Galactic Calendar 259872/ 2000 [ Sol Year 4387/ Day 155 of 365. Sol standard year]
Days after of Crash landing/ 4
Uninhabited Island / Clearing of Escape Capsule # 405
Galactic Standard Time / After 1440
Duncan
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Duncan stared at a living Ancient and he forced his heart to be still. The being was wearing a dark full-body suit of high-tech armor. It had two four small blades on the arms just behind the gloves facing away from the body. The head was covered by a full body mask that had spines over the head. The Ancient turned to look at them and the mask fully covered the head with a blue visor across where the eyes would be.
Duncan licked his lips as he tried to figure out what to do. Part of him wanted to fire, but the treaty that was going to be signed. Everything he knew was telling him to kill it, but his mind was telling him to wait. With everything that was happening, this place, having one of them to help was something that he couldn’t let go of. So against his old instants, he would let the Ancient make the first move.
The Ancient looked at them for a moment more before it released its blade. As the weapon disappeared, the being started to walk towards them, looking around.
“Now what!? I mean what do we do!?” Tatrina asked, her voice full of fear and anger.
“We stay calm, that’s for starters. And then we try and communicate with this person,” Duncan said with a scowl.
“How!? We never broke their codes, and we never talked to them! Even the peace treaty was done through letters! How are we going to ‘talk’ to him!?” Tatrina demeaned.
Duncan only looked at her as the Ancient stopped and looked at them. It crossed its arms and looked right at them.
“Okay, anyone have any ideas at all?” Qiana asked, her voice a little faint.
“I think I could jury rig a text-to-speech device, but it’ll take some time,” Dalila piped in from behind.
Duncan felt a surge of relief, but then he felt the same despair from before. As soon as he saw that one thing that they had all forgotten, he facepalmed. “Oh, NOVA! I can’t believe that we didn’t even think of that!”
“Think about what?” Tatrina asked terror in her voice. “How we have a near-unstoppable killing machine within arm’s reach of us? How none of our weapons are big enough to even scratch this thing?”
“No, how to even think of talking to them. We need a program to translate, and unless he has one, anything Dalila makes it useless!” Duncan said as he locked eyes on the visor of the being before him. Duncan could usually tell when beings were having fun and he was feeling it from the Ancient. As he looked at the being, Tatrina only laughed madly.
“Terrific! We have a plan to talk to this thing and we can’t even do that! What a world, I mean really!” Tatrina spat.
Duncan sighed and looked around, trying to see if the others had any plans. But as all of the others only shrugged, he sighed. For a few moments, he tried to think of what to do when finally he made a plan. “Okay, here’s what we do. Try and use pictures to talk to this one. Basic ones that show that the robots are the enemy.”
“Not bad sir, I think it might work!” Leonator said with a grin. “I can remember the report that one of the first ambassadors to these people said they did that. And we don’t have anything else we can do.”
“Yeah! …… wait,” Dalila said suddenly as she looked around at the others, her face blank as her mouth dropped open.
“What is it?” Duncan asked.
Dalila didn’t say anything, she only looked right at the Ancient. “Didn’t someone say they had that robot? Wasn’t it just before this guy appeared!?”
“What are you saying, that this person can speak common!?” Ta4 demanded in shock as everyone looked at the Ancient.
After a few moments, the Ancient nodded.
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“There’s right, I can,” The Ancient said suddenly in the common tongue in a male voice. As everyone watched the Ancient in shock, the Ancient bowed. “Thank you for setting me free. Please, call me by my first name, Dam’ien. My full is something of a mouthful in Federation Common after all.”
Duncan felt his whole worldview shift as he looked at the Ancient, shock making his mouth drop open. If this was true, then the Ancients could understand their language. And then he felt that there was something that he had to speak that thought, and he knew things were going to change. “The Peace Treaty, you all let our ambassadors make fools of themselves, didn’t you?
Damien’s masked face looked at Duncan for a few moments. “Wellllll. The thought was if you wanted peace so badly, then we should make them work for it.”
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Dam’ien
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As he looked at the humans, Dam’ien felt down his laughter. The thought about what had happened back then still made him crack up about it. He looked at the humans, and they all looked at him with shocked expressions.
“Well, let’s move on. My name is Duncan, I’m the security chief aboard a civilian cruise ship, the Spirit of Adventure. Let me introduce everyone here. This is Da3 and Vivian, both civilian volunteers. This is Leonator, a civilian specialist of Virgin Worlds. Qiana, the woman who released you and Tatrina…..” Duncan said.
Tatrina interloped him and looked right at the Ancient’s mask. “Tatrina S. Qin, civilian investigator attached to the same company as their ship. The same ship that you were being smuggled on. And the ship that my investigation took me to. So I would love to hear more about how you were put into that cell!”
Dam’ien locked his eyes on Duncan as he heard the name of the ship he was on. There was no way, there was no way in the Ancestors! That ship, that one ship was the one he was held captive on!? Then that meant that……. He swallowed and knew he was going to have to ask a question and be very careful about how he asked it.
“The Spirit of Adventure? Was there a team of my people aboard that ship?” Dam’ien asked with panic in his voice.
The one that called himself Duncan looked at him, staring at him. Dam’ien. In the silence of that moment, Dam’ien wondered if this person knew exactly who was on that team. And if that was true, then the situation might have changed.
“Yes, there was. And this happened to this. We’ve all crashed into this monster of an island,” Duncan said as he looked at Dam’ien.
“Did it happen before or after the thirtieth day?” Dam’ien asked an edge of urgency in his voice.
“No, I think it was around the twentieth day. If my hunch is right,” Leonator cut in.
“Good! Very good!” Dam’ien said as he almost cried tears of relief. That means that his Prince was still alive! And that was the greatest gift that he could have received from these people.
“Wait, why was that good!?” Tatrina demanded.
Dam’ien looked between the people before him and forced back a chuckle. This might be what his people stated away. They were too old, but he saw the appeal of making true contact now. As he was about to say something a strange reading appeared on his mask. He looked at it and then he stared in shock. Slowly he looked around at the people before, and he was shocked. The ability to use Aether was the Bio Virus his ancestors had been infected with, that was their history. But these readings challenged that theory no, they destroyed it! The scans showed that most of these people were on the edge of Awaking. And then another reading appeared and he looked to the right and found two Cyclopes floating in the air.
For a second, he just stared and then he shook his head. “Null gravity field as a prison? Interesting! I don’t believe that my people haven’t used something like that in years!”
“That’s interesting. Did your people stop using…. Not important! How did you know the name of the ship!?” Duncan demanded.
Dam’ien looked at the people before him and wondered what to say. To say most of it would lead to the one secret that his people kept from the Federation. To say nothing might be just as bad, and that was something that he couldn’t do. So then the best answer was to explain things without telling the whole truth.
“My job is like Miss Tatrina. I found chatter in my kind’s underworld about a pirate gang attacking your ship. Their target was our ambassador, ransom them back to their clan. Any of yours that they killed doing that? They saw it as nothing more than pest control. But since I’m here, I think they had some allies on your side of the border,” Dam’ien said as he locked his eyes on Duncan. Then he looked at Qiana and bowed. “And Miss? Thank you for thinking of me when you freed me. That was the spark I needed to get my mind back under control.”
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Qiana
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Qiana could only blink as she looked at the Ancient, not understanding anything. She had heard of these people, and they were terrors. They knew nothing about these beings, they had kept even their genetics from being taken. The nanites these beings were said to have used to do that, the potential uses for that. Then she realized what the strange being before was saying, and then what words he used.
“My thoughts? What are you talking about?” She asked as Dam’ien seemed to send a sense of calm and joy at her.
The being started to turn then he stopped. Lighting fast, a pistol appeared in his hands aiming down the pit at the hole.
“I can sense movement from down there! More of those things that I fought coming out of it! Please tell me those things are just security robots that you lost control of!” Dam’ien asked urgently.
“NO! We crashed down on and found this thing!” Duncan said before he whistled. “EVERYONE! GET READY FOR WAR!”
Qiana looked down at the pit, and then she felt someone pulling her away. She looked and saw Leonator dragging her away, looking towards the capsule.
“Don’t talk miss! We need to get to safety so we can help these people if their hurt!” Leonator said with a slight edge of panic in his voice.
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Dam’ien
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As he aimed his pistol down at the hole, he smirked under his helmet. As much as he didn’t like to admit it, he was a combat junkie. He had grown up hunting monsters from a broken Ruin, and the hunt to find the truth did satisfy his being. But this, raw combat? That was the thing he lived for!
As more of the robots came out of the hole, his eyes locked onto the one leading the way. It was a humanoid model with two strange-looking three-foot-long axes at the end of its arms. “
That’s new. And just after you destroyed the other one,” Duncan said with a strange edge to his voice.
Dam’ien remained silent as he looked at the robot before him, feeling his blood boil as he watched it. Was it something that had been modified to fight him? Or was it something that had been coming to fight these? Either way, that one looked like a command model, and the basic strategy was to get rid of commanders. So there was just one thing that he could do. And as luck would have it, it was something that he wanted to do anyway.
But first, he had to see it if was possible to be done, that was the important thing. Sending a command to his helmet, his vision gained a square showing the shield. As he looked at it, he nodded as he knew exactly what he had to do.
“Sir Duncan. I need you to open a hole in the shield. I’ll take that thing away while you deal with the others,” Dam’ien said as he kept his vision locked on the robot. The robot was slowly walking towards them, the others firing up at the humans who ducked and fired back.
