Chapter 7 - Survivor
John carefully helped Devoras over the rough ground and into the rear passenger seat of Concorde. He was badly injured, but it looked as though he would recover with time. Ben was very concerned for his old friend's condition, but even that would not disperse the vast number of questions he needed answered. Will, who had never seen Devoras before gave a slight start as the Kineishan passed by. In the bright daylight, he was just barely Humanoid in appearance, with greyish skin, short silver hair and an overall physiology which looked slightly similar in build to the Kinecelerans. Their home-worlds were apparently in the same star system.
By the time Sarah had emerged from the darkness of the deserted outpost building carrying several log recording units, anything which may be needed at some point in the future was packed and ready.
"Dev." Said Ben approaching the left side of the chrome AG which he was sitting in. "You alright? I don't know how you got out of that attack alive. Everyone else, well…"
" I know alright." He said, slightly dazed however determined to stand up regardless. "But I still don't understand why. Everything seemed to kind of just… Miss me by inches. Not that I'm not glad to be out of there in one piece of course, but it was really disturbing to just watch it happen."
"But what exactly did happen? And why?" Asked Ben, curiosity mounting. "From that message you left us, about all we could make out were a couple of large creatures slashing at officers and others just randomly dropping dead all over the place."
"Well…" Began Devoras, taking a deep breath. "Last night, we spotted about twenty suspicious-looking aircraft doing flyovers every hour or so. They didn't seem to have any hostile intent at that point though… Johnson gave orders for them to be followed, so we did. Everything seemed fine right until we got up close, a few feet from their hull. It was like we triggered some kind of automatic defence mechanism against capture. All twenty ships locked on to us, fired one small energy charge each and seemed to just phase out."
"Did you find out anything about them?" Asked Ben, now beginning to pace between the AG and the outpost door.
"Yes." Said Devoras certainly. "They weren't manned and they definitely weren't real."
"Uh… Define 'not real'." He said.
"We fired several times before they took us down. Every shot missed. Sam even tried ramming them but hit nothing. Turns out it was just a diversion to get us away from the base. When I returned, we were facing a full-scale assault. I managed to record that warning before…" He broke off, thinking over what had happened so quickly. "All those people. Many of whom I've known for years…"
Ben had heard all he needed.
"OK." He said aloud, addressing the group. The understanding of what had happened seemed to stir him into action. "It looks like we're dealing with something that doesn't want us to know anything about what it's doing or what it's goals are. And judging by what's happened here, we've got to assume the worst."
"Do you mean-" Began Will, but his question was cut short.
"Yes." Said Ben firmly as he walked over to Nova. "I'm willing to bet we're about to face something big. Dev, we need you to contact the other outposts. Get any scrap of info you can about what's going on. We might not have long to get ready for whatever's coming our way."
"In that case" Said John "We'd better get going. Whatever it is has probably tracked here by now… "
He began extracting packages from the pilot seat of his craft, about to climb in.
"No, Dad." Replied Ben. "I think we should leave Defiant and Concorde here this time. Just take Nova. There are enough seats for all of us, and the we need go unnoticed. One large AG will draw less attention that three small ones."
"OK." Said John, slightly downhearted, but in favour of the idea. "What do we do with the other two then?"
"Why not leave them here?" Asked Devoras, weakly. "There's a hangar on the top floor."
"Good idea." Ben replied. "Come then, lets move."