“Okay, so if this doesn’t work, I’m going to get drowsy and possibly pass out. Also, the Josagn will know where we are. I’ll need you to pull this right here, and we’ll have to get out of here as fast as possible.”

Olivia looked at the wire he was holding up. Dustin knew she wasn’t okay with this plan at all, but he wanted access to all of his evolutions before he had to go fight an entire space station of Josagn. He had triple checked everything, and was certain that the ship was not communicating in any way with anyone, it would not blow up because of a bomb, and it would easily by able to fly them to the space station.

He also knew that their PED’s could handle the entire amount of data in the extra storage he had installed at the shuttle station. The programing on the PED’s had it upload all the data to the cloud, so that if he ever managed to disable the antennae, he wouldn’t be able to evolve. Which is exactly what happened. He wasn’t sure they thought he would figure out a way to reprogram them or not.

Once she nodded in understanding, he sighed and initiated contact.

Everything went smoothly. In fact, it worked so much more proficiently now, than it had before, that it had downloaded everything in only a few minutes. Now that he had all that garbage programming gone, it worked so much more efficiently. And as soon as it was done, it disconnected, and wouldn’t reconnect until he told it to.

Once it was done, Olivia sighed in relief.

“Okay, your turn.”

“But I don’t have any data on the cloud,” she said, confused.

He stopped as he realized she was right. He hadn’t given her time to really collect any data yet. She had in previous trips, but he wasn’t sure they kept that data from one trip to another. It was a new PED so it probably couldn’t handle accessing any other data than its own.

“Never mind then. How about we get out of these caves and get off this damn planet?”

“Oh, thank God!” she said, moving back to the seat and strapping in.

Checking over everything, he had the PED grow the plate back over itself so that it would be protected. That was now an automatic function while he was in this form.

Starting up the shuttle, he was pleased that it ran so much smoother now. He had completely rewired the entire thing. Hopefully it didn’t glitch anywhere.

Heading back up the tunnel, he reached the other worm tunnel that they had first followed. The giant worm was long gone, having continued digging in search of food. He turned back towards the monster’s lair, and hoped that getting out would be this easy the whole time.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t. The giant serpent was waiting for them, poised to strike as they waited just inside the tunnel. It must have heard them coming, somehow.

The shuttle didn’t have any weapons, and really could only handle one speed. He was going to have to use his brain to get out of this problem. Maybe that would be enough.

Moving forward, he got the serpent to strike at them, and managed to move back far enough into the tunnel that it couldn’t hit them. He watched carefully, and saw that the serpent left enough of a gap between its jaws when it hit the wall, that the shuttle could squeeze through. Taking a breath, he eased forward again. But this time, when it went to strike, he jerked the controls forward, slipping out of the way.

This seemed to infuriate the serpent and it went crazy trying to snap at him.

Olivia made a noise that was halfway between a squeak and a strangled cry, but he ignored her. Now that he was out, it was a matter of staying ahead of the thing, and he knew that it was faster than his shuttle. He intentionally flew close to rocky outcroppings to slow it down as he dived into the water. It didn’t like this any better, hitting a lot of them, and losing a few scales in the process.

Once under the water, he retraced his route to the outside. Every time the serpent went to bite, he would change direction, but it was too crafty to be tied in a knot like in the old cartoons. Dustin was a little disappointed in that.

A thick curtain of plants, growing at the bottom of the chasm, made an excellent hiding spot, while he tried to evade it on his way to the waterfalls at the end of the chasm where he had entered.

Flying towards the white froth of water bubbles that he knew had some rocks hiding in them, from the last time he flew through this area, he steered just above them, missing by inches. That was actually closer than he had intended. It turned out to be an excellent move, however, as the serpent had grown desperate with the fear of losing him. It lunged with all of its strength at it, as the shuttle entered the bubbles, and ended up crashing right into the rocks. The bubbles became tinged with the color of its blood, and Dustin immediately steered them straight out of the water, climbing above the edges of the cliffs, and up into the sky.

He had turned off all of the lights before leaving the bottom of the chasm, so as not to notify any scouts who may be watching for them. And since it was currently dark, he was able to squeeze by undetected.

As Olivia cheered, he had all of the air tanks recycled and filled with breathable air before they climbed too high. Then they both put on the rebreathers that she had found in the bench storage.

It was time to get off this planet once and for all. He was quite pleased to say he wouldn’t miss it at all.