With a groan, Scarlet opened her eyes, blinking away the film that blurred her vision. Not that there was a lot to see, a white ceiling, apparently made out of cheap plascrete, some light filtering in from a nearby window, nothing that gave her an idea where she was. It took her a moment to remember what had happened and she almost chuckled at the prudence Psycom had shown. She had played with the thought to learn more about the Verdun-System and possibly giver her minders the slip, going underground. It seemed that such an action had been warded against, by simply knocking her out for the journey. If she was on Verdun, that is.

Curious about her surroundings, she exerted her will, pushing outwards in a basic psionic trick, called by some a Mind Scan, looking for minds in the area. If there were psions around, they would know about the scan but she had to start somewhere and moving around would be discovered by more common ways to keep an eye on people, like cameras. The scan told her that there were two minds in the next room, both awake but one strong, the other weak. Just from the feeling of strength, she knew that one was another psion, the other probably not. In addition, there were three unconscious minds nearby.

Just as she thought about her next step, the door opened causing her to push herself into a seating position and look towards the door. A female face looked into the small room and spoke.

“Good, you are awake. You are the second of your batch to wake up, why don’t you come out and I’ll introduce you to the Doc?” the one at the door asked, causing Scarlet to frown, confused.

“Batch? Where are we, Verdun? Why was I drugged?” she asks, her mind still a little sluggish from the unconsciousness.

“Psicom sends people over in batches, every so often. But the Doc will explain, come on.” the other urged Scarlet on so she stood, only now noticing that she was no longer dressed in the Cadet Uniform of the Pandora-Training-Center but in a new uniform, looking almost like the normal black Psycom-Uniform, but not quite. For a second, Scarlet thought about knocking the woman still looking in out and trying to run but trying to do so on in an unknown facility on an unknown planet seemed a bad idea. And if they wanted to do something to her, they had her unconcious for who knew how long and thus had plenty of times if they, whoever they were, had nefarious plans.

So, following the siren’s call of information, she walked over to the door, getting a good look at the other woman. She was about average in height, making her a couple centimeters taller than Scarlet’s own, diminutive, height and likely quite a bit heavier, given that she was a little plumb around the middle. Her face on the other hand was friendly and open, a smiling face that seemed to infuse pleasant feelings into even the biggest of grouches. A face that would serve a teacher, a nurse or a con-woman very well. In addition to that, the sixth sense that every psion developed told Scarlet that she was not hostile.

The other stepped back, letting Scarlet out and gesturing towards another door. Scarlet walked over and stepped into a wide room that looked like a mixture of reception-room and shop. On a nearby armchair, a tall man was sitting, reading a book. That simple thing made Scarlet take notice, books, real, paperback books, were rare and obsolete. But as she took notice of that book, she also realised that in the short time she had been awake, she had not seen a single piece of modern technology. There was a light-fixture on the ceiling but even that looked to her like it had fallen out of a museum.

“Good Afternoon and Welcome to the Jungle. No, we don’t have fun and games.” the sitting man greeted her with a smirk, causing her to frown. Her first impression was that she wanted a shower, just looking at him.

“Lieutenant Scarlet Jones, Psicom.” she introduced herself, unsure about the situation.

“Oh, dear, you are precious. Doesn’t matter who you are, doesn’t matter who you were, here on Verdun that means jackshit. But, for what it's worth, you can call me Doc Oak, everyone does. You see, Verdun is the place where Psicom sends their problems, here they can’t cause real trouble and they can be useful. Congratulations, you have been a problem. But, you are in my territory, so I guess I should show you the ropes so that you can cease to be a problem and become an asset. I suggest you focus on being an asset, problems have a habit of being terminally solved.” Scarlet watched as the Doc placed a marker in his book and stood, walking over. Her sixth sense warned her that he was dangerous but it was not a hostile danger, just that she should not cross him.

“So, Verdun and why you are here. You see, this planet was discovered twenty years ago and despite their best efforts, it resists the Federations colonisation-efforts. Not because it is particularly unpleasant, it's a nice, Gaia-type planet, good air, no toxic fumes, little extreme-weather and so on. No, what stopped them is the native fauna and flora. Or, something. Originally, they wanted to name the planet ‘Fuck You, Darwin!’ or something along those lines but it got shot down.” he explained with a snicker, confusing Scarlet. She had heard the name Darwin, an ancient scientist and one of the first to describe the concept of Natural Selection. But why name a planet after him in such a way?

“The name would be a joke, you see? Because this planet spits in the face of everything we know about evolution, or at least half of it does. There are two different forms of beings here on Verdun, one sort is what you would expect of a Gaia-class planet, the normal flora and fauna, without any really big surprises. But the other form is what drives those studying them to drink. Let me show you a video, of what happened when we first got here.” the doctor moved towards a door, gesturing for Scarlet to follow, which she did. She needed information and apparently the rambling doctor was currently the only source unless she wanted to run head-first into the unknown, which seemed to be a bad idea.

In the small office, stood a computer that just looked as if it should be in a museum. The monitor looked like an old cathode-ray screen and the tower was just bulky. But as she looked closer, she noticed that it was not so much that it was old, it was shielded, heavily so. “Is there radiation-danger?” she asked, as she saw that. Radiation Sickness was not a fun way to go, but better know in advance, so she could put her things in order.

“Not for us, just for anything electronic. Everything we use on Verdun needs specially constructed shielding or it will fry within seconds. That’s part of the reason why the Federation has been unable to fully colonise the place.” while he spoke, the computer had booted up with a strange, electronic flourish.

“But, now, behold the terrible reality that is Verdun.” the doctor spoke with incredible pathos, making one think he was preaching. What he did, was open a video-file and play it. Scarlet’s first impression was that he was having her on. Some sort of hazing-prank or something in that avenue. On the screen, two beings battled that could only be described as monsters. One was a huge, winged lizard, at that moment in the process of breathing fire over its opponent. That opponent seemed to be some sort of armadillo-like beast, all hard scales and a club-like tail.

After the stream of fire from the winged lizard ended, that tail bashed the ground and multiple, huge blocks of rock, emerged, without leaving holes behind, as if they simply appeared. Another bash and those rocks shot at the lizard without any other effect being involved. Telekinetic power was known, Scarlet herself had it in a minor form, she could lift a feather without touching it, as long as the feather was directly visible to her and no more than two meters away. But it had never been observed in animals.

The scene on the screen shifted and she noticed the trees around the two monsters. They seemed tiny, lending some scale to the events. Unless they were fighting in someone’s bonsai-garden, the two monsters on the screen were the size of a small house. The combination of such beasts and the mentioned radiation that scrapped electronics gave her an idea why colonisation was problematic. But there was enough tech that could be used to circumvent that, using kinetic strikes from orbit was one of them. A few rods from above would easily kill such a beast, no matter how sturdy it was. They would need a few tries but she doubted that there were many of those beasts. Add in boots on the ground, armed with old-style gunpowder mass-drivers and it should be quite possible.

She voiced those thoughts to the Doctor and he looked at her with wide-open eyes. “My, you must be a genius or something. How could the Federation forget about things they used for hundreds of years, to great effect? Shit, they should ship you back and promote you to Admiral, with such genius.” Electronics might not work on the planet, but sarcasm obviously did, it was so thick that it might be useful to fight against those monsters.

“Of course they thought of that. The result was quite sobering, they lost over seven-hundred thousand soldiers here on this marble. And what had they to show for? Nothing, not a god-damned thing.” The doctor snorted, anger in his voice.

The number shocked Scarlet to her core, seven-hundred thousand was a huge amount, it was an invasion-force. If she previously had to make a guess how many boots the Federation could put on the ground, at some far-distant planet, she would have guessed two, maybe three million soldiers. Not so much due to lack of soldiers but because of logistics. Most spaceships used a small crew, even a destroyer had less than hundred souls aboard, and the large battleships maybe two-thousand. That meant there had been a major fleet action and despite that, the monsters on the planet had withstood it? That scared her.

“Those monsters, they are the reason you are here. You see, they are not quite what they seem. We are not sure what they should be classified as, we are not even sure they should be considered alive. What you saw on the screen was, to our current understanding, a solid illusion, projected by a resonance between a mineral crystal and the radiation unique to the planet. We have no real idea why it happens, just that it does.” He explained and pulled a crystal, maybe the size of a walnut from a bag at his waist. When she saw it, Scarlet noticed that there was a mental pressure around it, as if someone was suppressing it using mental domination-techniques. But using mental domination on a rock?

“We call them monster-crystals and here is why.” he tossed the crystal and as it flew, Scarlet noticed a shift in the air, the pressure receding. And just as it did, the crystal flared and as it landed, it had turned into a dog-like creature, maybe half a meter high and almost fluffy looking. But it was quite obviously not a normal dog, or maybe even a real dog.

“What the hell?!” Scarlet cursed in surprise.

The doctor sniggered a little and she felt that the mental domination was now targeted at the dog-like creature in front of her.

“As I said, we are not sure what to call them. They come in almost any shape you can imagine, from small and harmless-looking things, that seem to be based on flowers to the huge monsters you saw on the screen. And when we tried to invade, there were rumors of even bigger monsters that were seen from orbit, some of them even without telescope. But those are just rumors.” he explained.

“So, why are we here? Why doesn’t the Federation put a marker, saying ‘Here, there be dragons!’ or something like that and doesn’t bother?” Scarlet asked, now seriously spooked.

“The crystals. When harvested properly, they are a natural multi-phasic material, almost priceless for the right people. The small crystal that houses Buddy over there, if there was any non-sanctioned trading it would be worth about twenty million Fed-marks.”

The explanation and the cost shocked Scarlet almost as bad as the amount of people lost, ten Fed-marks were roughly the amount of money needed daily, to live an adequate life. Slum-dwellers could make it on a fraction of that, but it was not a good life. That meant the doctor was casually waving around enough money to feed a family over multiple generations.

“The problem is the harvesting. Unless the consciousness in the crystal is harvested beforehand, the crystal shatters and only dust remains. Harvesting the consciousness can only be done by another crystal, at least as far as we know. It seems to be their whole reason for existing and creating those projected shells. They fight each other and devour the consciousness of the other crystal, gaining in strength. Hell, we have even seen crystals suddenly change their projected shell, getting bigger and stronger, once they devoured enough energy. And yes, that is where you and all the other Psions come in. You might have felt that I dominated the crystal. We can keep them in a dormant state, with its consciousness still inside and use the dominated projection to fight and harvest other crystals. The Federation exchanges the crystals for what we need on this wonderful planet and if you harvest enough and accumulate enough credit, you can even get yourself a ride off this dirtball. If you live long enough, that is.”