Dan paused for a second, he didn't know what to do or think, he found himself just standing there frozen in shock. The next second though, he moved as he brought up his walkie-talkie and contacted Marcus.

  "Marcus, Dan here. Where are you? We need to meet, it's urgent. Over."

  "At port, with the other guards." Marcus didn't waste any time and answered straight away.

  "Voyager, put me next to the guards," Dan said as he ran to the open so the Voyager could carry him.

  Okay! the Voyager sent fast, seeming to have understood how in a hurry he was.

  As soon as he stood in the open, Dan felt the familiar metallic hold of the Voyager's appendages. He was then carried to where the guards were at port. As he dropped down on deck again, he saw Marcus hurrying towards him.

  "What is it?" the short security officer asked seriously, "What happened?"

  "Some of the Harvesters are coming towards us from starboard," Dan explained what he had seen, "They seem to be returning from somewhere and some of them are holding bloodied people."

  "How far are they?" Marcus asked as soon as Dan was done speaking.

  "Around 10 minutes or so," Dan answered after checking with the camera.

  Getting the news across, Dan finally had the time to consider what was happening. They were in the middle of the ocean, which meant that the only places those bugs were getting people from were an island or a ship, and each of those came with more questions to answer.

  First, if it were an island, they knew nothing about the existence of an inhabited island in the area of the ocean they were in. After all, they weren't even in the area of the Imperial Ocean used to go between the Empire and the Dynasty, it was essentially an area of the ocean that should have been uninhabited by anyone.

  And if it were a ship, then due to the reasons mentioned earlier, the ship could only be a pirate ship or a navy ship, there was basically no other option, no civilian ship would be in that area after all. And honestly, Dan didn't know how he would react if it were any of those two.

  "What do you think we should do?" Marcus asks, "The choice is in your hands."

  "We-" Dan opened his mouth, aiming to say that they should help them, but then he couldn't finish his words.

  Two faces came to his mind. The first was the face of the rotund noble that put the tracking mark on the Voyager, and the second was Corgan who was in fact a spy and who knows what he would have done if he and his group ever found out how weak they truly were. Those two were both people he saved by putting his own in danger and risk, and in the end, one of them betrayed them for real, while the other was too much of a latent danger, he worried that he was about to make the same mistake again.

  Marcus didn't push Dan for an answer, he just stood there and said nothing, Dan appreciated that, he wasn't going to keep him waiting for long though. He closed his eyes as he connected to the Voyager's camera and looked once again at the approaching Harvesters. They were still a bit far, but he could clearly make out what they were carrying, the bloodied forms settled too heavily on his heart and he knew his answer right there and then. With a sigh, he turned to Marcus and said:

  "We will get them!"

  "Okay." Marcus didn't argue, he went straight to the logistics of it. "The waters outside are too dangerous for us to go down. Have the Voyager take care of them using her appendages and then carry the bodies here. We need to be fast, no need to wait for them to reach us, let's change courses and cut their path, the faster we are at this, the higher the chance of saving any of them, even if it is just one."

  Hearing what he said, Dan spoke to the air:

  "Voyager, head towards those Harvesters approaching from starboard."

  On it! she sent back straight away, and Dan could feel the ship start turning at the same time.

  Focusing again on Marcus and what was happening in front of him, he saw the Guardian of Peace moving towards Fleta, the medical officer who had been with the guards. Making to join him, he made it just as Marcus began to speak.

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  "We might have some people who are heavily injured here soon, what should we do?"

  "The medical bay is too far inside the Voyager for her to take them there directly," Fleta said after thinking for a few moments, "She can first put them here gently and I'll try to give them some first aid with my skills before leading them to the med-bay, that should be the best course of action."

  "Good." Marcus nodded then turned to Dan. "How far are they?"

  "Just a couple of minutes away with us heading towards them," Dan said after checking.

  "Okay, tell the Voyager about what she needs to do, and make sure to tell her to be careful with those people."

  Dan just nodded as he called for the Voyager. Feeling her focus on him, he said,

  "Big girl, I need you to deal with those bugs we are heading towards, but be extremely careful not to hurt the people they are carrying. As soon as you kill one of those bugs, pick up whoever they had and bring them to us to heal them, do you understand me?"

  Yes. the Voyager answered in determination.

  "Thank you, Voyager."

  With that, they had nothing to do but wait for the Harvesters to be within reach of the Voyager's appendages. Soon, they were within it.

  The Voyager didn't attack as soon as they were within her attack range, she waited for them to react like any of the others they had faced that day, stop in their way and try to turn around to leave the radius of her aura. The Voyager targeted the moment when the Harvesters stopped and were trying to turn around to attack them. Her appendages moved as fast as lightning and accurately hit those 3-meter-long water striders without hitting any of the people they were holding.

  Dan had always known that the control given to the Voyager by Aura Appendages was pretty precise, after all she had carried him on them two times already, but seeing her accurately hit those bugs was still astonishing.

  As Dan watched, he noticed something else. The Voyager wasn't going after all the Harvesters that entered the range of her skill, looking closer, he saw what was happening. She was only going after those who were carrying people, and not paying any attention to the others. Dan found himself feeling proud at how smart she was, he didn't even tell her about that, she was growing quite fast.

  "She's bringing them!" he shouted as he saw bodies floating towards them.

  Soon, she put the first group of people she managed to get from the Harvesters and focused again on the still coming water striders. All in all, she brought four bodies to them on that first trip.

  With the bloodied people on deck, Fleta hurried to them as Dan watched from the side. He felt his heart squirm as he saw the state their bodies were in though, they had long and deep wounds all over and some of them were even missing limbs.

  Watching Fleta go from one body to the other without stopping on any of them and without the obvious tell of her using her skill, the green light that appeared whenever she used it, Dan started having a bad feeling.

  "They are all dead," Fleta said as she stepped away from the last body.

  Dan didn't know what he was feeling, he felt his heart quiver and could hear it beating heavily in his ears. It wasn't just him, the whole place was silent, no one said anything.

  Amidst that heavy silence, the Voyager brought the second group and the third after. Unfortunately, in all those, no one was alive, they were all dead.

  With the fourth, and last, group the Voyager brought, Dan didn't even look as she put them gently on deck. He could feel that even the Voyager was feeling down, noticing that none of the people she brought were alive.

  "This one is alive!" Fleta suddenly announced.

  Dan looked in surprise just to see Fleta sitting next to a skeleton of a man who seemed to be wearing nothing but rags, her hands shining in bright green. The man had a huge wound on the right side of his chest and his right hand was missing from the elbow down, removed in one clean cut.

  After minutes of Fleta working on him, and with her forehead shining with beads of sweat, she finally sat back as she released a deep breath and cleaned the sweat from her forehead.

  "He should be fine," she said as she looked at him, "He will take a long time to wake up though, his body was already extremely weak, and adding the injury to it, it's a miracle that he's even alive."

  "Good, good," Dan said, a bit stressed, "See about sending him to the med-bay, let him rest there."

  As he watched Leonard carry the man gently and Fleta walking with him to the med-bay, Dan felt a hand on his shoulder. Turning around he was met by Marcus's deep eyes.

  "Don't beat yourself over it, the fact that we could save one of them is already great."

  "I know." Dan sighed. "Doesn't make it any less horrible though."

  "No it doesn't." Marcus nodded, he then added, "What to do now? Should we head to where they came from?"

  Dan opened and closed his mouth as the possibilities he had thought of before came to mind. Throwing them aside, he said seriously,

  "Yes, let's go."

  With that, they changed course and headed to where the Harvesters came from. Dan noted how the further they got from the single peak, which he was sure was the hive, the fewer Harvesters came after them. Finally, after they moved for tens of minutes, they let them be and no longer came after them.

  They moved in that state for quite a while, the Voyager wasn't going at top speed, but she was still going pretty fast. Eventually, and after around 2 hours or so, Dan was sent the feed from one of the bow's cameras, an island was ahead of them.