Chapter 1: Hello New Friend and New Problems

Seresh stood up and brushed himself off as well. He grabbed his OT and gave it a quick function check, then holstered it. He looked over to see his new found friend fiddling with her wrist computer. She was obviously trying to get a comm signal. The white traveler grew frustrated quickly and gave the wrist computer a hard thump.

'Percussive maintenance.' Seresh said, laughing to himself. The white traveler turned and looked at him.

'What?' she asked. She reached up and clicked her helmet reduce button. The helmet folded back into her suit and saw his new friend for the first time.

She was blue skinned with eyes that were completely white. She had standard organic facial features; eyes, nose and mouth. Her reddish-orange hair was cut short, with bangs hanging down in front of her face. It was then that Seresh noticed the rather large scar that ran from her right temple to the side of her lip. Whatever had caused it, Seresh thought to himself, would have been extremely painful.

'Percussive maintenance. Hit something hard enough and it should work.' Seresh said, hitting the reduce the button on his helmet as well, with this HUD telling him that this world's atmo was fine for his body's physical makeup. His new friend smiled, an easy smile. 'You have a name?'

'Maysin Beltran. First Lieutenant of the Liberation Fleet.' She replied. She must have seen Seresh's eyes go wide and mouth drop. 'Heard of us, have you?' This time her smile was one of pride.

'You're kidding? THE Liberation fleet? The only fleet to take on a sentinel battlefrieighter and win? If you believe the stories, you guys have been tearing the sentinels apart for the last ten galactic cycles.' Seresh was suddenly very glad he had met his new friend.

'Three actually.' Maysin said, as she started walking and motioned for Seresh to follow.

'Three what?'

'It was three battlefrieghters. And yeah, most of the stories are true.' Maysin had to come back and grab Seresh and make him keep walking, as the shock of THREE battlefrieghters was too much.

'So what are you, worst assassin? From that OT and cargo storage unit on your back, I would guess mechanic of some kind?' Maysin asked, easily moving through heavy underbrush.

Seresh sighed to himself. Here he was in the presence of a soldier of the Liberation fleet, and she already pegged him for lowly mechanic. She wasn't wrong, but it didn't help the sting. Seresh had followed in his father's footsteps, and hated it every step of the way. As a child, he had dreamed of exploring the stars, fighting rabid beasts and taking on the Sentinels. But in the intervening years he had never even left his home planet except for a few excursions to the system's space station on his father's (now his) old rust bucket of a ship. He knew that was pretty standard across the galaxy. He always saw ships coming and going both at his outpost and the space station, but it was still a small percentage of the population that had a ship and even smaller that had a working hyperdrive.

'Yeah, mechanic.' he replied, after a short pause. Maysin must have picked up on his hesitation, or saw the shame he was trying desperately to hide in his face, because she paused her forward march and looked at him.

'My father was a mechanic aboard our system's space station. Thirty two years he kept that place running.' She said. He saw pride in her smile again, although it could have been just for his benefit.

'I'm sorry. At least you made something of yourself. I wasn't so lucky.' The words kind of spilled out of Seresh, and Maysin's expression changed from one of pride to...Seresh was not sure, maybe anger? She leaned forward a bit, as though she had to whisper to be heard.

'I am not ashamed of my father, or his profession. My father worked hard, everyday. He did so that my sisters and I had a roof over our heads and three hot meals a day. I could not be more proud of that man. Now, let's move, I want to make that hilltop before it gets dark.' The last part sounded more like an order as she pointed towards a wooded hilltop in the distance. Maysin turned and began making her way through the underbrush again. Seresh hung his head and followed.

The planet they had been stranded on would have been officially classified by the Exploration Guild as a "Temperate Paradise" planet. Seresh checked his wrist computer and the temperature had not changed much from seventy three degrees Fahrenheit. Just warm enough to cause you to sweat, just cool enough to made the sweat cold on your face. His suit's internal temp was maintaining around the same, but Seresh was a mechanic. Hiking through woods was something he had never done. Ever. He tried his best to hide his heavy breathing from Maysin. She was already mad at him from the lucky remark. He was determined to not screw up anymore today.

As they crested another hill, Seresh engaged his helmet again and marked the hilltop Maysin had pointed too. The internal nav said it was roughly ten kilometers away. Seresh sighed between heavy breaths. He reduced his helmet again and marched onward.

The planet had a purple hue to it. The dominant grass was purple and a lot of the trees were large and had reddish leaves. The sky was blue, and Seresh found himself staring up at it more then once, getting lost in it. His own home planet was fouled by natural toxins that the planet emitted from beneath its crust. Seresh had never seen a sky that was not rotting green. It was also the reason he had a state of the art filtration system in his suit. Ten seconds breathing in the planet's natural air, and you were dead.

It was, of course, due to Seresh's natural luck, that he was staring up at the blue sky like a star-struck child when Maysin grabbed him and threw him to the ground. They were at the crest of another hill. Before Seresh could, angrily, ask what was going on, Maysin put her hand over his mouth. She applied enough pressure that Seresh realized she was serious. The soldier slowly slid her OT out if its holster and used it to point at something over the hill in the small valley below.

Seresh craned his neck, and although Maysin did not let go of her iron grip on his mouth, allowed him enough movement to look. In the valley, he saw three red lights moving about inside the tree-line. At first he was angry. Maysin was worried about what could possibly be people and they were saved. However, as the red lights moved out of the tree-line, Seresh realized he was very wrong to be angry. Three sentinels moved into the clearing, scanning a nearby critter that was long, furry and had several eyes on its head, and who was desperately trying to get away from them. The sentinels were easily a meter long and had a box shape to the them, and were obviously using some sort of grav-tech to float above the ground. The sentinels were also insanely fast, and moved with the creature with ease. When they were done scanning, one of the sentinels fired a single laser blast from its red central eye that incinerated the poor creature. Had Maysin not kept her hand on Seresh's mouth, it would not have been there to stifle his frightened scream.

'Red sents.' Maysin whispered, matter of factly. Seresh, although still fighting with his fear, gave her a 'What in Atlas is a Red Sent' look.

'Red sent. The little eyeball in the middle is glowing red. That only means one thing. KYOS class.' She whispered, taking her eyes from Seresh and watching the sentinels move off in a eastward direction. When she brought her eyes back to Seresh, he gave Maysin a 'What in Atlas does KYOS mean?' look.

'Kill you on sight.'