Eodem: A Rifle and Sword Adventure (Complete)

Chapter 3. Vampire Night

(About 10 hours later after the Bandit Raid on the camp)

Governor Jeremy White, the appointed Colonial Governor of Benham-3 courtesy of the UFE Bureau of Colonial Affairs and Initiatives was having the worst day of his political life. What was supposed to be routine colonization to a pleasant climate and uninhabited planet was instead a firestorm of questions, dead bodies, and destroyed government-issued equipment. There were over a tally of 54 injured, 8 dead (all non-combatants) from the Casualty-report. These 'Bandits' in contrast, were completely wiped out with a death toll of 151 dead including what ashen remains were left of the giant 'Fire Monster' that Samantha and her squad heroically took down. Additionally, the Squad had also acquired a strange crystal blue necklace from the monster's handler or more colloquially called by the men as a 'Mage'.

Jeremy sighed as he sank down on his desk, he was so confused and so tired from his heart racing up when he was nearly attacked by the unidentified men who attacked them earlier in the day. The Crew of the Eodem Colony Ship was left reeling to mend their wounds. Medical Bay staff were overclocking in their workloads to heal off the wounded men and women. Supplies were re-accounted to check in-store how much was lost during the attack in the meantime that rationing and corner-cutting were enforced to make do with what remains until the next supply run. The Militia doubled their patrols and tightened their defensive formation around the Eodem's perimeter. Based on their on-the-ground reports, they said that the initial Probe's scouting reports were significantly inaccurate which further confused the Governor as the equipment was considered the best in the UFE's technology.

"Alright Science Team! I want a status report now." White opened the doors to the laboratory of the colony ship. There he found several scientists who were holding papers of their findings at hand, some faces showed nervousness while others showed confusion. After a brief silence, a scientist who was sitting by a chair stood up.

Doctor David Mahelona wiggled his way through the laboratory. Being more of your typical 'fat nerd' who doesn't care about the input of food he takes, he had to carefully move around his laboratory without accidentally knocking over the expensive equipment. This doesn't help the fact that he wasn't expecting this morning to be greeted by what everyone could only describe as "a Bandit Raid with a giant fire monster" only made him more stressed out than he normally is supposed to feel. A Native Hawaiian who got a Ph.D. in Physics by education, David was the go-to scientist who Colonel Polonsky can entrust the task of analyzing the mysterious blue-colored crystal necklace they have acquired from a dead bandit that day.

The necklace was tucked neatly inside a vacuum container that had various recording and observational gadgets attached to it like a prize piece in a jewelry store. The computers attached to the gadgets recorded the strange necklace producing curious signals and frequencies that the physics doctor could only be astonished to see.

"No Radiation, yet the compute says it can give off energy that are close to a kilo of Uranium-235. I am surprised nobody reported any signs of Radiation Poisoning sir." Dr. Mahelona said. His eyes showed his disbelief over the readings on his computer screen.

"I am just as surprised as you are too doctor. Other than energy readings what else can you get from it?" the Governor asked.

"I have recently cross-referenced the Scanning Probe recordings of Benham-3 with what the Scouts reported. I noticed that they have reported that they too have experienced seeing these kinds of energy patterns while the probe was doing the initial explorations. From what they have said, these particular energy patterns were causing their equipment to at first suffer technical fluctuations before coming back to normal and then they lost it soon after some 'Destructive Anomaly'. The next bit that I managed to learn from our new piece of jewelry here is that the energy readings are similar to energy readings from a coordinate not too far away that I triangulated. I believe the blue crystal that we have here is just a piece of a larger deposit I theorize of whatever this thing is. I suggest you some men over to check out if my readings are true. If they are we should send in some Harvester Drones and grab some more samples that I can work with. Plus I can send over these harvested crystals to other scientists who got better-equipped laboratories to study them." Dr. Mahelona replied. He passed over a file of paperwork that detailed his initial findings over to the Governor.