2234 work in progress

Dart

Dart looked back at the Quasimodo, this deep underwater she looked more like a sunken pre-contact era battleship than a modern spaceship. But somehow you had to conceal a ship this size. Unfortunately there were almost no wrecks on this planet, a watchful patrol could easily make the ship out from above. He shook his head, for now his trouble was only the Orion ship that crashed nearby. The captains words still echoed in his mind: salvage everything useful and investigate the reason for it's crash.

"Arrow, come in, do you copy?", Mikiko's voice ringed out of the radio attached to John's suit.

"Arrow here, copy. What's up?", Dart answered for John.

"I'm just checking if we have a connection, you're good, over."

"Understood, over and out."

There was only 5 of them, the rest of the crew was either recovering from the space battle or already busy making repairs. Under any other circumstances, the captain would've send a bigger team to avoid repeating the same mistake he did on Akoa one and a half years ago. Out of the 4 scouts he send out, only Mikiko came back, but his tailfin had been injured in a way it could never fully heal again. But so far there were no reports of any spacecrafts approaching the lower atmosphere, they would have to hurry before that time window closed.

Dart turned his head to look at Marina who was swimming a bit to the side of him, she acted like normal, but he could've sworn that she had just been looking at him. Suddenly he heard from the other side.

"Why do we always get the difficult jobs? I could really use a long break...", Ik'hi was still upset that her and his free time was yet again cut short. 

"Well, this is what we signed up for. You had it coming."

"Hm, true. Anyways, what did the captain say we were looking for again?"

"We're supposed to find out what shot that ship down, he wants to know who the other faction was that just appeared out of nowhere."

"But what does it matter if they're killing each other up there anyways?", she pointed at the water's surface. Even all the way down here you could see the traces of the ongoing space battle, laser beams, plasma detonations and explosions appearing everywhere among the stars. It would have been beautiful to watch if you were unaware of what was really happening. 

"Not so fast on that, there could be allies up there. And if so, we need to contact them, but only when we're sure, after all sending a single message out there would reveal our location to everyone."

Ik'hi stared at him for a few seconds.

"Good point. Alright, let's get this done fast, I want to get back before breakfast!"

She turned around to give Dionii a push, the Sapper had fallen behind again. Meanwile Dart checked his lasrifle, he had only managed to grab 2 batteries for it on his way out, but it should do the job. He put it into his bag and started checking their surroundings. The plants on this planet looked different from anything he had ever seen, here and there small fish dashed away at the appearance of the group. Hopefully there aren't any big predators on this planet, already the thought of that sent a shiver down his spine. Uncharted planets were dangerous, many terranic soldiers had already lost their lives on them.

"Sssir?", John swam closer to him.

"Cut the formal stuff out John, there's no Captain around."

"Yes sir- I mean Dart. I got-t an encrypted message sssaying that we need to hurry and keep radio sssilence until we get-t back."

"God damn it! And I had just hoped there would be no trouble this time. Did the message say what the reason for this sudden change is?"

"No, sir."