Castaway Planet

Galactic Calendar 259872/ 2000 [ Sol Year 4387/ Day 153 of 365. Sol standard year]

Days after of Crash landing/ 1

Unknown Planet

Outside Escape Capsule 0980

Galactic Standard Time / 0700

Jinn put on his armor and looked around at the rest of his team. Al was a good choice given his scores in the self-defense class they shared on the ship, not counting his tech skills. Racha had been Jinn’s choice for the third member but Duncan had vetoed her, something about how he needed her to stay back. Instead, he had chosen someone himself, a deckhand named Sara who he said was as good a medic as Racha was, and as fit. He didn’t know what to expect of her, both due to not interacting with her on the ship and having never heard a single rumor about her.

Sara was a woman his height with black hair with purple streaks. To Jinn, her blue eyes screamed competence and the fact that she took just a pistol and a small pack with only a medical kit was good. It told him she valued her speed to keep her and others alive, something that medics needed to learn.

Al meanwhile had taken only taken a single rifle. He had a backpack with his tools, the bioscaner, and a few other odds and ends he had grabbed from the supplies, and spent an hour making a few ‘surprise’ that he said would help them if they needed them.

Jinn had decided to only take two laser pistols plus a backpack with a distance viewer plus a few empty water bottles. Well, that and one last personal item, his blade.

He strapped what looked like a dagger onto his left arm and looked at it. He didn’t know just why he had had it when whatever happened on the Spirit, but at least he knew he wasn’t at some kind of social event. Could he have been at his berth before whatever happened to cause him to leave the ship? He kept the weapon on him when he was sleeping; otherwise, it was in a case he bought aboard the ship. So for Jinn to have the weapon on hand, that meant he had been near or at where he kept it, so what had happened?

<>------------------------------------------------<>------------------------------------------------<>

As Duncan looked at the people he was sending into harm’s way and wished he could go as well. But he looked at the brace on his leg and knew it was impossible. He remembered from his old army days that scouts needed to move fast, and for now, he couldn’t. And someone needed to ride herd on the civilians and his rank let him do that easily.

He sighed as he leaned against the wall before looking up at the sky. After everything yesterday, he had thrown the first three laser riffles they found at three deckhands and had them guard the outside last night. They had heard movement and when they checked the top of the crater this morning, all the remains of the worm things were gone. So there had to be more life out there, scavengers at least, plus whatever the worms ate.

He was worried about a lot of things, everyone something that might affect their chances of survival. Last night he had ordered the capsule locked down, and the few engineers had taken apart the few systems and they told him the systems were fully operational. But they couldn’t get anything on them, but the systems came back as fully operational. Frankly, he didn’t like any of this.

He needed to send out scouts to try and find out where they were, and with his wound, he couldn’t lead any scouting team. So he had to choose a leader and Jinn was one of his top choices. Duncan sighed, he knew that the man was being watched by his second, and Jinn had said he was running from something. Travel Decking was a good way to travel, a lot of ships needed new hands when they came to port, and a job on a cargo ship could let you go anywhere at all.

But he didn’t want to think Jinn was a criminal, but something about him just caused Duncan to look at what he knew and Jinn and see trouble. But his grasp of tactics, now that was what truly bothered Duncan. He couldn’t explain it, it was there.

Jinn was one of the better deckhands on the ship, he had good combat scores, and had saved the people he had sent out to gather food yesterday. Yet he had been a crack shot, not a single wasted bolt, and that was bothering him. Either he had natural talent, training, or nanobots to help, nanobots that only Special Forces had. He started to wonder what had caused Jinn to leave his planet when said man’s voice called out to him.

“Ready to leave sir!” Jinn called out and Duncan look up and smiled as he looked at his chosen team.

<>------------------------------------------------<>------------------------------------------------<>

Jinn felt that they were as ready as they could be with what they had. From the armor and weapons, they were as ready as their supplies could make them, now it came down to will alone.

“Good, you three are our only chance, so come back alive!” Duncan said and they all saluted.

Jinn knew what he meant and he understood how bad it could be if the mission failed. After they had done a headcount, there were only forty deckhands to thirty passengers. If there weren’t any other capsules in range……then they were the only hope each other had to survive.

So if the mission failed and they died, they would lose a seventh of their manpower, less if the passengers helped, but of greater concern was the number of weapons they had. And to add to their troubles, Al had told him that there was nothing wrong with the comms system, but it didn’t detect anything. Jinn had a bad feeling about all this, something about it was….familiar but he couldn’t figure out why.

“Good, remember you have to get far enough up the mountain to see everything around us. If you find any pods out there, tell them where we are so we can link up. And if any officers give you any trouble remember, I’m the third officer so I’m in charge! If you don’t find the captain of course,” Duncan muttered with a hopeful tone as he looked away.

Jinn saw exactly what was bothering Duncan, they both hated to let someone else lead when they could. But Jinn remembered an old saying about Destiny and Chance, and he had a bad feeling that the Security Chief would be disappointed.

The group climbed up the crater wall and reached the top they saw two deckhands already there. Both were armed with a rifle, their eyes on the ground and sky watching for anything. After the attack, Jinn talked with Duncan. Together with others, they had set up a few plans for better security for the crater. They all saw the logic, a new planet with unknown dangers was just begging to get the idiotic killed.

At the edge of the clearing, Jinn paused as he looked around, not hearing anything from the forest. He looked around for anything that might kill them before he led the way into the alien, silent forest.

<>------------------------------------------------<>------------------------------------------------<>

Sara looked around at the trees as a smile formed on her face. This was just like the nature dome on her home station, but this was beyond anything it had. She gazed in awe at vines that climbed some of the trees, each one colored a deep jade. The vines each had large red flowers at the bottom with four closed petals. As they walked on, Sara tripped on a root and took two steps closer to one. She regained her balance, but as she looked up the closet flower shot a spray of spores at her.

“What the heck?” She coughed and tried to brush it away before a scent unlike anything she had ever experienced hit her nose and her mind went blank.

She turned her head to the right and without knowing how, she knew this flower was where the scent came from. Unlike the others, this one had purple lines down the middle of the leaves. Something about it was calling to her, she had to touch it.

<>------------------------------------------------<>------------------------------------------------<>

Al sighed as he looked down at the ground, he couldn’t get his mind off the problems they were having with the comms. Nothing made sense; if something was blocking it they would have heard static, not nothing! He didn’t like anything about this at all. He had done a few projects in the past about blocking sensors and comms, but there was always a ‘tell’ with that kind of tech. But this was more like something was keeping the waves from the devices from transmitting. But that was impossible according to the laws of reality that he knew, but it wouldn’t be the first time Sentient Knowledge was incomplete.

With a sigh, Al looked up from the ground at Sara coughed, and saw Sara take a step toward one of the trees. “Hey, Sara? What is it?”

<>------------------------------------------------<>------------------------------------------------<>

Jinn could only stare around with tension in his gaze, on edge. This wasn’t natural, everything he knew was telling him they were in danger, but why? What was hiding around him and where was it coming from?

Jinn turned at Al’s voice and saw Sara walking towards the tree. His eyes widened as he saw something in the grass by the flower and then he was moving before he even realized he was.

“So beautiful,” Sara said with a breath of awe in her voice as she reached towards the plant.

However he reached her first, grabbed her shoulder, and pushed her backward. Moments after she was away from the tree a vine slapped the ground where Sara had been moments before.

Jinn drew his knife and slashed through the vine, part of it fell to the ground. He watched as a blue liquid came from the severed plant, gushing out.

Sara blinked as her senses returned, wondering just why she had tried to touch the flower before looking at the severed vine as it bled.

As the liquid gushed Jinn looked at it for a few moments before screeches came from all around them. From the red flowers vines shot out towards the party, Jinn slashed through them with his knife and drew one of his pistols.

Al helped Sara up, both of them looked around in horror as vines reached out towards them.

“By the void! FUCK!” Jinn barked as he fired at the nearest red flower. As the flower caught fire, from all around them pained screeches came from the trees.

Jinn swallowed as his mind thought of something that scared him before turning to Al and Sara.

“RUN NOW! GO!” Jinn bellowed as the screeches continued. Al and Sara started to run, Jinn following behind with his knife out.

As they ran through the forest in the direction away from the clearing, every third tree seemed to have vines that were grasping for them. When one came close to her Sara dodged it by inches, she drew her pistol and shot it. Al jumped over a vine that came at him from below and cursed that he didn’t have the tech to see these things before they struck. Jinn slashed through the vine that attacked Al, causing another screech of pain.

Finally, after a few more minutes of terror, they stopped running. Turning they saw the vines striking the ground ten feet back. Sara and Al fell to their knees and panted as they tried to catch their breath. Jinn stayed standing, looking back at the vines for a few moments before he sheathed his knife.

Sara panted as she looked at the vines. They had stopped striking the ground and now were waving back and forth as the cries died down. Sara couldn’t keep her eyes off them, nothing that had happened made any sense to her. “What was that? I smelled something and then I was on the ground!”

“Jinn saved you. I saw you take a step and then he was there and pushed you to the ground,” Al said as he looked at the vines, a strange look in his eyes as he stood back up.

Jinn scowled as he looked at them and then went still as he turned his head. He smiled as he turned back to the others and grinned. “We’re out of their range now, so we should be safe.”

“How can you tell?” Sara asked and Jinn just laughed and cupped his right ear.

“Listen,” He said and Al and Sara both looked at each other before they noticed.

They listened and heard the buzzing of insect wings. Turning their heads upwards they saw large bees a good three long and tall fluttering from blue flowers on tree branches fifteen feet above them. Looking around they saw the flowers on the vines were blue, purple, and black but none were red.

“Listen to the forest, that should have been my first clue!” Jinn said and the others looked at him.

Sara and Al looked at each other before they tried to listen, hearing the buzz of the life around them. They turned to Jinn who sighed and shook his head.

“You can’t see it? There’s noise here, life. It was as quiet as a grave back there!” Jinn said as he pulled out a piece of the worm and threw it toward the vines. As the piece of meat landed five feet away from them, the vines shot at it.

As they wrapped around it, all of the vines tried to pull it towards them, in moments they tore it apart. The three people could only each vine retreated with its prize.

Looking towards where the vines had gone, Sara swallowed and tried to keep herself calm.

Jinn just shook his head and looked at the two and sighed. “Did either of you even grow up near the wilderness?”

“Plant city for me bro, and I heard Sara was from a spacestation right?” Al said and Sara looked at him before nodding.

“Great. Wish I knew that before we left. Now there are two choices here. Do we try and find a way back so I can get others to come with me in place of you two or do we go on?” Jinn asked as he looked at them and crossed his arms.

“What? Bro!” Al said and Jinn shook his head.

“I won’t lead you to your deaths. If you want to continue then my word is the voice of god from now on. I say do something, you do it,” Jinn said and Al looked at Sara, she nodded and Al sighed before he grinned.

“Sorry man, but you’re stuck with us,” Al said and Jinn just shook his head, feeling a little bit of pride in his friend.

<>------------------------------------------------<>------------------------------------------------<>

Al looked at Jinn and the man just sighed and nodded after a few moments of silence.

“Fine, then listen. From now on we need to think that everything will kill us. Watch your surroundings and keep an eye out for anything that looks strange. You stay away from it and tell me, if you think something will attack us, say something about the worms and the clearing. Got it?” Jinn asked and Al nodded along with Sara.

Jinn looked between them and sighed. “Good, follow me!”

They walked off, Al kept his eyes on Jinn. The ease Jinn had with moving and surviving out here, it bothered Al a bit. But people were allowed to have pasts they didn’t want to bring up, his own included. But his feelings were just a side effect of something else, something Al had seen once.

Jinn might be able to hide a lot of things, but he still had times when he acted without thinking. More often than not, Jinn had flashes of surprise and awe in his eyes when he saw something, things that anyone in modern culture had seen a lot. From watching kids and teens at the hover park to some other species at the casino or pool, for a few moments, Jinn just had looks of wonder in his eyes before they were gone. If Al didn’t have nanotech in his eyes that recorded what he saw, Al would have thought he had imagined Jinn’s reactions. Al knew that he had moments like that when he first walked through the ship’s green dome once or twice, but that was because he grew up on a city planet. But if that was truly why Jinn reacted the way he did, where exactly was Jinn from to have not seen what

For a while now he had worried about what kind of life his friend had lived before they met. The man could shoot like an armed forces vet and knew about introducing animals from off planet into local food chains. Now, Jinn could have studied biospheres, but then he knew about the capsule’s computer, Al hadn’t learned about that until he took a survival course for Creative’s Sake! Jinn had skills and knowledge beyond any course Al could think of, and then there were his reflexes. He didn’t know what Jinn was hiding, what life the man had led. But whatever secrets Jinn was hiding, Al just hoped they would keep them alive.

<>------------------------------------------------<>------------------------------------------------<>

Jinn led the way, letting his mind wander after ordering his nanotech to watch for anything that moved. He didn’t understand anything, the few texts on alpha predators he had studied said a lot, but things like those vines were normally niche predators.

And the way that all those screeches of pain had happened all at once! He wanted to believe he was wrong, but it still bothered him. There were other ways it could have been done, but those weren’t an evolution of plants. There was one way, and he hoped he was wrong with everything he had, but if not then it was lucky they got away when they did.

Everything about this planet bothered him a lot more than it should. But he couldn’t keep that inner voice of his quiet. The last time he had listened to it, he had made the discovery that changed his life. He just had to hope that if this was like then, at the end he wouldn’t have another earth-shattering revelation to deal with.