Speaking of wildlife, the rabbitoid universe has a mouse analogue that is kinda flat, velvety, tiny eyes, small twitchy nose, six legs, and highly annoying.
Not sure where they fit in, on the periphery where they barely get noticed during the course of the tale, but they are there.
“Don’t exert yourself too much Carl” I said pushing myself up with a groan. “You might have some internal injuries”
This seemed to scare him. He glanced at the pilot, Ranagar and then me. “I’m okay, just a bit sore from the crash like any one else”
“Do you know of a settlement in these mountains?” The Captain asked me pointedly.
“No” I answered truthfully “I would suspect the best thing we can do is go down the mountain though, to where it’s not freezing cold when it gets dark”
It did look like it would be dark soon.
“Maybe we’d better stay here tonight, there has to be something in the ERIK we can burn” Carl interjected. “There is no way we’d be able to find any shelter before nightfall heading down”
So we started building a shelter from the wreck of the aerial vehicle, the ERIK, as they called it and putting a pile of stuff near it that would likely burn. It might not actually freeze at this exact location, judging by the lack of snow and ice, but it was going to get pretty close.
“What was that weapon you used to defend you camp?” The Captain asked “My guys were falling down when they tried to cross into the clearing”
“I’m sure you have similar technology, maybe it was abandoned or something. We call it the ADEW, Area Denial Engagement Weapon, designed and built by Colonel Angus Procter. It causes disorientation, dizziness, pain and stuff. At the right settings we can clear your bowels or fry your brain. Not that we would do that”
We were sitting there in the dark, except for the light thrown by the fire, and everything was quiet. It was almost like being on a camping trip except my gut was still hurting and these other two people were my enemies.
“Why did we crash?” I asked as I was laying down. It was getting late and I was more comfortable. I would probably be getting comfortable on a bed of sharp rocks as tired as I was.
“I think we were shot down” Carl muttered. Then there was silence. I half expected Captain Ranagar to shoot Carl for saying it. Maybe the Captain was asleep.
“By the fleet?” I asked “They arrived?”
“Not sure” Carl muttered. I think he was wincing by the way he said it. I was almost certain he really did have some internal injuries. He could be bleeding on the inside. I did not want to see Ranagar put him out of his misery too.
I woke up while it was still dark, the fire was dying down to embers and it was getting pretty cold. I was glad to be in the hulk of the ERIK and mostly out of the wind. Hearing two men slightly snoring and breathing in rhythm I decided they were both sound asleep. I slipped Samantha’s device out of my pocket.
I went to the communications cube which glowed a nice blue floating in the air above the device. I select radio frequencies and noticed that the com frequencies were flat lined. We were far too distant from the colony to be picking up short range radio. I wondered if these devices could detect and maybe broadcast on longer range frequencies.
There were signals being broadcast on short wave frequencies but when I tried to listen there was just squelching and unintelligible gibberish. I decided these must be computers communicating with each other and this must all be coming from the fleet.
I did not know if any one out there was listening or not but I used a floating keypad to send messages out. I did not get any messages back. I knew that once the sun came up the short wave frequencies would not be able to travel very far. If someone on one of the ships of the fleet noticed, I wondered, how long before someone sent help?