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Chapter 3: Monstrous Stowaway

Flashback

- The Year 1890 -

"Sir! You need to come look at this!" Zu'lio called to Vienn. "The ship is reading that one of the Fu'nas is on board here. Its life signs are minimal, but it is reading alive and there."

"I thought all programs on the ship were down," Vienn said.

"They were. But the heat signature reading requires hardly any of the advanced calculations that the others do, and during this last test that we did to try and get the system to work for someone older than the correct age, it came on. At first, we were thrilled that anything had worked, before we realized that it had been a malfunction. The heat scanning system isn't complicated, and therefore anyone can use it. That's when we saw the reading."

"Don't let anyone go back there until we confirm what it is. We can't risk unleashing it on this world, or on our people."

"Sir?" Zu'lio asked. "What did you say?"

"I said Don't Let Anyone Back There," Vienn enunciated with care so that Zu'lio could understand him.

Zu'lio's grew terrified. "I just gave them orders to investigate. I had no idea it might be a real threat."

He yelled frantically into the radio connector. "Draw back! Draw back! Orders from the Captain are to..."

The line went dead.

"Oh, by the suns."

"Calm down," Vienn told him in as steady a voice as he could, "We have to alert the other men now to the danger, and the potential that this being has come with us. Fear will not help anyone. Let us prepare ourselves. As General Klidarzan would say, let us do this not for our lives but for the greater purpose of all lives. Think of the innocents outside our walls this very minute. We must save them."

Zul'io took slow deep breaths of air and then let his shoulders fall.

"You are right, as always. May the gods help us."

"Vienn!" Another of the elders ran into the room, bursting through the door without knocking first, a sure sign of trouble.

"The creature, it's wounded, but it's escaping! Our men are dying in there!"

"Yu'gar." The sound of a struggle came from the other rooms. "The creature is out?"

"Out," Yu'gar confirmed, panting. "We can't contain it."

"Is there anything that we can do to stop it from getting out? There are innocent people out there that will die if we can't stop it."

"We can try..." he looked around for inspiration. Then Yu'gar's eyes lit up like a fire springing from a tiny match. "We can use the shot that forces a victim into an induced coma for a set amount of time. We only have one left, though. There were two total onboard."

"Do it. Before the creature digs down far enough that we can't reach it."

Yu'gar sprinted towards the medical lab as fast as he could, breathing in short gasps along the way. The air here was slightly thinner than Lia'unn, though it was composed of mainly the same things, which was why it was so lucky they had landed here with the ship malfunctioning the way it had.

Yu'gar reached the room and thrust his hand into the medical cabinet. It was so cold! He finally felt the fluid, filled an injection with it, and left the room.

He came back to the ship's base just as the creature had started digging down into the dirt below the concrete.

"No!" he cried out, jumping forward through the air and landing right next to the monster. He shoved the injection in.

The beast gnashed its teeth and snarled in pain.

"Grrraaaaa!" It screamed into the silent hallway, before burying itself deep into the Earth. Zu'lio could only hope that the injection would take effect and begin knocking the creature out.

Vienn raced into the room as fast as his long legs could carry him.

"Yu'gar, are you injured?"

"No," he answered, swiftly getting to his feet with the empty shot casing. "I got him, Vienn. I set the coma to its highest setting."

Vienn smiled in relief. Then his smile faded. "How long is that?"

"Three years."

"We better get started then."