Hauling herds

The first volley of shots dropped their targets without any of the other herbivores seeming to notice. Meli’s voice crackled through the comms a moment later as Dustin was working the action of his weapon to reload it. “Scanners are showing the tranqs all working in accordance with expectations. We’re safe to drop the rest of this group.” As she finished speaking he brought his gun around to the next target, the muzzle flash of Yril’k’s weapon already blossoming a short distance away.

For the next few minutes they worked their way across the herd; while the first two volleys had dropped their targets without causing any fuss, by the third volley the remaining herbivores seemed to sense something was up and started to bounce gently away from the area where they had been grazing. With the shuttles being a third of a mile in the air however they weren’t able to get far enough away to clear the range of the stun guns, allowing the crew of the Solar Ascent to send the remaining animals into slumber without too much difficulty.

What followed however was markedly more difficult. Each of the downed creatures needed to be secured in a harness and then either winched or (for the stronger crew) half-carried into the backs of the three shuttles. Each vessel could only hold two of the animals at a time safely; as a result it took them multiple trips before the entire contingent was safely stowed in one of Sola’s cargo bays. As he climbed back into the shuttle to head out towards the second of three groups of the animals that their scanners had detected in the wide grasslands, Dustin sighed.

“It’s a real pain loading and unloading these things. Thank the stars we only need to drop them off in the one location at their new home so we can just land Sola there rather than having to ferry them by shuttle. The tranqs are still working according to plan right?” Meli paused in her pre-flight checks to turn to give him a comforting smile. “Yes, li’ah’a - I double checked the first one you shot with a hand scanner when we dropped the last pair off. They’ll be comfortably out cold for another day or so if we don’t give them the wakeup meds, plenty of time to get the other two groups loaded and get to our final stop on this planet.”

Loading the remaining two herds took most of the rest of that day; the planet’s twin moons were rising over the horizon as Dustin wearily finished shutting down the shuttle and returning his stun gun to the armoury. “Nearly done now” he said to the others as he reached the bridge, Sola’s engines already spooling for the short hop across to the giant island that had been selected as the new home for their **** cargo. Emely rolled her shoulders and smiled up at him before sighing. “We’ve still got to get them unloaded before we can rest right?”

Trea’k reached out and patted the redhead hesitantly on the shoulder. “I am afraid so. Meli’a was quite clear that the risk of leaving them under for longer than necessary was to be avoided. At least unloading we can all move quickly, and then we’ll be back in orbit and in bed soon enough.” Dustin smiled down at the pair, happy despite his tiredness. The Vex’ess woman might not realize that she was already starting to take care of the crew in the way he’d hoped - reassurances, or just someone to vent to when things got stressful. He really hoped the worst she’d face as counsellor would be people tired after a hard day’s work and not anything more serious.

The others headed out a short while later; he’d decided to stay on the bridge in case there were any last minute issues or their landing site needed adjusting, but the other five could make their way down to the hold which was already prepped and ready to descend from Sola’s hull when they touched down. He’d have to take the lift down to the surface alone, but that wasn’t really an issue and it’d mean they’d be done faster with the unloading.

Landing was smooth as it turned out - but as he turned to head towards the lift, Sola’s voice chimed from a nearby speaker. “Captain, I thought I should alert you that I have completed the archival research task that the chief science officer set me. She requested I notify you at this time - we have a potential match for the entity you encountered in the communications outpost, albeit one that seems highly improbable.” Dustin hesitated, his hand on the door switch. “Why improbable?” he asked, before deciding to continue heading down to the planet below - any answers they might have found he’d want to discuss with the whole crew, and in any case they still had a hold full of animals to unload.

Sola’s voice followed him down the corridors, swapping from speaker to speaker. “The entity has a zero percent match with any known species. It does however have a seventy eight percent correlation with historic artifacts found on a number of worlds in the S’sh’en system; cross referencing these with additional artistic renders matching at sixty percent or higher, the chief science officer requested I review the database on the basis of her theory that these artifacts are all referring to the S’sh’el. Based on all available evidence, this theory has a ninety-eight point three five percent probability of a match with the alien you encountered if you exclude three major datapoints.”

Dustin shrugged as he stepped into the elevator. “What datapoints?” Sola’s response was measured, but the words she said were concerning. “Point one, the S’sh’el never achieved weave-jump capability. Point two, the S’sh’el while insectoid have no accounts of dissolving on **** and indeed multiple burials with partially-complete exoskeletons are known to exist. Point three, the S’sh’el went extinct some four thousand years ago; their species is believed to have been wiped out by a combination of stellar flares and a major plague occurring simultaneously leading to a total collapse of their nuclear power containment.”

He hit the lift button to descend, brain turning over the information even as the AI continued. “That is the best theory as to why they disappeared. Their planet certainly underwent a major nuclear and stellar incident, with ecological **** of the majority of larger species. The S’sh’en, a race of amphibians that grew to replace them as the dominant species on the planet re-purposed any historical artifacts they found rapidly, leading to their development from proto-sentients to a species that had colonised much of the system by the time of their discovery by the galactic community. Their progress through technological eras happened as a result in a cosmically speaking extremely short amount of time.”

Dustin was a little shocked by the fact that his mystery attacker was apparently from an extinct species as he stepped out of the lift. Meli was waiting for him at the door of the cargo bay, the others already hauling the **** herbivores out on grav sleds. “We’ll talk about it later, li’ah’a.” She said before he could raise the issue. “We need to get this done so that if nothing else the others can sleep. It won’t make things any easier if we delay this task, and everyone is worn out.” He nodded, reaching out to squeeze her arm as he walked past her into the hold. “You’re right of course my love. It’s… big news, if Sola’s right. Doesn’t help at all or make much difference to us right now though. We’ll discuss it with everyone tomorrow after breakfast.”

The Velca smiled up at him, turning to link her arm in his as they hurried to help their friends and lovers with the difficult task of hauling nearly a hundred **** kangaroo-elephant-lemur-things out of their ship’s hold as above them the two moons beamed down. There might be weird extinct aliens out there trying to sabotage colony efforts for minor species, but right now Dustin had a mission at hand and his lovers around him, and so he focused on what he could control. Which, as it turned out was a grav sled offered to him with great delight by Rye on which there rested a very relaxed and (as he discovered while pushing it out of the ship) also a rather flatulent alien herbivore.