---[ POV: Flynn ]---

The night was almost over and it would soon be morning when Flynn woke up. He had fought for too long.

He simply laid down there, beside the void, listening to the raging wind and the rain that fell around him.

The adrenaline and combat drugs had long faded from his system; his broken ribs and other wounds were hurting like hell. The young man felt like he had been trampled by a bull. Well, admittedly, the reality was probably worst.

Without any further responsibilities, he would have just slept there in the mud but he had to get up and act. He would not let this hard-earned victory be for naught and he had already been unconscious for half an hour.

With more difficulty than he would have thought, he slowly stood up and started to limp toward the cliff. The armor and symbiotic muscle helped to keep him upright. He got a ration pill out of storage and ate it. That would help his lymphites to repair his broken body. It was nowhere near as effective as solid food or dedicated biogel but it would have to do for now.

Flynn did not want to waste one of his remaining doses of biogel on wounds that would heal by themselves if left alone for long enough. He would just have to lay low and eat properly for a couple of days.

Once he reached the edge, Flynn looked down to spot his target. There were about a hundred meters from there to the bottom. The corpse of the shrieker was splattered below in a pool of crimson blood.

Flynn looked for an easy way down the canyon and spotted a place where the cliff was a lot less abrupt than where he currently stood so he started to make his way over there. Once he reached his destination, he started to go down prudently. It was not easy in his condition.

Since he was hurt, it took him longer than expected to scale down the slope. Dawn had broken and the storm had started to recede when he finally arrived at the bottom of the large canyon that divided two ridges of the mountain range from one another. A small and indolent river was slithering its way across the rocks and crags, some 50 meters away from the edge of the deep vale.

When Flynn reached the shrieker’s corpse, the rain had finally stopped and he could glimpse at the first lights of dawn through the veil of gray clouds.

The young man approached the monster and slapped its neck.

"You put up quite the fight, huh? I won't say it was a pleasure, you stupid lizard, but I'll admit it got my blood pumping."

Flynn walked toward the monster’s belly and got the searing-blade knife out of storage.

"Now, let's see what's in there."

The young man started to carve away and open the beast. The process was accompanied by the sizzling sound of the knife and the smell of burnt, cauterized flesh. It was not easy given the size of the carcass but the searing-blades of the ISF could cut through pretty much anything. After some time, the shrieker guts spilled out with a nauseating stench.

Flynn located what looked like the stomach and sliced it open.

Its content burst out. It was mostly comprised of half-digested animal bodies and bones mixed with a slurry of bloodied flesh and gastric acids. Flynn recognized some of those animals as what must have been the same species of hounds from yesterday, but there were also goat-looking corpses and even others too damaged for him to picture what it should be.

Flynn frowned.

First of all, despite being an uncharted planet, the fauna here was eerily similar to that of Earth or that of other worlds the Empire had seeded. That made almost no sense but there were not a lot of things that made sense recently...

Secondly, and worst of all, there was no sign of the crate.

The young man promptly cut open the intestines but there was nothing in there either. He reactivated his radar, confused. His thought of the crate being the source of the signal was just a guess but it had been pretty much confirmed since the distress beacon had guided him right to the shrieker's den.

Its den...

"Are you kidding me?!"

The signal on Flynn’s radar was pointing toward the monster lair.

"Goddammit! Why didn't I realize that earlier?!"

Flynn starred at the shrieker corpse with daggers in his eyes and scoffed. That little fucker is really messing with me all the way to the end.

Unable to digest the crate, it had probably regurgitated it somewhere in its lair.

"Well, I sure as hell didn't come down here for nothing."

Flynn climbed on the monster and started to skin it. If he was to remain on this planet for the rest of his life, such material would prove useful. The thought of having the monster pelt displayed somewhere as a trophy like hunters living on feral worlds had a tradition to do also crossed his mind. There would be no one to boast about it except the mysterious crate person but it would certainly fill him with pride and a sense of accomplishment to gaze upon it.

Since Flynn was not well versed in the discipline, having never skinned a dead animal in his life, he asked for JAX assistance but the AI could not help much. JAX was only as useful as the data loaded on Flynn’s stack and the young man had nothing regarding survival and hunting skill in his repertoire. Why would he, he was a spaceship pilot? In the end, Flynn was content with his work nonetheless and stored the rolled hide in the armor storage. The monster was so large that even though Flynn had only skinned a small portion of its body, the storage filled up to 81% right away.

On a more practical note, the young man also collected some blood, bone, and teeth samples to study later as well as some meat he wanted to taste. The sensor of the armor had confirmed that it was edible. Apparently, carnivorous creatures’ meat was not really good by human standards but it would still be good to put some solid food in his belly. If the meat really proved too disgusting to be eaten, it could always be processed into some low-quality biogel with the med bay instruments, provided they had survived the crash or were in a repairable state.

All in all, the collection process had taken about 40 minutes. Flynn could have continued until his storage was full but he decided to stop there.

That poor girl in the crate must be completely terrified and the distress signal has not been turned off, which probably means she is still locked in her pod for some reason. I should have gone to get her and come back here later, what a selfish prick I am.

Flynn headed back toward the lightly inclined slope whence he came from since it was easier to practice and climbed back up. He reached the summit as the clouds of last night's storm started to really clear up. The morning was still young but the sky above slowly started to shift from the gray of dawn to the blue of day.

The young man walked up the mountain, trying to follow the path the landslide had dragged him along. It took him some time but with the help of the radar locked on the distress beacon, it wasn't that hard.

He finally reached the theater of his extended fight with the shrieker, on the slope above its lair. The sinkhole that was originally only 2 or 3 meters in diameter was now four-time bigger.

Flynn approached and look down just to make sure there was not another beast in the lair but everything seemed calm and deserted.

He jumped down.

The pile of rubble below reduced the effective height he had to drop and the anti-gravity field of his armor coupled with its jet pack thrusters slowed him down enough to prevent any real damage despite his broken ribs.

Flynn landed at the top of the rubble pile and let the gravity drag him down its length in a sliding motion until he reached the ground of the cavern. He got the laser pistol out, just in case, and walked toward the nest where the signal pointed.

The small hill of bones and carcasses was disgusting but it was nothing compared to the inside of the organic ships of the Mind Eaters he had been forced to board back when he was yet a simple infantry sergeant fresh out of training. He trembled just remembering it. Basic spaceship troopers had it pretty rough for sure.

Once he reached the top of the macabre mound, Flynn started to search for the crate. It wasn't long before JAX outlined it for him on the HUD. It was located near a large rock column in a puddle of regurgitated slime and half-digested meat.

Flynn got there quickly and started to clean the crate as best as he could. Once he was done, he knocked on it in a rhythm that would be recognized by any members of the Empire as a playful air. He simply wanted to convey that it was now safe to get out and did not know if the person inside was military personnel so he refrained from using the modulated-sounds language derived from the 'Morse code' of primitive Earth taught in the ISF.

Nothing happened so he repeated his knocks, this time louder. Still no reaction.

He tried to open the crate but, sure enough, it was tightly locked.

Flynn cleaned the small control panel on the side and then had the armor parts covering his hand retract so that he could press his bare finger against the scanning screen. There was a flashing light indicating his DNA had been successfully scanned and a robotic voice started to speak.

"Insufficient authorization level. Black codes required to access the system."

Flynn choked a little.

Black codes were the highest military clearance codes he was aware of, even though he knew there was some secret one above that. The only person with black codes on the Starfall was the fleet admiral himself. This meant that this box had been directly sealed by the most important individual the young man had ever met.

Flynn let out a dejected sigh. His own blue codes would never allow him to get that box open. His only hope was that the girl inside decided to open it herself, but for that, he had to be able to communicate with her and the crate seemed too heavily armored for his knock to get through.

Flynn did not want to connect his personal communication system to that of the pod by fear that the defense mechanisms in places considered that as an attack or a hacking attempt and decided to fry his neural stack. Normally, that would not be a concern since the crate system would recognize him as an ISF officer but after the crate had been roughed up by the crash and the shrieker, it was not impossible some of its functions were now damaged or deficient. There was no way Flynn would take the risk to link his neural stack on a thing that could induce brain death in a fraction of a second.

Since the crate was not built with a simpler communication system, Flynn would have to bring it back to the corvette and build an independent radio device that would not rely on either his stack, his armor nor the corvette systems to work properly. That would be the safest thing to do; a completely isolated system whose circuitry was expendable and could be fried without any risk of collateral damage.

Flynn got some ropes and magnetic anchors out of the armor storage and started to craft a harness to secure the crate on his back. It was heavy and he would probably have to walk at a slow pace, but with his augmented strength, he would be able to make the trip back to corvette before nightfall.

Well, probably before nightfall... that will all depend on just how well my damned ribs will heal.

Once he was done, Flynn firmly strapped his new burden on his back and got up with a small grunt.

He was about to leave when his eyes caught up on a detail that had eluded him up until now in all the commotion.

"That... That can't be? What the fuck?!"

The young man frantically looked around, asking JAX to corroborate what he was seeing. Soon enough, his vision was assaulted by a multitude of outlined shapes strewn all around. The robotic voice of JAX produced a sinister echo in the cave.

"Humanoid remains detected. The shape of most skulls scanned fit that of homo sapiens in a range between 84% to 99.9999%."