r/HFY • u/AdventurerOfTheStars • 8d ago
OC-Series Re: The Deathworld (Part 18)
8:10 pm S.F.T (Standard Federation Time)- Planetside, Kepler-186f
A narrow slit opened through the dirt-coated weave of the hidden entrance, Aleah’s four eyes appearing in the darkness behind it. They looked over Loyd, Harriet, and Teralis in quick succession before dropping to the canteens hanging from their bodies.
“Ah good, you found containers," she said.
“Ten good ones,” Loyd answered. He lifted the two sealed food packets in one hand. “Maybe some food, too.”
“And medical supplies,” Teralis added, though the words came through clenched teeth as he clutched at his arm- blue blood having seeped through the arm of his environmental suit.
Aleah’s gaze immediately settled on the way he held his injured arm against his chest, and the blood soaking the material.
“thats not good,” she said, turning back toward the cave “Serria-”
“Can we get inside first?” Teralis protested, but Aleah had already moved past them, Serria appearing a moment after as she maneuvered herself off the lookout rock. She gave Teralis the sternest look Loyd had ever seen her give as she pointed inside with one of her bladed arms.
“Inside. Now.”
Harriet squeezed through the gap before either of them, the old canteens knocking against one another as his wings brushed the sides of the false wall. Loyd followed, turning slightly to the side to keep the supplies they'd gathered from catching on the camouflage. Teralis came through last, moving carefully until his injured arm bumped the edge.
His whole body tensed, though he didn’t make a sound. Loyd saw the pain cross all four of his eyes, and knew it hurt a lot worse than he was letting on.
Aleah closed the wall behind them, sealing away the pale forest and the spores crawling over the ground outside. Firelight filled the cave in its place, weak but warm, casting everyone’s shadows along the curved stone walls.
CoCo crossed the cave before Harriet had fully cleared the entrance, bright feathers flaring around her as she stopped directly in front of him. Her eyes moved over his body with frantic speed, checking his wings, legs, and the battered environmental suit underneath the canteens hanging from his shoulders.
“I am unharmed,” Harriet chirped.
CoCo ignored him and began checking for herself.
She pulled one of the canteens aside with her beak, exposing a scraped patch of brown feathers where the door had rubbed against his shoulder. Her own feathers puffed with irritation as she started untying the poorly secured straps.
“This is not unharmed.” she chirped, pointing her beak toward the bare patch near his shoulder.
“It is barely an injury,” Harriet replied.
“You said unharmed.” she accused, clicking her beak together.
“And I am, the feathers will grow back.” Harriet answered, tilting his head and clacking his own beak together.
“That is not the point, Harriet,” CoCo insisted.
Harriet lowered his head and allowed her to work, giving Loyd a tired look as CoCo began preening dirt and rust from the feathers around the bare patch with increasing care.
Behind them, Serria pointed toward a clear patch of ground beside the fire. “Sit,” she ordered Teralis.
“I should put these down first.” He gestured toward the canteens looped around his three usable arms.
“Sit, then put them down.”
Teralis’s jaw tightened, but he obeyed, and slowly lowered himself beside the fire. Qutin hurried over the moment the first canteen was placed onto the ground, gathering the containers with both paws and arranging them beside their supply pile.
“One,” he whispered, checking the cap before moving it aside. “Two. Three-”
Serria crouched in front of Teralis and carefully took hold of his injured arm with two of her manipulating appendages. Another moved toward the bloodied sleeve of his environmental suit, pinching the torn material and pulling it away from his skin.
“When did it begin bleeding?”
“I am not entirely certain.” he answered, looking down at his arm.
Her mandibles clicked together sharply, her emerald eyes wiggling in frustration “When did you first notice it?”
“Inside the communications facility.”
“And you continued without telling either of them?”
“We were …occupied.”
“With what?” Coori asked, approaching Loyd. Her feathers shifted between curiosity and concern as she looked over the bent support beam in his hands. The dried blue blood coating one end had not escaped her notice.
“Things in the walls,” Loyd answered.
“What kind of things?” coori asked cautiously, unsure if she wanted the answer.
“Let them get through the medical examination first,” Serria clicked, already loosening the cloth around Teralis’s splint.
“I can speak while you work,” Teralis protested.
“You can remain still while I work.”
Loyd placed the two MRE packets by Qutin’s growing inventory, then lowered the support beam beside them. “They looked like smaller versions of something I ran into before I found you all.” He looked over to Teralis and added, quietly. “And I'm pretty sure it was the thing that killed the Sru i found.”
“What did it look like?” Coori asked, her feathers puffing up around her body.
“Like a spider, if you removed the head and put the mouth underneath its body.” Loyd held his hands apart, trying to show them the approximate width of the adult’s chitinous mass. “Lots of legs, hooked claws under the stomach, and no eyes that I could see. The ones at the facility were smaller and pale. Soft shells, mostly.”
Isaac’s mandibles moved in a slow, thoughtful rhythm. “And you survived the encounter?”
“Mostly by accident,” Loyd admitted. “I hit one of the dried seed pods- that part was on purpose- he tether caught the vines around it, and the whole patch started going off in a chain reaction. The harpoons took the creature out while I hid behind one of the mushrooms.”
Coori’s feathers lifted from her body as she turned her head to stare at Loyd “You were still inside the exploding patch?”
“Yeah, not the best plan honestly but it was all i could think of at the time.”
“How did you avoid being struck?” Aleah asked, turning from the lookout rock to look at them.
“Luck, mostly. One nearly hit me, and I got cut up pretty badly running through them earlier.” He raised one arm, undoing the beat up environmental suit’s shoulder coupler, and pulled off the entire sleeve. Showing the thin scratches still crossing his skin beneath the damaged sleeve of his environmental suit. “It's how I knew to use them- they nearly killed me first.”
“Still,” Isaac clicked, “you survived.”
Loyd shrugged. “It died before I did. That’s about as much credit as I’m willing to take.”
Behind them, Serria pulled the last of the bloodied wrapping from Teralis’s arm. The support beam Harriet had originally given her had shifted several inches from where she placed it, pressing into the swollen tissue instead of holding the joint still.
“This looks significantly worse,” she clicked quietly. “What did you do?”
“We climbed through the roof.”He looked toward Loyd with one of his eyes before answering the next question “And ran through the corridors.”
“Is that all?” Serria's mandibles clicked together in the slow, judgemental way a doctor did when you did something stupid after being told not to.
Teralis’s jaw tightened. “And… I engaged in combat”
Serria’s mandibles ground together as she carefully lifted the splint away. Teralis drew a sharp breath through his teeth, but the others remained focused on Loyd and Harriet.
“Were the smaller creatures as dangerous as the one you encountered?” Kiki asked, her own body looking more exhausted than ever.
“Not individually,” Loyd answered. “They were soft and small enough to knock away, but there were dozens of them. They kept coming through the walls, and some of the larger ones were eating the smaller ones.”
Qutin paused halfway through checking another canteen as CoCo passed it to him. His ears slowly flattened. “Eating them?”
“Yeah, it was pretty gruesome.”
Harriet shifted as CoCo pulled another strap loose from beneath his wing, joining the conversation with his own input. “Their shed shells were scattered throughout the living quarters. They appear to grow quickly, because we had just passed through the area and they were not there the first time.”
Kiki looked toward the pupae moving across her own shell. Her manipulating appendages drew closer to them in an instinctive gesture, gently guiding one away from the ground.
“The facility is built over their nest,” Loyd continued. “The colonists didn’t know until the young started getting into the walls.”
“Humans had lived there,” Harriet added. “Many of their remains were still inside.”
CoCo stopped preening for just a moment before moving closer to Harriet. Her body pressed against his as she resumed cleaning the rust from around the scraped patch on his shoulder.
Loyd pulled his omnitool from his hip and crouched beside the supplies. The cracked screen flickered as he opened the data recovered from the communications console. It took several seconds for the damaged display to build the facility map, pale blue lines crawling outward until the underground structure appeared. The group moved closer, crowding around the small screen.
“There’s more under the tower than we thought,” Loyd explained. “The building stretches beneath the hill and part of the lake. Communications is on this side, along with living quarters and munitions. The other half has water treatment, storage, and Aquaponics.”
Coori leaned forward, her deep brown eyes moving along the branching corridors. “Did you find anything in munitions?”
“Rust.” Teralis made a low pained hiss from beside Serria. “An entire room of it.”
“The weapons were still on the racks,” Loyd amended “Most of them were fused in place or falling apart. The canteens were the only useful things that survived. somehow..”
“Which speaking of, we have ten.” Qutin squeaked, lifting one of the containers in his front paws. “The eleventh has a hole at the bottom.”
“I mean, given how bad everything else was- that's a lot better than i was expecting.” Harriet chirped to the protest of CoCo.
Qutin placed the good canteen beside the others and scratched another mark into the dirt. The leaking container sat separately, off to the side.
Behind the group, Serria wiped the remaining blood away from Teralis’s arm with some gauze. The skin beneath the displaced splint was badly swollen, the bruising having spread well beyond the original injury. Her eyes focused on the tear in the skin near the joint, mostly hidden beneath dried blood and the edge of his environmental suit.
She leaned closer, her manipulating appendages holding his arm steady as another carefully pulled the torn material away. A small amount of pale, cloudy fluid had gathered between the edges of the wound.
Her mandibles stopped moving. “Teralis,” she clicked quietly. “Have you felt cold recently?”
“A little, not much more than a cold breeze.”
“Nausea?”
“No.”
“Dizziness?”
“Only after running.”
Serria pressed lightly beside the wound. More cloudy fluid welled from the damaged tissue, carrying a faint sour smell with it.
“This is infected.” She clicked, carefully inspecting the wound further with more delicate manipulators.
Teralis looked down at his arm. “How bad is it?”
“I cannot tell without proper equipment.” Serria examined the discoloration spreading beneath his skin, her mandibles beginning to grind together again. “But this did not begin inside the communications facility.”
“The fracture happened two days ago.”
“And you have been walking through an alien jungle with an open injury- Have you taken off your environmental suit at all?”
Teralis seemed to think for a long moment before nodding slowly. “I did, when we sleep I use it as a head rest.”
Serria gave him a flat look through her emerald compound eyes, then reached toward the small collection of medical supplies they had recovered.
Loyd shifted the internal map aside, revealing a second set of files underneath it. “There was also a larger map. It doesn’t have a lot of detail, but it covers the surrounding region.”
Harriet stepped closer, forcing CoCo to move with him if she wanted to continue fussing over the scrape on his shoulder. She did, her body remaining firmly pressed against his side.
The communications facility shrank into a small blue shape beside the lake. Several other structures appeared farther out, some standing alone while others formed small clusters. Lines ran between many of them, marking old roads, water pipes, and utility connections that vanished into damaged portions of the file.
“So it was an entire settlement,” Isaac clicked.
“Looks that way,” Loyd said. “Or several smaller sites supporting one.”
Coori’s beak moved close to the projection as she studied the structures. “Do any of them have names?”
“Most of the labels are corrupted.” Loyd pointed toward one cluster. “That might’ve been housing. This larger building could have been industrial, but I’m guessing based on the shape.”
“Are there more communication towers?” Harriet asked.
“Nothing the map clearly identifies as one.”
He dragged the projection toward the edge of the surveyed region. The facilities became sparser until only a single isolated marker remained.
Ω
Unlike the others, it had no visible road or utility line leading toward it. A set of coordinates sat beneath the symbol, along with several broken characters the omnitool could not recover.
Coori tilted her head. “What is that?”
“Omega,” Loyd said. “It’s a letter from an old human alphabet.”
“What does it mean here?”
“No idea. In engineering, it represents ohms, the unit used to measure electrical resistance. It can mean other things in mathematics, and it’s also the final letter of the Greek alphabet.”
Isaac lowered his long head closer to the screen. “That is quite a number of possibilities for one letter.”
“It could also just be the name of the project.” Loyd admitted.
“Why is it separated from everything else?” Kiki asked.
Loyd expanded the area around the marker, but the surrounding map offered nothing more than uneven terrain lines and damaged survey data.
“Not entirely sure. Could be incomplete,” he said. “Or whoever built it didn’t want it connected to the rest of the colony.”
“Or the structure was never finished,” CoCo added.
“That too.”
The marker remained glowing at the edge of the screen, far enough from the other facilities that Loyd found himself returning to it despite having no answers. Whatever Omega had been, the colonists considered it important enough to include on their regional map but not important enough to properly label.
He closed the regional view before his thoughts wandered too far.
“We found a recording too.”
Loyd reached into the sealed pocket of his environmental suit and pulled out Olivia Brandenburg’s identification tag. The old metal was scratched and slightly bent, but her name remained visible across its surface.
“Olivia Brandenburg,” he read. “Chief medical officer of the USS Ulixes colony expedition.”
Serria’s head turned slightly at the title, though she continued cleaning Teralis’s wound.
“She recorded what happened during the attack,” Loyd continued. “The creatures were nesting in caverns beneath the facility. Their young got into the walls, and by the time the colonists understood what was happening, they’d already lost contact with water treatment, storage, and Aquaponics.”
“Did anyone survive?” Qutin asked.
Loyd looked down at the identification tag. “As far as we know? No.”
The crackling of the fire filled the cave for several seconds.
Harriet lowered his head, his brown feathers flattening against his neck. CoCo stopped working around his shoulder and pressed closer to him.
“They retreated into communications,” Harriet chirped. “They used chairs and equipment to construct a barricade. Their remains were still behind it.”
“There was an adult caught in the ceiling above them,” Loyd added. “It broke through during their last stand. They killed that one, but there were more coming in behind it.”
Qutin’s ears lowered.
Kiki’s manipulating appendages moved over the pupae clinging to her body, pulling them closer against her shell.
Loyd turned Olivia’s tag between his fingers. “They thought Earth had been assimilated. None of the other colony ships had answered them, so they believed the Ulixes might have carried the last surviving humans.”
“But they were wrong,” Coori said.
“Yeah. There were still around twenty thousand known survivors on Mars at the time, but communication outside the inner system was a mess. Nobody had an accurate count of how many colony ships made it, where they landed, or whether they survived after landing.”
Isaac’s mandibles clicked together slowly. “The colonists here never learned that others survived.”
“No.” Loyd placed the identification tag beside the omnitool, careful not to let it disappear beneath the recovered supplies.
Teralis watched Loyd place the identification tag beside the omnitool, all four of his eyes shifting toward the internal map still glowing across its cracked screen.
“Jefferson took the control codes to Aquaponics,” Teralis said, his jaw tightening as Serria pressed clean gauze against the infected wound. “If his remains are still there, the codes may be as well.”
Harriet shifted beneath CoCo’s attention, trying not to disturb her as she adjusted the straps around his shoulder. “The terminal still recognized Jefferson as the current administrator. His authorization should give us access to the transmitter, water pumps, and emergency systems.”
“He went back for someone named Micheal,” Loyd explained to the others, tracing the route toward Aquaponics with one finger. “He hadn’t checked in after the facility went into lockdown, and Jefferson refused to leave him behind.”
Isaac’s manipulating appendages tapped slowly against one another. “Neither of them returned to communications.”
“Not before the recording ended,” Loyd confirmed.
Teralis shifted beside the fire, pulling his injured arm slightly away from Serria’s support. “Then we need to search Aquaponics.”
Serria tightened her grip on his arm. “You need to remain seated.”
“The transmitter is our only known means of contacting the Federation,” Teralis argued. “If Jefferson’s codes can unlock it, we cannot afford to leave them behind.”
“We also cannot afford to worsen your condition,” Serria clicked, pushing the gauze more firmly against the wound. “Your fracture has shifted, the surrounding tissue is damaged, and you are feverish.”
“I can still walk.” Teralis protested with indignanation
“That is not how I determine whether you are healthy.”
Teralis placed one of his good hands against the ground and began pushing himself upright to prove his healthiness. He only made it halfway before the universe determined he was very wrong.
His four eyes drifted in different directions as the strength suddenly vanished from his body. One of his hands scraped across the dirt in a failed attempt to catch his weight, but his body tipped toward the fire before he found a grip.
Loyd lunged forward and caught him by the shoulder.
Teralis’s weight dragged him down onto one knee as Isaac hooked a bladed arm beneath the Sru’s torso. Together, they pulled him away from the flames and lowered him onto the dirt. Two of the nearby canteens were knocked aside, rolling across the cave floor with loud metallic clatters.
“Teralis!” Aleah called as she scrambled off the lookout rock, all four of her hands reaching for him.
The rest of the group moved toward the fallen Sru, feathers rising and manipulating appendages spreading in alarm.
“Everyone stay back,” Serria ordered, pushing between Loyd and Teralis.
Isaac raised both bladed arms and began guiding the others away. “You heard her. Let her work.”
Teralis remained conscious, though his eyes struggled to focus on the medic above him. His breathing came in short, shallow bursts as Serria pressed one manipulating appendage against the side of his neck and another against his chest.
“What happened to him?” Aleah asked, kneeling beside his uninjured side.
“The wound around his fracture is infected,” Serria answered. “He has likely been developing a fever since before he left the cave.”
“I am fine,” Teralis muttered, trying to lift his head.
“No, you are not,” Serria clicked, pressing him back against the ground.
Aleah placed one of her upper hands beneath Teralis’s head, supporting him while Serria reopened the salvaged medical supplies.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone you were feeling sick?” Aleah asked, her lower hands curling against the dirt.
“We had more urgent problems,” Teralis answered.
“You becoming another one does not help us,” Aleah said, all four eyes narrowing toward him.
Serria opened one of the sealed disinfectant packets recovered from communications. A sharp chemical scent spread through the cave as she paused, inspecting the outdated medicine. Satisfied, she pressed the soaked material against the tear in Teralis’s skin.
Teralis’s body tightened, but his injured arm barely moved.
Serria’s mandibles began clicking faster. “You should be reacting more strongly to this.”
“It hurts,” Teralis insisted.
“Not as much as it should.”
Loyd looked toward the cloudy fluid gathering around the wound. “Can you treat the infection?”
“I can clean and dress the injury, drain what contamination I can, and stabilize the fracture again,” Serria answered. She selected a fresh length of gauze and began wrapping it around the rigid support. “I cannot identify the organism without a scanner, and I will not administer medication intended for another species based on a guess.”
“What about the medicine we brought back?” Harriet asked, pulling slightly away from CoCo so he could see Teralis.
“The dressings and disinfectant were sealed,” Serria explained. “The remaining injectable medication has separated inside its containers. I cannot verify its contents, potency, or safety.”
“So it’s useless,” Loyd said.
“Not necessarily,” Serria corrected. “A functioning medical laboratory might be able to identify it. Here, it is too dangerous to use.”
A soft squeal came from beside Kiki.
One of the pupae crawling across her shell had worked its way beneath the plates near the base of her tail. Kiki jerked away so sharply that one of her legs slid beneath her, forcing her to strike the cave wall for support.
Isaac turned his elongated head toward her. “Kiki?”
“I am fine,” Kiki clicked, though her voice lacked its usual strength.
Serria’s compound eyes shifted toward the larger Kree’ark. “How long has feeding been painful?”
“It is not painful,” Kiki answered, using one manipulating appendage to guide the pupa away from beneath her tail.
Serria watched the movement carefully. “Then allow the young to feed.”
Kiki’s mandibles tightened. “It surprised me.”
The pupa attempted to reach beneath the plate again. Kiki flinched before it touched her, pulling away instinctively.
Serria lowered Teralis’s newly supported arm into Aleah’s hands. “Keep the limb still.”
“I can do that,” Aleah replied, adjusting all four hands around the splint and Teralis’s shoulder.
Serria crossed the cave and stopped beside Kiki. “Isaac, take the young.”
Kiki lifted one bladed arm between Serria and the pupae. “They are hungry.”
“And I need to determine why feeding them is causing you pain,” Serria replied.
“They require jelly.”
“They will survive without it for a short time.”
Isaac approached Kiki slowly, lowering his body so the pupae could crawl from her shell onto his own. One by one, their pale bodies moved across his carapace, their small proboscises searching between the ridges for food that wasn’t there.
When the last pupa had moved, Serria lifted the protective plate covering Kiki’s jelly-producing glands.
The tissue beneath had swollen around the openings. What little reddish jelly remained had thickened into a dark residue, clinging to the edges instead of a smooth jelly like it should be. Pale blue discoloration spread through the softer tissue surrounding the glands.
CoCo’s feathers flattened as she moved closer to examine it. “Could the fruit have caused that?”
“Doubtful. We'd all be having issues if it were that,” Serria answered. She carefully pressed along the edge of the swelling, making Kiki’s legs tense beneath her. “It could be contamination introduced while feeding, dehydration, or an infection developing independently of the fruit.”
Kiki looked toward the restless pupae moving across Isaac’s shell. “Can you treat it?”
“like i said before, not without identifying the cause,” Serria replied, lowering the plate carefully. “You cannot feed the young directly until I know whether the secretion is safe.”
“They will starve,” Kiki protested, her mandibles clacking rapidly.
“We can mulch some of the painted pears,” Isaac clicked, angling one manipulating appendage toward their supplies. “We will ration it until Serria finds an alternative.”
Kiki watched her young crawling over Isaac’s body before slowly lowering her bladed arm. “They will not understand.”
“I know,” Isaac clicked gently. “But they will remain alive.”
Loyd looked from Teralis lying beside the fire to Kiki leaning against the cave wall. “So we have two infections.”
“Two probable infections,” Serria corrected. “There is no reason to assume they were caused by the same organism. Teralis’s entered through damaged tissue around the fracture. Kiki’s is concentrated around her jelly-producing glands.”
“What do you need?” Loyd asked.
“A functional medical scanner, sterile equipment, and antimicrobial compounds I can identify,” Serria answered. “Even a working chemical analyzer would give me more options than I have here.”
Coori looked toward Olivia Brandenburg’s identification tag beside the omnitool. “The colonists had a chief medical officer. There must have been medical equipment somewhere.”
“There would have been,” Serria agreed. “Whether any of it survived, or is compatible with their biology, is another question.”
“Communications had medical supplies,” Harriet said, dipping his beak toward the recovered packets. “Most had already been opened or exposed.”
“And the facility is full of those creatures,” CoCo added, her feathers rising at the thought of Harriet returning there.
Loyd reopened the regional map and centered the Omega marker on the cracked display.
“This place wasn’t connected to the rest of the settlement,” Loyd said. “If it stayed sealed, whatever they stored there might still be intact.”
“Assuming Omega is a structure,” Isaac clicked, lowering himself so Kiki’s pupae could settle more securely across his back.
“Or that it was completed,” CoCo added.
“Or that it contained medical supplies at all,” Harriet chirped.
Loyd rubbed his forehead with his bandaged hand. “I’m aware there are a lot of things that could go wrong.”
Coori tilted her beak toward the isolated marker. “But it is the only place on the map that has not already been exposed to the jungle.”
“As far as we know,” Loyd amended. “That gives it a better chance than anything else.”
Teralis shifted weakly beside Aleah. “The codes should come first.”
Loyd turned toward him. “You are in no position to determine what we do first.”
“The codes may unlock the transmitter,” Teralis argued. “That could bring Federation assistance and make the medical supplies unnecessary.”
“If the transmitter still works,” Harriet said. “I could not access its controls, so I cannot tell whether it is capable of sending anything.”
“The console had power when we left,” Loyd added. “That is all we know.”
Serria returned to Teralis and inspected the bindings around his arm. “Omega may contain equipment capable of keeping you and Kiki alive. The transmitter may allow us to call for help. Neither possibility is guaranteed.”
Harriet studied the map. “The communications facility lies close to the route we would take toward Omega.”
“Then we stop at the tower on the way,” Loyd decided. “If the facility is still powered and we can safely reach Aquaponics, we look for Jefferson’s codes.”
“And if the corridors are still full of those things?” CoCo asked, her feathers immediately flaring around her body.
“We keep moving,” Loyd answered. “We are not fighting through an entire nest for codes that may not help us.”
Teralis opened his mouth to object.
“You’re staying here,” Loyd added before Teralis could speak.
“I am security,” Teralis hissed.
“You’re infected, your arm is worse than when we left, and you just collapsed,” Loyd replied. “You’re staying here.”
Teralis’s four eyes narrowed toward him, but Aleah tightened her hands around his shoulder and splint before he could attempt to rise again.
“He is staying here,” Aleah agreed firmly.
Teralis turned two of his eyes toward her. “I did not ask for your opinion.”
“You received it anyway,” Aleah replied.
Serria clicked her mandibles in approval. “Aleah will ensure that you follow my instructions.”
“I have three usable arms,” Teralis argued.
“And Aleah has four,” Serria replied.
Aleah gave Teralis a pointed look while adjusting her lower hands around his splint. Teralis’s jaw tightened, but he finally lowered his head against the folded material beneath him.
“Who is going to Omega?” CoCo asked.
Loyd looked toward Harriet and Serria. “The three of us.”
CoCo immediately stepped between Harriet and the cave entrance. “Harriet just returned.”
“I know,” Loyd said.
“He was nearly killed inside that facility,” CoCo continued.
“I know that too,” Loyd replied.
Harriet brushed his beak gently along the feathers near CoCo’s neck. “I am the communications officer. If we recover the codes, I have the best chance of using them.”
CoCo turned her head toward him. “You cannot operate the transmitter if those creatures eat you.”
“I intend to avoid that,” Harriet replied.
“You intended to avoid it the first time,” CoCo accused.
Harriet’s feathers lifted slightly. “And I succeeded.”
“You returned with missing feathers.”
“The feathers will grow back.”
CoCo’s beak clacked together as she stared at him.
Harriet lowered his head. “That was not the correct thing to say.”
“No,” CoCo agreed. “It was not.”
Loyd waited until CoCo’s feathers began settling before continuing. “I can read the human signs and understand most of the construction. Harriet understands communications systems, and Serria needs to examine whatever medical equipment we find.”
“I am going,” Serria clicked in agreement. “That portion of the plan is not open for debate.”
CoCo looked from Serria to Harriet, then moved closer to her partner and began preening the feathers along his neck, fixing any that were out of place.
“If you insist on leaving again, you will look like a proper Tiquil.”
Harriet lowered his wings and allowed her to work. “Your assistance is appreciated.”
“My assistance would be unnecessary if you had followed instructions and not gotten hurt.” CoCo replied
Loyd turned toward Isaac, who remained surrounded by Kiki’s restless pupae. Despite his own lack of offspring (at least, loyd assumed he didn’t have children) he seemed quite comfortable with the pupa. “You’re in charge while we’re gone.”
Isaac’s mandibles stopped clicking. “You decided that quickly.”
“You convinced everyone I should be captain,” Loyd reminded him. “This is the natural consequence.”
Isaac looked around the cave. Aleah remained beside Teralis, Serria continued treating Kiki, and Qutin had returned to the recovered supplies. Coori stood near the fire, watching the others with her feathers dulled by exhaustion.
After several seconds, Isaac lowered his bladed arms. “I accept. It is the logical option.”
“Good,” Loyd said.
“I did not say I was pleased,” Isaac added, jabbing a blade toward Loyd.
“That part wasn’t required,” Loyd replied. “I had to get you back for appointing me as captain anyway.”
Qutin lifted one of the canteens in both paws and carried it toward the remaining water. His movements were slower than before, and his fur had risen around his body until he appeared almost twice his normal size.
Coori noticed his shaking paws. “Are you alright, Qutin?”
“It is colder,” Qutin squeaked, setting the canteen down beside the collected water.
Coori looked toward the fire. “You are standing near the flames- you shouldn’t be cold.”
“Yes,” Qutin replied. “That is why I am concerned.”
Aleah carefully released Teralis’s splint and climbed back toward the lookout rock. She opened a narrow slit in the false wall, allowing a steady breeze to move through the cave.
Cold air curled along the floor, carrying pale spores with it. The particles swept around the fire and scattered across the dirt before settling among Qutin’s inventory marks.
Loyd poked his head out of the cave- the temperature outside seemed to have fallen several degrees since they had left for the communications facility. The red star remained above the horizon, but thick clouds had gathered across much of the sky, obscuring the rays coming from the slowly setting star.
“It’s definitely dropping,” Loyd said.
Qutin scratched another mark into the dirt beside the recovered supplies.
Loyd looked toward the new line. “What was that for?”
“The temperature,” Qutin answered.
“Youre keeping track?” Loyd asked.
“It affects our supplies, water requirements, fuel consumption, and survival prospects,” Qutin explained, tapping the mark with one claw. “Therefore, it is relevant to the inventory.”
Loyd stared at him for a moment before nodding. “Fair enough.”
Serria collected the remaining sealed dressings and placed them into a small bundle. She took a sample of the cloudy fluid from Teralis’s wound, sealed it inside an empty medical container, then collected another sample from the residue around Kiki’s gland.
“If we find a functioning scanner, these may allow me to identify the organisms,” Serria told Loyd.
Loyd returned Olivia’s identification tag to the sealed pocket of his environmental suit. He secured one of the canteens at his waist, closed the upper half of his suit, and picked up the bent support beam from beside Qutin’s inventory.
Coco finished fixing Harriet’s feathers, looking over her work as she tilted her beak back and forth. Harriet waited until she finished before lowering his head and brushing his beak along the top of hers.
“I will return,” Harriet promised.
CoCo pressed her neck against his. “You better not come back with more injuries.”
“I won’t,” Harriet answered.
Aleah widened the hidden entrance enough for the three of them to pass. The pale forest beyond had grown dim beneath the cloud cover, bare mushroom stalks stretching toward the red sky while spores moved across the ground in thin sheets.
Loyd tied his cloth mask over his nose and mouth. Harriet covered his beak, and Serria wrapped her own strip around her mandibles.
They would return to the communications facility, determine whether reaching Aquaponics was possible, then follow the incomplete map toward Omega. Whatever waited at those coordinates, Loyd hoped it had survived longer than the rest of the colony.
He stepped through into the cool air outside, and Harriet followed, looking back toward CoCo until the false wall began blocking her from view. Serria came last, her bladed limbs scraping softly against the stone as she maneuvered outside.
“Loyd?” Qutin called from inside the cave.
Loyd stopped and looked back through the shrinking gap.
Qutin stood beside the fire with both arms wrapped tightly around his body.
“If the temperature keeps dropping, it may freeze.” Qutin warned.
Loyd looked out at the pale forest and tightened his hand around the bent support beam.
“Keep the fire burning,” Loyd told Isaac, turning away and facing the forest once more.
Aleah pulled the false wall closed behind them with a quiet thump.
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