---[ POV: Flynn ]---

Flynn was in pain all over again.

The corvette had just stopped to roll around and he was somehow still alive and in relatively good shape despite the small wounds he got.

The basic Aegis built in the spacesuit he was wearing had protected him in part but Flynn knew he had weathered through the violent flips and tremors of the ship without much more than scratches and bruises because of his reflexes which got him grabbing a close by railing rather than letting himself be tossed around all the way until the corvette finally stopped to move.

He had activated the magnetic function in his boots and gloves and held to his position with everything he got until the corvette finally stopped shaking. Despite the recent hurling, the ship had ended its movement in an upright position. Flynn was relieved because he had no way to flip it over if it hadn’t.

When will I ever get a minute of rest?! thought the young man.

The adrenaline rush allowed him to get back up instantly, shrugging the pain aside. He activated the survival mode of his stack; this would enhance his senses and reactivity by increasing the processing speed of his brain, essentially creating an effect called ‘neural time dilation’. Under neural time dilation, the mind was operating so fast that one would have the impression time slowed around them. The extent of this slowing effect was heavily dependent on the quality of the neural stack used but in any case, it put an incredible strain on the brain and could not be used for long. Soldiers were instructed to use it a maximum of 30 minutes a day, and only if absolutely required too.

Flynn looked around horrified. The already damaged corvette was now completely disemboweled and the outside world was now visible through large openings in the ceiling and left wall.

It was hard to get a full picture as the outside seemed rather dark and shadowy but he could glance at some rocky formations dimly lit by anemic rays of sunlight. It was either dusk or the corvette was in a place where the sun could barely reach.

Some of the corvette equipment or pieces of broken hull were scattered around outside. A pale and slithering shape writhed in the corner of the young man’s vision but it disappeared in the shadow before he could focus his attention on it.

He could hear the sound of something moving just outside of his field of view; a mass dragging against the stone floor. Muffled but heavy steps.

Not bipedal, no... a beast on all fours... or more? At least 30 tons, probably more...

An air of concentration and concern appeared on Flynn’s face as he was piecing together every scrap of information he could gather with his magnified senses and simultaneously having JAX cross-reference it with every known threat recorded by the Empire. What Flynn could extrapolate was alarming to say the less, especially because JAX was not able to find a satisfying match in the database. This meant the young man was facing a totally novel enemy without proper planning nor equipment.

Flynn tried to locate the power-hammer that had slipped from his hand earlier and finally found it but cringed silently upon realizing it was on the ground outside, just a couple of meters away from the corvette. The other three power-hammer, he had put with the rest of the equipment salvaged on the dead Regulators inside the storage compartment on the other side of the cargo bay.

Flynn did not wish to expose himself to the thing lurking outside just to get it and walking to the storage compartment would also get him totally exposed.

Instead, he decided to approach the opening and got his back against the closest wall to hide from prying eyes from outside.

Flynn’s transceiver was still anchored near the metal crate in the center of the cargo bay and a blue light indicator on its crude panel proved that it was still operating. The young man was somewhat proud that his creation survived the recent attack but there was no time for vainglory.

The fact that the transmitter was still operational gave him a sliver of hope of being rescued but the fact that he was facing a totally unidentified enemy doused his enthusiasm, and not just because he was in immediate danger.

No, the implications were more profound and sinister.

Since he had no idea what he was facing and it was clearly not the Mind Eaters, the only other logical option was that it was a life form native to this world. If the reading about the planet condition were not erroneous, then it was plausible for life to have developed on this world just as it had on Earth and on so many other worlds now ruled over by the Unified Stellar Empire.

The only problem was that as far as Flynn was aware, every planet able to nurture life discovered by the Empire had been either colonized or thoroughly studied. If it was already home to a sapient civilization, the civilization would be integrated into the Empire, by force if need be.

This meant that if this planet was known to the Empire, at least a small scientific outpost should exist somewhere on the surface or in orbit and his distress signal would be picked up quickly. If it was the case, a rescue team was probably already dispatched and he only had to keep his beacon operational for a couple more hours for them to locate him. Even without the beacon, they would probably be able to find him by tomorrow.

On the other hand, if there was no sign of a rescue mission within the next day, Flynn could pretty much guarantee that he had landed on a world completely unknown to the Empire in a sector of space far away from human influence. Given the scale of the galaxy, the chance for the Unified Stellar Empire to stumble upon this planet and officially discover this unknown world during Flynn’s lifetime was rather slim.

Flynn did not know if he should laugh or cry. Only time would tell if he had been incredibly lucky or incredibly unlucky but he had a hunch it was the latter.

No matter what he was inclined to believe, such worries would have to wait for later. For the moment he had to protect the transmitter by driving the thing lurking outside away.

But how the hell should I do that?

The creature was apparently quite large; large enough to inflict considerable damages to a 30 meters long corvette, so maybe it was also comparatively slow?

Flynn thought about the ancient elephant native to Earth. They had been extinct for a long time but he saw some holographic recordings of cloned specimens in a scientific documentary; those beasts were large and slow. There was also the yadim, a woolly animal almost thrice the size of an elephant native from Andra-VI. Those were slow as well.

With some luck - he was bound to have some at one point, right? - he could maybe outrace the giant creature and lead it away until rescue got here. The problem was that if no one showed up he would be left in the open in the company of the monster without support nor an escape solution.

Flynn’s pondering got cut short when he suddenly heard the rush of heavy footsteps charging right at the corvette and one of the terrifying shrill cry starting to build up.

Before he could do anything, an imposing mass of scaly flesh invaded the corvette by the hole in the wall just beside him.

Something akin to a reptilian head deprived of any feature except a giant gaping maw started to wreak havoc around the cargo bay, supported by a massive and serpentine neck about two meters in diameter. The mouth of the creature opened in all-direction rather than the usual two-section jaw he was used to and was filled with razor-sharp teeth and three long, barbed, whipping tongues.

There was multiple red and fleshy-looking opening on each side of the creature's neck which resembled pulsating gills. The devastating scream of the monster came from those gaping, frilly orifices.

Flynn was under the impression he got paralyzed by terror for a fraction of a second but quickly realized he was once again under the confusing influence of the monster sound. It was as if the shriek was so loud and penetrating that it messed with his equilibrium and his thought process, making it difficult to organize his ideas and take action. Well… he would be lying if he said that fear didn't grip his guts at that very moment so he had to admit that his few seconds of inaction could be attributed to both factors.

The neural time dilation effect he was subject to played in his favor as he could quickly will JAX to lower his sound sensitivity and increase the sound insulation of the spacesuit helmet as much as possible before he suffered too much from the disorienting effect. The only noise left afterward was a muffled sound still recognizable as the creature's scream but nowhere near as handicapping.

Flynn pressed himself harder against the wall and thanked his lucky stars that he was in a position where it was hard for the monster to detect him or even reach him.

After ravaging the interior of the corvette for some time, seemingly trying to enter or grab something out of its reach, the creature settled its attention on one of the dead soldiers’ bodies, prodding it with its tongues before latching it in its maw and dragging it away.

Flynn risked a look outside and could finally see the creature in its entirety. Its body was shaped like one of a giant lizard. It had a long tail about twice the length of its body and six powerful-looking appendages. The creature was almost 15 meters in length and towered about 4 or 5 meters high in its natural position. It was covered by rugged scales in pales tones of white and cream with some darker pattern on its back which the young man recognized as scar tissue.

The beast seemed agitated. Rather than eating its prize, it shook it around angrily until it tore apart and only an arm was left in its mouth. The fleshy gills kept opening and closing in an erratic rhythm, and each time they closed up, the creature seemed to cringe and tense up.

The monstrous lizard quickly swallowed the bloodied arm left in its mouth before charging at the corvette again. This time, in its blind rage, it missed the opening and simply collided against the outside of the ship. The corvette slid against the rocky ground with a metallic sound for about two meters before stopping but the creature was not done yet. It started to use its two front paws to claw at the corvette while screaming angrily.

What the hell is the problem of this stupid reptile with my poor ship? thought Flynn. What have we done to it to garner and justify so much animosity? Did we crash in its nest and kill its babies? Was it driven here by the smell of the dead Regulators blood? Is it just a passing predator lured in by my scent or my thermal signature?

As he thought about that, the monster got up on the corvette, distorting the ceiling even more than it already was, and got its head inside once again, but this time by the opening above.

Flynn was now completely exposed so without thinking much about it, he rushed out of the corvette by jumping through the side opening where the monster had staged its first attack. He was just fast enough to avoid the snapping maw of the creature, but not its lashing tongues. One of the barbed tongues was able to whip him at the hip, skewing the already improvised angle of his jump. Thankfully, the spacesuit he was wearing, and its built-in Aegis, absorbed the impact, but Flynn knew it was the extent of their capacities. There was no way a simple spacesuit Aegis would protect him from being crushed and ripped apart by that creature if it was able to get a hold of him.

Flynn rolled on the ground to better dissipate the impact of the fall, got back up in the same go and, started to run toward the power-hammer he had located earlier.

It was now a bit further because the corvette had been moved by the lizard's charge but Flynn was able to reach it in a few seconds nonetheless. The young man let himself slide on the ground to pick up the weapon without slowing down as he did not want to stop before he found some cover. The hammer was heavy but the adrenaline helped him pick it up and swing it on his shoulder as he got back up and continued to sprint toward a pile of large rocks in front of him.

Flynn jumped behind the boulder at full speed, hit the brakes so abruptly that it raised a cloud of dust and got him on his ass, then he quickly backpedaled, dragging himself on the ground until his back met the stone wall of the rock formation he had just passed.

He took a moment to breathe in and breathe out, then leaned on the side and gazed over his shoulder in the direction of the corvette.

The good news was that the monster had not followed him. The bad news was that it was currently clutching its maw on what had laid in the center of the cargo bay, meaning the crate for Central and his banged-up transmitter.

Could anything get worse than that? internally complained the young man, I swear I’m cursed!

As soon as this thought crossed his mind he hit his head against the boulder in a self-inflicted reprimand as he evidently just jinxed himself.

Just as to taunt him and prove him right, the monster pulled its head out of the ship with one powerful motion, bringing with it the transmitter, the crate, and part of the magnetic anchors that had held them in place.

The monster started to chew on its new acquisition. The reinforced crate seemed utterly unimpressed and did not sustain much damage. It was a different story for his hastily tinkered transmitter, however. The poor thing got broken into pieces in a matter of seconds.

"You son of a bitch. It took me almost a full day and half my oxygen reserve to make that."

Flynn could not resist the urge to utter this phrase in a low and angry voice.

The monster slowly balanced its head while chewing. Once it seemed satisfied, it threw its head up, opened its maw in full, and let the armored crate and the remnant of his transmitter slide down its gullet.

"YOU SON OF A BITCH!!!"

This time Flynn screamed.

It was already too late for the transmitter and he knew it but that brute had just swallowed the package he was ordered to protect and the young man was almost sure it could not digest the alloy and composite material it was made of.

Why the hell did it do that? Just to spite me?

Flynn was so angry he got up without realizing it but quickly got a hold of himself. He always had a fiery temperament but the ISF had tempered it with the hammer of wisdom and discipline. Flynn could not let his emotions control him right now if he wanted to survive. Also, he could probably not afford to get angry at a 40 plus tons lizard.

Strangely enough, the monster now seemed a bit calmer, moving in a more indolent manner than before. Its gills continued to open and close but the rhythm was now more natural. Was all it wanted really to snack on my cargo? Flynn knew this was improbable, but it certainly looked like it.

The monster refrained from screaming for a moment, only letting out a low and continuous growl while it used its tongues to clean its bloodied paws. Despite its imposing bulk, it seemed to have hurt itself while carving through the metal hull of the corvette.

Flynn slowly got back down behind the boulder as the creature seemed to have forgotten about his presence and there was nothing that he could do for now.

After a couple of minutes, the monster let out a small and short shriek, after which its head automatically sprung up as if he was now on alert. It let out a series of modulated shrieks while getting back up and slowly turning to face the hidden soldier position.

A cold sweat run down Flynn’s spine and he got ready to run away. As he was gripping the power-hammer and getting back up, a sudden revelation flashed through his mind; this monster, which he had decided to name the "Shrieker", seemed to be using some form of echolocation. Since it was deprived of eyes, its shrieks were probably used as a sonar wave of some sort. Or at least, that’s what it seemed like. This meant it had at least some sensory abilities related to sound wave detection. Since Flynn knew nothing of its exact physiology, it was also possible that it was sensible to the electromagnetic wave emitted by the transceiver.

If it was the case and the transceiver signal had been harmful or irritating for the creature in some way, that would explain its previous actions. That would also explain the timing of the attack, just after he had started the transmission.

As the giant alien lizard got closer, Flynn looked around him for something miraculous that would provide a way out of this mess but there was nothing. He was apparently located at the bottom of a long and steep ravine, somewhere in a mountainous area. The cliff walls that surrounded him prevented the natural light from reaching down below even though the young man estimated it was probably sometime around late noon on this planet and that there was a couple of hours left to the day.

The only thing that surrounded him were boulders covered in dried moss, craggy stones, rock piles, and crevasses.

Flynn started to slowly back up, trying to reduce the sounds of his footstep to the minimum, but the creature was not fooled.

With a resounding shriek, it jumped forward in his direction all teeth ahead.