Mantrin Imperial Guard - Pilot Episode - 001 Darkening Sky

Chapter 7: When the Moon Comes Up

Run.

It was Freya's first instinct when the fear, projected by the woman's eyes, caught her in its grip like poison. It kept her hearts racing. It coated her forehead with a thin layer of sweat despite the coolness between the trees. It made her uniform stick to her skin under her armpits. But she had experienced her fair share of tight situations during her intense training. She wasn't a seasoned veteran, but she did have a knack for wrestling her way out of them. After taking a quick breath to shake the feeling she stuck out her hand.

"Can you walk?"

She grunted in affirmation but didn't take her hand. Planting her fist into the dirt she pushed herself upward, pain contorting her face as she bit through it. Being about the same size as Trezka, she rose above Freya in height. Her first steps were wobbly, which was more evident because of their species' large double-kneed legs. Her tail made frantic movements to compensate for this, but she managed to regain some composure. Her eyes then flashed toward Freya again, this time with a sense of gratitude in them.

"Hyami. Name's Kryssah by the way."

"Freya."

"We better go," she urged. "Where's your ship? We have to get off this planet!"

Her tone of voice triggered Trezka, who stepped closer, still using the flashlight of her weapon to light the area around them. Tightening her grip on the gun, she used it to gesture for them to move in the direction of the crash site.

"My idea. I still can't shake the feeling that we're being watched."

Kryssah wiped at a trickle of blood that threatened to seep into her eye with the back of her hand. She continued to pant as she started walking, hampered by her injuries. Freya covered her left flank, while Trezka had her right.

"I don't know what happened. We were on patrol until the Ginjha informed us that we had diverted our course to investigate some unusual readings. Next time I knew, something ripped the entire ship in half and I was running for an escape pod. I'm just a science specialist. I wasn't on duty at the time."

"We detected those readings too," Freya said. "Tachyons, neutrinos. I've got them on my scanner right now but it's vague. Can't get anything accurate because the emissions keep vanishing. Might as well try to catch fish without a net."

"Keep an eye on those," Kryssah said between two pants. Her tone gave Freya the idea she would try to rip her head off if she disobeyed. "It's got to have something to do with it. With the strange noises I kept hearing as I tried to hide. You got any more weapons? Empty pack made mine useless."

After some hesitation, Trezka tossed her own blaster in Kryssah's direction. Checking it, she released the safety and continued to hold it in a tight grip at her side. This raised the question why she had to use her blaster in the first place.

"You were firing at something?" Trezka asked in an intrusive way.

"It kept chasing me!" she bit back. "I couldn't see it, but it was there. I'm not crazy!"

Freya began to wonder. Kryssah was a finger's length away from being hysterical. Having survived a crash and suffering from what could be head trauma, judging by the wounds on her head, hallucination wasn't that far-fetched. Stranded on an alien world. Fear for the unknown. These were all factors that could contribute to sensing things that weren't there. But instead of disputing her words, she checked her scanner's readings again as according to it, they were less than 600 steps away from the clearing. The sudden increase in number and intensity of particle emissions began to erase doubt about Kryssah's statements.