Author's Notes: Thanks for all of the reviews guys. I appreciate the feedback and shall post this chapter as my reply.

The Dying Planet

After not hearing anything above for quite some time and assuming it was probably night based on what Laes could remember, he decided to climb out to investigate things. This took a very long time because of his broken arm, and Lard Nar attempting to stop him more than once, and his lack of stamina, but he did eventually make it out.

The stars were sitting in the inky blackness above, and so was a moon. He stared up at them for a little while before returning his attention to what was around him; the destroyed remains of the base...

A couple walls were still standing, but one looked like part of it was missing. Sharp metal debris and other shrapnel from the woods lay strewn around on the tiled floor which was cracked and broken apart in a few places.

"How does it look?" Lard Nar asked from below.

"I think the worms are gone," Laes replied, sucking in a breath. He could do this. He wasn't going very far.

Slowly he picked his way through the debris and was pleasantly surprised when he found a few unopened bags of snacks from the destroyed pantry. He picked these up and hurried back to the shaft and dropped them down to Lard Nar who was probably startled by this since Laes forgot to say something.

"It's a mess out here though," Laes remarked. It really was. Whole trees had been uprooted and the ground had been broken apart.

"Ok... you need to come back," Lard Nar told him. "We can explore the area better in the daylight."

"I'll be down in a minute... I just..." he wanted to find out what happened to Darden. He couldn't tell Lard Nar though. Probably.

Of course it would be easier to see during the day. At least it had finally stopped raining, although everything was still pretty muddy.

Then he saw something in the sky. It was wriggling around... almost like...

Oh cripes. It was a worm. They weren't all gone yet.

"Look out!" he called as he jumped down the hole. He realized just before he landed that he hadn't quite given Lard Nar enough time to move out of the way. Oops.

He smashed into Lard Nar who hit the floor. "Oh shoot... sorry..." Laes apologized, clutching his head as he sort of fell off of the former leader of the Resisty and rolled onto his back. "Are you ok?"

"Yes..." Lard Nar answered. "What happened?"

"They're not gone yet," Laes replied. It was still too dark for anyone to see the hand gestures he was making. "I just saw one in the sky."

"Ok..." Lard Nar said, and he let out a sigh. "Let's stay quiet and wait until morning."

As soon as the first glimmers of daylight filtered down, Lard Nar climbed up the metal shaft to take a look around. He was still being fairly quiet although it wasn't in his usual avoidant kind of way. After a few minutes he returned and beckoned Laes who'd been watching from below.

When Laes finally managed to make it to the top, he struggled to pull himself away from the hole. His good arm was really tired now. He didn't think he'd be able to climb back up here again, so hopefully the worms weren't around anymore.

In the light he could see all of the trees around them had been uprooted and tossed around. They were already rotting. That was unusual. The base had been completely smashed apart except for the two walls he noticed last night. The muddy earth was broken and displaced, and the tiled floor he was standing on was cracked. Even the rocks they'd set the base next to had been flattened.

What was once a thick forest was really quiet and still... almost as though whatever animals had been living there were gone... had the worms eaten all of the creatures on this planet? Laes wondered. He brought his hand to his face when he thought about it... if everything really had been devoured then this planet might never recover.

It was just a death planet filled with killer animals and plants anyway he chided himself. Did it really matter if it was ruined? There was no sign of sentient life here.

"So this is what these things do..." Laes commented in awe as he stared at the carnage around him. The trees that had been uprooted were losing their leaves and branches. How could something rot so quickly...? It smelled like rotting wood too. "Are they toxic?"

"No," Lard Nar responded as he knelt down in the mud and touched the trunk of a fallen tree. "At least I don't think so..." The bark crumbled beneath his hand, and he drew away. "These plants are so well protected... I don't think they've ever been taken out of the earth like this before..." he stood up and brushed whatever mud he could off his pants. "They're probably dying from shock."

"Oh... so the planet could recover then," Laes breathed a sigh of relief. He wasn't sure why he was feeling relieved. There didn't seem to be anything very important here except maybe a few healing herbs or something. "That's good... I think."

"It might..." Lard Nar agreed with a slight nod.

"So um..." Laes started fidgeting with his sling. "Are you feeling better?" He wished he could have asked that question less directly, but he couldn't think of any other way of asking.

Lard Nar breathed a sigh and closed his eyes. "I don't have a choice but to be better right now Laes. The few survivors left are already frightened enough... I don't want to add to their worries."

His eyes opened as he moved further into the mess of fallen trees.

Laes glanced up at the sky. There were no clouds anymore. It was kind of strange. Usually it was raining. Maybe this change was normal for the planet, but he couldn't help wondering if the worms could impact the weather or climate somehow. If they could, then maybe this planet was doomed.

If it was doomed then they needed to find a way off quickly. The Irkens had smashed all of the technology on this planet to pieces though... and now they couldn't even use the base because the worms had destroyed that...

It hadn't fully deployed, so if they could find an energy source maybe there would be something he and Lard Nar could use: tools, computers, wires, metal materials... anything would help.

Staring at the sky wasn't helping... he sighed as he looked back at the wreckage around him. He didn't want to move too far from their underground hideout. Last night he hadn't been able to see all of the devastation. How many worms had been out here?

"Laes," Lard Nar called from somewhere in the tree pile. It kind of looked like a pile; a very large messy pile of dead and dying trees.

"Yeah?" Laes responded, and he hurried over to the edge of this pile, making sure his feet were still planted on the cold broken floor. "Did you find something?"

"Come here."

Laes gulped when he looked at the plants nearby. They looked dead, but maybe they weren't. None of them looked spikey or toothy... and Lard Nar hadn't said anything about getting mauled when he went in.

He sucked in a breath. "Ok, coming," he said as he stepped down off the floor. He started carefully picking his way over top the fallen trees.

Lard Nar had gone a lot further in then he thought. Laes had to pause to catch his breath after climbing over another particularly tall log. He wiped some sweat off his forehead and glanced behind him to see if he could still see the remains of the base. He couldn't. If a worm descended on him now he'd get eaten for sure.

"Laes."

At least Lard Nar's voice was sounding closer.

"Coming," Laes called, and he forced himself to keep going. His sling caught on a small branch and ripped a little. He had to untangle himself from that before pressing on. Then he slid on something slimy and crashed into another fallen tree. "Oh cripes..." he breathed as he righted himself. He stumbled over a small plant, but this time he caught himself before falling.

He could see Lard Nar's back. The former leader of the Resisty was hunched over something. Laes approached him from behind, and he was startled to see Darden lying pinned beneath one of the logs.

The soldier's disguise was gone so he looked like himself again. His antennae were pressed flat and his ruby red eyes were squeezed shut in pain. There was blood dripping down his face from a scrape on his head, and his face had a few very notifiable bruises. The rest of him was hidden under the dead tree.

"Darden?" Laes gasped as he hurried over to the fallen soldier. "What happened?"

The Irken cracked open an eye. "What does it look like?" he groaned through clenched teeth.

"You um... got crushed by a tree?" Laes guessed.

Darden attempted to move a little, but he seemed to be stuck pretty good. "Close enough..." he grumbled, and blood oozed from the corner of his mouth.

Laes reached to grab his arm, but he froze when the soldier shot him a pretty intense glare.

"Don't touch me," he growled.

"Yeah uh... normally I wouldn't," Laes spoke as he hesitantly grasped the Irken's shoulder. "But you can't really stay there... so... let me help you maybe?"

"Laes... wait," Lard Nar placed a hand on top of his to stop him.

He looked at the former leader of the Resisty expecting to see some kind of hostility reflected in the other Vortian's expression. There was none though. At least none Laes could see anyway. He still wasn't really good at reading expressions.

"If we try to move him, we might cause more damage..." Lard Nar explained, and he moved Laes' hand away from Darden's shoulder.

"But we can't just leave him here," Laes insisted. Being crushed under a tree would definitely be uncomfortable, but Lard Nar was right. Dragging Darden out might be impossible depending on how well he was lodged underneath. Also moving Darden could possibly cause the tree to roll the wrong direction... assuming they could even budge the trapped Irken.

Vortians weren't very strong after all.

"We need to lift the tree straight up to avoid causing anymore crushing injuries..." Lard Nar mused, tapping his chin. "That means we will need a pulley system... I think if we double up the vines twice they'll be strong enough to lift it." The former leader of the Resisty gestured to a tree nearby that was leaning quite badly, but it was still stuck in the ground. "We can use that... I'll reinforce it to make sure it doesn't go anywhere if you want to start gathering the vines. Try to find some long ones since we're going to need to tie them a few times."

Right. Laes smacked himself in the forehead. Vortians weren't strong, but they were supposed to be smart. How could he forget about the whole problem solving thing? Sure most of the stuff here was wood and not metal, but they could still build with it.

"Ok... I'll go do that," Laes responded. He glanced at Darden who looked more annoyed than anything else. "We're going to get you out ok? So just be um... patient?"

"I don't have much choice," Darden responded; his antennae flattening even more.

It took them most of the afternoon to get everything in place. Ixane volunteered to help them pull, and even though none of them were very strong, the way Lard Nar set it up allowed them to lift the tree enough for Darden to crawl out.

The Irken rose to his feet and nearly lost his balance. His legs were trembling, but he grabbed onto a branch of another fallen tree to steady himself. He was covered in small scratches, but what was the most troubling for him likely was the condition his pak was in. Irken paks were strong and very difficult to break, but his had been dented in a few places. If it had been working properly Darden would have been able to get himself out without much trouble.

Then there was the large bloody hole in his back right below his pak. It looked pretty sore to say the least. Laes quickly found something else to look at so he wouldn't start getting dizzy and/or nauseous. There was more blood coming from cracks in his armour, but no one here was a medic so the soldier was going to have to deal with it on his own.

"The temperature is falling," Darden noted as he glanced up at the sky.

The sun didn't look as big as Laes remembered, and now that Darden mentioned it, the air was feeling a bit chillier today.

"I hope this isn't the case, but there is a possibility the worms have sent this planet off orbit."

"How could they do that...?" Laes questioned; his eyes wide in surprise. "I mean... they're big, but they're not that big."

"Whatever it is... we need to get off this planet," Darden decided and he took a step to test his balance. Then apparently satisfied he wasn't going to topple over, he began walking through the piles of twisted and broken trees towards the remains of the base.

Laes turned his attention to Lard Nar who was sitting on a log, catching his breath. The leader of the Resisty had probably done most of the pulling... huh... maybe that's why he hadn't struggled as much as he thought he should have. Ixane was standing close by watching as Darden disappeared from view.

"He's pretty focused isn't he?" she said, looking from Laes to Lard Nar.

"Well... I don't think he has much else to do..." Laes remarked, fiddling with his sling. "He was left here with the rest of us... and that's pretty much a death sentence."

"Is he safe...?" Ixane questioned Laes.

"Um...no. If you make him mad he'll definitely punch you in the face." He knew that from experience. He rubbed the place he remembered receiving said punch to the face.

"Oh..." she spoke; her voice fading. "Really...? So the children..."

"He doesn't seem interested in attacking us," Lard Nar commented as he slowly stood up from the log. "He had a knife, not to mention the other sharp implements in his pak... if his goal was to kill us he could have easily done it already."

"His self-destruct button might still be working too..." Laes offered, and he managed a smile when both members of the Resisty turned to stare at him. He rose his hands in self-defence. "I just thought I should probably mention that."

"I don't trust him..." Lard Nar touched his eye patch and let out a sigh. "But right now our goal seems to be the same."

If that changed though... what would happen? Laes couldn't help worrying about it. Irkens could be pretty unpredictable. Bann and Zim sure were anyway... the guards had been fairly predictable though. Was Bann really defective? The young soldier had to be... there was no way he could have turned against his own people if he wasn't.

Was Darden defective too? Is that why the Tallest left him here to die? Wouldn't having too many defective Irkens mess up their system really badly?

"I need to get back to the children," Ixane decided as she started walking in the direction of the destroyed base.

"So um..." Laes glanced at Lard Nar who seemed to be debating whether or not he should follow her. "What's our plan?"

"Plan?" Lard Nar repeated, blinking.

"Yeah like... how should we go about leaving this place?"

"A plan..." Lard Nar muttered turning away before bringing a hand to his head. "Right... one of those would be good..."

Laes balked. "There's no plan?"

"Coming up with plans isn't really my strength Laes..."

"Oh..." Laes deflated a bit. Come to think of it, Lard Nar had gotten himself thrown into prison because he didn't have a plan... and neither of them had been able to come up with a good plan to escape either. A wrench? Really?

"Yeah. Me too."

Maybe Darden could think of a plan. It was worth asking him anyway.