Finding the surviving scavengers was simple. We just followed the screaming.

They weren't far from the smoking ruin of the tank. There were three of them. Kids, they were only kids, and scrawny ones at that. Each of them was so covered in dirt and dust that I could only just make out the blue-tinted skin that I'd come to associate with the natives of the planet Skraeling.

Dark blue blood soaked the clothes of the one lying on the ground, and his breathing seemed shallow and erratic. Beside him crouched a girl with short-cropped black hair. Tears welled in her eyes, but this was no wilting princess waiting for help. She was too busy trying to stem his bleeding to fall apart at the moment.

The third of the figures was the largest, an older teenager with long straggly hair. He leaned on a battered-looking rifle and looked down at the others with concern. With his back to us, he was oblivious to our approach. If he was meant to be on watch, he was doing a lousy job.

Kuwta lifted her rifle and aimed at the guard. I quickly stepped in front of her and prevented her shot. "What happened here?" I asked as I advanced towards him. The boy spun around in surprise, lifting his rifle towards me in a jerky motion.

Icy fear ran through my veins, but I forced myself to ignore his gun and pointed at his friend, "Shit, is he alright?"

The kid turned to check, and I crunched the butt of my assault rifle into the back of his head. He went sprawling to the floor in a heap and stayed down, unmoving. Perhaps I hit him a little hard, but I figured that his chance of recovery was better than if Kuwta had riddled him with bullets. I didn't want to kill him, but you don't take chances with someone holding a gun. He might not be a soldier, but any idiot can pull a trigger.

"It's alright. I won't hurt you." I said to the girl reassuringly. Her eyes flitted over to her unconscious friend. She didn’t look convinced and I couldn’t blame her.

"Kuwta, take a look at the kid and see if you can help him." I requested.

The Orc impassively considered my request. "Your compassion is dangerous," she muttered just loudly enough for me to hear.

I smirked at her, "I didn't hear you complaining when I saved your life."

Kuwta bared her teeth and snarled back, "As I said, your compassion will get you killed, probably by me." I'd like to think she was joking, but I'm not confident that she has a sense of humor.

Still, my dubious charm must have persuaded her because she removed her backpack and moved over to the kids. The girl, who had been tending to the wounded boy, sensibly moved away from him.

Kuwta got down to work, cutting away the boy's clothing to expose his injuries. Large sharp pieces of metal jutted out of many of the kids' wounds, probably shrapnel from the explosion.

The girl sidled up to me and asked quietly, "Is Kareem going to be alright?" Her angular emphasized the streaks down her dirty cheeks where tears had run.

"I don't know," I stated bluntly. There was no point lying to her. For all I knew, the kid might tap out at any moment. Desperate for something more reassuring to say, I continued. “Kuwta knows what she’s doing.”

The girl sank to the ground without saying a word, sitting staring blankly at the scene in front of her.

"Buzz?" I enquired sharply. He'd started to inspect the scavenger that I'd knocked down earlier. I didn't think I'd hit the kid hard enough to kill him, but just in case, I was preparing to dissuade Buzz from taking a midday snack. I figured it was my responsibility to teach Buzz table manners, and eating someone in front of their living friends is definitely bad etiquette.

Buzz withdrew his mandibles from the boy's forehead. "They live," he commented, his tone slightly disappointed.

"Tie him up," I ordered. The brat had already pointed a gun at me once. I wasn't going to let the little bastard do it twice; even the stupidest person learned from their mistakes. Next time I doubted he'd let me get close enough to brain him.

Time passed, and blood stopped pooling on the ground beneath the injured boy. Either he had run out of blood to bleed, or Kuwta was making progress. The kid's face was deathly pale, and it wasn't immediately obvious which was true. I was rooting for him to pull through, but some shadowy part of my soul wasn't sure why that was. My dark side whispered insistently that the kid was living in a war zone. If he survived today, something would probably kill him tomorrow.

None of us were guaranteed to see tomorrow. Somewhere in the heavens, the Gods played dice and determined our destinies. It was surely just mortal arrogance that made us believe we could make a difference.

As always, this line of thought was threatening to bring me to bleak places. Pushing the thoughts to the back of my mind, I decided to occupy myself with action.

"So what happened?" I asked the girl.

"We were looking for metal to pawn." She paused and looked up at me with large blue eyes, "The village has been good to us since our parents died, but times are hard, and everyone has to pull their weight."

I looked towards her injured friend and grunted an acknowledgment as she continued speaking. "Kareem said that that tank was the largest machine on the battlefield, so it made sense that it'd have the more valuable parts." She sniffled slightly, then snorted as she pulled herself together. "It was all going so well, up until the explosion, that is."

Her words started to speed up as she showed me a small, black metal box. "Just before it blew, he'd freed this from the wreck. It looked valuable. Do you know what it is?"

I took the cube from her hands and stooped as its weight took me by surprise. The item was barely six inches cubed and very compact, yet it easily weighed twenty pounds. Holding it carefully, I turned it over, examining it closely. There were slots on several sides with tiny metallic grooves inside them, probably to plug something into it.

My nanobots then finally kicked into gear and text boxes started appearing, revealing more information about the device than I ever could have discerned myself. I blinked away those containing spaghetti-like schematics and other information that was beyond my comprehension and concentrated on reading the summary blurb for the device.

Scrael Command Processor

Technological Level: Highly Advanced

Current Status: Inactive (No power source)

This command processor is designed to communicate with the central Scrael mainframe through the built-in satellite link. When connected, the processor will facilitate accessing the functionality from that system.

Well, that sounded promising, apart from the lack of a power source, obviously.

"A command processor?" Kuwta had surgically opened the kid's chest. I could see tissue and what was probably a lung visible, but she was ignoring him—fixated as she was on the cube I held.

"Yes," I raised an eyebrow and nodded towards her patient. "I'll let you play with it, after you finish what you're doing."

Kuwta showed her teeth but resumed stitching Kareem back together. The boy's chest heaved slowly, showing that he was still alive. That was something, at least.

"Sasi, you gave it to them?" A whiny voice complained loudly. The boy I'd whacked was apparently awake again and struggling against his bonds.

"Bodi, they're helping Kareem," Sasi stated, looking the boy straight in the eye unapologetically.

The boy wasn't having any of that, "I can't believe you did that!" From his tone of voice, he'd probably have said a lot more, but I interrupted him.

"Quiet down," I jerked a thumb towards Buzz, "He's still hungry, and I'm inclined to let him have you for breakfast."

Bodi looked at my stony expression, then at the unblinking eyes of Buzz, who clacked his mandibles together enthusiastically. Finally, the boy's face paled, and he sensibly shut up.

I sincerely hoped that Buzz was just playing along with my bluff, but I wasn't sure. Still, it had worked, and in the short term that was the important thing. I'd deal with having taught my squad-mate that eating captives was an option at a later date.

There was no sound on the battlefield now apart from the wind and slow wheezy breathing of the injured boy.

Kuwta cracked her neck a few minutes later as she stood up, "He'll probably live, for what good that'll do him." She pointed at bandages she'd wrapped around his head. "Best case, he's probably in a coma and will come out of it when his body has healed enough. Worst case, his body is here, but his mind will remain gone until he starves to death."

I nodded. Kuwta had done what she could, and that was all I could ask.

Sasi, who had been sitting quietly, suddenly started sobbing, and I felt like a heartless bastard. Apparently, my bedside manner had room for improvement.

If Kuwta noticed the girl's tears, she didn't show any reaction. The Orc wiped her bloody hands dry on her uniform, "Now let me see the command processor." Without thinking, with some effort I lobbed the heavy cube to her, and she caught it with a grunt. "Be careful with that idiot!" She pulled a piece of clean paper out of her satchel and rested the cube carefully upon it. Other tools and cables quickly emerged from the bag. Kuwta quickly started to plug them into the holes and grunted in affirmation as tiny LED displays sprang to life.

Ignorant as I was, there was little I could do to assist, so I knelt beside Sasi and tried to calm her down, "He probably just needs some rest." Her tears stopped, and she looked up at me, cautious hope blossoming on her face.

"You really think so?"

"He's a tough cookie," I stated firmly, "he's survived this long after all."

Sasi nodded, and we sat in silence for a while until Kuwta grunted in dissatisfaction and stopped tinkering.

As the Orc carefully wrapped the processor in cloth, and placed it gingerly into her backpage, I asked "So what can that cube do exactly?"

"When properly configured and powered it will connect us to the Scrael mainframe." Kuwta explained. Which told me exactly nothing.

"Explain it to me simply?" I pleaded, "Pretend that I'm an idiot."

The look Kuwta gave me suggested that she wasn't going to have to pretend. "The Scrael mainframe is what organizes their empire. Having a connection to it will potentially give us a huge amount of power and influence." She paused and sighed deeply, considering her words, trying to find something that I'd connect to. "It'll help us to leave this planet."

I nodded sagely, "So we can just ask the mainframe to send a ship, and it'll arrive like a taxi?"

Kuwta took a deep breath and ran her fingers through her dark black hair. This was a gesture that I'd seen often enough to recognize; she did it to delay replying when someone was an idiot. Today, as usual, I was the idiot in question.

"No, how do I put this?" She paused briefly and then continued, "Just because you can do something, it doesn't mean there wouldn't be repercussions. On Earth, if you stole a vehicle, then you could drive it around, but doing so would get you arrested."

The light bulb went off, and I finally understood. Kuwta was a great teacher. Years of mentoring psychotic Orc warlords had gifted her with a great deal of patience and the ability to communicate clearly.

"So what can we do without attracting too much attention?" I asked.

Kuwta shrugged, "Right now, nothing." She held up a hand, forestalling more stupid questions, "We need a power core, I think the processor is intact, but my battery pack doesn't have enough charge to support a satellite link."

"I know where you can get one." Sasi had been listening quietly to our exchange and now spoke up in a quiet voice, "Our village has supplies. If you take us home, I'll get you a power core."

Kuwta looked at me dubiously, "That seems rather convenient," she stated flatly.

"It is, isn't it," Sasi replied, her slightly surprised tone implying that butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, "Still, what other options do you have available?"

The kid had a good point. It wasn't like I'd seen any shopping malls on this godforsaken planet.