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--This is the report of Limax, follower of Tyche, sent out to discover what had become of planets Dazenic and Kiiratha, as both had gone dark during an intergalactic war.--

Planet Dazenic

"Day eleven. I am back on board my ship; dirty and tired, but with my first samples. I'll tell just what happened, from the time I set my one big foot on the planet, to right now as I sit here.

I read that the Dazenics live in toxic pools, so I left the ship in a suit with a helmet that would let me swim in the pools if I had to. The whole place was quiet; at first I thought the part of the helmet that let me hear things was broken, but as I moved further out, I found out that the whole planet seemed to have gone quiet. I remember that the report said all but a few had left to go to war with the Kiirathans, so there should have been someone to see me land. But there was nothing; just the pools that glowed a little and the clouds of gas that passed by my helmet like ghosts.

I kept going until I found a pool that looked a little different than the others, mainly because it had something floating in it. It was close to the edge, so I reached out and pulled it up on the shore, turning it over since it seemed to be floating upside-down. It turned out to be what was left of a Dazenic suit, full of rips and stained with dark stains all around, mostly around a huge hole in the chest. One of the arms was heavy, and I looked and saw that there was still an arm inside, the edge of the arm torn up as though something had been gnawing on it. It wasn’t hard to guess what.

I threw the suit to one side and dove into the pool. The water was murky, and I had trouble seeing, but I was able to follow the wall of the pool down to the bottom, using a special fan in the back of my suit that pushed me forward, since my one foot wasn't very good for swimming. When I reached the bottom of the pool, there was a cave there, with a big shiny thing covering the mouth. I was able to get through it with just a little push and it turned out to be like a big bubble door. I was shocked to find that inside, there was no toxic water. The place looked like a lab of some kind, with openings leading to rooms with smooth surfaces of metal and tile, and full of tubes and wires and large tanks of the water from outside, and even a few that looked more like they were full of good, clean water. It didn't look anything like a cave. Maybe they kept it this way for whatever they brought in here. So I thought this place could be where they studied the 'children' that the Dazenics had after encoun.....meeting the Kiiranthans.

I left my suit on as I started exploring; the place was just as quiet as the outside, but this place had the smell of danger, and not far off. I began to hear a strange noise as I went further; it sounded like a very quiet, very soft scraping sound. I pulled out my stunner and moved forward as quietly as I could, wanting to take my helmet off to see better, but something just told me to keep it on.

I came around a bend in a hallway and found what was making the scraping sound. At the end of the hallway was a door, and at the door was a strange creature. It looked a lot like the Kiirathans that I had seen on the computer screen, but it wasn't quite one; the smell of something fishy came through my breathing mask, and all the way from here I could see flaps beneath its head that looked like leafy gills, moving rapidly up and down like bellows as it ignored me and kept doing what it was doing; trying to get the door open. It had some fingers that looked like tree limbs but moved like tentacles, and it was prying the door open very slowly; it might have taken it days just to get it that far open. Well, some plants did live for hundreds of years; I guess it thought it had the time.

Well it was about to be out of time. I moved toward it with my weapon, and it heard me and turned around. I saw a face with beady, berry-like eyes that almost had the wet look of a Dazenic, but the mouth that opened and hissed at me was all Kiirathan: razor sharp teeth made of thorns as long as one of my stalks. It wiggled its tenta-fingers at me and charged, moving more quickly than I thought I had seen on the computer. I had just enough time to set my stunner to full blast and bring it up in front of me. There was a loud and pained squeal, and my helmet was full of the smell of burning forest. I saw that there was just a smoking pile of black wood in front of me, and as the gills puffed out one last time, a little bit of smoke came out. I was upset that I had killed it, because I knew Lord Tyche would have wanted it alive, but my luck came back when I moved past the dead creature and went into the room it had been trying to get into.

I was in a small room that looked like some kind of panic room. On one side were a whole lot of consoles and screens that took up the entire wall. Many of the screens were broken, and the consoles looked like every slimy thing in the galaxy had left its mark on it, gooing up buttons or burning holes through the top and showing all the wires. The other side had a row of cryo chambers, each just big enough for one person, and full of frozen toxic water. Many of these were also in bad shape; those that weren't all the way broken were cracked enough to be useless, leaking glowing icemelt all over the floor. I moved closer to the ones that looked less broken and saw that the last two were occupied by two Dazenic. It was hard to see what they looked like through the ice, but I was more concerned with getting them out and........asking them what had happened here.

I moved back to the consoles and tried to find one that would thaw out the cryo chambers, when I saw one of the buttons was blinking. I pushed it and one of the screens lit up above me; it had a large crack down in the corner, but the picture was clear. I listened to the message, and was able to pull it from the console, which was at least still intact. I now present this message for the records."

Planet Dazenic Resumed

"When the message was done, I was both happy and sad at the same time; happy because I knew now that I hadn't killed off the last sample I could take with me to Lord Tyche, but sad because now I knew what had happened without prying it from either of the two inside the tubes. I pulled out the chip that the message was on and put it safely away in my tool pouch, and then I thought about the two who were still here with me. I wanted to take them on board with me, easy samples for Lord Tyche to play with, especially the girl who carried the pod within her. I didn't care if a way was found to remove it or if it would make more sense to just let the pod hatch in order to study the creature that came out. It would not be fun for the female, but that's the way it is with war; stupid actions always catch up to you sooner or later, and they had all paid the price. For all I knew, there weren't any left on Kiiratha either, and these were the only two Dazenic left in all of space.

The problem was that the cryo tubes were really large and heavy, and didn't look like they were meant to come off of the wall. In order for me to take them on board, I had to get them unfroze first. I knew it was risky with the female, since the seed might come back to life, but I didn't have a choice.

The console for the cryo system wasn't much different from ours, and soon I had them both thawed, and securing them both to my large body like riders on a horse, I quickly exited the room and the lab, passing through the bubble and into the toxic water. The water didn't bother the two, but the female did slip off as I got closer to the top of the pool. Luckily she bobbed to the surface like a cork, and when I got out, I just grabbed her by the waist and continued to move back to my ship.

I had just spotted it a few hundred feet off when just then I felt the female's body squirming in my grasp, and weak cries gave way immed...... right away to loud, gurgly screams. I dropped her and turned quickly to see her on the ground wiggling around as though someone were shocking her, and with a sudden ripping sound, her chest flooded with red, and a mouth full of tiny teeth poked out, chewing and snarling at the same time. I quickly pulled out my stunner and remembered just in time to put it on a lower setting before I moved in and gave the creature a sharp poke. It squeaked and went limp, still halfway inside of the now still Dazenic body. I pulled it out, found the biggest sample bag in my pouch that I had, and stuffed it in. I moved as fast as I could to my ship with it and the other Dazenic, but nothing else happened, and in no time I had them both secure in the ship's cryo vats. I thought about going back for the female's body, but I guessed there wouldn't be much point, since we already had a healthy Dazenic on board.

I also thought about how easy it was to get into the lab, and asked myself why the ones who had been chased around by these creatures for days didn't just run away. Then I remembered the suit floating on the surface of the pool, and all I can think of is that the door had been shut or blocked somehow, and the doomed Dazenic had found the strength to open it and make a run for it, though not fast enough to save itself or the two it had left behind in the panic room. That also could mean that there is one more creature running around out there, but with no one to plant or conquer, it might very well just curl up and die.

And so I report for this part of the mission that the planet of Dazenic has been cleared of its native people. I'll go once around the planet just to be sure, looking for signals, but if I don't find any, I think it's safe to think that this is now an empty planet. My last thought is that I will face much worse danger on Kiiratha, since after all, that's where everybody went. I might tell the Dazenic about what happened on their planet.....if there are any left."

“Day Twelve. I didn’t see any signals; no signs of life accor.....from what the computer says, even though one small form might sneak by because of its size. The computer is now setting the course for Kiiratha.”

Planet Kiiratha

“Day Twenty-One. One quick entry before I leave the ship. When I started to get close to the ground, I was surprised at what I saw out the cockpit. This was supposed to be the smaller planet, I know, but I didn’t remember until I saw the whole ground just.....MOVING with creatures too small to make out. I also remembered that almost every last Dazenic was supposed to be here, so it seems like the planet almost can’t hold them all. Put that with all of the new things that the Kiirathans have already made with their planting and......well you can guess. Now it seems REALLY weird that the messages have stopped coming from here; it isn’t like Dazenic, with nobody left to send them. This place is CRAWLING with life; someone should be able to stop and send out a signal once in a while! Just because this whole thing made me nervous, I did one last check of my pouch and gear before heading out. I have a feeling this is going to get ugly.”

“Final entry. Forgive me my Lord Tyche, but there is no way I can tell how long it has been since my last entry. My time spent on Kiiratha seemed like forever, and I would just as soon put it behind me even as the planet is falling farther behind in the spaceship window. Now that I’m out of danger, and everything is once again secure on board, I’ll rest here and tell you just what happened.

When I found a good place to land, I didn’t get out until it was night where I was; no sense in throwing out the surprise you can get in the dark. I didn’t expect to see anyone when I got out, but once I put the ship in cloak and started out, I really didn’t run into anything. That made me really nervous, because I had SEEN a whole lot of creatures as I had come close to the planet, and I was SURE some of them had seen me. I should have at least bumped into a group out looking for me. But I kept moving farther away, and it just seemed to get quieter. No battle cries, no blasts or clanging of older weapons......definitely not the sound of a planet at war.
I had just come to the edge of a clearing where I couldn’t see much of what the area around me looked like, so I carefully brought the two small lights in my feelers up to a tiny glow. Suddenly, my glow was answered by dozens more all around me; blinking lights of green and orange and red. I was startled enough to brighten my lights a bit more, and what I saw shocked me enough to stand really still for a whole minute just to make sure of what I was looking at.

I was surrounded by at least a dozen creatures, all staring at me with blank, watery eyes. Right away I recognized the forms; here were more creatures like what I had seen on Dazenic pawing at the door; the gills flapping against the damp, mossy skin, the mouth hanging half open, where I could just see the rows of sharp teeth. They would have been just as I had remembered, except these had a whole lot of strange things sticking out from their heads: wires, plates of metal, blinking lights that didn’t really seem to do anything. The head looked a little off too, like someone had put a big dent in it, and as I looked, even though some of them had a different wire here or a different shaped plate there, that same weird scoop was there on every one of them, like the same healed head wound.

I took all this in as I slowly began reaching down toward my belt for my trusty shocker, though I had to wonder how many I could take down before I would be taken down myself; I had plenty of weapons with me, but even I know that it doesn’t mean anything if you have so many that you don’t have any time to get to them. Some days your belt can feel so far away that it might as well be the sun in the next system over. So far they had just stared at me as they surrounded me in a circle, their eyes never blinking and their mouths just hanging half open. But when I began to reach toward my belt, one of them started to hiss, and suddenly they were all hissing, their eyes got hard and the lights on their heads were blinking like crazy. All at the same time, they lifted their arms toward me with those tentacle arms moving toward me. I didn’t try to run; I knew there wouldn’t be a point. I could feel my body getting more toxic as my blood started to hum; I was ready for a great fight.

But just as I was ready to fly at the first one, I heard a voice to my right speaking Dazenic. “Lower your weapon; they don’t like it” it said. I didn’t want to, but I did as the voice said, and the creatures’ arms went down again; the hissing died away and the eyes turned back to water and glass. I turned my head and saw another form come out of the shadows. This time it was a full-blooded Dazenic, but not quite like the ones I had seen either. This one had a suit for breathing, but it was trim and decorated with what looked like medals, and as he walked forward, he held his head high and kept his back straight; all the marks of a warrior.

He looked at me with a look that I couldn’t place, and then spoke again, asking if I was from the ship that was seen earlier. I didn’t want to tell him anything, but I knew also that I was the one who was in a bad spot, and he could just get what he wanted anyway if I didn’t say anything, so I nodded. He looked happy and asked if there were others with me. I wasn’t sure how to answer that, since you never give up such things to another in battle, but I decided that a half-truth couldn’t hurt, so I told him that I had been sent ahead to see about the silence on the planet. It sounded like the rest of my people was right behind me, and was still true enough for this warrior in front of me, who probably knew how to spot a liar. He seemed to accept my answer, and made a motion for me to follow. I didn’t really have anything else to find out here, so I followed. The strange creatures stayed behind, and I was still thinking about them when we arrived at where we were going. It seemed I had landed close to the Dazenic’s central base; dozens and dozens of ships of all sizes were scattered around; many looking as though they had lasted through a long and harsh war.

As we passed through the camp, I let my eyes look quickly around to see what I could see, since it was still dark. Luckily there were a few lights around to help. I saw Dazenic soldiers all over, doing everything from fixing holes in some of the ships’ sides to fixing what I thought must have been weapons but looked more like piles of junk. Once we passed by a ship with a faded symbol on it that I remembered from one of the computer programs that told me it was a sign for a medical ship, but the sounds coming from it sounded anything but healing: hissing and grinding, and a very familiar shrieking sound, like a dying animal.

The Dazenic led me to the biggest ship, where we went right through a huge hole that looked like it had been torn there from the outside in. Inside, the place was full of scratches and holes where wires poked through, just like the consoles on the Dazenic planet. Creatures in suits that I figured must be engin....repair people, were everywhere, trying to fix as much as they could. I couldn’t step over them, but they made way for me, and I noticed that when I passed by, they didn’t go back to work, but just kept looking after me. I wasn’t liking this at all.

We finally came to the guarded door to the ship’s large bridge, where the leader of the Dazenic and his council were gathered. They were all talking quietly, but stopped and turned all at once when my guide and I came in. The leader was large for his kind and looked very strong, but he wasn’t leader for nothing; I could see the cunning in his eyes all the way across the room and through his breathing mask. The others beside him were looking at me with strange eyes, much the same as the ones in the corridor had been. I suddenly knew that look; it was hunger. Not the kind you get when you need to eat, but the kind you get when you’d do almost anything for something and suddenly there it is in front of you, and you would sell your own soul to get it.

My guide told me to wait there and walked forward to the group, while I stayed there, feeling worse and worse with every minute. I could hear the leader whispering to my guide, hear the tone of the reply, and I did not miss what for many would seem like a casual wave of a gloved hand as he spoke. I turned around, but it was too late; the guards I had seen at the door were right behind me; one in the act of reaching out to try and take the weapon on my belt. I felt my anger flare up, and my glow increased, but before I could put my toxic slime to use, they had me by both of my arms, and I could not reach them through the suits even as I slimed right through my shirt.

As they pulled my weapon free and took my pack, the leader approached me, and I could tell he was trying to smile in a nice way. He said there was no need for ‘all of this’ and that he knew I wanted to leave, and they would let me as soon as I gave him some answers that told him that I was on their side. Like where the rest of my people were, and how many of us there were, and if we were really there to just scout, or help them in their war. Well any idiot knows an interro.....well, what I do!.......when they hear one, so I stayed quiet. I watched him get madder and madder as he asked again and again, and I could feel my arms getting squeezed tighter, but all I said was that ‘I was sent ahead’. He didn’t seem to believe that I was just a stupid scout, but something about how he went about it made me think he WANTED to believe that I was more. “You have to have a larger force somewhere! You HAVE to!” he said once, and I could hear the crazy sound of someone who saw what he wanted slipping away, but I didn’t know what it was, and when he seemed to finally get that, there was nothing left of the leader who had gone through the trouble of looking friendly.

Half snarling and half gurgling, he ordered his guards to throw me in ‘the cages’ until I was ready to talk. The two guards were joined by two more; I guess they figured I was more than what I seemed, my shirt soaked with toxic yuck and with a pack full of weapons that they would probably spend days trying to take apart and figure out. They marched me out slowly as I tried to keep pace with my large foot; when they seemed like they would be just as happy to drag me along, I made enough slime to sort of slide along; it was easier on my arms and it kind of made me happy to leave something so toxic and gross for them to clean up.

We ended up at a ship right beside the medical ship where the screams had been coming from. The inside had been fitted with as many sections of bars as could fit, and several were already filled with shapes that moved just a bit as I came in. I was pushed along into a section with about three or four other figures, and they quickly pulled the cage door closed as one of them flew at them with a snarl; they only just got the door closed in time. The figure hissed and spat and tried to grab at the guards through the cage with fingers that moved in a way I had seen once before. The guards ran away quickly, and the form slid to the ground and sat there, breathing in and out angrily. I made my feelers glow a little brighter and was amazed to see a true Kiirathan; the first I had seen since coming here. I noticed the scaly skin that looked like moving tree bark, the large gaping mouth filled with more teeth than I could count, and the bright angry eyes. For a bit it didn’t even seem to notice me staring at it, but then it looked up at me and its eyes turned to slits. When it spoke, it sounded like a few voices speaking at once and asked angrily what I was staring at. I gave it a glare right back, and it turned its head and spat what looked like a glob of tree sap on the ground.

The Kiirathan Camp

It took us less time than I thought to reach the camp of the Kiirathans. Theirs was made of such things that would be easier to take down, like tents and huts, which made me think that this was more of a scouting party than a main base. The looks were the same as we went in; hunger that burned in beady eyes. It made me want to put on every weapon I had and find the nearest vantage point.

As before, I was taken to a leader. This time, the leader was quite impress..... cool to look at. He reminded me of a plant filled with poison; he looked like he had a hundred colors in his skin and leaf-like coverings, and his teeth were even a bright shade of red as he spoke. He said that ‘we’ had come at last and that they had been waiting for us. I felt fed up already as I said that everyone so far had told me that, and how they all knew since the planet was dark. The leader seemed a little unsure of what to say, but I could tell he had an answer. Hoping to get it out of him before he hid it away, I kept on, telling him that the Dazenic had been looking for me too. He seemed really upset by this, calling them all thieves and that I was ‘ours’ and not ‘theirs’, with all of the other Kiirathans calling out the same thing.

I think we all know that I’m not the smartest in service to you, my Lord Tyche, but when he said the word ‘ours’, like I was some kind of weapon that fell from the sky and into their laps, something suddenly just clicked; I could have almost sworn I heard the sound in my brain. I didn’t think what would happen if I said my thoughts out loud, but I did as I looked right at the leader. I’ve never been one to talk a whole lot, so I said it straight out: both sides had fought themselves to a halt, being so evenly matched: the Kiirathans were stronger, but the Dazenic had their tech to convert any hybrids to their side and using numbers to help them even the odds. They both needed a secret weapon, something the other didn’t have, to tip the odds and win them the war. That would be the ships that would come and find out why the planet had stopped sending any messages out. A planet like Dazenic, with quieter people, wouldn’t be as big a problem as a planet with people that you knew loved to fight and make war. People would want to see what was going on so that they knew everything was okay and that they weren’t going to attack THEM. And that was the plan that both sides were sharing: catch the ones coming to find things out, and use them and everything they brought to win the war for their side, no matter what it did to the people who had just come to have a look. The whole planet had turned into a trap!

As I told them this, the hissing noises they made got louder and louder, until I was shouting the last part. They knew they had been found out, and they were REALLY mad. The leader shouted for his people to grab me and hold me, and I saw them move to try, just like the Dazenic had tried. But as I had shouted, I had begun to reach into my bag for a good weapon. My hand found something, and as they grabbed for me, I pulled it out and held it in front of me. I saw it was the tube of salt, but I also saw that there was a crack in the tube, which must have gotten there in the escape. I pulled the lid off just as I had four or five Kiirathans jump at me and try to take me down. I could feel their sharp fingers poking me, their teeth trying to bite through my shirt and into my arms and shoulders, and I felt a very sharp pain on my head as one of my feelers felt like it had been bitten off. All I had room or time to do was throw a handful of salt at the closest ones. Most of it seemed to just bounce off, but any place slimy or wet on their bodies that it hit, like eyes and mouths, made them shriek and pull back, trying to wipe it off with their fingers. I could see eyes shrivel like dead leaves, mouths turning brown and rotten, and any other place where there was wet looked like it was turning soft and dying.

I had used a lot of it to get them off me, but I had enough left to make them think twice as I got up and backed out of the camp. I turned and moved off as fast as I could, but I knew all they had to do was follow my slime trail and it would lead them right to my ship. I could hear them behind me, and just like I thought, they were using my slime as a guide to find out which way I went. There didn’t seem to be any way I could get to my ship without leading them all to it and then they would just take me down and bring me back. I didn’t want to go through the same kind of questi..... interr...... I didn’t want to taste my own medicine. At least I knew thanks to my gear which way the ship was.

Just when I thought I was going to have to keep going until they gave up, I looked ahead and saw a large pool of slick and dirty water, and I had a sudden idea. I moved as close as I could to the edge of the water, getting my slime to go into the water a little bit, and then dumping the rest of the salt on the slime right at the edge. I scooped up as much dirt as I could from the ground around me, and scattered it after me as I moved to hide in some shrubs nearby, hoping the dirt would cover the REAL trail behind me. I calmed down as best I could and dimmed my one feeler just as the Kiirathans came to the water. Just as I thought, the first one went right to the edge, and I heard him screech as he felt the salty slime cling to his legs and feet and burn them. The Kiirathans were talking quickly, thinking that I had waded into the water to throw them off, which to them meant I hadn’t gone far. They went off another way, leaving the hurt one behind even as it tried to stumble after them. I remembered that Lord Tyche wanted samples, and hoped he wouldn’t mind one with hurt legs as I pulled out my stunner and gave it a good sharp shock. The creature fell with no sound, like a tree, and I was able to drag it the short way to the ship without running into the other Kiirathans, though I did hear them a few times. When I did, I just ducked down and sat on my sample until they moved off again.

I made it to the ship and was just closing the door when I heard the sounds outside that meant the Kiirathans had found me. Of course it was too late, and I had plenty of time to get the hurt Kiirathan to a cryo vat before walking back to the ship’s front; the Kiiranthans might have been strong and brave, but they weren’t much of a match for a ship’s hull. I thought about letting them keep at it and tiring them out, but I remembered the Dazenic and their brain scrambling, so I powered up the ship and left the planet as quickly as I could. I did hear scratching for a while after I took off, and I wondered if one of them had tried to hang on all the way to space. I was going to wait until I was in space, put on a suit and go out to find out, but then it stopped and as I looked out the window, I saw something falling down to the planet covered in fire, so I didn’t bother after that.”