First Contact Fallout Read online

  “I do not feel like licking the ground,” he said, grabbing a few more and tossing them up again. His aim was spot on, and not a one of them fell past his bite.

  “We have traveled far longer than you have done before. You need food and rest. I will keep watch.”

  “We will split the watch,” he differed.

  “No, you must sleep.”

  “Why?”

  “If you overload your mind may seize up, and I don’t have the proper equipment to treat you.”

  “Explain.”

  “If your mind reaches for something it can’t access and keeps trying repeatedly you will get stuck in an unfulfilled loop and not be able to do anything else. It has happened many times before and requires a treatment. I cannot give you that here.”

  Tu’vac ate another handful of food cubes. “So you are saying that I will become helpless if I do not rest?”

  “It may happen even if you do. We had no choice but to run from the Zor’do. I am just trying to keep us alive as long as possible. I do not know what to do.”

  “Will I come out of the loop eventually?”

  “I have never let you linger enough to know. Unlocking the thought you were trying to access was the preferred course of dealing with the malfunction.”

  “Am I not to think?”

  “Try not to focus on anything you don’t already know.”

  “I am unsure how to do that.”

  “I know, Tu’vac. I know. Do your best.”

  “My best is not the objective. What else is in this dead drop?”

  Sol’an pulled out 22 more containers, each of small size and carryable by Zen’zat. Most were food and two were water. The rest were survival equipment, including a tent, but setting up one here was not a good idea.

  “Does that tent have camouflage capabilities?” Tu’vac asked.

  “I don’t know,” the healer said, well outside her area of expertise. She activated and read through the holographic instructions, which included a feature list. “Thermal masking and minimal sensor absorption.”

  “That is where we will sleep, unless we are to move on. What is our…options?” he said, struggling to find the word.

  “We can try to find other Era’tran, or I guess we can hide out here, or we can keep running and not look back. I’m sorry. Tactics is not my specialty.”

  “Is it mine?”

  “I’m told it was.”

  “We cannot live on these supplies forever. We must gain more. Either from allies, enemies, or from scavenging. Are there any other abandoned facilities within range that we could use?”

  “I haven’t updated in a while,” Sol’an said, using her halo to bring up an active status map. “I didn’t want to register to the enemy.”

  “Have they compromised our communications?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You should be able to receive position data for all our units.”

  “Won’t the enemy be able to use that?” she asked, then cringed as she saw his brow crunch up in thought.

  “Maybe they could. I am sorry. I do not know why I didn’t think of that.”

  “Old data then,” she deferred, triggering a visible hologram for them both to look at that hovered just above the short plants that covered the jungle floor around the grove of large trees. “That’s where we were…and this is where we are now.”

  “I thought we had traveled farther than this,” he said with shame.

  “You are tired?”

  “I am.”

  “Your strength will recover with time. You have not been able to train in two centuries. That is why your body is weak.”

  He looked away from the map in shock. “Why did you not have me use my body?”

  “Most of that time you could not control your body enough to train. Since you regained some ability we have been waiting until more memories were recovered. That is what is holding you back. Your body will be easy to retain afterwards.”

  “Stagnation kills, healer,” Tu’vac criticized. “Even you must know that.”

  “Priorities, my friend. Priorities. There is much you do not remember, and that is a far greater weakness we were trying to cure.”

  “How was I injured?”

  “In battle. Your heart was damaged. By the time it was repaired your brain went into a coma from the blood loss. Had you woke from it the Kich’a’kat would have replaced your damaged memory cells with blank new ones. It was a fortuitous accident that did not happen. It has allowed us this opportunity to recover most of your memories in time.”

  “But not all?”

  “Some cells were so badly damaged the data they contained was permanently lost,” she said, gesturing back to the map. “Do you see anywhere we can go?”

  “There is nothing here.”

  “What about this?” she asked, highlighting a small dot.

  “Comm tower. If we want to stay hidden sending a message would be unwise. Or can we call for pickup?”

  “I was told no. We would have had a ship at the Zor’do, but the Era’tran no longer control the airspace here. It would be intercepted and shot down.”

  “Then we cannot reveal our presence. Even an…secret message could be used to locate us.”

  “I see nothing else.”

  “Nor do I. Expand the map.”

  Sol’an did as instructed, then a few more dots popped up. “That is too far to travel.”

  “Are we in a hurry?” Tu’vac asked seriously.

  “I don’t know. If they are following us then we are. If we escaped cleanly then no we are not.”

  “Ask questions.”

  “About what?”

  “If I am not to think about what I do not know, you must direct my thoughts. Ask questions.”

  “If there is nowhere to go, how do we survive?”

  “We can harvest water using the equipment here. For food we can harvest leaves from the trees and the converter will provide most of the food cubes we need, but some special nutrients we will lack. We can live here for an extended period of time if we are not detected.”

  “How can we avoid detection?”

  “If they come close we cannot. Our hope is remoteness. Where is the most remote place in proximity?”

  “The Zor’do was located in a remote region. There is nothing else out here. We are already remote.”

  Tu’vac twitched his head, and for moment Sol’an thought he was about to seize up again, but he did not. Rather, he had an insightful thought.

  “What will the enemy do with the Zor’do? Do they want it, or wish to deny it to us?”

  “There is nothing there of combat value.”

  “Could they use it to heal their wounded?”

  “They have Kich’a’kat, as far as I know. They have no need of it. The Zor’do is for emotional and non-physical wounds.”

  “Why was I brought here then? Is not my cell damage physical?”

  “Healing your wound is software related more than physical. The information from each memory cell has to be analyzed, uncorrupted, and if recoverable rewritten onto a new cell. A Kich’a’kat cannot do that. It could only replace memories on file, which there are none for you.”

  “Why are there none?”

  “We do not keep memory files unless specifically requested by the individual.”

  “Why not?”

  “Privacy. And what would be the need? Your condition is improbable. It has only occurred a few times in V’kit’no’sat history.”

  “Why am I different?”

  “You are lucky. I cannot explain further than that.”

  “Is it possible that they will search then abandon the facility?”

  “I do not know what they will do with it.”

  “If they abandon it, we can return and you can continue with my recovery, correct?”

  “Possibly, if the equipment is intact. They may have destroyed it. And we can’t know if they abandon the facility without going there to check. If we do and the
y are there, they will find us. We cannot risk it.”

  “Do we not have Zen’zat? I thought we had Zen’zat.”

  “They fought while we escaped.”

  “Did they all die?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Do they know where we have come?”

  “Not specifically. But some know the location of the dead drops.”

  “Will they search us out?”

  “If they live. I do not know if any did.”

  “Then we stay here. If they find us, we will use them to scout the Zor’do. If we cannot go back, we will survive here.”

  “And if we’re followed? Shouldn’t we keep moving on? Maybe to another dead drop?”

  “Can you do anything now to help with my mind? Keep me from malfunctioning again?”

  “Some small things. Not enough, I’m afraid.”

  “Then we stay here and I will rest. You will try to keep me functioning. We will wait for the Zen’zat.”

  “If they don’t come, are we going to stay here forever?”

  “We can decide then,” Tu’vac said, gesturing with his nose to the equipment. “Put up the tent. I cannot do it well with my claws.”

  “Are you near to passing out?” Sol’an asked, already knowing the answer.

  “My mind is watery.”

  “We stay here then. Do not force your mind, go with the flow but remain on your feet. That should keep you from passing out entirely,” she said, telekinetically reaching for the tent and pulling it over to her…then there was a thud and she turned to see Mak’to’ran lying on his side on the ground.

  She kept the tent floating beside her and moved to place her foot on his chest, making flesh contact that allowed her to get inside his mind better than her limited equipment would. Then she sighed with relief, realizing that he was merely asleep and not locked up. The sudden journey out here must have been more harrowing than she thought, and without the adrenaline of constant movement his fatigue had overcome him.

  Sol’an went about deploying the tent, having to break some tree branches to make room, but being sure not to cut through the vertical canopy that was giving them visual cover. When she finished she had to drag him inside, for he would not wake up and he was far too large to fully lift with her Lachka, but she managed. Once he was inside she joined him, sealing up the tent but keeping watch with her Pefbar beyond as she used her limited equipment to monitor his mental fluctuations as much as possible.

  She didn’t think he could go more than a day or two before locking up, but then again they were in new territory here. Maybe they would get lucky and some unknown factor present in this wilderness activity would be more applicable to his normal life than roaming around a Zor’do…but she doubted it. At least they were out of harm’s way for the moment, but they were operating on borrowed time now, and no matter how hard she tried, doom was knocking at their door. All her hard work over the previous years was about to be wasted because they had simply run out of time.

  Sol’an would had traded her life in exchange for this mission being successful, but it looked like she was soon to lose both…and there was nothing she could do to stop either from occurring, which was the most maddening part about their current situation.

  An Itaru transport flown by Zak’de’ron servants landed on the promenade inside the Zor’do, and out of the rear hatch came several dozen infantry along with one larger individual. It was a Pak’lem, similar in size to a Brat’mar but without the head plate and horns. Instead it had a very shallow ridge of psionic tissue along its back that bubbled up like a callous and was hard as stone. It was a gift from the Zak’de’ron to their race for their long service to the dragons, and it contained many different abilities.

  Gon’zu walked off the transport and sniffed the air, smelling the residue of recent battle and blood…all of which felt wrong. This facility was supposed to have been abandoned months before, but a fierce, if not small fight had taken place, and not for no reason. Something about this Zor’do was important, and with the planet slowly being taken over by the V’kit’no’sat forces, of which the Pak’lem were now a major part of, there wasn’t much that mattered that wasn’t war related.

  So what was here that could be? Gon’zu already had briefing reports updating to his cranial implants from the troops on site. They had not been relayed before, given the jamming operations the Era’tran employed whenever possible to interfere with the implants. They’d found a way to adjust their own communications into a range that the Zak’de’ron’s servants did not use, and had been effective at jamming medium to long range messages with malicious code rather than static. Enough to garble, if not disrupt those receiving, meaning Gon’zu had to rely on short range updates only.

  There was a nearby comm tower transmitting the jamming, but inside the Zor’do it wasn’t strong enough to affect the local transmitters. They were powerful enough to be able to differentiate to the receiver, and so far Gon’zu had allowed that comm tower to stay up because he knew there was an Era’tran trap in it. What type he wasn’t sure, but it wasn’t too far beyond their patrol zones to receive support, and he got the feeling he’d lose a few more troops taking it…and any losses at this point were a massive failure given how few remained on both sides.

  He’d take it down later once he got some larger units rotated in from adjacent sweeping campaigns. Right now he’d just have to tolerate it, but now that he was here on the ground it wasn’t going to be an issue.

  “What are you hiding from me?” he asked no one in particular, already having sent the new arrivals out on various missions with a few mental orders. “What does a healing center have that is so important to waste Zen’zat defending, only to lose it in the end?”

  Gon’zu didn’t get a direct answer, but he did get an indirect one a few minutes later when one of his new search teams discovered an intact genetics lab…with all the databases wiped of recent information. Not all information, just the recent years. In fact, the length of the omission was equal to the length of the war. So what exactly were they working on here? And why was it so important to die defending empty databanks when the planet was short on defensive units?

  Something wasn’t right, and Gon’zu wasn’t going to leave here until he figured it out. Not even if it meant canceling upcoming assaults in his given combat region. His instincts told him this was massively important to the Era’tran, because if it had been anything less they would have just destroyed the facility and moved on, or relocated whatever it was.

  But they stayed to defend it. If he could figure out…or rather when he figured out why they had stayed he would know how to proceed. For now he was just going to walk, listen, and learn. The Era’tran were cunning, and he had to be even more so, for if they were trying to hide something they were going to do a good job of it…unless they’d been caught off guard and had to buy time with their lives.

  If that was so, maybe they had gotten sloppy and missed something. He certainly hoped so, but only time would tell, and he wasn’t going to leave anything this sensitive to the Bo’ja. This required intelligence and wisdom, and those two assets were the primary reasons the Zak’de’ron had chosen the Pak’lem long ago from millions of other races in the galaxy…that, and their physical size gave their wisdom the backing of considerable muscle, now augmented with psionics. If Gon’zu needed to fight he could, and well, but right now this was a game of wits. Him versus the Era’tran, and he had to prove to be the superior.

  This invasion was too important to the Zak’de’ron. They had to succeed, and the Era’tran had already put up far more resistance than expected. A special project could tip this conflict, perhaps even alter the course of the war in other systems. But what was it they could have been working on in a healing facility? That currently stumped Gon’zu, but he was going to find out. He had to. The Zak’de’ron were depending on him, as was Itaru and the rest of the newly reformed V’kit’no’sat. And the Era’tran were now the primary obstacle from them r
eclaiming the rest of the races and ending this destructive war sooner rather than later. For the longer this reclamation took, the closer the Hadarak came to Itaru and the other major systems that were finally back in their rightful claws…

  5

  May 6, 128800

  Jamtren System (Era’tran capitol)

  Holloi

  Mario’topa flinched as he heard the explosion behind him. He stopped running and turned around, seeing his armor’s guesswork putting the explosion several miles away…but that was far too close out here in the jungle. There wasn’t supposed to be anything else out here.

  He found the largest nearby tree and climbed up using the grip points on his armor until he could get a clear view above the canopy. He was still cloaked, using passive sensors only and not even using his Pefbar in case someone nearby might brush up against it. He was as stealthy as he could get, but he immediately got a warning as a tiny bit of Mushgu’vu radiation washed over him.

  It wasn’t enough to get through his cloak and was easily absorbed, but had he been closer to the source it would have highlighted him immediately. Mushgu’vu was a very rare and expensive technology, useful only against cloaking devices that operated in atmosphere. Naval ones were structured differently and could stay hidden, but there was so much that a suit of armor had to deal with other than vacuum that that the matrix was less than perfect. Mushgu’vu exploited that weakness, but aside from some ultra secure facilities he had never known it to be used, let alone in the field.

  His passive sensors could at least zoom, and what he saw were two gunships pummeling a piece of jungle from very close range and drifting slightly as they appeared to track separate targets. They were identical to the gunships the Zen’zat used, but these were not transmitting the proper codes. They weren’t transmitting anything that he could pick up, so that probably meant they were not Era’tran. The ‘new’ V’kit’no’sat used a lot of the same technology, he thought deliberately so, rather than relying on foreign tech, though there was a lot of it on planet already in the invasion force. But these two gunships…