***
Ist…
Raist! He shook his head slowly as his eyes focused on some light coming down from the trees above him.
He shook his head, thinking about that girl – spilled out on some planet in his past, serving her fatalistic destiny without complaint. In time his bleeding wounds would heal, but there were some wounds that never healed, those that were too deep to see.
Anyone there!? A desperate female voice came through on his ICS, but there was no identification marker or avatar associated with it. What was going on? ICS was nearly flawless, local range could reach substantial portions of the planet.
Yeah, I’m here. I can’t get an ID on you. I took a pretty hard fall and was out for a while there. - Raist
Philira speaking. I ended up on the ground okay, but I worry about everyone else. I’m glad at least one person is still alive. - Philira
Well, we need to meet. Unfortunately, this foliage is way too dense to get a vantage point on. - Raist
Raist put his hand behind him and pushed himself to a sitting position, but just doing that hurt his hand. He lifted his hand to find small cuts over it, and rapidly realized the ground he was on was composed of a grass-like plant that its sharp edges literally were serrated. He grabbed a blade of the plant and realized it was structured so that it would stab inwards deeper and deeper, but had small anchors that prevented it from easily coming back out.
In the corner of his eye his system was pinging a warning, and he activated it. His system told him that medical and suit synth capabilities have been reduced to 84% after healing him from the fall.
Normally that wasn’t too bad, but his system also warned that given the harsh condition of travel, expect high levels of loss while maintaining suit integrity as it increased thickness to stop the plants from getting at him.
He unrolled the suit off his hand to touch the plants without the armor protecting him, gently rolling his finger over it. Just the soft touch left a thin line of blood on his fingertip before his internal nanites quickly sealed the cut and recycled the blood.
Philira, be careful of the terrain. The area I found myself in is composed of extremely sharp objects. We should be okay with our suits, but if those break down we are in for a lot of pain getting through here. - Raist
Shout a few times, if you would. - Philira
“Philira! Hey! Anyone out there?! Phil—” He heard some crashing behind him, and shot up into a crouch, pulling out his Gauss-Limiter rifle.
There were many weapons that were used by individuals that were also used on ships, only in changed capacities. Agrest’s Rail Rifle was based on the ship weapon of same name that was a long-range rail gun designed to pound out space stations, and with very good tracking and computers could blow smaller ships apart. Raist’s Gauss-Limiter was similar to the ship’s in that it launched huge numbers of tiny projectiles at hyper velocities.
“It’s me,” her voice came through. He didn’t even see her; the camo was still working completely.
He disengaged his own clocking slightly, and she followed suit so they could see each other. They ran up to each other and gave a quick hug, grateful to see someone after the crash. Even though he was dating Leio, he had a soft spot in his heart for Philira. He never pursued it meaningfully because of emotional scars he had over Laiun, the last Scout whom he seriously liked, that selflessly gave her life away for him. They were vastly different in many ways, beyond that they were both completely sacrificial for the Leader. He shook his head to get off the dark train of thought he was on.
“How lucky that the Scout was the one that crashed close to me,” he smiled warily.
“You were actually pretty far away, but this forest is strangely quiet right now.”
“You ran here? Isn’t that risky with all these plants?” Raist asked the young Scout.
“Just reinforce your boots, and the rest is just being careful where your body is.” She held his eyes for only a moment longer before going back to scanning the forest, holding her Plaz-Shot down by her hips.
“Yeah, already on it. Was I the only one you heard from, on ICS or sound?”
“Unfortunately, yes. I couldn’t imagine we are particularly dispersed, but I should definitely be able to hear them, regardless of the ICS malfunction.”
Raist was completing a quick check to make sure none of his gear had fallen out on the crash. “Has to either be something with the planet, which I doubt, or our enemy has an interference device. That had to be what caused the crash. If we get you up that tree, any chance it might help?” He was pointing to the biggest ‘tree’, if you could call a starburst-shaped trunk a tree.
“Completely. It might take a bit to climb though.”
“Let’s do it. I’ll guard down here.”
The two of them made their way over to the spiked ridge. He crouched down, ready to boost her up to one of the knife-branches, when she shook her head ‘no’.
He raised an eyebrow at her, but then she showed him her gloves which had taken on hooked appearances while slightly spreading out.
‘Scout trick,’ he thought. She jumped at the ridge, slamming her hands into the strange object, punching her hooked claws through the tree as her spiked boots likewise punched their way through with slight ‘tings’ as she flew up the tree, crystal fragments falling down as she ascended. She cloaked herself fully once more once she was actually climbing upwards. If somehow the ‘tree’ had resisted the repulsion field in her climbing tools, the microscopic suction cups would have propelled her up anyway.
Keep a ping going so we can find the range of the ICS here - he sent to her, but when she didn’t respond he felt alone again. He backed up a bit as small bits of the plant fell out of the sky from her ascent, turning his own cloaking field back on. He picked one of the branches up, from where it had broken off was a liquid leaking out from the middle. Though the branch was colored purple, he thought the similarity to obsidian was strong. Was this really a plant, or maybe a symbiotic amalgamation of plant and geologic processes? They looked a lot like Daijin Star plants, if they had plants. Hmm…did they have plants?
‘Thinking too much…’
He shook his head and pulled the Gauss-Limiter up to his shoulder and looked around at the silent forest around him. Really the forest was rather beautiful with its soft reflections of the light far above. There appeared to only be two major life forms: the huge trees and the sharp ‘grass’ underneath.
The terrain wasn’t that hard to cross; compared to some the going would have been fairly fast. But the problem was the extreme diligence required of being aware where every hand and every foot was going to ensure no slipping into a razor tree happened. Strengthening just the feet or hands as Philira suggested was a good way to save suit material, but at the risk of injury in an accident.
The visibility was fairly good. Sight lines were about average, blocked only by the big pyramidal trunks or the eventual even dispersion of the trees filling in every sight line.
“Haaaauuuuuuu!” a strange call from somewhere up in the air came, making Raist realize how close to dusk it was now becoming. The call also indicated there was something here other than the two plants types. In the setting sun the purple color of the plants was even more obvious, and that made him remember the fact that from space the landscape looked green. But from here, there was definitely nothing green around.
The branches falling off the tree then took on a different touch from their completely purple obsidian nature beforehand. They were the crystal branches, but with leaves on them. Green leaves.
“What?” He picked up one from the pile forming and sure enough the leaves looked similar enough to Terrestrial leaves, barring the strange branch. Something else caught his eye even more though, and it was that this pile was softly moving. He backed up out of caution and slowly watched it vibrate.
‘This grass is alive…’ He looked down at his boots, grateful the
advanced alloy was protecting him from this alien world. He dropped the leafed branch to the grass, in which the razor grass slowly swayed back and forth. It cleaved the glass-like branch apart and leaving a strange liquid inside the crystal branch similar to sap that was dripping out, as well as the valuable, soft leaves. Raist knelt down to see that between the blades of grass was a small pool of liquid, which the remnants of the sliced branch fell into and were systematically dissolved in what appeared to be an acid.
This was a hostile planet, and with each step he took he could imagine the alien grass trying to cleave bits of his boot off to get to his own ‘juices’ inside. It disgusted him imagining the grass as millions of worms swaying back and forth to eat him. He wanted to shoot them for a moment if it would have at all mattered.
“Raist?” a soft female voice called to him.
“Philira?”
“Yeah.” She jumped out of the tree and turned off her cloak. Her cold eyes and bright hair still affected Raist every time; Scouts were a very enigmatic class of soldier. Given his past with Laiun, the previous Scout he had fallen, for added to the forced distance in his heart he had to maintain with Philira.
“Four things,” she started. “One, there appears to be creatures that live here and only come out at night, and they put this plant life to shame in terms of danger. Two, that way,” she pointed, “is the way towards our goal. Three, there are robot sentries in the air, possibly of Daijin Star origin, but heavily armed. Lastly, there is at least one person alive, and they are that way.”
“Well, then we are going that way,” pointing towards the unknown team member.
“Of course, Leader.”
“Raist is fine, don’t talk differently just because we are on a mission now.”
“Of course, Raist.” He liked the way she said his name.