Lupis fought and kicked and clawed his way through the vicious abominations until they were all lying dead and scattered outside the cave opening. A lesser trained and practiced warrior would have been torn to shreds, but Lupis had managed to stay a few steps ahead of his attackers, picking his attacks with deadly accuracy. It then took a few minutes for him to calm down and re-orient himself. Once he caught his bearings again, he first noticed that he no longer could see the leader of the escaped prisoners fighting behind him. He was able to spot the unmoving figure of the giant Ursid lying on the ground. Haze had fought to the end and died doing what he probably loved best. There had been no love lost there on Lupis’ part, but he still felt a twinge of something inside his mostly empty soul at the sight of the dead Titan, who had fought till the end. It had probably been better on everyone, for with whatever strange disease that had been taking over his brain, Lupis would have had to just kill him anyway. He just hoped that the Ursid had not been too far gone at the point of his death to appreciate the honorable end.

Speaking of which, Lupis realized that there were more Titans somewhere inside of the cave, and likely they had all been affected also. The bounty hunter collapsed the power sword and attached the hilt and blade, now the size of a dagger back onto his belt, while reaching for the rifle on his back. He thumbed the switch to extend the barrel and stock while walking toward the mouth of the cave.

A dozen prisoners came running out, wild looks in their eyes. His Net-Comm HUD began targeting them, and each time it did, it let him know that they were infected. Some of them froze momentarily when they saw what they were running towards, the others tried their best to run by him and hope for the best.

“Out of the frying pan…” Lupis spoke, shouldering the Roland Assaultmaster rifle.

Lupis opened fire. The rattling three-round bursts echoed through the valley as he cut them down.

“…into the fire.” Lupis’s aim, even without the suit’s HUD was impeccable, and none of the escaped prisoners made it out of the valley alive. Lupis then walked toward the cave and crossed through the opening.

The Phantasm’s night vision kicked in automatically as he entered the darkness within. He was inside of a large, high-ceilinged chamber that looked anything but natural by the smooth exact angles and cuts of the walls. Off to his right was the cage, and a small group of Titans making their way towards him. They froze when they saw his dark silhouette, outlined by the light coming from outside of the cave. He adjusted his grip on the rifle and checked the Net-Comm.

“Scanning.” Gabriel’s voice sounded inside of the helmet. Then a moment later, “No infection detected.”

“I was wondering when you would find us.” Lupis recognized the voice speaking to him, it was Halden, the hateful little Zenith Security Chief. The one that had masterminded, along with the Rodentia crime boss his capture, taunted him and took his power armor. The Titan who even after his defeat, made sure that Lupis’ humiliation was complete. His maw curled into an unconscious snarl under the mirrored helmet.

“Scan again.” Lupis thought into the Net-Comm, focused now solely on the one Titan. “No infection detected.” Gabriel announced again.

“I suppose you are going to kill me then?” Halden asked, though the conviction of his tone did not imply a question but rather a statement. “I figured it would always come down to this, one of us killing the other. I guess you think I deserve it after we captured you. Your record reads like a ruthless killer of innocents, females and pups. A slaughterer willing to kill anyone that stands in his way…but I know the truth about you. I know the real Lupis, the Titan that was fired from his job at Zenith Corp for a violation that he did not commit. I’ve seen your true face, underneath the helmet and I know the noble hero beneath. So, go ahead and kill me if you must…” Halden sneered up at the towering armor. “If you have the ruthlessness and bad blood to do it.”

Lupis shouldered the rifle, switched to single fire and squeezed the trigger, sending a solitary bullet through the security chief’s forehead. Halden fell, his lifeless body being dead before it collided with the ground. The rest of the crew of the Triumph stepped away in shock. They seemed terrified that they would be next. Lupis answered this fear by lowering his rifle to the low ready position.

“We have to get out of here, it’s not safe. If you’re gonna kill us, then get it over with.” The little Rabbid captain faced off bravely against the imposing suit of power armor. “But I’d rather not wait around for that thing to wake up.”

“I’m not going to kill you.” Lupis returned through the speakers in his suit. “The rest of them were infected by something.” It was a mostly true statement, after all.

This seemed to bring the attention of the plump Beaver who spoke up next.

“Can that suit detect those things?” His fingers were making involuntary movements as he looked up at the armor with curiosity.

“Yes.” Lupis returned simply.

“Was it an alien infection? Something they got here?” Kenner, a tall for his race black and white Badger asked intently.

“Yes, I believe so. The waters are tainted as are the vegetation. Some type of spores maybe. They take over your body and I believe your mind.”

“That makes sense, they sure were acting a good bit daft towards the end there, weren’t they?” Dally remarked more to himself than the others, but they nodded in reply anyway.

“What “thing” were you referring to?” Lupis pointed towards the pretty female Rabbid. She seemed confused at first but then suddenly understood and pointed behind her.

“It’s at the top of the stairs. I believe it is hooked up to a network of sensors and weird computer systems. I dunno for sure but my Net-Comm thinks it’s probably hooked up to a whole series of little nooks and crannies just like this one, probably filled with armies of whatever those alien creatures were. I don’t want to stay here and find out.”

Lupis looked past her and saw the opening where large stairs led further up into the cave.

“Wait for me outside, I’m going to have a look.” Lupis responded while pushing past them. The Canid among them was tall, probably taller than he was outside of his suit, but inside his shell was a different story.

Lupis climbed the staircase, curious as to the construction, which seemed to have been made for something a little larger than his suit. At the top of the stairs, he saw the massive robotic figure that the captain had seen, seating on a type of throne.

“Gabriel, analyze.” Lupis thought into the Net-Comm.

“Scanning.” Came the reply. “Unknown technology. Unknown Lifeform.” Gabriel said a few moments later.

“Lifeform?” Lupis wondered at the Net-Comm’s choice of words and decided to push for more information. “Gabriel, is that a robot or something alive?”

“Extrapolating data. It appears to be an advanced AI, perhaps on par with the Zenith Supreme AI. Whether an AI that can learn and improve is considered alive is something Titanian philosophers have long debated.”

“And what is it hooked up to?”

“Extrapolating. These systems are unlike any known to Titan. This is an information system like a computer, but it is natural, like a plant.”

“A plant computer?” Lupis thought into the Net-Comm, surprised by the analysis. “Is it possible that this thing is hooked up to a network of defensive systems or something like that?”

“These systems are highly advanced, beyond Titan technology today. None of the lifeforms we have encountered have displayed any indication that they would be capable of using such technology, let along creating it. Previous scans showed that the insectoid lifeforms that coordinated their attack on you carried some matching DNA with the local wildlife. My analysis concludes that whatever civilization created this AI system also biologically engineered those creatures as a natural defense system of this planet. If this is true, then this AI is hooked up to multiple cells hidden away underground and capable of coordinating an assault anywhere on the planet.”

“Can you scan the planet for more of those?”

“My sensors cannot encompass the entire planet. I can sense thousands more of these soldiers within a fifty-mile radius.”

“Thousands?” Lupis thought, more to himself in shock of the idea than in reply to his suit’s AI. He had nearly been overwhelmed by dozens of them, he did not want to square off against thousands. And the fact that his AI called them soldiers sank the reality of the situation in quickly.

“Affirmative. Exact number unknown. If the pattern within my sensor range continues across the entire planet the number could be in the billions.”

In other words, this entire planet could be teeming with armies of murderous bioengineered insect creatures. As if the surface was not making every effort to kill him already with the infections and spores and rampaging creatures. The Rabbid female had a point, it was best to be away from this place quickly, for there was no telling what could trigger this planet-wide defensive system or if it even already had been triggered.

But something caught his attention as he moved to leave. It wasn’t his eyes that drew his attention back to the scene, it was somehow his mind, his outer senses. It was a strange, otherworldly feeling he could not describe. It was as if he was called mentally to the floating object towards the rear of the room. His eyes fell upon a floating trapezohedron, that had no visible source of propulsion or levitation, but was gently spinning in midair. Before he could check himself, Lupis was reaching out to touch the diamond object.

As Lupis’ hand made light contact with the smooth surface of the object he felt an electric shock that instantly filled all his senses. It was as if a cybernetic medical procedure had been performed on him, all his senses were heightened and filled to their maximum potential, even his handicapped hearing. The world and reality as he was aware of it dropped away, like a curtain being pulled back to reveal something underneath.

An explosion of colors assaulted him, a kaleidoscope of colors he recognized but soon they were swirling into new spectrums and wavelengths, creating new colors that no Titan eye had ever before witnessed. These strange, psychedelic colors began coalescing into images, and these images came at him hard and fast.

Lupis saw glimpses of the underground shelters across the planet. Thousands upon thousands of insectoid creatures, alive yet not alive, awaiting a command to rise and fight. He was somehow connected to their consciousness, and it was a group consciousness, and he could find no evidence of any other emotion or thought that they were capable of. No love, hate, hope or even self-preservation could these monsters comprehend. Their only thought to spread and kill, seek and destroy.

Lupis could not explain the visions, but he was now somehow somewhere else far, far away. Somewhere out in the galaxy, he was still connected to this consciousness, but this planet was only the tip of the iceberg of this massive group intelligence. Inconceivable trillions more spread out, laying dormant in ships and other planets, asteroids and moons. Trillions of untold, uncountable waves of living drones, awaiting activation. The very thought and magnitude send shivers down the bounty hunter’s spine.

And then, just when he thought his consciousness had been thrust out into the galaxy as far as it could go, it was transported somewhere else. It was a strange planet, in an old bizarre part of the universe, where concepts of time and reality were loosened. The planet pulsed, like a living grotesque heart, and yet it appeared to be more a construct of some alien, unknowable civilization than any common planetoid. It was interconnected to a living mechanical web, one that covered the entire solar system. He recognized the uncountable swarms of solar sails and unfathomably massive series of mechanical rings from theoretical Titan science. This was a Barksley Sphere, named after an ancient Titan scientist, an advanced system of interconnected systems harnessing the power of the sun.

And at the center of the planet was an alien consciousness, a mechanical intelligence that seemed to sense him. A vision of a being vaguely mechanical, but not built like any bipedal that Lupis could imagine, lit up and turned to face him.

And then Lupis was suddenly thrust back inside the dark cavern, the sparkling stars and other fantastic sights had disappeared instantly. His senses reeled from the experience, and he nearly retched inside his helmet. He pulled his hand away from the trapezohedron and sneered at it from under his helmet. Disoriented, Lupis left the antechamber and made his way out of the cave to meet up with the other survivors of the Triumph.

* * * *

Lupis went through the motions and led the others back to the PTC, but his mind still felt literally millions of miles away. He made no attempt at small talk and gave short, clean answers to the attempts that the others made to him. He kept the visions that he had encountered within the cave to himself for now, he felt as though he had yet to process all the information for himself, how could he even explain or discuss his experience to others?

They found the PTC and Lupis used the GPS system to try and map out a path back to the Triumph. When he connected Gabriel to the PTC’s onboard computer, they collaborated to find that they had never truly left the original land mass that the Triumph had crashed upon. The island appeared to have been in a channel of a wide river, and they would be able to alter their course and take an overland route back to the crash site. The only downside to this was that the small PTC could not handle them all at once. Because of this, they decided to let Serge, who was a mechanical engineer, take the PTC on ahead and begin the repairs he was now confident he would be able to make and the rest of them would simply trek the distance back. Serge was in the process of fabricating something that he thought would deal with the deadly radiation leak. They knew that this would be a long journey possibly fraught with many dangers from the local wildlife.

Several hours went by after they had watched the PTC disappear into the horizon. Lupis instantly realized as he watched it that it had been a sort of safety net for him. Having the option of mobility was a tremendous boon when you were stranded on an unsafe alien planet. He was thankful for getting his armor back at least, for it would at least give him some protection against the landscape and any hungry creatures, meanwhile his companions would be out of luck. He noticed this less than an hour into their trek as they passed through a patch of waist high fungal plant life that turned out to be razor sharp.

Eventually they came across a flat field, and Lupis was beginning to grow irritated with the others following him. With the suit’s enhanced servo motors, he would have been able to make the trek at twice the speed. They were growing tired, and the landscape was hard on them. He wasn’t sure why he was staying back with them, perhaps some sense of duty? Maybe it was because he knew they would be his best bet off the planet. He didn’t know enough about fabricator technology to be able to fabricate complex machinery like this other Titan claimed to be able to do. About the best he was able to do was replicate a sandwich, and with the help of the programs that he had installed in his own, sometimes some ammunition.

As he was contemplating these things a noise like a rumbling thunder sounded from the distance, with bass loud enough to cause his suit’s seismic sensors to alert. For a moment he figured it must have been a storm on the horizon, but the noise intensified, and he realized with a sudden shock that it was an animal roar. It was the same roar that had terrified him in the darkness when he first awoke on the planet alone. It sounded like he was about to come face to face with whatever had produced the booming otherworldly sound.