When Austin left, I fished out Xavier and began listening to her as she reels out more Information she has gathered about Galsong-7. She does this till I fall asleep.

  When I wake up the next morning, it is quite late and the spaces outside the medic tent have begun to bustle with activity.

  I get up, wash my face and clean my mouth in a separate area of the tent dedicated for washing. When I step out, the glow of the sun is almost blinding. Aunty Petti and all others are dressed in training g uniforms, including Austin. The others who were with me at the medic tent also emerge, cleaned and dressed. It is as though everyone felt better and were all ready to begin the next stage of the journey. Everyone formed a semicircle and we ate a breakfast of cold roast pork, mashed potatoes and rich wheat bread, along with quince stock and coffee. We were all served on little plastic sealed plates and cups.

  After breakfast, everyone looked to Major Santorez who had been pacing and organizing things all morning.

  "What's the plan, Major?" Aunty Petti's fiancé, the copilot, asked. I later discovered that his name was Jeff.

  Major Santorez ceased his pacing. "We are going to advance into the area. First of all, the drones will go ahead of us and scour the area, reporting back live feeds in real time. When we find an extraterrestrial settlement, we attack and inhabit it. We need time, we need resources, if we are to ever complete the mission and return back to earth. And we are going to get it."

  I saw Jeff nod, but there were so many questions in his eyes. Austin and I look at each other. He was right about what he said last night. The whispers I heard were true. We were going to carry out what was akin to a war, an invasion.

  Major Santorez began to address everyone. "I know a good number of you may be skeptical about this. You have questions, lots of questions that all seem valid and reasonable. You feel an ethical, moral obligation to leave intact what has not first harmed you. You also have no idea if the creatures on this planet are hostile or not. But the first rule of survival is to look out for yourself first. It is an instinct, and we are going to look out for this group first." He paused.

  "We aren't doing this because we are terrible humans. We are doing this for the good of the entire world. And if you still feel it is wrong, please put your hands up and propose a better strategy. One that does not involve staying here, depleting our food supplies, getting scorched by the sun as our research materials deteriorate and waiting for the creatures to come upon us in the thick of the night and attack. Propose something where we will not be at the bottom of the power totem."

  Everyone fell silent. I could almost hear crickets.

  Major Santorez peered at everyone, locked eyed with every single one of us. "I thought so.

  "Austin, Jason, Mikael, Jeff, Aiko. Go to the weaponry compartment and bring out what we have."

  Aiko set up the drones, while the other three boys began sharing the weapons to people who were best suited for them.

  "Sleep well?" Austin asked as he tossed me a shock gun.

  "Yes," I reply flatly, recalling that I was slightly upset with him the night before.

  "Look, I'm sorry, okay?"

  "For what?"

  "For treating you like a child most of the time."

  I stroked the gun and kept mute.

  "Won't you say something?"

  "Say what?"

  "I don't know..."

  "Should I thank you for apologizing?"

  Austin shrugged, sighed. "Okay. Touché. But I'm also sorry because it won't be ending anytime soon and it's totally not my fault."

  "What do you mean?" I glared at him.

  "Well, you're the only one here with a shock gun. It tosses the victim a few feet away by running a strong current through their bodies. Much like a Taser but on a more powerful scale. Everyone else has a more dangerous weapon."

  I began to feel a strong heat rising to my chest. "Why? What if I get into serious danger?"

  "That is already covered."

  "What do you mean?" My temper had begun to rise and I felt my muscles perk up. I took several deep breaths to calm myself.

  "Major Santorez has already put together a formation, the order In which you are going to attack. You would not be at the front lines or the sides where you would be most prone to attack. We will form a shield and move in that order."

  I dug my hands into my pockets. "That's bullshit. If they think I am so fragile, then why did they get me on the team anyway?"

  Austin smiled slightly. "Your team was never meant to fight, Emma. You all were just supposed to think for the rest of us. With this crash however, a lot of things have changed. We are all now merged into one. Everyone is a part of the military and security team now."

  I sighed.

  "I understand how you feel. It comes with being the youngest. I was the youngest too, when I served with the security force. Over there, they were unnecessarily mean and they acted like I was made of flesh and no bones. It is a huge shame they didn't pick an 18 year old for the space exploration program this year. Perhaps it would have all been better for you."

  Austin squeezed my shoulders and left to join the others outside.

  I try to gather myself. Take a deep breath, mutter some affirmation, keep myself on track and prepare for what is to come. I do not lie to myself, so I admit to no one in particular about how frightened I feel. Apart from the bathroom ruckus with Mikael and Jason, this is the first confrontational situation I had ever been in. And this was large scale, bigger than anything I had ever known. I had grown up sheltered, encased in silence- the silence of the house and the silence of my mother. I never had bullies to contend with, siblings to fight over the last slice of pizza. But here I was, about to partake in an invasion of a foreign planet. As much as it made me feel fearful, it also bestowed me with a sort of excitement. My heart was beating so fast, so loudly.

  I strengthened my resolve, discarded my anger towards Major Santorez and the rest for treating me like a toddler, and joined the others. Alyonna looked tough as usual. She looked like she was born to wield a gun.

  When everyone was ready, we began to embark on the journey. The drones revved up, our feet hit the sand and our hearts began to thrum a common tune. I wondered what we would see. Since I already had an image of what Galsong-7 creatures looked like in my head, I found myself subconsciously looking out for them. The terrains changed as we moved. From the arid, sandy place where we had crashed, we moved to another arid place but this particular one had white sand, and winds howled from all directions. Major Santorez wondered if it would affect the drones vision, but Akio laughed and said it would not.

  We continued to trudge along till the sun rose high in the sky. Concurrently, the land we came across began to have a desert like consistency. The white sand gave way to a papery brown and the papery brown sand hardened and callused till it formed a thick, cracked, hot desert sand. Some of the cracks had fine lines that weaved outwards like a spider's nest, it's beautiful handcraft, and others were so large, we feared they would crack further and part from a huge gaping crater.

  "You okay?" Austin asked me. She handed me a bottle of water.

  "Yea, I guess. It's so damn hot."

  I removed the top of my jumper and wrapped its flaying edges around my waste. We were all wearing a white tee underneath. Austin smiled at me and did the same. Soon, the rest of the team was dressed like that, our tops shining a blinding white under the intensity of the sun. Only Major Santorez refused to pull off his thick garb.

  "You start feeling uncomfortable and doing these things. Next thing you know, you would all be stripping down to your birthday suits. Imagine what those creatures would think of us when they find us naked, huh?" Major Santorez said.

  We were tired, dehydrated and bent on saving energy. But when I envisaged what Major Santorez had said, I looked at Austin and we began to giggle simultaneously. Soon, the whole team was laughing, sputtering and slapping their knees. Even Major Santorez had a wry smile on his face.

  "Don't say I didn't warn you." He said.

  "I wish we all had skaters." I whispered to Austin. By this time, all the anger I felt towards him had dissipated. We were friends again. "That would be cool, wouldn't it? Especially on this land. I half expect to see a camel here."

  Suddenly, something dawned on Austin. "I think you are totally right, Emma." His eyes were glowing with a strange kind of excitement. I half wondered if the heat was throwing him into a state of delirium.

  "Right about what?"

  "Camels, the sun, the whole desert feeling. There is a body of water nearby. Maybe an oasis. But I can bet the next scene we would encounter would have something to do with water and a good arable soil. Maybe a swamp, maybe a lake. Something dramatic. Or even..."

  "An ocean." I cut in, giggling.

  "I'm serious." Austin said. "We can bet on it."

  "I believe you. I have the same speculation. But if we are to bet on it, you need to be specific about what could be ahead, you know? The odds have to be narrowed down. I'm placing half of my dinner down. You win, you take mine. You lose, I take yours. Deal?"

  "Deal." Austin said, grinning.

  "So what do you propose could be ahead?"

  "A swamp."

  I scoffed. "Maybe an oasis could have been more accurate?"

  "You'll see. This place is not the kind to conform to what anyone would ordinarily expect."

  "Argh!!" Someone screamed from the far right.

  It was Zuri. She had her feet stuck in a crack that had expanded and shrunken back. She kept screaming, shrill decibels that haunted us. Austin, aunty Petti and Major Santorez rushed to help. The rest of us were told to keep a little distance and avoid cracks. Akio stalled the drones. Pulling the foot away was a near impossible task, so we began to hit and chisel off the tough ground. After several minutes, her food came free but not without noticeable injury.

  "This place is fucking cursed." Jason swore under his breath. For some reason, this seemed to rile Major Santorez up. The heat was getting to everyone.

  Major Santorez walked up to him, his imposing figure looming tauter and more wicked than ever. Finally, he stopped just a few inches in front of him, hovering a whole foot above him. "Repeat what you said," Major Santorez commanded.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  "I...I...I said it's kinda..." Jason stuttered. His once arrogant demeanor was now reduced to a rubble.

  "Say it!" Major Santorez barked and Jason flinched.

  "I said this place is cursed." Jason said in a barely audible voice.

  "So why don't you get us to a 'blessed' place, Jason?"

  There was a thick silence. We thought Major Santorez would give him a punishment or do something scary. Instead, he turned, told Akio to get the drones going, and began to forge ahead.

  We followed in silence this time. The only sound was Zuri's whimpering and Aunty Petti's whispers of comfort. Her foot hurt, but she could not be left behind. She had to walk still, and we each alternated to go with her, having her lean on our shoulders at intervals.

  Just as me and Austin had predicted, the land began to change as we journeyed. The cracks sealed up, the earth became softer under our feet, and the colour changed into a healthy brown. We began to see signs of life first by noticing little sprouts of vegetation. Tiny greens in the earth that had yet to grow firm roots, beads of water on the leaf of a little plant, etc. As we progressed, our excitement grew.

  Austin leaned in, "I told you. We are getting closer to a swampy swamp!"

  I waved him off and stifled my laughter. As we moved further, we began to see trees, including different species like a bare tree trunk that had nothing but pink and green plants creeping and winding its way around it to form an X. Aunty Petti went to take some samples.

  "Careful." Major Santorez warned. Some plants could be carnivorous and erratic. Expect anything. Almost everyone had a test tube and sample collecting materials with them.

  "I think we are close to the settlement area." Akio said.

  "Yes. The plants, good soil and water is an indication of that." Major Santorez said absentmindedly.

  "No, what I mean is, I can see something already. From the drones."

  We paused in our tracks. Everyone rushed to him to see the live feed on his tablet. True enough, a kilometer away, there were rodents and other small animals drinking from a nearby pond.

  "Not a swamp?" Austin asked sadly. Akio looked at him like he was crazy.

  "Galsong-7 does not have the capacity for creating a swamp. This is the wettest it gets."

  Austin looked at me and I grinned wickedly. "Get ready to share half of your dinner with me. It was great doing business with you."

  He raised his hands in mock surrender.

  "Let's get to the pond." Major Santorez said. "We cannot test on site. Make sure your collecting devices are uncontaminated. We would do our best to preserve it for further research. There is simply not enough time. We have to get to the settlements before nightfall."

  We begin walking again, but as tired as we are, there is a measure of excitement to keep us going. We made small conversations and Austin tried to play a song but Major Santorez said it was too garish and made him listen to it on his headphones alone, instead.

  Finally, we got to the pond and it was breathtakingly beautiful. The drone had not done justice to its representation. It was clear, and the moss covered rocks and colored plants could be seen at the bottom of it. There were rodents like animals who could also live under water that were snacking on some of the plants. One held on to a piece of rock and nibbled on it, a few feet away from where Major Santorez stood. Major Santorez picked it up gingerly, with gloved hands and a makeshift protective gear. The animal seemed to like it because it purred and curved in on itself, as though it wanted a snuggle.

  Here, our feet were not planted on sand, but balanced on plush carpet grass and areas punctuated by smooth tiny pebbles.

  "This is so beautiful," Alyonna commented as she glided her feet back and forth on the grass. She picked up a flower and placed it on Zuri's afro.

  "Don't do that." Aunty Petti warned. Everyone was already absorbed in one thing or the other. The ground fascinated Austin, the water in the pond fascinated Zuri, and just like that, everyone got to work collecting tiny bits and part of the place and keeping it in a test tube.

  While everyone gusted over their surroundings or furrowed their brows in deep scientific concentration, something different was happening to me. I felt drawn to a force I could not describe. It was like beyond where we stood, there was a magnet that was hell bent on attracting me, pulling all of my senses in its direction. I wanted to scream at Akio to set up the drones again so we could advance, but I knew how awkward that would look. I took several deep breaths and decided to go somewhere else and calm myself down.

  "Are you okay?" Austin asked, when he saw the dazed look in my eyes and the way I was wringing my hands.

  "Yea, I'm okay." I looked down and found him holding his gun. He looked down too.

  "Yea. This. Everyone is busy looking over the specimens and almost all the guards are down. Well, at the security team, we were taught to never let that happen. So everyone else can concentrate on the job and I'll just sit here and make sure nothing goes wrong and we don't get ambushed."

  "Bravo." I said and gave him two thumbs up.

  I left him and went to sit under a shrub. It was green, cool, refreshing, and I almost dozed off when I heard someone shout my name.

  "Emma!" It was Major Santorez, running to me and dragging me up so roughly that I stumbled into him.

  "That is not a real shrub! You have to be careful."

  When I looked closely, indeed it wasn't. It was a turtle-like organism, green with a smooth thick leaf draped over it's back like a shell. On its head was a vine that was growing, but the turtle seemed unperturbed. Just as we were watching, it moved by a few inches and relaxed again. My body was ridden with goosebumps, but I was also excited. U had made my first extraterrestrial contact, and he let me sit with him.

  "Please be careful, everyone. I cannot stress this enough. We all need to get back home in one piece. When making any investigation, be on your protective gear, be on the lookout for signs that they might attack, but also be gentle. It is possible to embody all of that. Protect yourself. You don't want to pick up a foreign virus and take it back to earth."

  The rest of the journey is uneventful. We walk in silence again, and this time, Major Santorez said we would not be taking any stops until we get to where we want to go. Everyone is worn out, but I feel energized. Whatever it is that is pulling me further and farther into the depths of this place has grown stronger. Deep within me, there is an urge to break into a sprint, run past everyone and Major Santorez at the front, over take the drones and find out where the source of this energy is.

  Suddenly, I pause.

  "Can you hear that?" I whisper to Austin.

  "Hear what?"

  I consider how crazy it would be to explain what I wanted to, how his reaction would be. I turned this over in my head for a while. "Nothing, never mind." This earned me a concerned glance from Austin.

  I could hear the sound of drumming in the distance. It sounded primitive, loud, like the accompanying note to a wild dance of people surrounded by fire and beauty. As we grew closer and closer, others began to hear it.

  "What is that?" Everyone seemed to be asking each other.

  "Akio, place the drones above the settlement in a more covert way. It is the creatures. Perhaps they know we are coming?" Major Santorez said.

  "How is that even possible?" Akio asked as he struggled with the buttons.

  "Intuitive knowledge." I spoke up. My voice sounded like I was out of breath. "Either that, or the entire land shares a singular consciousness. It is possible that the turtle plant I sat beneath, the rodents at the pond, the flowers we touched and the earth we ran through our fingers are all connected in one infinite loop, one stream of consciousness that leads to a source. If one thing is happening at one end to one of them, the other feels it quite weakly too."

  Major Santorez wasted no time. He began to lay out a stronger formation, based on the feed he was getting from the drone. Everyone went to look at it, to have a mental preparation of what the creatures looked like, but I did not go. A part of me wanted to be surprised, even if it meant that that surprise could turn out to be a negative one.

  The plan was to surround the base camp. Alyonna and Mikael, alongside Jason, took this up. A good number of us approached the main point, and I could notice that Austin was trying his best to cover me.

  "Look, I'm fine." I said to him. I noticed how restless he was, his brows furrowed, his muscles rippling. It wasn't because of the attack, but because he was so concerned that I would be in danger. I could read this from his body language.

  "Just don't go out of line." He said, and nodded.

  Major Santorez was the first to blast off a creature before we even knew what was happening. They were mixed, some were just like I expected like the transparent skinned ones with flowers for hair and rainbow for blood. They had leaves wrapped around their waist. Others were like centaurs, half animal and half human. And yet, even in the midst of that seemingly primitive appearance, there were sophisticated cyborgs with skins made of tough metal, some of them patched with flesh and vegetation, fur, feathers, scales, and almost everything peculiar to life on land. It was all a litany of madness, a representation and inclusion of everything that screamed aliveness.

  They were all holding nothing but stones and sticks, and it seemed the ones who appeared to be cyborgs were not made to fight. Austin gave me a shield out of nowhere. It was a tiny rod that opened up into a barrier that shielded it from the sticks and stones while we continued to shoot. I felt a little sorry for them, but we had to do this. The only way I could intervene was to be faster with my gun. Since it was only a toss gun, all it would do is to shock and immobilize them, or scare them away. This way, they would not have to be killed by Major Santorez's almost drunken firing style. He looked like he was having a lot of fun just finishing them off.

  I kept asking myself, what if all they wanted was just to talk and not engage in war? What if the sticks and stones were for their self defense just like we had our guns? Also, using sophisticated ammunition against people who only had stones, sticks and clubs seemed like a genocide, an unfair battle tilted in our favor. They did not have a good vantage point from which to defend themselves. We had drones. It reminded me of history long past. Of colonization, slavery, of founding fathers taking away lands from people, grabbing it from beneath their feet, claiming to have discovered things that have existed for a particular people for centuries. Taking hold of a place where people have farmed and reared cattle for years on end, and making it their own by sheer force. In that moment, a heartbreaking realization made itself known to me. For as long as life existed, the powerful would always subdue the weak. Ethics would always be thrown to the wayside. A group of people with more advantages are always bound to become oppressors one way or the other.

  In the distance, I saw a number of them fleeing towards the hills and I let them go without drawing Major Santorez's attention to it. He would definitely kill me if he finds out, but why did I necessarily have to interfere with fate? If those ones were lucky enough to have escaped the sting of the bullet and the guttural blood shed in front of us, should we not let them go? Wasn't it enough that they had their griefs to last them for the rest of their lifetime having seen members of their communities slaughtered? Were they not already marinated in fear and pain?

  I let them go because there was no way they could plot revenge. I let them go because I knew I would come back for them.

  ***

  When a good number of the aliens had been neutralized, the rest were captured and we all went to the hovel.

  Major Santorez tried to interrogate the natives, but they could not understand him and we could not understand them either. I stepped in and tried to sign to one who seemed to be the leader. I placed my hands on my chest, and brought them both down to signify that he should calm down. He doesn't quite get this, and he growls even more.

  Major Santorez steps in and does a maneuver with his hands that really gets the man to calm down this time, and it works. Major Santorez keeps talking to them in the simple sign language they have established, albeit quite difficulty. After that, we establish our little research center in the hovel. We bring out our test quotes, equipment, ammunition, and build a little base of operation from which everything would be organized. We called it what it was. That is, we literally named it the Galsong-7 Hovel. I watch as Austin hooks up wires and nails in boards to the walls as part of the measures for setting up the laboratory. The hovel was beautiful. The natives had dug out and made something beautiful out of mud, ochre, and preserved flowers. They carved hieroglyphs into the walls along with paintings of exotic animals including the ones that were beyond the scope of our imagination. I ran my fingers across one that seemed like a dragon or a cross breed between a walrus and a Trex. The carving was intricately done, and I felt a little guilty that we were tearing down some parts to build some laboratory and holding facility without their express permission.

  When we got around to it, we could really be destructive as a species.

  "Coming up good?" I asked Austin. He was separating a bundle of wires of different colors. There were blue, red, yellow, black. It reminded me of movies where the main character would be unsure which color of wire to cut to detonate a bomb. Cutting the wrong wire would set the bomb off instead.

  "Yea, it's all going fine."

  I could tell that he was tired. There was a strain in his voice and his forehead was slick with sweat. All through the day, Austin had stood like a bulwark, looking out for everyone else, but no one had actually found the time to really, truly, ask him what he was doing.

  "Here, let me help you."

  "Thanks."

  He hands me a bundle and I start separating.

  "I know you don't feel comfortable."

  "About what?" I asked, confused.

  "This. All of this. It's written all over your face."

  I laughed. "Yea, I think anyone would like to go somewhere else rather than on a foreign planet, killing off and neutralizing natives and not knowing what to expect in the future. I mean, who knows if we are going to come out of here alive?"

  Austin keeps quiet as though he is ruminating on my words. Then he shrugs. "We just got a hope. That's all we have, you know? There's nothing wrong with it."

  "Sometimes there is. Hope kills faster than despair."

  He stopped picking the wires and looked at me intensely. "We will do what we have to do."

  I wondered what that meant.

  "Hey, Zuri. How's your foot?" Austin called out to Zuri as she passed us.

  "Good as new. Aunty Petti cooked up some compound in the lab and the pain is completely gone by a good measure. It still stings a little, but I feel great." She beamed.

  "Awesome." I said. I noticed she was armed with a map and a backpack. "Where are you headed? You look quite kitted up." I commented.

  "Yea, this. She twirled the ropes on her bag. Major Santorez gave us all the permission to explore the nearby colonies. Of course, we are forbidden from venturing beyond a certain radius." She cupped her mouth and whispered like a conspirator, "Akio is watching."

  "Wow. I can't believe Major Santorez actually allowed that." I said, excited and jittery. I was already itching to go.

  Zuri handed me a sheet. "Here. There is a list of rules to follow. Alyonna had it printed because our tabs might run out of power soon. They're still trying to set it up. The solar energy on this planet doesn't do shit." With that, she sauntered off.

  Jason and Mikael came in after that.

  "What are you guys up to?" Jason asked.

  "None of your business." Austin snapped.

  I turned to Austin, ignoring them. "I'm going to explore some ditches. I saw some natives escape to that place."

  Austin paused. "Are you going to harm them?"

  "No, of course not."

  "I think Major Santorez ought to know about that." Mikael said.

  Austin peered daggers at him. "It is obvious you both never learn your lessons." He threatened. "Go about your own business, okay?"

  The two boys left, beet red in the face and I suppose, appropriately humiliated.

  "Shall we?"