In this chapter I send the Atlantians off to rescue Resilience, as well as Trudy. Next chapter I'll probably throw in something weird in the ground.

I landed the fighter at our camp to refill the fuel, and then flew using bands to Hometree. I landed there and walked over to the fallen tree. All the fires had burned themselves out, and grass was just starting to creep in around the edges. I went towards the base of the tree to where Paul lay. I took out my knife and cut in an X with a line down the middle. I took a step back and hit something with my foot. I looked down and saw an ARC. Paul must've thrown it to the side before he was killed. I picked it up and put it in my pocket, maybe I could do something with it later.

I stayed there a few hours, and then returned to the Omaticaya camp. Some of the other tribes were already starting to leave, but there was still a sizable force left. Jake seemed to have been accepted as their leader, and was doing a good job at it. In just three days, he had gotten the humans to leave Pandora back towards earth. Once they had left, I started repairing Hope with the others. We got the normal engines to work, but the burn chambers were still having some trouble.

I was fixing some of the armour plating when we got a response from a rather old signal. "Sir, remember when we sent out a signal for Willpower?" ARC said.

"Yes. Did they answer?"

"No. They are all dead. "

"Oh. "

Five months later, Hope had been repaired. It could burn now, and the entire inside was pressurized, except for the main cargo hold. All we needed now was fuel. It was easy to find, since the fuel was combined from simple elements, and both were plentiful on Pandora. Once we found all we needed, we were able to leave. Before we did though, I needed to talk to Jake and Trudy.

"Jake, the other Atlantians and I have to leave the planet now. We will return as soon as we can, but we may be gone for more than five years, if we run into problems, " I said.

"Where are you going too?" He asked.

"Other Atlantians have sent us a distress signal requesting a rescue, and we have to help them before it's too late. It should take us about a month if all goes as planned, but we still know very little about the planet they are in. "

"In?"

"Yes. It's hard to explain. "

"Okay. Thanks for letting me know. "

I left and found Trudy, who was trying to fix up her helicopter, which had been badly damaged in the fight but was coming along nicely.

"Trudy, we are leaving the planet for a while and would like to ask you to come along with us. You're a great pilot and we could use someone with your skills on our ship. "

She set down her wrench and turned to me. "Where are you going to?"

"Others of us have run into a problem, and we have to rescue them. "

"How long will I be gone?"

"If everything goes well, only a month or so. If we run into a bunch of problems, five years or more. "

"Great, I'm in. "

"All right. When would you like to leave?"

"Whenever you're ready. "

"In two days then?"

"Sure. "

"All right. I'll find you when we're ready. "

Over the next two days, we brought up all of our equipment from base camp, as well as a few helicopters left by the humans, including Trudy's, which we fixed completely. When we were ready, we brought her up in the maintenance shuttle. In the hangar we had the fighter, the maintenance shuttle, and five helicopters, which we had modified to be able to fly in space and also have increased speed in atmosphere. Along the back of the wall we had lots of fuel and mining equipment, along with barrels upon barrels of water. We kept the food, spacesuits, medipads, and weapons closer to the bridge.

"You had this the whole time? I know some people on earth who would kill to see this. ", Trudy said when she stepped onto the ship.

"It's been badly damaged for a long time, and we've been repairing it for five months. ", I replied. "Come on, let's get to the bridge. "

Hope was meant to have twelve pilots, but we had made several modifications to bring it down to seven. I showed Trudy how to work the console she would be at. After she was comfortable with the setup, we began to start the burn sequence for the second time.

"A lot of this stuff is decades, even centuries ahead of earth. How long have you guys had to make all of this? "

"Let's leave it at a long time. " I didn't want to explain the time machine disaster to her. We had more important things to think about right now.

"Okay. Works for me. "

"Alright. Let's get ready to go. Everybody to your spots please. " Everyone went to their consoles, and I checked everything one last time. "Cloaking shield off, guns in, Atomic Dissapator online, everything looks good. Begin burn sequence, " I said.

"Burn sequence engaged. Ready to burn in two minutes, " Ben said.

"Whenever you're ready, burn, " I replied. Two minutes later the ship rocketed into light speed. Over the next four days, we waited for us to arrive at the planet. It was an uneventful trip, which was a welcome change from battles on Pandora.

When we arrived, we got our first glimpse of the planet. It was about twice the size of Pandora, and was a solid planet, but the atmosphere was thick with gases. It was unbreathable, and too thick to see very far. The temperature was a little lower than was comfortable, but we could deal with it. We orbited the planet to locate where Resilience would be easiest to access, and got suited up to descend to the planet.

Upon landing, we lost contact with Hope due to the heavy fog. There was little water in the air, which meant we would have to bring our own. The second day we got a camp set up around the location where we would be mining so we wouldn't have to wear the suits all the time. We created plasma and used it to melt the ground away, which let us get up to a hundred feet on most days. When we were about an eighth of the way to Resilience, we encountered a large cavern.