Chapter 6
Kitten headed up the ramp to her personal interceptor, in the last couple of weeks, since the synths departure, she and Alpha had put together a team, joined by a twi'lek medic and a pair of Fett clones they had begun exploring the surrounding systems according to Sparrow's plan.
The strategy had already paid off as they had made contact with a colony that was failing and managed to get their power system fixed, giving them access to fresh, clean water again.
They had also made contact with a very xenophobic group of echani. They had exchanged greetings and gave the comm frequency to contact them but nothing more had come of that at present.
They had only gone to 8 systems so far, so two sentient races was not a bad success rate. Alpha continued to push her to head in a specific direction but she went with the plan and visited the systems in the order Sparrow had suggested instead, an expanding sphere outwards from Nathea.
There were now at least 8 different groups conducting the scouting, 6 from Nathea itself. The efforts were coordinated by Darby, his wife, and the growing family onboard the yacht, made up of the rescued women, the delphians, and their respective significant others.
It had actually been suggested for Darby to turn in the yacht and take back over one of the pirate corsairs because the poor yacht was growing crowded rather quickly.
Darby had opted to attempt to wait for one of the new ship designs to be completed by their manufacturing ship in orbit. He felt it addressed a few weaknesses of the corvair design and would make a better exploration ship since, among other things, it was designed with a hanger.
Seeing that her crew was onboard and ready to depart she turned to Alpha and said, "Don't worry, we are going to continue to search the pattern, but I did put in the request with Darby that our team explore the system that interests you so much."
"Thanks," the independent droid replied, "I don't know what it is about that place but i just can't get it out of my mind."
Kazumi slowly opened the door and entered what appeared to be a sitting room. She hissed in a breath when she saw the green figure on the couch and was about to run away when she realized what must have happened.
Oh no! She thought, that idiot must have made some mistake that caused the changes to be passed from person to person! This was horrible! She now felt awful that her presence had apparently been the cause of this poor man being changed.
She checked on the unconscious figure more or less out of guilt. He was completely comatose and she could tell he must be fairly far into the change.
He wasn't hideous, she decided, not like the original creature. He seemed fairly formed and his face was nicely symmetrical. He had tusks, like her small ones, and sported short horns as well, but neither feature was too terrible in her opinion. She thought with some humor that she really ought to get used to seeing both.
She explored around the room and the surrounding rooms. It was obvious which rooms the man had included in his living quarters as they were the only ones that had been cleared of the years of dust and debris and had working lights.
She realized there were two of them when she found the second green figure in another bedroom. She checked on him as well.
She found some fresh meat hanging in what must be the kitchen and figured out how to cook it, mostly by trial and error. Getting some food in her belly made her feel 1000% better so she cooked up an ample supply for when her hosts woke up.
The hours passed slowly as she busied herself picking up and organizing the place some. She would check on the men every hour or so but honestly didn't know enough to render any aid even if it was needed.
The one in the living room woke up first, meeting her eyes as she did her bed check. She hissed a bit in shock and backed away in surprise.
"Hello." he said in an amazingly deep voice. "My name is Tinker, I am sorry I seem to have been a bad host."
"I am SO sorry Tinker! My name is Kazumi and I had no idea that I was even infected, let alone contagious. The monster never even touched me!"
"Monster?" He asked.
She went into the whole story. She was a bit startled and scared when she mentioned the rape and he growled, like an actual beast type growl. When she finished he just sat there thinking for a minute.
"Okay", he said, "We definitely need to get back to the lab you came from if we are going to get any answers."
"But the beast is there!" She shivered at the thought.
"We have to destroy the creature anyway I bet." Tinker told her, "I would wager it is the source of the infection."
"By the way," he asked, changing the subject suddenly, "Have you seen my brother?"
"He is in that bedroom," she said, pointing, "I checked on him an hour ago and he was still out of it."
"Do me a favor," Tinker asked her with a grin and a wink, "when he wakes up make sure you tell him how I have been up and around for hours and hours, maybe even casually imply that he is weak for not waking up sooner."
Despite herself she laughed. "I will see what I can do."
"I hear the pair of you already plotting against me." Another giant green figure stood in the doorway to the bedroom he'd been resting in, wearing only a very tight pair of shorts.
"I will know to watch you as well Lady Kazumi." He winked at her.
"I am no lady, I am a mere slave."
There went that growl again, but this time both were doing it.
"We hold no truck with slavery. You have made it to us and are therefore free." Tinker announced with authority.
They all sat down and discussed the situation. In the process Kazumi learned a bit about Mandalorians, not least of which because the pair absolutely refused to begin the trek to the lab until they had adjusted their armor.
It was while they discussed options for carrying the necessary supplies for the hike once the fuel gave out that Tinker suddenly glanced oddly at her and Gavin and then burst out laughing.
"What is so funny?" Gavin asked him. confused.
"We're orcs Gavin, we are all damn orcs." Tears were actually running down his face he was laughing so hard.
"What is an orc?" The pair asked him.
Once he recovered he tied to explain table top gaming and the prevalence in such games of the dumb but strong race of orcs. Not surprisingly neither of the others found it nearly as funny as he did.
They got to work after the men had eaten every bit of the meat she had prepared.
"We're going to need more supplies than I thought." Gavin said.
"Yeah, I could probably eat that much again and wouldn't feel stuffed." Tinker agreed.
Kazumi was almost a bit scared, between the two of them they had eaten about 3/4 of a full sized deer.
Once they had eaten the men broke out the electric forge and began removing all the circuitry and extraneous parts from their armor. Once they had reduced it to just the plates they went to work with hammers, pounding it out in a steady rhythm, thinning the metal to increase the size.
Kazumi had initially been fascinated to watch the two men, well, mostly Tinker she admitted to herself, as they had stripped to the waist and worked the hammers like tireless machines, but after a few hours she lost interest.
Feeling the need for a call of nature she headed outside. The men had explained they had made an outhouse of sorts, and described how to get there.
As she emerged from the ship into the sunlight however, she was suddenly knocked to the ground as she was hit in the side by a charging monster.
She screamed loudly when she turned her head and saw some kind of canine/orc crossbreed thing snarling and slobbering at her.
It was about to attack her again when suddenly its head was flattened with a smack.
Tinker stood there with his hammer in his hand. His chest was heaving and he was growling again.
"Are you alright?" he ground out, visually inspecting her for damage.
"I'm fine, but what the hell was that?"
"It looked like a canine predator that had been exposed to the virus."
She sighed. "That's what I was afraid of, if it's jumping species now we may be in real trouble."
Boom! Boom! Boom! A heavy rifle fired from one of the upper hatches.
"We're in trouble!" Sparrow hollered.
"Poodoo!" Tinker groaned.
Sparrow joined them at ground level a few minutes later.
"So much for our food source, the deer are affected too and I will have to be pretty hungry to eat something like that."
This could be a serious problem. It took her approximately 14 hours to make it at nearly full throttle in the speeder, therefore they were thinking it was probably at least a few days of walking to get back. With the way the men could eat they could be in real danger of starvation by the time they made it.
They saw no reason to delay departing much longer, they packed up what food and supplies they determined they could carry once the speeder ran out of fuel and jumped in heading for the lab.
It was easy to follow the trail back through the grass. She had never raised the vehicle more than a few inches in the air and so had broken stalks all the way along her path. They were moving at a solid pace, trying to balance making distance with conserving fuel.
The ride lasted for almost 10 hours before the fuel went out, which was honestly better than they had hoped. They had been seeing more and more deformed animals along the path as they traveled. It appeared that the virus had taken the area over completely.
Since there were so many dangerous creatures running about they decided to hole up for the night. They located a spot where they were somewhat shielded by a random group of rocks and settled in for the night.
They managed to get through the night without being disturbed and jumped off to an early start the next morning. As they trudged along that day the men managed to bag a few birds and even speared a few fish.
They also tried finding edible fruits and vegetables but either there weren't any or, as Kazumi suspected, their altered systems couldn't process them any more.
The next few days had them steadily making progress towards the lab, interspersed with short battles against the virus altered creatures that seemed to pop up with horrible regularity.
Tinker had run the numbers through the computer he had placed back in his altered armor and figured they had at least another two or three days to go.
The men were constantly feeling hunger pains as the non-altered animals seemed to disappear. They had fought canines, felines, the deer, a pig thing, and even some type of bear. None of the creatures seemed any more intelligent than the usual for their species, which was good news.
They reached a larger body of water that night, and they decided to take a break and do some serious fishing. All three of them had discovered that while their new bodies seemed to have advantages they certainly became a draw back when food was short.
Luckily the local varieties of fish were absolute suckers for any kind of bait and the pile of fish rapidly grew. They ended up spending several hours at it and caught what should be enough to last at least the next couple of days.