The vast expanse of the Sunderville claim was from the mountains foot all the way to the river that hadn’t been named.  The river wrapped around in an appropriate way as to fold nicely around the settlement in kind of a broken box shape.   Sunderville, named such because it was broken off and far away from the main cluster of settlements on this continent of New Xena.  This whole planet should have been named after isolation, but that’s the reason Nate and Venetta were there.  They liked being alone.  The only reason they could stand each other was because they benefitted from the partnership, but didn’t feel the need for talking like so many other people seemed to.
Venetta needed Nates ship, and Nate needed Venetta to be crew.  His ship proudly christened the “Pack Rat” was named for it’s massive, custom cargo belly, and small crew space.  The ship was, at some point in it’s unfortunate life, a destroyer class frigate.  Just looking at it as it sat on the dusty road in the middle of Sunderville anyone could see that it’s had a hard life, and that it was not all there in some places and extra pieces in others.  The name Pack Rat is painted with what looks to have been a paint roller and it was smattered all over the hull.  As Venetta walked down the long loading ramp, she was followed by two large cats.  Though the species name was forgotten by her the pair were twins, jet black fur, bright green eyes, pure white teeth, and perfect white whiskers.  Identical in every way but size.  The boy was massive almost as tall as Venettas shoulder, while the girl was up to her waist.  As the trio walked into the dilapidated town the ship sat alone with it’s cargo doors and loading ramp unfurled.

Venetta knew that Nate would be sleeping late today, because last night he was up late working on the ships lights.  She had been spending most days going through all the buildings systematically looking for anything shiney, anything her twins could play with and secretly anything alive.  She loved finding new animals to make friends with.  She had a way with beasts and creatures of all sizes.  Her twin wildcats where cubs when she found them so she was like a mother to them but it was easy to make new friends of pretty much any animal she came across.  Nate didn’t mind the creatures as Venetta took good care of them and she would never take on more than would be healthy for the animals sake and the health of her and her captain.  He especially liked when she finds creatures that can be trained, either to serve as crew members or who can serve as entertainment for the long voyages.  She didn’t like using her animals as a bartering tool but many of the animals seemed to like the attention.  She’s even sold a few of them when she needed the money but she would follow them to their new home in secret to make sure they weren’t mistreated.  It was extreme, and she new it but she didn’t do it often and it made her feel better if the creatures were being taken to a loving place.

The day dragged on through the early morning into just before noon, she found a few trinkets that Nate may have use for but no animals.  At one point she found a gun covered in cinders and dust.  When she picked it up to look for anything useful she saw it was nothing more than the husk of a child’s toy.  Her thoughts lingered for a moment on where the child that played with it had gone, and weather they made it off the planet before the power plant blew but she had seen so much destruction living with Nate that she learned to quickly put it out of her mind.  She dropped the toy gun in the dirt and moved on.

The twins started to get out further and further in front of Venetta.  They always stayed close to her, unless they smelled something that got them excited.  Many times it would be a dead animal, a snack, but she hoped maybe it was only hurt or just scared, hiding and she could help.   The big cats would never start eating without Venettas say so, and they wouldn’t kill anything they found no matter how tempting but they couldn’t fight the natural urges to follow the scent.  Venetta quickened her step to keep up but the pair disappeared through a door frame on a building that was little more than rubble.

Before she could whistle at them to stop a figure emerged around the corner of the building closest to her.  The shape of a man crawling on his waist, dragging his feet behind him almost lifelessly.  He was looking intently at where the two enormous cats had gone un aware that as he crawled he inched ever closer to the feet of Venetta.  As he reached out to grab another handful of dirt and pull himself away for fear of his life, his hand was instead filled with a boot.  He quickly swiveled his head around and his eyes met with Venetta’s.

“Hi!” sounding more chipper than she expected, she let it just stop with the one word greeting.  She could see the man was not long for this world.  His legs were a torn wreckage of flesh and blood.  His feet were black where they weren’t bloody.  Looked as though he had sweat out everything he could into his clothes but he wasn’t sweaty in the face any more, but not for lack of trying.  He was dehydrated.  Venetta reached back for a canister of water as quick as she could, but before she could turn around, the man had wrapped himself around her legs.

“Oh thank you, I didn’t fail. Thank…” his throat closed up on itself.  His voice was raspy and parched and he sounded breathless he tried to speak again.

Venetta stretched around and pulled her own canister from her side, she wasn’t going to worry about manners now.  “Here, please drink some water.  You’ll die if you don’t.”

“I’m already dead.  We all are.  Take this, at least I didn’t fail.  Tell them.  Tell them they are…”  the man reached out his hand holding a food travel canister.  One used to keep foods temperature regulated.  Venetta took it from him on force of habit, but wondered what it could be, something a man on death’s door would put as priority over his own life.

The man’s breaths seemed only to flow outward now, as if he was deflating.  He laid his cheek down on the dirt road, “They have returned”.

The twins rounded the corner following the trail of blood, as the did the stood over the man’s body.  The largest one sniffed him and then looked up at Venetta and let out a pathetic whine.
“No Artemis! We do not eat… human remains.  Take Apollo and return to the ship.”

Apollo was the smaller of the pair but she did not fear her brother.  She jumped on to Artemis’s face with her front paws as if to tear him away from what he might have planned on being a meal.  Her attack didn’t go unnoticed and he quickly broke loose from her paws and pressed her down into the dirt.  She rolled with his hit and pulled him away towards the ship slapping and biting at him the whole way.   Once they reached the loading ramp the pair flopped down like house cats under the shade of the Pack Rat.

The scuffling and arrival of the large animals stirred Nate from within the ship.  He wasn’t sleeping as his hands were already covered in black and grease.
“Hey you two, where’s your mom?”  Nate looked down the ramp at Apollo who rolled back on to her back and bent her back scratching her shoulders in the dirt and coming to rest legs up pressed against her brothers back.

Nate walked down the ramp cleaning his hands the best he could with the cloth he kept in his pocket at all times.  As he stepped out on the road Venetta approached him holding the meal canister wide open as was her mouth.  She wasn’t walking toward Nate as much as she was walking in his direction.  She nearly bumped right into him but nate caught her by her shoulders.

“Wooh there, Venetta?  You had an early morning.”

Venetta rolled her eyes up to Nate’s face.  “A man.  He’s dead.  He..”

“What, what!? You met someone out here?!  Did he attack you?  I didn’t get any readings. Where is he? He died?! Oh my god, are you ok?”

“He died, he had this.”  She held out the food canister and turned it around so Nate could see what was inside.

“What?! What?”  His disquieted confusion turned to uncomfortable confusion.  “What is it”?

Inside the container surrounded by packing foam, and a chunk of strange looking dirt was a solid white capsule.  If it was smaller one might say it was a headache tablet, or a medicine capsule.  However this capsule was 3 inches wide and 8 inches from end to end.  Nate didn’t dare touch it but the chunk of dirt or rock appeared to be attached to it.

Venetta stared at it a while longer and then looked at Nate, pulling his shoulder to get his attention.  “I don’t know what it is.”

“Maybe the web will have something on it.  I’ll grab a snap of it.”

Nate reached up to a piece an implant next to his eye and pressed his finger against a silver strip holding his finger there for a second and then releasing.  

“But Nate, I’m getting one of those feelings I get sometimes.”

“About this capsule?” Nate pointed at the pure white tube, his finger only inches away from it.  When he focused on it once again he quickly retracted his finger and closed the lid of the container very gently.  “Well, uh, then you know what to do with it better then me.  I’ll hold off on looking it up, but I should call the Counsel about the man you found.  You mind sending Apollo with me, maybe she can sniff around and find out where he came from, where this messenger came from.  I don’t want to talk to the Council and just say ‘hey we found a dead guy’.”

Venetta took the canister and held it close to her chest like she was holding a baby.  She looked over at Apollo.  The smaller of the two huge cats stood up instantly and started walking over to Nate. Venetta spoke sternly “Apollo! Go with Nate, keep him safe, do as he says.”

Nate chuckles softly. “You know sometimes I think she can read your mind, she seemed to know what I asked for before you even commanded her.”

Venetta snickered and suppressed the urge to do more.  “Yeah, I know right.”  She looked at Artemis and kissed the air.  “Come on big guy.”  With that she retreated inside the ship clutching the food canister and Artemis on her heels.

Nate followed Apollo as she quickly trotted towards the recently departed messenger.  Nate stepped over the body of the man who gave his life so selflessly… though he didn’t yet understand why.  He stooped down and picked up the man.  He didn’t smell too good, not from being dead, more from his adventure, from whatever it was that put him into this state.  Nate had an iron stomach though, he didn’t mind, in his life you come across all kinds of things.  He never liked finding bodies.  He always tried to do something for them when he found them.  For this mysterious messenger he decided a burial would be the least he could do.  He carried him out past the rubble of the building he was found in, into a patch of grass.  It was dead grass right now but the fact that it was tall means that it would eventually be green and beautiful.

That was another thing Nate could do well.  He never saw things how they were, but instead how they could be.  Every broken or destroyed thing was just something else waiting to come into being.

Nate wasn’t one for ceremony, for him the honoring of the dead came from the doing, not from how it was done.  Sometimes he came acrossed bodies that were “wedged”, for lack of a better description.  He would place something he found near the body as a plaque or cover the face if he couldn’t desecentigrate it as a “field creamation”.  This time though he had the body, he had the ground and he had means for digging a hole in a hurry.

“Apollo kitty, you’re going to want to step back behind me.”  Apollo did as she was told and got close up behind Nate’s back.  She sniffed the messengers head but didn’t get to close.  Nate pulled out a grenade from his hip pouch. “Venetta, you going to hear a boom.  Don’t worry, i’m just digging a hole”.
“Ok, Nate.  Thanks for doing that.  I didn’t know his name but he’s obviously worth of at least one of your ceremonies.”

“Yep.”

Nate tossed the grenade a good 10 yards in front of himself.  Apollo had seen grenades many times before and was very uncomfortable with the close proximity.  She ran back  away from Nate as fast as she could.  The explosion from a grenade is always faster then one would thing.  Almost a “pop”.  The majority of the noise came from the rattling of dirts and rocks as they fell down around nate.  Larger pebbles and even a pretty sizeable rock landed square against Nate’s body, but he didn’t budge.  He looked like a man standing in the rain.

The hole left by his homebrewed grenade was plenty deep to put a body in and wide enough for a few more besides.  Nate placed the body down and bowed his head.  “Sorry, man.” was all he said to the body as he placed him down.  He wiped the man’s face to clear way what dirt, soot and blood he could manage with his equally dirt hands then pressed his finger against his silver implant again and took another picture of his face.  He looked peaceful enough for that.

Apollo approached from behind and stood on the edge of the hole.

“Come on girl, let’s solve this riddle at least.” Nate climbed out of the hole and started walking after Apollo who was now smelling the air and the ground as she walked.  From between the buildings near the ship, several small shapes came from the shadows and approached the newly formed grave.  As they drew closer they positioned themselves around the hole in places the dirt hand piled up.  As Nate and Apollo walked into the distance the small figures pushed the dirt pile back into the hole covering it neatly before returning to the ship.

Venetta was standing in front of an illuminated shelf.  On some of its levels there were plants, small cages and various clear containers of water, well liquid.  Some liquids were colored and only she knew what made them that way.  On the shelf right in front of her, just at the level of her waist was the canister, now empty, and the pure white capsule sitting on a blanket.  With a gentle tap she touched the odd looking clump attached to the capsule.  It didn’t budge.

“Hmm”.

She had been staring at it for some time, it wasn’t moving but she felt like it was alive some how.

“Maybe it’s an egg”.

Artemis lifted his head from where it was resting on his paws.

“No, you can’t eat this one, I think something’s in it.”

Artemis lowered his head but with a dissatisfied huff.

“You’ll be fine big guy.  We’ll find you something nice fresh.  In the meantime we should keep this one warm.  I think.  Most things like warmth.”  Venetta reached into a cabinet and pulled out a modified desk lamp, it had a cage around the light and when she turned it on, it gave of a red glow.  She couldn’t stop staring at the shape of it.  She’d never seen anything like it.

After a time a small flurry of noise erupted on the load ramp, whirring motors, rolling wheels, and treads on the metal plates in the floor made a clatter that took Venetta out of her trance.  It was part of Nate’s drone army.  Robots of every size and shape, cobbled together for single purposes, but used for anything.  Most of them covered in dirt.  At the back of the pack was the largest of the pack, but he wasn’t a drone.

“Good afternoon Ms. Venetta.” the Auxoid’s metallic voice rang out as it ascended the ramp.

“Good afternoon Giovanni”

“I will take these drones for cleaning and return if you need my assistance.”

“No thank you Giovanni, I’m ok, I’m just waiting for Nate to get back.  I tried looking up this new… whatever it is but I can’t get the web to come up.”
“I am detecting no network issues at this time, Ms. Venetta?  Would you like me to perform a diagnostic while I stow the drones?”

Venetta chuckled softly “No thank you, I’m sure Nate did something to it.”

“Very well, Enjoy your afternoon Ms.” The Auxoid rolled on following the parade of drones disappearing into a corridor on the side of the cargo bay.

Venetta always liked talking to Giovanni, his model had a known issue where when they were left on for too long they would begin to “conditionalize themselves with their surroundings”.  It was Auxoid Incorporated’s jargon for spontaneous intelligence.  Normally artificial intelligence would only be included on the Androids models they made, the Auxiods were not supposed to have this ability and the web is alive with chatter that some disgruntled worker released the code into Giovanni’s model as a prank or as way to get back at the company either way they fixed it in a patch.  Nate of course disabled the patch from going through as the idea of have a robotic crew member with a personality of it’s own was too perfect for him to pass up, many others had done the same.

It wasn’t long before Apollo ran up the ramp into Venettas room, she jumped onto Venettas bed and lap.  Venetta had dozed off so she was startled awake.  “Oh hello girl!”

“We are back” Nate walked into Venettas quarters as the door was wide open.  He immediately walked over to the desk where the heat light was setup.  “So we’ve decided it’s a living thing then?”

“Yeah, I think so at least. It’s not moving but I don’t know if it’s supposed too.  I tried looking it up on line and I couldn’t get on the web.”

“You couldn’t?”

Nate’s surprise was not what Venetta was expecting, “Yeah, I figured you were doing something with the dish or the com panels or something.”

Nate laughed nervously.  “Not this time.  Come on let’s try again, maybe from the bridge.”

Venetta climbed out from under Apollo who was tired from her walk and couldn’t be bothered to get up as she took over the entirety of the bed.

The bridge was perhaps a generous name for the control center of the Pack Rat.  The original bridge of the frigate was probably very nice, but it had a massive hole blasted in it, most likely just before it was owned by the Pirates who owned it long before Nate did.  The current bridge was the cockpit from Nate’s original trade ship.  One that was small enough to park in the Pack Rats cargo bay.  The controls for the whole ship have been added to a space meant for a two man crew at most.  Extra panels had to be added and tact on to the hull some of them stuck out into cockpit window.  Nate didn’t need to see where he was going because of the number of sensors now on his ship, but he liked the view and having a window to look out made him feel like he was still in a smaller more maneuverable craft.

One of the interior hulls was taken up buy a massive comm screen.  Like everything else, this clearly belonged to some much larger vessel at some point.  The screen came to life brightly lit with the acronym “S.I.E.G.E” splayed across the middle before switching to a screen of interactive icons.  Mail, The Web, several games, entertainment programs and of course a communication application just to name a few.  Nate held his fingers out in front his face and swipped the silver button in his implant one more time.  The screen came to life with the icons on the screen reacting to where he looked.  He glanced at “The Web” and pressed his fingers together.  The comm screen reacted immediately bringing up a web search bar.

Epimethius, the web of mankind:

“There you go it’s up.” Nate looked over at Venetta with a smirk.  “Maybe you just didn’t give it enough time to load.”

“No, I got this far, try to search for something.”

“Alright.”  Nate turned back around, “Siege, Search big weird white capsule thing”.

The words appear on the screen as he says them.  An icon on the screen just spins.

“Hmm” Nate said.

“Yeah, Hmm” Venetta repeated.

The screen quickly changed to a black screen with a red text error message. “Web not available, return above ground, or back to known space before connecting”

Nate couldn’t help but laugh.  “Well I know we are way the hell out here but, we are definitely still in the confines of known space.”

Venetta didn’t laugh.  She was actually starting to get concerned. “Nate, that’s not cool.  What if we need to call for help?”

“We won’t, besides when the situation gets bad, I’m the one people call for help.  We’ll be fine. Besides it’s probably just down for maintenance.”

“Return to known space?!  When the web is down for maintenance they say it’s down.”

“Yeah.” Nate scratched his chin. “That’s weird I guess.”  He motioned with his hand and the error screen closed.  He looked up at the icons again and opened the communications app.

“Me and Apollo walked a ways out of town, but the guy clearly came from the river.  The means he probably came from New Reading.  He at least came from that big cluster of settlements over there.  I’ll just call up someone over there.”

Nate brought up a map view that displayed a series of location across the region.  Sunderville was of course off by itself and there was a large selection of icons in tight group to the west in a very green portion of the map around a large lake.  One by one Nate selected the open invitation icons.  People who were willing to talk to whoever wanted to try.  One by one the connection would time out.  “Hmm.”

“There’s that sound again.”  Venetta now found a place to sit on in what was left of the copilot seat.

“Nah, no, no.” Nate held up his indicator finger but didn’t look back at his sole crew member.  He quickly switched to command screen, one that Venetta didn’t often see.  Nate didn’t know it but even though she didn’t use it often she knew what the command window could do.  She watched as he tried connecting with various satellites that were supposed to be in orbit around the planet.  He was getting no response from any of them.  At this point there should have been hundreds of communication satellites, and that’s just for the communications, there are hundreds more for Global positioning, imaging, ground surveying and map making.  He couldn’t get even a general response when asking the equivalent of “is anyone out there”.  Although he immediately regretted sending out such a communication.   Considering he had no idea why the planet had gone dark.

Nate gulped, but tried to remain calm as he spun around in his chair to face Venetta who was already sitting on the edge of her own seat.
“Are we okay, Nate?”

“We should probably leave.”

“What’s going on.”
“I might be able to explain as we go, but I need Giovanni, I need you get your things from outside, we need to prepare to lift off.”

“Okay, but like are we just leaving or are talking under attack, how scared should I be right now.”

Nate looked at Venetta with a looks she dubbed “The dad look”

“I’m going!”  Venetta started walking down the stairs into the main cargo hold. “Giovanni, honey, daddy wants you!”

Nate didn’t pay attention to her he immediately shut down the comm panel and locked his chair into the pilot location.  Flicking a few levers here and there he turned around quickly, shouting “Giova--!” as his head snapped around he was face to face with Giovanni already positioned directly behind him. “NI!”

“Captian, our first mate ordered me to report.”  His metallic and overly calm voice always irritated Nate since he was often passionate in how he spoke.  He had hoped that Giovanni’s personality would include voice modulation some how.
“Yes, please, thank you,  I mean I do, I did!” Nate was clearly flustered and stopped himself to take a deep breath.  “We have to leave, prepare the ship for lift off. All Drones, all stations.”

“Aye captain.”

As Giovanni turned to tend his new duties, drones emerged from all corners of the ship, activating, regulating, connecting and generally managing the jobs of what would have been a full complement of crew on a standard military frigate.  It was they that made it possible for two humans and a modified Auxoid to run such a complex vessel.
Nate stood up from his chair to walk down the stairs into the cargo hold.  “Venetta you need any help with-”  His voice was cut short as he walked onto the scene.  Venetta stood with hands raised, as a man in very dusty leathers stood at food of the loading ramp.  His eyes covered, his mouth wrapped in cloth and a respirator protruding out one side.  More noteworthy perhaps was the gun he was holding out in front of himself pointing at Venetta.  There was 10 feet between them but that’s close enough to make it hard to miss.
“I don’t want to kill either of you” The figures voice rang out through the respirator.  It nearly sounded like Giovanni’s voice.  “I just can’t let you leave.  Not without me.  I’m going to need to take this ship”.

Nate laughed loudly.

The figure turned his gun towards the massive man, but that only seemed to provoke Nate to walk closer.  He pointed it back at Venetta and then Nate stopped.

“Okay hero, i’m glad you’re having fun, but don’t move any closer or she’ll get it.”

From behind the dusty leather clad figure Artimus emerged from behind a building frame, returning from a boredom provoked prowl.  Baring his teeth he got ready to pounce,

Venetta changed her focus from the man to the cat and held out her hand infront of her. “Wait, no!”

“You got nothing to worry about miss.  As long as big guy here doesn’t try anything, so talk to him” the stranger insisted.

Nate lowered his hands and stood up relaxed, then smiled at Venetta, though he couldn’t be sure what she was doing.

“That’s right, lets all calm down.  You just let me fly us out of here and we can all just be friends”.  the stranger continued.

Venetta looked down at the man’s gun, then up at his goggled face.  “Well, you aren’t going to fly the ship, but you are coming with us.” With that she dropped her arms then walked up to the dusty figure and just took the gun from his hand.  Following her lead Nate was right behind her and knocked the would be bandit out with a single hit.
“You had your big boy back there, why the gutsy disarm maneuver?”  Nate spoke as he caught the intruder in his arm and left him over his shoulder.

Venetta held up the gun and it was the same toy she discarded earlier in the day.  “It’s a toy, I found it over in the ruins this morning. It’s garbage.”  She laughed as she tossed it off the ramp into the dirt.

Nate looked out into the town, trying to see if there were anymore bandits waiting to pounce and after a quick scan called to Artemis. “Come on big guy. We’ve gotta run!”

Artemis was distracted by something in the ruins at the end of the long main dirt road.  He was sniffing the air intently.  After a quick pause he began to growl.

Nate called for him again but turned to look in the direction Artemis was facing.  He could see a dust cloud at the end of the road.  Pressing his implant next to his eye he was able to focus his eye and zoom in on whatever he was looking at.  Between the wavering lines of heat he could see figures running down the road.  Not people, they looked like bears or lions or some other form of large brown beast.  “Art! Dude! Come on! You aren’t going to win, there’s like a pack of them!”

Artemis, almost challenged by Nates discouragement took a few steps down the road toward the enclave.  He quickly turned around and ran back to the ship once a few blasts of energy fire hit the ground around him.  The creatures were shooting at the ship, and Artemis didn’t want to mess with blasters.

“Holy!” was all Nate could say before slapping the control panel for the ramp to raise up.  Artemis bolted as fast as he could and leaped up on to the ramp as it retracted inside and quickly closed.

“Is that blaster fire!?” Vendetta came out from the brig section of the ship where she had stashed the masked bandit.  “Is someone shooting at us!?”

“I’d love to chat but we gotta go! Giovanni takeoff!” Nate shouted as he ran passed Venetta and up the stairs.
“Where to sir?”

“Up you damned computer! Just up!”

“Aye, course ‘up’ laid in. Engaging departure thrusters, sir I have concerns however-”

“Belay that! Just run!” Nate strapped himself into his chair as a smattering of blasts hit the sides of the Pack Rat’s hull.
“Aye Captain.”

The ship nearly fell apart as it fought against the planet’s gravity, but they had made it to the upper atmosphere.