For a moment I forget where I was, why I was blaster fired almost blindly in the dark, following the sound of an animal snarling, and the brief flashes of light that came from our panicked shooting. It was nothing more than a desperate reaction of fear. In that instant it was just me, and the threat. If I was in a better state of mind I might have said something about watching were you fired. As it was I did no better than anyone else had.
"Gah! Something bit me!" A Gerresian yelled, firing dangerously close to me as the animal violently tore past me. I ducked under a few shots, rolling away from the blasts with a speed I didn't know I could muster.
One energy blast in particular brushed past my face, sending a lance of agony down my body from where what was left of my ear sat on my head. I ignored it as best I could as I tried to focus on whatever had gotten into the room with us, the adrenaline working wonders for me. I started to remember what was going on between the heartbeats pushing my blood through the throbbing burn on the side of my head. I stopped looking for the danger, and felt for it instead, ignoring the growing shouts of surprise and fear filling the air around us.
I heard empty clicking to my side as someone tried and failed to turn the overhead light on, cursing as he did. Even the emergency lights in the hall had gone out.
I swung around to my left, powering a blast as the creature lunged at me. Another flash of red lit up the room, and I felt a surge of relief at the sound of a high pitched, and decidedly inhuman scream. Thankfully the others heard it too, the sound of their blasters fading as I pushed my own against the creatures chest, and fired three more times, just to be sure. I turned to the now open door of our hiding spot, just barely picking up on a few more energy signatures as they backed away, nothing more than a few dozen feet outside our room.
Even so close they were hard to sense, difficult enough that I wouldn't have noticed if I wasn't actively looking for them.
"They found us!" It was Marriv who spoke first, his voice breaking. "They fo-" I slammed the door shut as they started to creep closer, no doubt picking up on the fear in his voice. As soon as it closed they crossed the distance in little more than an instant , sniffing around now that we weren't yelling and screaming like no tomorrow. I couldn't even hear them breathe, but their ki told me they were just outside. When I was sure we weren't about to be attacked I spoke up.
"Maybe they did, but screaming about it isn't going to help." I winced as I felt something press up against the door. "Does anyone have something to use as a light? We need to have an idea what we're dealing with." General mumbles of agreement came from the group, but if anyone had anything of use they didn't come forward. A minute later I sighed at the realization.
"Fine, I'll see what I can do myself." I wasn't particularly fond of the idea sharing my power with people, but this was more important than comfort.
I extended a palm, concentrating my energy in much the same way I had as I practiced aboard the spaceship. I felt as my energy listened to my command, flowing warmly through my arm and bathing the room in shimmering blue faces of my fellow slaves showed surprise, but less than I was expecting, still, something felt off about looking at them. I felt my lip curl in disgust when I brought the light to the corpse in our midst. It was thin, covered in tough, elephant-like skin and it had four legs. Almost like a dog. Almost.
It was simultaneously too skinny, and too large, but most jarringly different from animals I was familiar with, was its head. Its head was too wide, and far too expressive. It looked in a strange and warped way human, it's lips drawn back in a frown, that when combined with its eyes, looked truly genuine. It was a bizarre mixture of what looked to be honest sadness and pure hunger. I hated it immediately, but carefully looked over the body. Checking for tattoos, markings, scars, and anything like a collar. When I found none I stood up, feeling out the energy on the surface.
No one was close, or suspicious. Just a few soldiers sitting in another building.
"I think these are wild." It was either that or we were screwed anyway,
"What?" One of the aliens ground out, holding his bleeding hand gingerly.
"These animals are scavengers, and pack hunters, but I don't think they belong to anyone. Look at its weight and the lack of identifying markers. I bet they just came here for the water, and the potential food. " I shrugged my shoulders. "They probably noticed us sleeping and figured we were an easy meal." I kicked the body. "They guessed wrong, but that does leave one question." I looked around the room, finally noticing what was wrong.
"Who opened the door?" Someone was missing.
"Where's N'lam? Was it his shift?" I looked over to the bleeding Gerresian, V'hun. He was supposed to take the shift after my own.
He nodded. "N'lam was complaining about having to urinate, but I told him to either go in a corner or wait till the morning." I scoffed as the pieces came together. He had probably left on his shift, leaving the door open as he did. When he was ambushed he likely didn't have the time to yell before he was killed, the animals catching him with the strange quiet they moved with. Hell, they almost got us for the same reason. I tried to keep hold of my anger.
I was nearly killed because someone needed to piss.
"Chances are he's dead then. We'll check in a few hours, hopefully after they leave." I carefully pushed a shelf over the door, gesturing to the others to sit. before sitting myself and attempting to meditate as best I damned fool had almost brought his people that much closer to extinction, all for some mixture of pride and embarrassment.
The anger made my attempt more a hateful nap than a learning experience.
I did note that ki was easier to draw when I was angry, but harder to control.
Of course N'lam wasn't the only person we lost over the following weeks.
When morning arrived, or at least when we felt it had, we moved the debris out of the doorway and found a new spot to hide. The dog-like creatures were no-where to be found, but we did discover his body in something resembling a wash room. The group had to follow me as we explored the halls, relying on what little light I could provide to keep themselves useful.
The power had gone out sometime the night before, nearly having as much a hand in our potential death as N'lam did, but no one had gathered the courage to go outside and face the danger on our own, preferring the disturbing presence of the scavengers over the certain death the defenders offered. As we put distance from our last hiding place I noticed that this place was larger than any of us had expected, the hallways and pipes seemingly stretching onward for miles in every direction, leaving me with only more questions as to why it was all so empty.
I discovered I had no issue lighting our way for hours on end, which I considered a big improvement from the painful beginnings I had on board the ship.
We found a new spot in another closet, this one closer to the stairs for an easier escape to the other levels, and filled with useful supplies like actually dry cloth and timbre, a number of tools probably once used for cleaning if at the cost of some of our ability to hide from sentient enemies. In lieu of hunting for supplies that night we gathered the driest wood and cloth we could find, before lighting the blase with a low powered blast of our weapons, cooking the scavenger who had attacked us. It managed to last us two nights before we had to take a risk again.
I took the time to bandage my now damaged ear, but was happy enough to notice that I only lost a bit of the cartilage on the upper half, leaving me a bit uglier, but not deprived of hearing.
With torches and a more secure place to stay I volunteered to gather the supplies with two others, Marriv and F'xal. We waited just below the surface, hiding in the stairwell for hours as we memorized guard schedules and let the sun disappear over the horizon. We managed to make it to the scrap field with managable ease, stealing a few more blasters from a number of corpses, and almost a full crate of nutrient paste.
F'xal made a commotion when he noticed a number of guards getting too close to us as we made our way back to the spire our group had hidden in, leading them away before we were noticed. No one bothered asking what became of him when we returned alone. Thankfully his sacrifice all but made certain we didn't have to leave again.
The fighting kept going above ground, with the occasional wave of PTO men attacking only to retreat before they took any real losses. They would strike hard and fast, before leaving as soon as the could when the defenders actually managed to rally.
I spent the days training as my body adjusted to Xecroas' gravity, occasionally playing a few childrens games as we waited for the news of the battle to come. Without a scouter it was difficult to say for sure, but I was certain I had grown nearly as strong as the Gerresains naturally were. The lights never came back on, but each of us now kept torches around at all times.
Of course they didn't provide much help when the scavengers came back. We never saw them the second time around, but that time they let us hear them, scratching lightly at the door whenever it seemed like our guard dropped. I don't know if it was curiosity or intelligence that drove them to it, but none of us were willing to fight them over noise we could try and ignore.
The third and fourth time they found us when we were outside, during the day when we thought they were less active, following us but not attacking as we drew a slow retreat back to our closet. scratching at our door for hours before finally drawing away. It was around then we started to get nervous, maybe it was the isolation, the stress, or just the damned animals themselves, but it wasn't long before I started to feel like taking my chances above ground were a better option. I didn't have to ask whether the others felt the same.
The fifth time they attacked us as we listened to our communicators for the first time in days, the poor quality of our blasters leaving us with a silence and static the actual soldiers probably didn't have. It probably didn't help that we were underground. By some miracle I managed to pick up a reception, and for a moment we had almost forgotten about them.
"-Expected outliers have surpassed expectations, but have been removed from targets D, A, and E. Forces are to rest and await further orders on final targets. We should have this wrapped up by the end of the week." Considering it had been nearly a month I was ready to let out a dry comment about her predictive ability when a scream, raw and pained, cut me off.
It was N'lam's voice, and I would sworn it was him if I hadn't seen his body weeks before. No words sounded from behind the door, but his desperate, suffering moans were so easy to make out it was almost like it was in the room with us. Not one of us made a sound as it screamed.
When I reached for the source of the sounds ki I found that it was different from the scavengers. Just as hard to read but distinct in its own unique way.
It got me scared, and I made a mistake. When it finally stopped, hours later, I stood, stretching as a way to hide the shiver that had been building in me almost as soon as that sound started.
"We can't stay here anymore. We leave now."