go ahead, Kitt."

"You are very much welcome, Kitt out."

"You know Narchean, for once I think I am happy that the forest will block comm signals"

"Yeah… I wonder who was the one who broke the sparring room, we could really use someone strong like them."

"Ok let's go, you two talk too much," said Buvin, cutting in for the first time.

As we entered the forest we heard a short static noise as our long-range communications lost contact. We slowly but steadily advanced into the forest. Getting closer to the center, we started noticing scratch marks on the trees. Deeper in they became gash marks cutting in some cases a meter into the bases of the giant trees, which had extremely tough and thick bark.

Buvin was the first to say anything "are you guys seeing the trees"

"Oh, s**t! Incoming at three O'Clock," Narchean exclaimed, leaping to the left to dodge a giant snake that had been heading right for him "jump in three seconds and shield down."

We compiled using the small boosters on the LDPs to gain some extra air time. As soon as we jumped Narchean put his words together extending them and used the remaining fuel to spin fast enough to cut down the trees in a small radius and give us an open field to fight on. We landed and could now see what the snake looked like, a large red cobra with large metal blades and a metal piece protecting its head. Narchean charged towards the snake as soon as he saw it, something he would soon regret, as the speed of the snake and blades combined knocked his sword out of his hand sending it flying past us into a tree on the other side of the clearing. Stunned, Narchean was also sent flying blood slowly oozing out of a new gash in his armor. It was my turn to come up with the plan. Narchean's attempt made it obvious that our weapons would not easily Pierce its armor, I now knew what I had to do. Buvin and I stood on top of a stump, shooting the cobra. It seemed only mildly annoyed at us for this and began charging at us. I jumped on Buvin's shoulders using his LDP to boost us both upwards as far as we could. He then dropped while I continued to move up. I put the shield facing down and propelled myself as fast as I could straight towards the cobra's head. I did not get through the armor, but that was never the plan. As I hit the enormous head of the Cobra all the bones in its head were crushed, sending the lower jawbone up through the top of its head. I walked over to Narchean, he was doing okay for now. We got what little of the snakes metal armor that we could carry and set off to get out of the forest, having to support Narchean at some parts. The rest of the walk through the forest had no incidents and we arrived at the base of the mountain just after dark. We entered through a door at the bottom of the mountain into the remains of the old Green Surge outpost. Buvin wandered off to find a place to sleep while I patched up Narchean, his armor was going to need a fair amount of repairs when we got back. Buvin came back a moment later.

"There are some Sierra Viper class ships over here, we should be able to sleep pretty comfortably in them."

It turned out Buvin was right, the control console could be covered and you could lean the heavily padded leather seats as far back as you want. I quickly fell asleep in the comfort of the space plane.

The next morning we all woke up early, the ship would be passing overhead soon and we didn't want to miss it. We each unlocked the controls in our ships and initiated the launch sequence. The ships turned around facing the launch tubes. Once we entered the tubes, the ships lurched down before proceeding to turn straight up, launching out from behind the cliff where we had started. Our communication systems came back online. Kitt was calling to greet us, but we decided not to answer and to save catching up for when we got back to the ship. We had just completed our first mission successfully.