Trapped on Novas Ch. 06

It took her nearly an hour to find the downed pod, not only did the harsh terrain slow her down but she only had an approximate location for the crash site. The jungle seemed to have rapidly started to swallow up the invader making it hard to spot but it didn’t take Tessa long after getting there to realise it had been abandoned. She found the cremated remains of at least two people, from what she could tell they never made it out the escape pods but the rest seemed to have escaped.

After an hour of exploring the arc she found the hidden PC link that had saved the arc and disrupted the code, it was long since dead but at least it was evidence someone with some skill survived. Looking at her map she noticed a small clearing to the north along with what may be fresh water and decided it was as good a place as any to start looking.

On the way however she found the first sign that things had not gone to plan, in a tiny clearing Tessa found the shredded remains of what was clearly once a stasis suite. There was no blood, not signs that the person had been hurt other than the fact the thing was in pieces. Picking it up Tessa noted it almost looked melted.

With added care she continued on to the clearing, her pulse rifle primed and loaded given what she had found. At the clearing there were most definitely signs that people had been there, burnt out campfires, foot marks and the odd piece of kit were scattered around the shores of the river bed. Disturbingly though there were a lot of shredded stasis suites, and absolutely no signs of anyone.

“Commander, this is mother. Come in.”

“What’s up mother, don’t tell me you miss me already.” Tessa said smiling.

“Not quite commander. I’ve got the main sensors working again and thought you’d like to know there is something resembling a ship heading your way. I would advise caution when meeting technologically capable races.”

“Agreed, I take it there is no way it could be the pod survivors?”

“Unlikely, but not impossible.” mother said. “I estimate they will be at your location in 5 minutes commander.”

“Thanks Mother, I’m going to head up the river a little and keep an eye on what’s going on.”

Five minutes later and sure enough a small ship appeared above the clearing and proceeded to land. Tessa watched as three huge figures jumped out the ship, and hauled off a number of large crates. As soon as they were unloaded the ship took off and headed back the way it came.

“Mother, keep an eye on where that ship goes will you?” Tessa whispered into her comms. “Radio silence unless necessary from now on ok?”

“Affirmative captain, good luck.” Mother replied.

Tessa watched the hunters explore the clearing for a couple of hours, the appeared to be looking for something. After a meticulous sweep of the clearing the three seemed satisfied whatever they were looking for was gone and returned to their own supplies. Taking off their helmets they seemed to focus on setting up a small camp, one of the hunters heading off into the forest whilst the others carried on set up.

Tessa was so fascinated by two men setting up camp she had almost completely forgotten about the third when no more than 10 m in front of her the figure emerged from the jungle canopy on the other side of the river.

Tessa ducked back down behind the rock she was using as shelter cursing herself, how could she have gotten so complacent to allow some half giant to sneak up on her like that.

‘You’re 1262 years old you hag, that’s how’ a voice said in the back of her mind making her chuckled to herself.

Given the person hadn’t come storming round the rock with his gun aimed at her she guess that this time round she had been lucky. Sneaking a look around the rock confirmed that, the third hunter had continued his patrol back down the river and into the camp.

She could just make out the three hunters discussing something, but from this distance all she could tell was that they were not speaking English, or anything else her standard issue translator could decipher.

“Mother, can you tell what they are saying?” Tessa whispered into her microphone.

“Negative commander, insufficient context for linguistic interpretation.”

“Suggestions?” Tessa said.

“Well if you could ask them to say ‘The cat sat on the mat’ for me that may help.”
“Again, your such a fucking comedian.” She rasped.

The three hunters opened up a crate and each took out a small metallic globe. They all seemed to punch in some details into an arm pad attached to their armour and within moment of each other each ball turned a bright blue. Tessa watched in amazement as the hunters released their grip, the balls now floating in mid-air as if awaiting order. The middle hunter pointed in three directions and after punching codes into his arm pad all of the metal spheres turned green and shot off in different directions at speed.

Tessa, realising that these were probably probes, decided it was a good time to retreat further from the camp. She carefully made her way back into the jungle depths, before quietly following the river upstream away from the hunters camp.