Chapter 39 – Moving On

Mk23 -IRJ Droplet – Class 7 – Carpe Victoria (Wrecked)

Sector - Unknown

Planet - Unknown

13th November 2342 (BSST)

When I wake, it’s a surprise that nothing bad has happened, I would have thought for sure that I would have been dragged off, slaughtered or ripped apart by whatever found me, instead I had a nice, peaceful nap after the adrenalin fuelled fight.

“Enigma, did anything interesting happen whilst I slept.”

“No, nothing potentially dangerous, though it depends on interesting, several interesting animals wandered around you, but they left you well enough alone.”

“Thanks, for keeping an eye out and all.”

“Of course, though I would recommend not to fall asleep in such a way again.”

“Well, obviously buddy, I didn’t mean to fall asleep there, but I’d been up for nearly a whole day and I was tired. The adrenalin wearing off makes me sleepy, ok?”

“Of course, Ronja.”

“Good, and less of the lip, bud.”

I stretch and loosen up before getting to my feet, I yawn, and shake myself to fully wake up. A cold face bath would do wonders to wake me up. Or a cold shower, no, definitely a cold shower. Wake me up and clean me off because I’m covered in blood and grime from the fight and I feel disgusting right now.

Since I guess that I’m moving now that the humanoids have found me, I’d better try and salvage as much as possible from the old camp.

The tools at least will be useful, and the pots of charcoal and metal will be good to have as they took a long time to get hold of.

By the time I get to camp, the morning is well and truly behind me. Whilst walking with the broken suit, my back begins to ache as the uneven weight distribution because I lost the left arm has given me slight ataxic gait and the motion begins to hurt slightly.

Looking around, I feel saddened, the work of the past year and a half lays strewn around me, the house and the pottery lies smashed into small fragments as shards of a broken crown.

It takes me a while to get anything salvageable into a small pile.

I have an axe, knife, shovel, spit and short-sword as the metal tools as well as a pot of charcoal, with my metal and glue and flour inside it. I manage to get my rope from the house and the fly wheel from the fire starter and fit everything inside the charcoal pot except for the sword, axe and shovel.

The monjolo will have to stay here, perhaps I could come for it when summer comes around again.

Moving on from the camp I head down the slopes, hunting for where I fought the humanoid. I find it after a few minutes and I stare, examining it with my eyes, it is withered and broken, the head rolled a few metres away since I left it and it sits, face down in the muck. I’m glad, I don’t want to stare at it, at the person it used to be.

No matter how hard I try, I still find it tough to connect the beast to anything human. The size and features are so alien to me that my mind refuses to accept it.

As I examine it, I find spikes of bone all over. They split the flesh around it as they protrude, there are spikes on the heels, feet, knees, elbows, shoulders and numerous smaller protrusions on all the bones to protect it, like some sick cross between a hedgehog and a human.

In terms of the internal organs, they seem to be atrophying severely but from what I can tell they are all there, even if they don’t function.

It is frankly amazing it is still alive, though I doubt it has a long lifespan.

The muscles are dense and solid cords that obviously hold all the creature’s power.

The skin is several times thicker than mine, I suppose blood doesn’t get all the way to the surface, which is why it sloughs off and starts to rot.

Big swellings distort its body; they seem to be pockets of skin that the decaying organs fill up during their liquefaction as the monster rots from within.

The necrotic cells smell gangrenous and it nearly makes me spew, thank god the air filter can handle it is all I say.

It is a grewsome, harrowing sight yet I persist in examining it, if I can find an edge against them then perhaps I can beat them more thoroughly.

Whilst I’ve killed five of them, I didn’t come out of it well, the suit is damaged in a couple of places and missing an arm, I’ve had my camp destroyed and I’ve only killed five of them.

I pause, shocked as I examine its neck, within the muscle of its neck I find a small capsule, no more than a half inch in length and significantly less in width. It looks like a pill.

One end is rounded as you would expect whilst the other is squared off, it has a black coating compared to the grey of the rest of the capsule.

“Enigma, any clue?” I ask him, hoping he can tell me what it is.

“No, there is not enough data, get the suit to scan it and I may be able to tell you more”

I do as he asks.

“It appears to have internal components, and a battery, whatever it is it uses electricity.”

“What could it be, a tracker?”

“Possibly, if you could crack it open I might be able to tell more.”

I turn it over,

“No screws or clips, suggestions?

“Knife”

“Right of course, where should I try?”

“You see the seam, between the two sides of the plastic shell?”

“Yep, here?” I say after finding it, I press the knife point in at the end of the pill and wait for confirmation.

“Yeah, go there”

I stab in gently, turning the knife to try and prise the two sides open. Eventually I try slicing around, following the seam, when I get about a quarter done it pops open.

Success!

Inside the little capsule, there is a small battery, a circuit board, some wires and another box which presses to the black end of the pill.

Enigma confirms that I should open that up too.

Inside the box there is a small piston and a small section of foam, it means nothing to me.

“Enigma?”

“It appears to be a transducer of some kind, you see that loose wire, the black one. It is a receiver, the signal then gets processed and a command is sent to this unit here, this is a transducer, the small piston produces some sort of signal for the creature, I can’t determine much else.”

“Do you think it’s connected to the signal we’ve heard occasionally?” I ask him.

“It is quite likely”

We both fade to silence as we ponder the newest discovery.

Eventually though, I have to move on.

Having collected all that I can salvage and examined the corpse, I decide it is time for a wash, despite the pouring rain I still feel icky, stripping out of the suit I sling my wet uniform on the rocks and jump in the pool, it takes me a few minutes to clean off the grime and sweat from myself before I tackle the suit, as the arm has come off it is no longer water-tight and so I can’t get it in the water to wash it off.

Phew, I’m exhausted again, getting the suit clean was a monumental task, the little edges and joints mean the grime hides away.

When I’m done, I head off along the path I made yesterday in my frantic run. Somewhere in the fight I had lost the sword and unfortunately, I’m not sure where. I know I had it beyond the ditch as I used it to kill one there, but I didn’t have it at the cliff, so I must have abandoned it along the way.

I make haste as I backtrack and soon I’ve reached the sword, it was abandoned as I made the break for the cliff, unconsciously I had dropped it to increase my speed.

At least I’ve got it again, without it I’d have very little chance of killing them, it allows me the reach to deal with them effectively, especially now that my left arm isn’t protected.

As I was searching my route I encountered the remains again, the two that I left to die in the ditch did in fact die, bleeding out in the ditch, the one I sliced open didn’t make it far dying where it came to rest whilst the other; the one that impaled itself had managed to crawl a few metres along.

I am surprised that nothing came along to eat it, there’s a few bugs but it seems to have been left alone by all the scavengers, perhaps they know better than to approach something that smells the way they do.

I give the corpses a quick once over finding a capsule in one and not in the other.

What does that say? I wonder, thinking about asking Enigma but I hold off, he won’t have any insight here. Not anything useful anyway.

I make it to the cliff and stare down at the floor, the beast is gone, perhaps the big cats got to it. I doubted they would be scared of anything, I spot the remains of my suit’s arm down there and decide that I want it back.

It takes me a while to work my way around the cliff and down to the base, but I get to keep my supplies on me, something that is well worth the time invested.

The arm is wrecked, not only has the fall and subsequent impact dislodged the connectors but the metal has been sheered into several ribbon-like lengths by the humanoids claws.

The jagged edges have clumps of the claws stuck on them as they dealt just as much damage to the beast than it did to the suit.

Seeing its state, I decide to leave it, the electronics are buried in the metal, a metal that I won’t be able to use or forge, I just won’t be able to get a fire hot enough to make the metal malleable or work out the stresses through annealing. A shame, if I could have fitted it back on then I’d feel much more comfortable.

Since I’m not getting anything here I decide to head off.

About four hours later I run into the coral forest, the water level here has started to rise, submerging the former islands in a few inches of water, splashing my way across I keep watch of the deeper channels, though I doubt there are any predators lurking there I’m not betting on it. It takes me a few hours to cross the coral forest, the pace is slow because of the sticky marshy waters that cling to my feet with every step.

When I emerge, I enter a new area. Like so much of the world, it has lots of trees, but the gently sloping ground is covered with short grasses and small bushes, the grasslands are filled with herbivorous animals, thankfully they ignore me, one of them is reminiscent of a rhino, with hard looking skin and a large vicious horn that juts out from the tip of its snout.

I make a wide berth to avoid it as I progress, soon the ground reaches a peak, the trees bunching up and becoming more densely packed as the ridge approaches, on the other side of the ridge I spot a river, it is about twenty metres wide with gently sloping beaches that drop off a few feet to the water.

The river bottom is more shingle and pebble than soft sand, but they are round enough that when I walk on them it doesn’t hurt too much.

The ground feels firm as the water runs off into the river and the water table is rich enough to support the trees along the ridges, blocking much of the wind and rain. The river flows down towards the sea in the direction of the wind meaning that the little gully where I find myself settling is sheltered enough to relax for a bit.

I think this will do well, I drop the pot down to the floor and take a seat on a smooth-ish rock. It cracks and crumbles to dust under the weight of the suit, splaying me over as I overbalance and end up lying flat on the floor.

Sandstone, great!

I sigh and let myself relax. I’ll just take a little break and then update the log.