Chapter 2: Zenith

[Awesomoman]

"Copy that, well make sure to take caution." Lance replied to Kiruza. He also was trying to follow Tal'set's orders but being quiet was not something a heavily armored marine was good at. For the most part things seemed to be quiet, that wasn't a good sign. "We're being watched." He said taking a quick look around. "I don't know where or by who, but i just have the feeling." He had his finger ready on the trigger.

[Zetherus]

Tal'set heard a growl from the trees ahead of him making him quickly pull his riffle off of his back and aim. As he turned on the three laser sights on the scope the growl of the creature got louder and closer. Just then the bushes on the right of him began moving.

A creature jumped out of the bushes on the Merc's right and tackled Tal'set throwing him into the open behind a large tree with the creature on top of him. "What the hell!. Yelled Tal'set as he was ambushed causing him to drop his riffle and struggle with the monster. Tal'set grabbed the creature's throat and held it's mouth filled with razor sharp fangs from his neck as it tried to kill him. He was able to hold it off with his left hand and reach for his knife but he saw the one he was aiming at first jump out of the trees and head for the marine. "Look out soldier here it comes!" He yelled once more to get the marine's attention from the imminent attack heading his way.

[Awesomoman]

Within a second a spray of bullets came out of Lance's gun and what was once a charging beast landed in a mess of red at his feet. Not even hesitating he turned his fire on the animal on Tal'set, pretty soon its insides were in a pile next to them. "Are you alright?" He walked over to push the dead body off and help Tal'set up. "I'm starting to think a wooden fence won't be keeping these out."

[Nohiki]

Ariaka found what she was looking for just one level under the bridge. She went along the hallway of the Officer quarters, peeking into each room. She found one suited for all of her fellow travelers. At the end was the officer's lounge. She tapped on the command console on the door, but nothing happened. She returned to the bridge and checked the area for hull breaches, but it was well within the ship to be depressurized. The cat found one unoccupied seat and fell asleep in there. Ariaka smiled and closed the door behind her so the animal won't get lost again. As she was walking to the chamber she awoke in, she wondered what else might be lurking on the ship. She opened the room. She was activated here and it stored all of the parts she didn't usually need. She went in and another flash happened. She saw her body being assembled in there by the scientist for a few seconds. She shook her head and proceeded to do what she came to do. Opening a large locker, a recess in the wall in her shape appeared. She stood in it, back facing the wall. "home sweet home." she joked, a touchscreen extending from the wall. She browsed through various equipment that was in storage. Having a feeling the room was locked because there was something bad in it, she chose heavy armor and some melee weapons, as shooting inside a ship is generally a bad idea. The wall opened behind her, mechanical hands reaching out and modifying her armor. It went a lot faster than the repair she had to perform manually. Too bad this interface wasn't capable of performing it. She tested her systems and determined that with the added weight she'll have to engage the hydraulic boosters again, to her displeasure. It will restrict her to two hours of operation time at her current power level, even with the added battery in the prototype chest armor.

She made her way back to the locked room. She stuck her sword between the halves of the door and used it as a crowbar to open them. She stopped immediately as footsteps could be heard from within. Surviving crew? she thought for herself. Then a particle burst pierced the door near her and nearly hit her shoulder. "Oooor not!" she said, pushing herself to the side of the corridor. Boosting the pressure in her hydraulics to maximum, she kicked the door out and ran into the room. She kicked one of the tables over and hid behind it, replaying the high speed footage from her eyes she took through the action. She noticed twelve androids much like her. There were federation marks on them. She remembered the weird hit they suffered prior to the jump. They were boarded. The hostile bots probably waited and took the chance when they left the ship. Another shot penetrated the table. Ariaka shot up, running towards the wall, blasts going closely behind her. she jumped on the wall and engaged the magboots. Running on the wall, she sliced first android in half, picking up it's gun.

A minute later, Ariaka was standing over pile of scraps. She quickly picked up some half-off meat for the cat and ran back to the bridge. The animal gladly too k the food, while Ariaka hooked up to the captain's interface. She did a sweep for any other active androids. fortunately, none shown up, as didn't any other life forms. to her displeasure, some of the areas were still blacked out. She'll have to repair the third engine.
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Meanwhile, down on zenith, things begun to move. All of the things. Large quantities of various predators and even plants started to converge on the shuttle.

[Midnightmoon]

"Lee, I guess.. sounds right. Ok, I'll be here then." He responded to the Rucha person. At first he circled the ship, checking out the perimeter then went back to the river to collect his packs he had left there. By this point the evening had almost come to full night, which was fine with him. As he crouched to pick up the pack he scowled at the water, remembering what happened before. One moment he was seeing everything normally and the next he was seeing a blend of colours. There was light blue right in front of him with smears of darkerblue floating around, and greenish at his feet. He blinked in surprise and he could see normally again. "I really hope seeing thermal is normal." Lee said when he realised what he had seen. Straitening with the packs he blink hard again and the thermal was back. At first he was amazed and then he was horrified, shapes of both dramatic cold and hot were moving out there through the trees. "There are things out there guys!" He exclaimed through the com.

[Nohiki]

"Ground team, Ariaka. I've dispatched android boarding party. Hurry up with the harvest, i dunno if they revealed our position to the enemy or not." the android reported. She carried the 'garbage' out and vented it through an airlock. then she went back to the bridge and checked if the ship was broadcasting any signal. It was not, but they only had to send a message. She started preparing the ship for warp just in case. When that was done, she pulled out ship's logs on all the races that the crew were members of, studying carefully before going back down to do some redecoration.
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Meanwhile back down, Kiruza didn't have a chance to hear the danger approaching. Hearing something slither when you're slithering yourself isn't easy. When the shuttle was already in sight, a huge, orange snake dropped down on her from the trees above.

On another place, a treeroots wrapped itself around Tal's, Lance's and Rucha's legs, pinning them in place, while a numerous pack of giant spiders prepared to turn them into cocoons.

[Morty]

When the camp was in sight Kiruza sped up, still keeping an eye on the forest undergrowth. Her vision just preoccupied she didn't even see the colossal viper until she was right under it. The Shis looked up in alarm right as the predator set upon her. The snake latched around her collar, binding three of her arms against her chest and constricting her fluid pump. Thankfully her breathing device prevented it from constricting any further, though she could feel it splintering under the snake's crushing grip. Panicking, she thrashed wildly, the translator going haywire from the volley of hisses from her an the snake. She could hear a whistling noise building in her head and was afraid she was going delirious, when suddenly, as the snake reared back to strike, the whistling grew to a terrible pitch and the forest exploded, wood and loam flying everywhere. She and the snake were both thrown to the ground. Chunks of meat and metal were raining down when Kiruza finally felt brave enough to look up, feeling the rope around her torso slacken. She stood up slowly and chased off the bits of snake still clinging to her, shaking bits out of her mane and dusting herself off. Satisfied that she was in one piece she looked around, tracing the trajectory of the unkown projectile through the smouldering hole in the treetops it left in its wake, leaving a burning trail that ended in the smoking crater just a few meters to her left. She crept up to it cautiously, carefully skirting around the rim. Whatever was left of the snake had been disintegrated on impact. She carefully picked up a stick from the upturned ground and poked at the bottom of the crater, unearthing the charred remains of a federation android. If the Shis could blink in astonishment, she certainly would have done then. Rather than stand around looking baffled though she quickly reminded herself of what her current objective was, and that was get the hell out of this forest. She shook herself off one last time and carried on.

[Kauria]

"Yeah, we've already run into some of them," Rucha replied to Lee, looking at the remains of the animals. "Looks like we've got it under cont—" Something heavy snaked across her legs, then smashed her into the tree behind her before she could react. "Never mind," she half-gasped into the channel before closing it.
A chittering rustled out of the trees, and she cast about in the draining light, gun at the ready.
There.
She fired three shots in rapid succession before another rough branch slammed across her throat.
The sensation triggered a dozen memories at once, images of how to escape the grip of an attacker, but none of them would work on freaking vegetation. A guttural noise of frustration escaped her.

[Zetherus]

;D Sounds pretty epic with this song on: www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmJ4IUPMNVo&feature=BFa&list=PL7CEA99EABD3D4D8E&lf=results_video

When the marine shoot the creature on Tal'set it surprised him on how fast the marine really was. He stood up grabbing his riffle then to thank the marine but he was rudely interrupted by a giant plant life form that grabbed all three of the party. Tal'set had no choice now seeing that he began feeling his races brutality getting to him. He without warning grabbed the plants roots with his right hand holding his left and ripped it into splinters. He raised his left hand revealing the two glowing purple cylinders and clenched his fist which made the two turn into violet arrays of light. "This is not my end!" The last thing he yelled as the cylinders erupted into a great shock wave which incinerated the hostile plant and threw everything within a 40ft radius in all directions. Fortunately the marine was next to Rucha when the blast accrued so being in heave armor saved the marine's life. Rucha was thrown the same direction as the marine unharmed but with only a few possible bruises seeing she was basically behind the heavily armored figure.

Where the mercenary was; a giant crater had formed frightening everything that might of wanted to go that direction for miles. Tal'set stood up after falling 15ft breaking only his left middle finger and hastily ran to the others aid to make sure they were okay. He strapped his riffle to his back while he was running then pulled out his handgun.

[Kauria]

Rucha went flying. She hit the ground hard, arched in pain, and caught herself on her second bounce, setae on her feet open to help her stop. Debris skidded past, and the Ceretai ducked her head against the remainder.
Stiffly, she straightened, relieved Lance hadn't fallen on her, and cracked a smile. "Overkill, I think."
The forested silence that had followed the blast was slowly beginning to refill with night noises. "We need to get back to the shuttle and out of here. Not much food left after that anyways."

[Nohiki]

The ship just passed the apolapsis of orbit and was furthest from the ground team. So far Ariaka didn't hear from them, so she assumed they were fine and prepared for EVA. She wanted to check the remaining engine so they can operate at full power. It took her ten minutes to get there as shuttle 1 wasn't in perfect condition (more precisely, half of the cockpit was missing). She parked it near the nozzle and saw the problem on the first peek. The coolant pipes burst and the coolant leaked out, freezing in the coldness of space immediately and effectively plugging the engine. She sighed and returned to the shuttle for a jackhammer and started chiseling the solid coolant out, loading it back on the shuttle, as the engine will still need it.

[Awesomoman]

The roots around Lance crept up around his legs then quickly tightened, keeping him where he stood. He aimed down, but if he shot the roots he would end up shooting himself. He took his left hand off of the gun and let the front drop and used it to grab his sword and slice off the roots easily. That proofed to be bad timing however because once we was free to move he was forced to move 40 ft in a random direction. His armors shield took the force of the blow and reduced it to only 3%, he crashed hard into a tree which cracked and bent but didn't fully break. Lance was left in a daze, his head was spinning and he couldn't move. "Come on soldier." A familiar voice said. "Co. Commander?" He said looking up. The forest was now more of a swamp, bullets and lasers where firing in all directions. A line of his fellow marines where holding back some unknown foe, while his Commander was standing over him. "Come on Private, on your feet. You didn't join the marines to die now." The Commander held out his arm. Lance grabbed it and pulled himself up, only to see the whole scene disappear. "Overkill, I think." He heard Rucha joke. "Hm? Wha?....Yes, that was a bit more than needed." He replied still not sure what he had just saw. His gun was still in his hand, not sure how he held onto it after that blast. "I agree, its time we left this accursed place."

[Morty]

Kiruza stumbled into the clearing where the detonation had gone off, poised for conflict. "Is everything allright?" she called cautiously, eyeing the charred scenery. She took a head count of her comrades and relaxed. "Okay, so no one was killed. What happened? I think this planet is trying to kill us." she hissed, rubbing her throat.

[Nohiki]

While everyone was occupied, a giant rhino appeared on the other side of the camp. It went straight for the shuttle. Fortunately, something blasted a huge hole into the side of it and it fell down.
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Ariaka was waiting. As she left for the engine, she sent the closest drone to do a flyby of the camp, just to be sure. When the footage of the mess down there came, she hurried back to the bridge, a plan already forming in her head.

She couldn't use the landing gear, even though the situation dow there was pretty critical. Crashing the ship wouldn't help anyone. She started calculating power requirements for her plan B.

[Zetherus]

Tal'set came running up to Lance and Rucha seeing they were still in one piece. "We need to get out of here now before something else comes along." Signaled the Merc to the two before he turned and began sprinting to the shuttle. The device on his left arm still glowed a bright purple and was making a odd low pitch beeping as he made his way back to base.

Tal'set could now be seen from the base thirty feet away with hopefully the two others following close behind him.