A.I.: Re-Genesis

Part 13

Chapter 12

Luna bit her lip as she was camouflaged with the surrounding area. She wasn't far from the two men and she couldn't actually move. While the suit offered her stealth it did nothing to conceal the crunch of footsteps on sand.

"An angel?" She overheard the redhead ask with a roll of his eyes. The skepticism was clear as day. "Now I know you have a concussion."

"Hey!" The other on the ground exclaimed before getting up. Luna inched back so he wouldn't brush against her. Her step back however caused her to step on a twig. She mentally screamed as the men were alert again. This was not going well. They had guns, which was more firepower than they had expected from a planet that had been abandoned. During her schooling it was often reiterated year after year during history classes that the people left on Earth, after all these centuries, had devolved back to the Stone age. Now Luna knew that was wrong. She wanted to kick her robotic teacher in the circuit boards. 'Did humanity make up the devolution so that they could feel better about themselves for abandoning this planet?' she asked herself as the men looked around.

Her eyes widened when a suspicious sound was heard further away. "What was that?" She saw the redhead ask as he looked and aimed his weapon in that direction. She then felt someone grabbing her arm. She saw no one but was dragged back quickly to a safe distance. Luna tried to stifle her surprise as Mendia deactivated her stealth suit to appear before her.

"What the hell were you thinking?!" Mendia asked in an angry whisper. "If the Captain hears about this....."

"I'm sorry!" Luna whispered back. "I was in my assigned area when I took notice of their gear. They had greater firepower than I imagined. I panicked."

"That still doesn't excuse you from breaking stealth protocol. If I hadn't been here they would have gotten you!" Mandia growled once she was sure they were safe.

"I didn't do it on purpose!" Luna retorted. "The tree seemed like a good place to hide. I didn't expect my stealth suit to have been damaged and the branch to give out!"

"This is a mess," Mendia groaned. "Now that they know we are camouflaged they will take precautions."

Mendia's built-in shortwave radio activated and both women could hear Mala's order. "Everyone, we have a situation. Regroup at our designated rally point. Observation status is over."

"This can't be good." Mendia hissed and then frowned. She grabbed Luna's arm to check the suit's built-in computer. "The radio's fried as well. You should have gotten the same message I had."

"You think the electric shocks had anything to do with it?" Luna asked as both women slipped away from the area.

"We'll have to ask Larana. She has the probe data." Mendia stated. "For now let's go see what's going on."

Luna's eyes widened as she saw most of the team crouched low behind shrubbery while watching the scene that unfolded before them near the crash site. "What happened?" She asked in a whisper. Surprisingly it was Telmia who answered and not Mala.

"Jila did something stupid again," The Talarian muttered with some exasperation in her voice. She said something under her breath that Luna didn't catch but if trusting her suspicions then Telmia and Haddock had a history together. The alien ambassador called Haddock Jila but his first name on his suit started with an 'S'. She immediately thought 'a nickname perhaps?'.

The scene before them was chaotic. Sergeant Haddock had one of the female inhabitants sporting short hair slung over his right shoulder like a sack of potatoes while he dragged a shorter muscular male by the back of his collar. That one was screaming up a storm and trashing his limbs.