I do not own Battlestar Galatica or have any connection, other than I have seen the show, a long time ago. I also do not own or have input into the game of Rifts. I don't even play the game, but I do own copies of some of the books and used them for this story.

Chapter 4 Visitors

270 Days after the Hall of the Colonies

2 years 1 month 6 days AT

There was flash and a bit of blurred motion and an eye blink later, a battered looking Colonial Raptor popped back into to real space. This bit of space was not where the Raptor had planned to have arrived at. It was so different, that it did not take but a few seconds for both the Pilot and the EO to realize something was very wrong. The pilot was worried what the Admiral would say to them, when they returned to their battered but still moving home. The orders were that if you had a miss jump, or were otherwise separated from the group. You were to return to the Battlestar and the rest of the fleet as fast as possible. A close second on the list of trouble the pair thought they were in was how much Frak they would catch from Starbuck. For getting lost on her mission to retrieve the Arrow of Apollo on the very first Fraking jump. While the two were thinking about that, their electronic system stabilized after the jump and went to work. It should have been easy to pick up the life barring planet below the Colonial made craft, normally. This was not was not anything like a normal location. It was hard to detect the planet even this close, because of the nebula they had unknowingly jumped into. When the data finally started to firm up and was displayed on the pair's screens. The two Colonial's realized what they had found and it was very special. They became very excited, as more and more data was pumped into the different screens mounted on the scout craft.

It was too bad that it was not there mission to scout new planets, today. On the other hand. This was just too good, not to make sure the information did get back to the fleet as fast as they could. Racetrack and Skulls did a quick second scan of the planet. They were able to pick up an amazing amount of data, in a very short amount of time. This was all done, while there jump system on the little craft was recharging for another interstellar move. When the engine was ready? Then the Raptor was gone again in a brief flash light and some leaked energy. They did not pick up the growing human settlement on the coast of the main continent. It had been on the other side of planet when Racetrack arrived, so it would not have matter that habitation had been planned and built not to have be seen from above. The humans on the surface also did not pick up the small ship in space, before it disappeared again out of the solar system and out of the nebula. The detection systems that the humans had on the planet, were never design to scan that high or deep into space. To Captain Kelly and ship's crews, it was like nothing strange had happened at all, yet. Back on Rifts Earth, space was closed to them. And after over 300 years, very few people thought about what was happening above the planet's surface any more. It had been almost bread out of the people from that battle torn world by this point in time to wonder about the stars.

The god had fallowed the Raptor on is miss-jump to this system, and watched until the little Colonial craft had left again. The old lord of Kobol made a mental note to check on this place again, in the near future. The next danger point, was sometime down the road for these souls. As long as those intense heart-felt prayers kept coming from them. He would grow in power, every day one of them offered a prayer to him. He would like this to continue, if it could. He would protect this recharging point as best he could. As long as it was giving him something in return. He was tapping his trident in his off hand, as it changed plains of reality again. It was never seen by the human eyes and sensors, which lived in this specially designed hidden system.

A few days later all around the little cold planet hidden in the nebula, flashes of ships coming out of jump space and appeared one after the other in rapid secession. They had just had a shocking change of civilian leadership of what remained of the Colonies of Kobal. The newly elected president wanted everyone on the surface of this planet, and for the running from the cylons to finally stop once and for all time. They did an extremely quick scan of the planet's surface, but their systems missed the emissions from the other humans on the land below them. The new civilian leadership was more concerned about it being quick and less concerned about effective. Baltar was not worried so much, that DRADIS sweeps might not be complete. The Colonials designers and operators never had seen anything like the systems the Earthers used. Even if the Colonial military did notice Captain Kelly and his people, the Colonials would not have known what they were. The Rift Earthers also were being cloaked by the back ground interference from the surrounding nebula. The area that the Rift Earth settlement built in was nice, but it was not what this Rag Tag fleet was looking for as there landing site. To make the first land fall since the cylons attacked, the humans wanted or needed it to fit certain requirements. They wanted a large but cleared flat area. That the surface ground would also need to take the weight of the landing capable space ships. Baltar wanted everyone together, and it was he who picked the cold, wet, and muddy plain. That would be the landing site, and new home for what remained of the 12 Colonies of Kobal.

New Caprica

284 Days after the Hall of the Colonies

2 years 1 month 20 days AT

Captain Kelly's head came up like a shot from a rail gun. As an air horn and sirens on both ships went off in an ear splitting howl, which hurt your ears and made headaches like a very bad hangover. Even at a distance of almost a mile away from where the two ships were tied up at it was loud. Kelly grabbed Max, who was with him at Warehouse 1. The pair had been talking to people around the large building that had become the center of the small, but still growing little village. He pushed the other man into one of the Road Kings SUV's that had been once cargo, on one of the ships. Now it was acting as their transport around the local area. It was in bad form to run like that in front of the civilians and crews, but this was not a time to be sedate or dignified. Kelly punched the accelerator, and the big machine started to race towards the dock. They were leaving the wide eyed civilians behind in a cloud of dust and flying light debris. The ships crews were only a little slower than their Captain in reacting to the noise. Before making a fast break to their homes around the enclosed village. Max gave a bewildered look to the other man, who was behind the wheel of the speeding and bouncing SUV. After working with Max for almost two years now, Kelly know that he was concerned. Before he could say anything Bob's voice came over the four wheeled drive vehicles built in radio. He was saying that he was on his way from the Mill, and heading towards the ships. He had been checking on how the newly started rock cutting was going, now that they did not need so much possessed wood on a weekly bases. They were working on a number of different ways to use the local stone as a road building material. Now Bob was driving as fast as he could down one of the other dirt roads in the settlement, towards the dock ships.

Kelly went over a set of exposed roots from a massive cover providing tree, which almost loosened the pairs back teeth in Max's head. Kelly let his right foot get a little lighter on the accelerators. As they slowed down on the bouncing, Kelly found the breath to talk. "Max that alarm, is the auto nuclear detection alarm. And it's going off to wake the dead." When the other man did not seem to get what Kelly was trying to tell him. Kelly added some more information, between hard hit bumps. "Max someone just set off a nuclear bomb close enough for us to pick up the EMP from the blast, and it was not us. We are not alone on this planet anymore. And they might be pissed at someone, or something, or us enough to detonate a nuclear warhead."

Max's face turned an odd shade of green, and then went very gray as the information worked its way through his brain. He nodded at the mad man driving the high ground clearance vehicle. Then he just said one word, after hitting another set of exposed roots. "Faster." Kelly obliged him, and tried to put his foot threw the metal floorboards of the SUV.

Max and Kelly's Road King slid to a stop, and both men ran up the gang plank to the high sided ship as fast as their old legs could carry them. They had almost reached the main deck of the ship, when an Ermine scout vehicle slid to a stop by their still cooling and slightly rocking vehicle. Bob jumped out of his still rocking scout car, and was moving at the run in less than four steps. He was right behind them, as Kelly and Max entered the bridge area on the Neptune's Revenge. Joe turned to look towards them as the hatch crashed open, and slammed against the metal inner wall of the ship. As the three out of breath men fully entered the dark room. They had to stop moving so as not to run one of the staff members over. The sound outside started to wind down, and get less ear splitting, to only about make your ears bleed a little bit level.

It took only a second for Joe to decide how to address the group entering the Bridge. His training told him to just address this to his Captain, but with the whole leadership of the village on the bridge. Now here this was a little different, and his mind quickly worked out how to get around this slight change. He just pitches his voice to carry to all three of the men, and started talking. "Our nuclear alert detected one device detonation four and half minutes ago. We are still trying to refine the details. But none of the scouts, and lookouts have seen a cloud or have heard a blast of any kind. It might be a false alarm, but we are still not going to come off our alert statues. Until we know it was a system issue or some of other none warhead detonation event."

Kelly turned to Max, who was off to his right side, and still breathing threw his open mouth. He knew Max was out of his knowledge depth. Kelly wanted to explain in a little more detail while he had the free time. "The EMP detector only works, when it has a line of sight with the nuclear blast. It does not make since, not to have eyes or ears on the blast, which set off our detectors. It would have to be close to us for the blasted sensor to pick it up the EMP."

As the XO and Captain was finishing his all too short update, and explanation on ship's systems. A voice came from the back of the bridge, which drowned out most of the others in the room by sheer volume. "THAT CAN'T BE RIGHT!" The four men turn to see who had sounded off so loudly, in such a small metal room. They saw a young man named Tim scratching his head, with his head hung over a console. Tim was so into his system read outs that he had not realized, he had yelled his frustration loud enough to be heard below decks from his seat.

Kelly was the first to start moving towards that location. The other three men fallowed him almost as one animal, and not four different people. When Captain Kelly was close enough the station, he could see the computer screen was running a systems diagnostic check. What he could not see, was what had caused the operator such distress to shout out and then run a systems check? "So what have you got Tim?" Kelly used his softer, so not to shake anyone else up more. Than they already were with the nuclear attack warring device.

The operator was so focused on his system that he had not heard the group stocking up on him, like a pack of lions going after a gazelle. So he almost jumped out of his seat, when the voice sounded softly beside his left ear. "Ahhhh Sir, I'm running a full systems check and test. There has to be something wrong with the damn thing. It might need to be sent down to the electronics shop, for them to look at the insides of the beast. I have no idea when it will be back in proper operation."

Kelly smiled a tooth hidden smile, at Tim. He was trying not to make Tim, more nervous than he already was. He also was trying not to lose his temper at him, either. "Well what did it say before you ran the self-test?" You did not take down a system like this one during and alert. Unless it was battle damaged and risking the rest of the ship with it begin nonoperational. The operator knew and had been well trained. On when and when not to take their systems off line, without high command Okaying the event before they moved a finger.

The operator picked up a hard copy print out form the side of the machine in a low profile hopper, and handed it off to his commander. That was good thought Kelly, as he was looking down reading the print out. This was so that he did not miss anything, as the EMP operator at this station started talking. "The system said the alert was about an enhanced radiation burst from a 55kton device in air-burst mod. With a blast at an altitude of between 312 miles to 422 miles on a heading of 67 degrees off of magnetic north. I checked the plotting table, and that would be just coming up on our visible horizon. If it was true, so I ran down the trouble shooting list for my station. It said to run a self-test, to make sure the system was not developing a fault deep in its software or firmware." He took a breath and was waiting to be chewed out. It did not come and the longer it took to come, the more Tim was going to sweat in his uniform top.

Captain Kelly looked at Joe and Max, both men were white faced. Kelly was able to keep his voice flat and even, when he spoke to both Tim and his XO. "Re-run all of the data, bring up the main Air Search Radar. I want you to run a quick full power search in active mode. Then power her back down to standby mode. Let's see if it can pick anything up that high. I don't know if it can reach that high, or even if it would know what it was seeing with the current software build. If it can get a return form that altitude."

Joe turned and pointed to another stations and nodded. Everyone had been watching them, so only a few more words were needed and they went to the task with speed and skill. The bridge filled with the sounds of high speed gears turning coming through the metal hull. The radar scattering camouflage netting was rolled up, to clear the ship mounted system. Now they would have a clear shot with beams of Radar energy in the X band range. It would take a few minutes to warm up the massive radar system for operation. The Air search radar had not been used, other than for a short test every few months. That were just to make sure it still worked, or fix items that might have broken over time. Salt and sea air were not friends to electronics devices, even in the age that this group of humans has come from. Items would just stop working, if they were not warmed up and tested every so often.

"Sir the camouflage netting is clear!" came from another station half way across the metal room that was both the bridge and CIC of the warship. This update was not for the ships officers, but so that others could do their jobs. "Air search come on NOW!" in 45 seconds the voice bellowed into the cold air "Search complete!" This was followed by the same sound of gears turning and straining as they did their jobs of recovering the flat radar panels. "Sir, Netting is redeploying. We will be back under cover in 60 seconds!" This was not a new skill set for this well trained crew. Kelly and Joe both had inside smiles on. Knowing that all of those "Drills" had just paid off big time and the crews knew it also.

It was only three of four steps to the main screen, which would display the returns form the radar. Captain Kelly was not surprised, when the display only showed the ridge across the bay from them. From what he remembered of the specs on the upgraded radar, it only had an altitude range of about 100 miles or so. He considered it was worth the risk to see if anyone was coming for them, besides the published specs could have been wrong. The crew and Joe did not need to tell the Captain or the visitors that the screen was clear of any threats, at least for now. That was when that same voice behind them saved anyone from saying something dumb that they might have lived to regret. "Sir, the nuclear detection system reran the data, and it's coming up the same as before. It did happen according to EMP detection device." Tim was fighting to keep the bewilderment out of his voice. He failed miserably.

Max had been quite since he had entered the ship's bridge, but now he broke his silence. "We need to advice everyone to be on alert. I think everyone should be in body armor at all times, and have at least side arms with them at all times." He stopped talking and made an odd face, like he had bit into a very strong lemon or something equally as bad. "Do we need to sound the pirate alarm?"

Bob looked at the other two men. "Kelly I agree with Max, lets sound the alarm." He made a face that was a close match to Max's look. "The only ones I know of, that have any idea about things in the exo-atmosphere area, are the Stapps. We should ask them to return to town and tell them why." The Stapps were independent contractors, which had proven extremely useful to this ship wrecked community. They had paid for their own tickets back on Rift's Earth, so that they could go to the old east coast to explore. Just because they wanted to and not under anyone else's orders, for once. They were very helpful and smart, but they did only the things that they wanted to. If they were not interested in doing something? They would not help out, no matter what the offer of compensation might have been. One of the ways to get them to help, was come up with something that interested them and ride for as long as you could by adding as many riders to it as you could get away with. .

Captain Kelly had ideas to. "Joe please post the pirates alert, and what Max suggested about our people needing to be ready for an attack. I think I will also order my weapons crews, to do weapons checks and re-load all of the ship's mounted weapons.' Kelly looked at Joe who only nodded at his orders, before he turned and started issuing orders. Kelly was not done yet. "I think we need to post a notice on what we know about this alarm, and that we are just being careful. I think we need to pitch it as a just in case, it might be slavers. I also think we need to get back on shore, so that we do not have too much of a panic and someone gets shot by mistake." Each of other two men, shook their heads in a silent agreement before truing towards the access hatch they had entered.

When the three men walked back up the wooden dock/jetty at a measured, if not leisurely pace. They left their transports on the dock beside their ships for future need. They were bombarded with the same question. "What happened?" from about a dozen people that they passed. They told them all they knew, but that only caused more questions to fallow. Finally Kelly just told everyone, that all they knew would be posted on the screen mounted on the side of Warehouse 1. Kelly was thankful again of finding that 90 inch UHD 3D computer display, they had found in one of the cargo boxes aboard the Find. After another late comer had come and asked what had happened. Bob just told everyone to fallow them, and the trio would go over it all again. It was funny by the time that they were almost to the area, every time someone new showed up and asked what was going on. The crowed would tell them very vocally, that they were going to get told once they got to the warehouse.

When they got to the massive building that was a lot more than just a warehouse now. The three leaders did a quick little huddle amongst themselves, before they started the massive meeting. Max had notice that on the massive screen, was a request for one of leaders to contact the Neptune's bridge as soon as they entered the building. Bob was voted to go into the warehouse/meeting place, and use one of the land lines to contact the converted warship to see what was going on. It turned out that the Stapps had picked up the nuclear detonation on their own equipment. They were on their way back to the Settlement. At the fastest rate their machine could go through the heavy woods and not kill themselves. They should make it to the nearest dirt path that the Rhino bulldozer had made soon, but they were still over 80 miles from the settlement when they radioed in. Bob did some quick math in his head, after he had been given the numbers. It they made their best speed, they still would not make it back to Safe Port Bay until just before the sun had set.

Bob called one of the older kids over when he was done on the land line. He sent him on a mission to let all of the four land access gates know that the Stapps were due in soon. These were the only access points to the outside world. Now would know that the scouts would be coming in fast and hard. The kids love these little errands, that was because that meant they would get a chit for a recharging an E-Clip that they could spend. They also would be able to use one of the few mountain bicycle, which made it to this new planet in the cargo holds of the Lucky Find. Bob hoped that they would make some of their own man-powered transportation in a cottage industry like set up. The problem turned out to be. How do you make rubber tires without rubber? So bicycle production was at a standstill for now, but some things looked like they might work out in the near future.

It had been a few months ago, that someone had found out something while doing some kitchen experiments. It turned out that all of the waste from making the wood gas, could have been used as a type of feed stock. This was the first step to make plastic and a type of very low grade rubber. They were still working on the rubber, but the plastic problem had been fixed already. What they were making now. Was being used as weather proof insulation and outer covering for the still growing number of green houses. They were already self-sufficient in growing fresh food, but it would be nice to be able to put some away for long term storage. As a just in case of a disaster or something bad happened. And the only way they knew how to do that was build more green houses. That would make it easier on their stocks of food that they had left in storage. All of which had come over with them to this cold world a little over two years ago.

After the meeting to bring everyone one up to speed it was very late and the sun had long set. The whole Triumvirate stayed in the settlement for the rest of the day and into the night, instead of going back to one of the ships to sleep. It did give the trio a chance to try the first chicken griller to open in the village. The family who opened it, had taken their two pet chickens they had shipped with them, and set up a hatchery while they were still restricted to the ships. They had been the ones to set up the first successful hatchery on the ships in the first place. They knew what to do, and they had worked extra hard to get every extra chicks they could and not waste them. They also were the first ones to find out, that Earth chickens could eat and even loved the local grass. It had almost a catnip like effect on the feather brains, but was also very healthy for them to eat. They also gave their chickens' whole clams, which were plentiful in the shallow water of the protected bay to eat. These two little tricks meant that each hen laid twice as many eggs in day compared to the rest in the village. That little secrets were kept for almost a year, before it slipped out to the rest of the settlement. It took just under six months for a chicken to go from an egg to laying more eggs. This increase in production, let the families already lead in chicken numbers, grow to a truly huge number in very short order. So large in fact, that they had to start employing people outside of their families. Just to help the small family take care of the growing number of beast.

Right now, the chicken ranchers, only sold ten chickens a day for food. It was a nice change from fish as the only meat available. Now that the Triumvirate had stopped giving out beef from the storage compartment the year before. Until tonight, the leadership had not stopped by to buy some of the cooked bird. That was because the price for the meat was out of reach for over 90 percent of the residence of the village. If things worked out as the family hoped. They would have a good sized and warm warehouse finished in a few more weeks or a month at the outside. The couple had paid for it out of their own pocket. They were getting to be well off compared to the rest of colonist. That is between selling the eggs, live chickens, cooked chickens, and the high grade fertilizer. The Triumvirate know that they were planning on upping the number of cooked chickens for sale pretty soon. To as many as two dozen a day in the next few months, but doing it slowly. All of the birds were animals that had stopped laying eggs, so were only good for eating food and being pets. Bob was looking forward to that day. Because just like everyone else. Bob was very tired of fish, after almost two years of having it in every meal he had eaten. He also hoped that selling two dozen full birds a day, would mean that the price would soon go down. At least to a level that most working people could afford to have once in a while.

When the Triumvirate all had called it a night, the Stapps were still not threw the village gates. The Stapps had not only a house to themselves in the village, but a storage building, and a pole barn combination. They had it built so that they could put things in and keep them out of the weather, on this wet and cold world. All of the buildings that were on the large size and custom designed. When they had come back into the settlement. It was very late at night, or if you wanted to call it very early in the morning. They parked there machine under cover of the pole barn section, but did not go to sleep. What they did do, was drag out a homemade telescope that they had made over a year ago. It was four times the size of the first one they made, in the machine shop of the Lucky Find. It was considered to be very well made. But considering how few people on PA Earth knew anything about telescopes, it was workable and had done the jobs asked of it so far. They were just lucky to know what they did, and smart enough to figure it out as they went with the device. It was small, with only a three foot in diameter mirror in the long wooden tube and a heavy base plate. It would look like a standard Dobsonian telescopes from the early 2010's, if the Stapps and crew had known about them.

When a runner came to Stapps home near the wall that was where they were still found. As the sun came up huddled around the telescope. The runner let them know, that they were wanted by the Triumvirate on the Lucky Finds main briefing room, for a meeting already set for 0900. The group of rogue scientist radioed the ship before sending the runner back. They asked if they could send a car to take them the few miles to the ships. They claimed it was because they were old and to tired, to make the long and wet walk after another all-nighter. The just barely teen age girl sprinted back to the ship to finish her task, and collect her payment. Not long after the blur of running teen had gone. One of the only two electric hover cars that had been down loaded pulled up to the pole barn. They were only used for emergency or tasks that trio think they would add value to support. The bleary eyed Scientist loaded up into the hover car, and were soon off to see the heads of the government.

Not one of the Triumvirates were surprised that the Stapps had gotten right to work on the little surprise that everyone had the day before. Payment would be decided later, the leadership was sure of. Right now however, they were just kids with a new toy or puzzle to figure out. They had brought a digital camera with them to the meeting, and were plugging it into the briefing room's large display. They still were not ready, when the three men that made up the leadership of the little group entered the room and took the worn seats arranged around the table.

When they were ready to give the briefing, which thankfully it did not that long before June Stapp was ready to give the few golden nugget of information to the three leaders of the settlement. "Okay we only had last night to find out what happened. The short answer is that we still don't know, but we did see this threw our little telescope." She hit a few buttons, and the screen changed from a white back ground with blue and red letters to something a lot different.

It was a blurry image now on display, but you could make out artificial items projected on the metal wall. Then shapes got clearer, as the images flipped through about two dozen different images. "We counted over forty different ships in orbit. To include these two monsters." June hit the advance button again. The first image, was of one ship that looked like an alligator with large box like skies connecting its four feet. The second image was a close sister to the first one, but it looked newer and meaner somehow. But a lot less animal shaped kind of way and more weapons looking in function. There was little doubt that she was a warship.

"We think they both are about half to 3/4rd of a mile long. We picked up some blurs coming from those boxes on the sides of the ships few times, but we don't know what they were. They could have been missiles, but we have not seen any more detonations. Nuclear or otherwise to confirm that observation." June was using a hand held remote to zoom in, but it was not adding any additional details. That the group of leaders could identify, without lots of help from the group of scientist giving the briefing

The meeting went on for another hour with John now doing most of the talking. The group of scientist did not have any more major information on who they might be. They had no idea if they were human, or otherwise, or of it they might be slavers, or maybe something even worse. The Triumvirate would have to find this out the old fashioned and hard way. They did ask for the Settlement to pay for the development of a new telescope, which would have a mirror twice as big as the one they had right now. They would use it to keep a better and clearer eye on what was going on in orbit over the planet. They would be able to keep it after they were done, and use it as they saw fit later. The three men did not have a problem agreeing to these requirements. It was the same agreement that had been worked out before on the two other telescopes the couple had in their possession. The three even got them to do an evening briefs to the staff and at Warehouse one if needed. They were even talked into offering classes at night on the telescope they already had. To anyone who wanted to know more about them. The total cost of the project would be credit on an engine replacement, on their massive Explorer class machine that was their walking laboratory. They would take as a replacement engine in the form of a nuclear, solid oxide, fuel cell or for the EX-Behemoth Super Explorer. That machine was sitting in Hold Number 2 of the Lucky Find, being unused or bought still to this date. The three men made a note to see how much engine life Sapp's Explorer robot had left on it. They hopped that they could use that information to gauge how long, they could get the Stapp's to work on credit to support the settlement. Some might have called that begin close to the edge of playing dirty pool. But if it was for the good of the Settlement, the three men were okay with using what they could to get the job done.

Over the next few days all the scouts made their way back to the settlement, one after the other as quickly and as stealthy as they could. The little village hidden under the trees, had been directly over flown twice by a fat little craft while the scouts had made their way home. They had also seen little dart shaped craft that flew near the ships, but not as close as the fat little ones had. It appeared that none of the over flying craft had seemed to have noticed the humans living below the over flying craft. The only reason that the people below "saw" them now, was that they were now looking for them. No one knew how long those type of craft had been flying around overhead without being noticed.

Each morning the scientist would brief the three men, on what they found during the long cold night with their eyes glued to the telescope. About the only thing they did find out, was at the end of the second night of watching. It seemed like some of the ships, were looking like they were coming into land somewhere on the planet. All the information was put out, and even briefed by the two scientists to whole village outside Warehouse 1. This cut down on the problems for the other three leaders, by an unknown number. By simply making all the information public as it was given to the three leaders. No one could claim that anything Earth shattering was being withheld from them. Everyone was on edge and it was only getting worse, with each over flight or near over flight. By the alien craft that was being picked up on passive systems.

2 week later

The three leaders were in a meeting trying to figure out what they needed to do next. It had been two weeks since the orbital nuclear blast had shaken them. The only thing they knew about these strangers, was that three out of four of the ships they had seen that first night. Where no longer up there anymore, or view able from their location. Now there only major questions remaining were. "Where were they, how long would they be here, what do they want, and are they human?" Those were only the top of a long list of questions. But by no means were they the only questions on everyone's mind for the last few weeks.

The trio called a settlement wide town hall meeting at noon, around Warehouse 1. They announce that they wanted to send scouting missions out, to find out where this new visitors might be operating ground base. They wanted volunteers, but it would only be ground units that would be given the green light to undertake the scouting. The job will be a sneak and peak mission, with the focus on Sneak with the capital S. If you were not that type of person? Then you need not apply for the mission, thank you very much. They gave a brief run down on the rules, like they were not to fly above 25 feet above the trees or grass at any time. It was also put out that they would not be able to use their radar or radio systems past the 500 miles line away from the Safe Port Bay. That was all the area that they had mapped so far from the village. The area that they had mapped, was mapped in great detail and even had a mostly all-weather trail system hidden from any overflights with in those bounds of protective tree green limbs.

One of the hopes that the scouting missions would do? Was to find things that the growing settlement needed, along with finding the visitors. They had already covered the basics of shelter, food, and protection. Now they needed to start building the larger bits of infrastructure. That they needed to support their machines. Before the limited supply of spare parts, they had on hand ran out forever. When the first round of scouts return? They would have to see which of the paths would be cleared up or improved, to handle the increase traffic or other changes to improve them in anyway.

Right now each of the five main dirt roads ended, with a wooded building with some emergency supplies. Each of the buildings were connected to the settlement by a copper wire communication system. The wire communication system they had built, was completely made from materials they found on this planet after coming to it. The new trails and any new extensions would be mapped, expanded, and improved as needed to support the fallow on scouts. It was hoped that this would help speed them on their duel missions.

Bob was sitting alone in the main Warehouse thinking about that system, when he had the idea to find Dexter. It had not taken long for the rumor mill to point to Dexter, as being the one who somehow remote viewed the bay and passed it along to the leadership. Captain Kelly had tried to keep Dexter's part of helping out as quite as he could. In the end, it had not worked nearly as well as the sea captain had hoped it would. The poor man had been overwhelmed by all the people who want his help for every little thing, or help them to fix their lost magic user ability. He had not held up well under the assault, and started to drink heavily to cope with the stress. Kelly had to let him go of his ships duties. Captain Kelly did not trust him with access to major weapons systems on his ship, with his heavy drinking. He had not exactly been thrown into the mud, but it took his anchor or support system away. It was not that his new found power were much stronger on this planet. It was also that he was the only known magic user to still be effective. After Kelly had let him go, he had skills to fall back on. Dexter was able to keep his higher skills quiet for a while from the general population. Now he was getting a share of several high value mines, which he had helped the "owners" find after leaving the employ of Captain Kelly. His first find had been a massive Rutile crystals deposit not far from the wooden wall. The titanium oxide the crystals were made out of, was one of the key elements needed by the Settlement. But was very hard to find, even on Earth. It was mainly used by the armor patch making machine, down in the main machine shop of the Neptune's Revenge.

The desk sized machine could not make a suit of armor, but it could turn out 4 inch x 4 inch armor patches. That is, if it had the raw material on hand to make the armor squares. Dexter had also helped find one of the most pure Chalcopyrite deposits, anyone had ever heard of. It was between 40 to 50 percent pure copper, right out of the ground, before they even started smelting it. According to a contact working for the Triumvirate, Dexter had just gotten back about three week ago. He had been helping to find a possible Magnetite area across the bay. It turned out to be on that ridge line, which separated the ocean and the protected bay. If the labs reports are correct, this find was about 73% iron without putting the first bit of heat to it.

The profits from those finds had kept him in drinking alcohol, food and shelter. With the added benefit of keeping people away from him for a long time, while out looking around the planet. Bob wanted to remind Dexter that if he needed to talk and that he had an open invitation to see any of them at any time he needed or wanted to. He also had a list of things that the village would need in the future to keep growing. The single page document, was a list of minerals and ores. It was all of the things that they would really need in the future or sooner. If they worked hard enough, and had just a little luck break their way. Oh and they could hide from the possible slavers. Bob and Kelly had Dexter report to them. They worked on some ideas between them that benefited everyone in the room and the village as a whole.

While the meeting was going on with Dexter. Rex was starting to pack his favorite hover cycle for another long scouting trip. He had been getting bored over the last few months, which was something not so new for him. He needed that heart shot of adrenaline that living wild with things that might kill you around provided. The safeness of the planet had worn off of him many months ago. Whoever found out the most about the new visitors, would have some great stories to tell. He was also hoping that maybe even getting some extra perks as a bonus would be given out. The Triumvirate were not known for being stingy with bonuses. They were not just given out, like candy but they rewarded the extra effort someone had given.

The first problem was that a whole planet was a big place to hide. But these people had space ships, which had to help them somehow be found he knew it. Before he started packing, he had used his reputation, as the best scout, to get access to the plotting table on one of the ships. He plotted the flight paths of each of the overflying craft they had tracked. He was hoping to find some kind of pattern, which might lead him to their home base of operations After a few hours, he was not satisfied, but it did give him an idea of where to start to find the next piece of the puzzle. He checked back in at the desk, which was going to manage scouting areas. This managing desk, was to make sure the scouts were not leaving any gaps in their coverage. Rex gave them a vague area that he would be looking at, and it was marked on the main map along with the areas other scouts had told them. Who knew how true this data might or might not be.

Rex was finishing packing some last minute supplies. When he had signed up, to be a scout at the desk. He had been given a chit that he could turn in for 60 pounds of persevered fish, an NG-57 heavy duty ion blaster, and a new NG-IP7 Ion pulse Rifle. All the other times he had gone out over the last two years, he had only gone out with his trusty MP-10 pistol. This was very nice, he like everyone else, was short on ramjet rounds that made the pistol such a deadly weapon. He also had the C-14 rifle, which he had since the left the services of the Coalition States a few years back. They even gave him an extra pair long E-Clips fully charged, to go with each of the newly issued weapons. He was glad, when he had heard a rumor that the two remaining Juicers were not going to allowed to go out scouting. They however, had been activated as a QRF, if anything bad happened out there. The remaining Juicers could bring some very heavy firepower, strength, and speed to the battle, if someone had time to call for their help.

Thinking about the remaining Juicers, keyed Rex into thinking about Ron again. He had been the oldest of the Juicers, and had burned up about six months ago. His body was giving out, and they did not have the drugs or experience to try to detox any of them. So the Juicers could only watch, as they bodies slowly gave out to the abusing drugs. Those were the drugs they had use to augment their bodies, to fight the monsters that come calling on Earth. The average lives of the Juicers were about five years, without drugs to help even out some of the worse effects of the augmentation and ageing. It was a bad way to die for Juicers. Ron had other ideas on how to die. He had taken a hand built wooden 40 foot long human powered paddle-boat boat out to the mouth of the bay. This was where it opened to the larger ocean. He was "trying to hunt" one of the huge sharks that patrolled that area of the bay and ocean. They were eating whatever was flushed out of the rivers and the bay, by the changing and rushing tides.

He did catch and kill one of the 50 foot long and ten ton Semi-Megalodon sharks with a hand thrown harpoon, and his bare hands to finish it off. But not before the huge shark had done the same to Ron, by taking everything below the hips of that crazy man with its massive jaws. "Was he going to go out in that same type of way? Was he going to die on some kind of one more scouting mission, or something equally crazy?" He thought to himself when he threw his right leg over the cycle, and settled onto the wide padded seat. He did a little rocking back and forth, getting comfortable for what he was betting was going to be a long ride. "At least I don't have to worry about large animals that want to eat me." He was mumbling and everyone that walked by made sure not to take visible notice it. Scouts were strange, and could anger for the oddest of reasons. He had been out looking and had never seen a sign of any animals, just like the Stapps had said. These were his last thought as his machine went out the northern large wooden gate, that protected the little town and into the dark wet woods beyond. He had to open his mind for threats and thinking about other things could get a scout killed.

If someone had been watching this small part of this cold little world, they would had seen a gray streak cross about 150 foot of wide open grass field. This field separated the rest of the mainland woodland form an odd shaped set of woods, which just happen to border the edge of the little bay. Threw the rest of the day hover cycles and even few larger hover scout cars, left the segregated wooded area heading out into many different directions. They were all going deeper into the massive landmass, which dominated the world. As full night fell the activity stopped, and not even a speck of light could have been seen from above that part of the world. That would have been normal for these lost humans, on a cold world that they had started to set up a life for themselves on. After all light could draw enemies to them, and they did not like to be a target for anyone. This was something that had been drummed into the survivors of Earth.

The three men that headed the governing body of Safe Port Bay, did not have to keep a close eye on where every one of the scouts was going and how long they planned to be out in the wilds. That was why the trio had developed and trained good staff members for. If you were not good at your job, they would find someone that was, and you would have a new job found for you. What the trio did do, was go over every line of equipment listed. They also were visually checking every weapon, round of ammunition, and vehicle that they had on hand. It was just in case things went wrong, and gunfire was needed to be exchanged. It was after the evening meal, which they rejoined together on board the Neptune's Revenge. It was in the main briefing room that was by default, their main meeting location for the three leaders.

Max was the first in the briefing order tonight. He had been given the job of checking on small arms, and all of the body armor that had not been issued yet. "Well everyone has some kind of body armor, except the women that are more than six months pregnant. And all of the kids that are less than 4 foot 5 inches tall. I put out the notice at noon that we will be trading out all of the homemade stuff for better manufactured ones, to those interested. All they need to do is bring the homemade armor into Warehouse One to start the exchange. I think we need put out, to the ones that won't fit into regular body armor. That we will break into some of that load of Northern Gun made street cloths armor we have. I think that will cover most of the smaller people." The diet that they had been on. Had cut the number of overweight people in the settlement, to as near zero as a village could get and not fall under threat of malnourishment. "I also think we might want to pull it out an alert notice. Just to see if anyone knows how to make the different types of homemade body armor, into something useful for the Settlement. I was thinking maybe that it will give at least some protection for people that nothing else will fit effectively like hand carried shields. I would hate to see some mother, eight months long not protected, or some baby in arms exposed to harm." Max stopped talking and looked down at his notes, he had had a mental image that was entirely too vivid.

Bob had a wife that was one of those that did not have body armor that would fit around her twin carrying belly. He had been worry about those same issues, and had planned to bring them up in this meeting. "I like that idea. How about we offer up a contract to anyone. Who has the skills to turn that crap armor into very oversized coats and some kind of smock for little ones? I think that we could even keep them on hand, and issue them out to anyone who wants one. They will have to return them, when they are not needed, or they are out grown. It will give some extra protection if they want to use them, kind of like the maturity uniforms the CS Navy uses." Kelly nodded in agreement to what Bob and Max had said so far. It was a done and closed deal as far as the three men were concerned.

Max took down a long note on his computer. To have one of the staff to type up the official note, and post in to the Settlement as soon as possible. He looked up when he was done typing on this screen. "I will take care of that, I had been thinking of just giving out that homemade stuff to and let them work with it, until a few seconds ago as our best bet. I had complete forgotten about the probably it would not fit properly anyone. That is without a lot of work, and it does not fit right? It's not going to work right if at all." Max waited till he had all the notes done, before moving on the next item on his punch list.

"Now, as for small arms. In the settlement as of right now. I have about as complete information as I could get. But you all know, sometimes people are not that giving in that type of information." The other two men laughed softly but heart felt at Max's statement. Asking someone about what firepower and weapons they were packing? Might just give you a lot closer look at that firepower than you wanted, in the first place. Muzzle bores can be very cold against the nose or forehead.

Max let that settled down, before he started talking again. "Everyone above the age of 16 has a modern firearm of some kind. We only issued out some of the extra energy based weapons with extra E-clips to the scouts, if they wanted them. I will tell you, not one of them has turned any offered new weapon down. This might have thrown of my numbers off some, and it is not counting what anyone might have hidden away for a rainy day. What we have in storage, is not enough of anything one type of weapon, to fully outfit us to any type of standard, or uniform, or even a basic look. We have almost a complete sales list from Bandito Arms, a range of Coalition weapons, some Traxi stuff, but mostly we have Free Quebec and Northern Gun weapons. This does include a full shipping container of their newer ION based weapons, all still in the protective wrappings. We also have more than we can use, of weapons scaled for the Robots, Juicers, cyborgs and Powered Armor to use. They are both energy weapons and rail guns types, but it's an odd mix of this and that. Does anyone have ideas on how we might be able to use them?" Max stopped talking and let the question sit in the air, but the other two men did not jump in right away.

Max let his shoulders drop a little, then looked back at his notes and started talking again. "About the only thing I can think of for them. Is somehow using them in some kind of fixed defense point on the walls. I also checked out and re-inventoried the special weapons lockers." The Special Weapons Lockers had been set up to hold rare weapons. Like the stuff you used to get from Naruni Enterprises before the CS drove them off planet. Those were items that were made off planet or possibly even in another dimension. Some were new in the box, but others were captured and or repaired items. They also had small but still a growing list of magic weapons, which had not worked since the first day on this new planet. "We also have a container of mixed conventional damage weapons. They cover the range between old style revolvers, weak assault rifles, old machine guns, and even a couple of recoilless rifles. I can send you an updated list, but I don't think it's worth the time right now."

Max smiled back up at the group, but he was thinking about those Recoilless Rifles. Why would that old man have something like those weapons on his ship in the first place? Now he could ask a question, which had be bothering him for over a year now. "Captain Kelly. Why did you had those two monsters mounted on the stern of his ship? Then you donated them, along with 500 rounds of various types for the two village use." He tilted his head to one side and had a sly smile on his face to take the sting out of any words he might say next. "Why on Earth, did you have those ancient beasts mounted on your ship in the first place? When you could have had real weapons mounted in their place?"

Captain Kelly had heard this question more than once in his life. So he had a comeback ready, when this question raised its ugly head again at this table. "Well Max, I have them for two reasons. One, is that sometimes you don't always want to blow the bottom out of an enemy boat you're trying to capture. The other reason is that the ammunition is cheap, and you can be found it almost anywhere that sells medium and large caliber weapons ammunition. Something my father learned a long time ago, is that you can't say that about rail guns rounds you know. I also found out that they had some other uses, which are not all about a how much firepower you have. I have also use them to hunt some of the larger animals, that live back home in the deeper water. You would be surprised how well, and fast a single HE round from one of those things can fill your fishing nets with food very quickly. On top of that you can get some very odd types of reloads that are useful, like wood and bone. They work great against vampires"

Kelly was waiting for the other man to say something else, but Max just nodded his head in agreement and put his notes away. Max looked to the other side of Kelly and gave a nod of his head to the other man in the room. That was the sign that he was done with is part of the briefing. Max was still thinking about what Kelly had said, but he was not going to ask any more questions about that subject. That is until he had time to really think about what had been said.

Bob was the next person to brief, and decided now was the time to start his part while Max removed the crow he just been given to eat again. "I might have a few ideas to pass along which might let us use those larger scale weapons more effectively. The first item on my list was land transportation. I went back over what transportation assets, we still have under lock and key. We have ten armed hover cycles and twenty unarmed hover cycles of various types and makes. For land based transport. We have exactly forty of the four wheeled off road transports left along with a dozen civilian hover cars. They are battery or liquid fueled but all are unarmed. We also have four each old style Coalition Command Cars, Scarab Officers Car, and Skull Patrol Cars. Again these are all items that were not claimed to be owned by passengers or crew-members. We do not have any heavy armed tanks but we do have four VTOLs and four large APC's. We also had the pair of larger cargo carries. There are the six fully repaired Sky cycle in storage. It's too bad the other ones were good only for spare parts. But that should keep the one's flying for some time longer. That is unless they have a catastrophic accident or something shoots them down on us. I was thinking about those heavy weapons before Max brought them up tonight. I have an old book in my office, which I was re looking at a few weeks ago. On one of the pages was image with something called a gun jeep or gun truck, I'm not sure what it was. It's a light four wheeled off road vehicle, which trades cargo capacity and passenger's capability. So that it can carry a heavy machinegun or antitank missile launcher in their place. Can we see if we can do something like that? With those smaller vehicles that we have not given out and the larger scale weapons?"

Max was stunned, but he had worked with these men for some time now, and recovered quickly. But somehow these two men could pull the strangest reference out sometimes, and just threw them on the table. With a shake of his head side to side Max asked. "Can I get a copy of those images? I can take them to some of the village workshops, and see what they think about the ideas. Give me a couple of days to find out what can or might be done, or even if they might have some workable ideas or not. I can then see if there is a cost in getting any of the work done that they might suggest."

Bob gave a nod to Max. "I can have Sophia scan the whole book and send a copy to you. Maybe you and your contacts can figure out what Sahara or a Nam might be." Bob looked toward the other Captain and did a chin point to Kelly. "That's all I got for now."

Now it was Kelly's turn to update the other members of the Triumvirate on the tasks he had done. "As agreed, I checked out what has been stored on my ship, which we could use for the defense of our little village. We have 120 combat robots of various makes and models that are not assigned or purchased by individuals yet." Kelly stopped talking for a second to catch breath, but this was delayed a little by Max's reaction.

Max let a soft whistle out between his slightly parted lips. He did not realize that it was high pitch, and acted like nails on a chalk board to the others in the room. They all had seen the weapons break out before, as the weapons of combat had been found in the cargo holds. Until now no one had looked that closely at the totals, which had accumulated by the inventory exploration. Until right then, it had not settled in with how much firepower, they had been setting on for almost two years now. With the units that protected each ship for security and what the passengers had loaded were added in. The little settlement had a little over 220 heavy combat robots to defend themselves with. That was more than most mid-sized kingdoms, back home could claim to be in their order of battle. That was more than the major powers, could field at a major base of operations. Much less a forward field site or any village under a hundred thousand in population. In short it was very impressive amount of firepower.

Kelly was not done yet, so after shooting Max a look to stop. He was ready to continue his part of the briefing update. "We also have 600 suites of unassigned but operational power armor in my cargo holds, safely locked down. That's a lot of available firepower, but we are critically short trained pilots for both types of combat systems to effectively use them. The equipment quality ranges from ChipWells and Bandito's stuff. All the way up to Coalition and Triax's built combat units, and everything in between those two quality levels. We also have good supply of spare parts for them, to include replacement engines of the nuclear, Solid Oxide, and batteries types for both types of combat systems. I have no idea what fits in what type of machine, just that we have some extras locked down and protected from the environment."

Kelly took a loud breath, and wait to see if anyone had any questions. When no one seemed to want him to stop this time, he went on with this list. "Now to the ammunition count on hand, for our heavy damage giving shooters. I did not count what each person in the settlement has, or might have, or what are in the magazines of our ships. So it's not the complete total, only what we can offer as reloads for combat operation that we might have to do." Each of the other two men gave a simple head nod, to let him know they understood the limitation and Kelly went on with this report.

"I also did not break them down by the warhead types, but we have 500 long range missiles. I do know that we do have only four nuclear warheads, but I did see quit a few Heavy Proton warhead types. We have a little over 1200 medium range missiles with a few Multi-warhead types that will fit them." Kelly gave a chuckle as he continued to talk. "I think we have a few of every type of warhead but we have more of the more common warheads. The totals for the short range missiles are a little over 2000 of them. We also have wide range of warheads that include knock out gas and fire retardant warheads, as well as the "normal" types of warhead. The mini sized missiles count is at around 3000 missile bodies. The only warhead type, I did not remember seeing is smoke. I don't think that there is going to be too much of that type work to be done, for it to be any issue. Major Weston to me HE and Plasma rounds make nice fires." Kelly was thankful that Max did not make the noise again, but the shocked look on the other two was still nice to see on their faces.

With a sly smile Kelly went to this next item in his notes that he needed to cover. "While I was doing that little inventory I stated to think about something. I notice something was missing from our list of strategic materials we were tracking. It took so doing and a lot of help, but I found and move to my ship from Warehouse 3. Almost a thousand extra seeker systems, for different types and class of missiles. We will have to see if we can use them or not, besides using them for spare parts that is. The next part, well it turns out we are lucky. It turns out that all most all of our rail guns, take the same sized ammunition. There are some odd ducks out there in the settlement and in our cargo holds. I don't know what we will do about them, unless we can find a way to make the different sized rounds that will fit them. But we do have 50,000 rounds available for the Rail guns in storage, all nice and packed in boxes. Now that may seem like a lot more, than it really is. At forty rounds a burst, it will go quicker than you might think. Trust me I have had to restock my ammunition bunkers, after going through what I "knew" was enough for a few dozen gun fights."

Now Kelly thought it was time to bring up something, which will not make them very happy. "I would like to bring up something that we have talked about before, and was voted down every time. Circumstances have now changed enough for me to think it's worth another look. I feel it's my duty to the safety and welfare of us all." Kelly looked around to the two other men. He looked each of them levelly in the eyes, one at time before he finished saying what was on his mind.

A groan from the other men around the table greeted Kelly's ears, and he could read their faces that matched the sound coming from them. They all hated rehashing things over and over again. Kelly took the bull by the horns, and jumped in with both feet before they could get mentally entrenched. "I think we need to test and then start training new operators, for the Power Armor and Robot units." As soon as the statement hit the air, eyes rolled to look at the metal ceiling of the room. As the evening went on for the three men, they worked on the idea. And around the village, life and work went on about the ships, under the protective branches of the massive trees.

New Caprica

465 Days after the Hall of the Colonies

2 years 7 month 25 days AT

It got dark very fast in this mountain range after the sun went down over the western horizon. It was a complete lack of any light except, the back lighting provided by the glow on the nebula glowing in blues, greens, and whites overhead. The mountain range was craggy and cold, like a bad mix between the Adirondack and the South Gila mountains in the Pecos Empire. On one of the highest peaks of the mountain range was a speck of something. If you looked close enough and had a lot of luck, you might see a slight yellow-red glow on one side of the tall rocky mountain. It was not on the top of the pillar of cold rock, but a little lower from the crest. The mass of the mountain would block most of the line of sight to the small protected fire burning on the side of the mountain. If you got closer, you would be able to see the fire was covered on all sides by flat rocks. This arrangement made it so that the all of the light and heat would only go one way. And that way, was towards the odd mass of almost rock looking cloth. This was not a fire set up to be a joyful area, but more like something to fight off the cold. It was so that a person could live in the high cold, and not much else with its meager flames produce heat. Off to one side of the well covered fire, was a hover cycle. It was propped up and ready to go in a split second, if a threat make its presents known the unmoving human. The one person that was near the fire, but not staring into the small and bright flames was a man with a lot on his mind. The mind and eyes were the only things that were moving of the covered human.

Rex was upset, very upset. He had been back for resupply twice now, and he still had not seen a sign of what he was looking for. Failure was not something he was used to have to accept in a long time. The only thing that could be called "on the bright side", was that no one else had found them either. Rex took a very small bit of comfort in that little tidbit of information, because he was the best scout on this planet. A flash of bright light fallowed by a streak of red and orange caught his eyes, not far off of the line his eyes had been holding. He had hoped that he might see one of the strange ships reenter the planets heavier atmosphere layers. This he hoped, was not a scouting mission craft but maybe it was going to land at the stranger's base of operation. He quickly picked up a well-used night vision binocular, and started to track the fire ball. As it made its way from north to south from his location on the mountain top. He was still tracking it when the deep boom that a supersonic craft made washed over him, in the classic double thunder clap that could only be made by a very high speed object. He was able to track the craft against three different land marks, before he lost his target in the dark sky. Before the fireball went over the horizon from him and disappeared from view. Now he smiled with a full set of yellow teeth showing. It had worked! It looked like he was going the right direction after all. The craft was moving fast and it would take him a long time cover the distance, which the high flying craft had covered in less than an hour.

Rex let his mind go over the contents still packed down on his speedily little craft. He still had three months of food backed on his craft. It was not like he could just pop a hog or something, to extend his limited food supplies. That would give him another month to a month in a half of scouting, before he would have to turn back for another resupply. When he thought about the route he would be using to get back to the settlement. He wondered how much the road will have been extended, since his last trip back. That was one job, which he was very glad he did not have to do. He loved scouting, but scouting for something as slow moving as a road? Having to do that in such a way that they had to keep from being seen from the air was dull work. Rex gave himself a slight shutter, and it was not because of the cold. He would rather pull the hair out of his nose one hair out at a time, than scout a path for a trail/supply road.

While Rex was watching the fire ball in the sky, a few thousand miles away the leaders of the Safe Port Bay Settlement were looking at the greatly expanded and detailed map. It was of the explored parts of the planet that they knew about. The road network was always expanding, slowly but steadily away from the protected bay. It looked like a spider's webbing spreading across the planet like some kind of malignant disease. They only had one bulldozer to support five different main roads or access ways they were building, and now maintaining. They were taking in all the scouting reports, then plotted out the information almost daily to all of the plotting devices. Then they would send a second scout team out to make a starter trail that would be cut with hand tools. The new extended trails were marketed and mapped out in both digital and hard copy formats. They would be passed along to the long ranged scouts, as they got ready to leave out again for another set of deep scouting mission. These slowly extending trails would make the trips back quicker for the other scouts. That was because they would not have to spend so much time slowing down and dodging round obstacles, as they made their way back to the few support locations. If anything worth wild was found it was marked on the maps, and a third team was sent out. But the still unknown strangers had not been found by any of the teams and this was starting to ware on both the scouts and everyone else in general.

The last step was that the Rhino would be sent out, to make a wider and smoother road to whatever was interesting. Any cut trees or large bits of wood would be loaded on the back of a NG-AT-26 Road Buster. Then it would be brought back to the settlement to be turned into lumber, or wood gas, or any of a number of much needed items for the stranded population. Besides mapping out more of the planet. The scouts had already found all the ingredients needed for making heavy damage resistant hydraulic cement. They should be able to start making the first loads of that very useful item, in only a few more days. Wooden Forms already were going up behind the main wooden palisade wall, to hold the wet mixed stuff even now. If their luck held out a little longer, they would be making it by the wheel barrel loads by the end of the week. Max was kicking himself, every hour for weeks now. He had been the one, which had the most heartburn about paying for scouting missions. That is before the nuclear explosion made it imperative. He could have been using that high strength concrete for years now. That is if he had not been so aggressive, about objecting to the cost of those scouting missions. Now it was proven that they would have been worthwhile. Mother Nature is a hell of a teacher, she gives you the final exam before giving you the homework.

While Rex was plotting were a fire ball might have gone on his detail map, and trying to stay warm. Captain Kelly was waiting on the tree covered wooden dock trying not to pace back and forth. Dexter had worked hard to be qualified to pilot the Crayfish amphibious submarine. It was allowing Dexter to detail explore areas of the bay that had not been looked at that closely before. He had found a nice sized deposit of gadolinium and neodymium already, but it was all under the bay's cold gray water. Dexter had pulled every favor on the books for the training on the odd little submarine/crawler. He wanted to recover the minerals that they needed for high temperature magnets and high temperature laser lenses for himself. He was not going to "let" someone else be the front person, and take a major cut of what he had found this time. Kelley checked his watch, again. Dexter was over due to return by six hours with his first load and Captain Kelly was worrying. If something happened to that specialized submarine? The Sea Bats and a few of his underwater optimized Power Armor or Robots have to do the job of getting the ores out of the water. It would take a lot longer and use more manpower, to bring up the same amount ores as that the Crayfish could do by itself. Kelly was just reaching for a land line phone. When something broke the surface of the water by the launching point they first used to access the land threw the Near Mangroves patch.

On this planet just like on some parts of the old Earth, when something disturbed the water at night, a family of microbes would give off flash of odd green light. The Settlement did not have any external lights put out, so Kelly could clearly see a V shaped light getting closer to the shore very clearly. As the square shaped ship rose from the water, six rows of V shaped lights expanded around a dark center. If this would have been the place Kelly had grown up and lived on? He would have sounded the alarm in a heartbeat, if not faster. Instead he just walked a little quicker than normal, to the dirt and rock boat ramp at the water's edge. This planet did not have any animals that would come on to land or on to the dock for that matter. So he just waited until enough of the square beast was out of the water, that he could hear the engines and treads in operations. Then he would pass the alert to the nearest guard point or team.

Captain Kelly and one of the guard force people in a SAMAS suit waited for the slow moving amphibious sub, to make its way completely out of the dark cold water. The little multi uses submarine did not look like it had, when It had left the day before from this same spot of almost dry dirt. It was now covered in rope nets holding large misshaped rocks all over the top and high walled sides of the Crayfish. The guard in the CS made SAMAS suit opened up his visor to relay a message to the waiting Captain. The Pilot told Kelly that the crew leader, wanted to take the whole vehicle into Warehouse 3 to unload. The SAMAS would be the ground guide for the still moving Crayfish, so no one could get hurt walking around the large track mounted sub in the dark with no lights. It took about half an hour to get the slow moving machine threw the large trees with the homes built nearby. It was slow but an uneventful passage of time. There were very few people moving around this time of night in the Settlement. Soon the odd shaped machine was stopped again, and no damage had been done to any building between the Warehouse and the Bay's water edge. When Dexter climbing out of the cab with arms loads of rock he was followed by the crew that had been crazy enough to go with him, in this underwater adventure The man was smiling and as much as Kelly could tell. Dexter was sober, or doing a very good job of acting that way.

Dexter saw the warship Captain standing near, and walked over with lumps of rock still in his arms. "Sir, I did not expect to see you so soon. I wanted the lab guys test these first before I reported in." He half raised the arm load of fist sized rocks held in some kind of fishnet style bag to keep them from falling out of his arms. "The systems on the Crayfish said what they are, but I had no way knowing how pure the rare earths are in each rock." He turned and used his head to point at the box shaped submarine. "I picked up as many rocks, as we could and still come in close to our timeline." He tried to look down, but the arm load of rocks was in the way. "I just did not think that outside nets would cause that much drag, and slow us down so much." His head came up some, but he could not look Captain Kelly in the eyes. "I think the rocks might have come down the big river, or washed down off of the barrier ridges. I just don't know enough yet, to tell where they came from. But there should be more than enough down there to meet our needs for a long time on the bay floor alone. I plotted out were we found each rock, that will help if we need to find more." The man had a huge smile on his face, he was very proud of himself and what he had been able to accomplish.

Captain Kelly slapped the younger man on the shoulder, almost hard enough to over balance the man. "Why don't you lock everything up in the warehouse, and get some sleep in a real bed first. You can bring the lab guys in to run the test on your find later, after you get some sleep. If the ores all check out? Then the clam is all yours Mr. Woods. You can rent any of the equipment you need to pull up what village needs, as we need it. And again, Great Job Dexter!" Kelly turned away the massive building, and headed back to his cabin on his ship. One of these days, I might have to take them up on the offer to have my own place dirt-side. He was thinking as we walked through the night.