Space Bound Skald

I threaten a planet

So the Hunters just sent out their ultimatum, and that sucks. The captain was willing to drop me on a planet, but he himself was unwilling to take the burden of having a Human on board. It was a class 7 world, and there was some civilization present, but it didn't have a huge number of natural resources, nor did it have a particularly important location. It was basically a backwater so he figured I could survive there quietly while the hunter nonsense blew over. Rhulit refused to let me go it alone though so we were given 48 hours warning while he made his way to the planet and dropped us there. We used that time to prep various items that we would need, including a solar charger, an experimental ballistic weapon which used a double kinetic pulse to propel the round, and a much smaller foundry which could run off of the solar charger to make more of the bullets and whatever else we might need. That all, in combination with the nutrispheres he provided, ensured that we could survive a while without any issues. I was in charge of being the pack mule, and Rhulit was the one operating our navigation and a few other such technical items.

We felt ready for anything, the planet was a relatively low gravity one at .7 Earth gravity. Rhulit found it not difficult, the climate was acceptable, and the only thing which made it a class 7 was a fairly competent predator species visually reminiscent of a cross between a fox and a lizard, slightly scaled up. They were tough, and they had some wicked claws, but they weren't really fast enough to threaten most entities. They didn't hunt so much as they waited for prey to wander close enough that a lunge could hook their claws into its hide then drag themselves higher until they could kill their prey. They were tough by alien standards, but by earth standards they were relatively unimpressive. Food proved easy enough to find as most of the local flora and fauna was edible, and we had enough ammo to use, I got accustomed to sleeping in my armor, and aside from when I took it off to clean the liner, I basically lived in it. It made very good camouflage for hunting, and given that our kinetic pulse bullets were subsonic, we could usually not spook prey in the area if we missed which was rare. Rhulit turned out to be a really good shot, and we managed to make it all work.

About a year passed, with us hunting, sleeping, talking about what to do in the future, and tinkering. The prolonged camping trip ended when we came within a few miles of a settlement and felt a rumble. That was weird for two reasons; the first being that the planet had all but no tectonic activity, the second being that there was a smoke trail coming from that direction. We ran, with me taking the lead until Rhulit dropped to all fours and started really running. I hadn't realized just how fast a Gaoian could run if they wanted to. The settlement was a mess when we arrived. Most of the buildings were concrete, but there were some fires. Tons of buildings had been knocked over, there were craters all over the city, and bodies littered the streets. Rhulit and I looked at each other and started looking for survivors, I even went so far as to call out in hope of a response. Nothing for three city blocks seemed to be alive, but in the fourth, underneath a car type vehicle, I found a Rauwryhr child hiding. She was scared and hurt, and she, naturally, didn't trust the black metal man. I raised my visor, but that didn't help, so I called Rhulit over and he managed to coax her out. He stood upright and carried her in his arms as she had a broken leg or some such injury. Rhulit took her out of the city while I looked on for any other survivors, but I found none. When I returned, I took off my helmet to make myself somewhat less threatening. She introduced herself as Zarkrer, Zar for short, and said that first a massive storm of exploding objects fell from the sky. She continued that shiny metal men, vaguely like me, but with glass domes which Rhulit guessed were Allebenellin, had descended and picked up the survivors killing all who resisted. She exclaimed that she was scared and just wanted her mother and began to be racked with shuddering sobs, but I couldn't provide her mother to comfort her so I began to sing a lullaby that I remembered from my childhood, somewhat mournful in tone, but relaxing. Eventually her wailing subsided into quiet tears, and then to the deep, even breaths of sleep.