The Sun rose high in the sky. Gabe stretched his arms out and yawned. He sat up and looked next to him. The lizard girl was still asleep next to him. Her calm breathing reminded him of when he slept with Anaya, to Gabe this felt like an eternity ago, in reality perhaps only a week ago. At some point, he was going to find them again. And perhaps Gabe would take Anaya up on that captain position, whether she was kidding or not.

He got up from the bed, He tried his best not to disturb her, which apparently was good enough. She still woke once he touched the sand floor. Must be some sort of natural instinct to be a light sleeper, that or the drugs made her hypersensitive to practically everything around her.

“What’re you doing?” She leaned upward, the thin protective membrane covering her eyes blinked itself out of the way.

Gabe shrugged. “Dunno. Think I might blow this popsicle stand I kinda have some questions that need answers. Besides, I think I’m starting to enjoy the sand.”

She also got up. “Blow this popsicle stand?” the mixture of English and Caloricean left Zara confused about the expression.

“It means to leave.” He explained the expression to her in most simple way possible.

“Oh. How? We don’t have any space traveling ships.”

“Might be able to salvage something from my people’s ship.” Once again this wasn’t something that Gabe should be allowed to do. He’s sucked at designing which is detrimental to ship building and he’s never tried to make a propulsion system. He lifted the tent’s flap to look out, VeVa perked up and turned around, it had been waiting at the entrance.

“Good morning, Gabe.”

“Morning Vev.” He put a hand on the robot’s head. “How’s the solar panel’s doing?”

“They are working well, I recommend a battery storage upgrade.”

“I’ll see what I can do about that.” He began to walk forward toward the town center. Zara walked on the opposite side of the robot. She didn’t trust it, to begin with, now that she knew that he could fire a limb severing projectile made her trust it even less.

Gabe looked at Zara, something was almost rather different with her appearance. It was either the fact that he hasn’t been fully conscious of her looks or that he’s become a total xenophile, either way, something was different. Her skin was still the same tan, Her tail still barely moved behind her. Everything was still the same yet something was off. A random Cartollian running by broke his stare. Then another ran by, then another, and another. A whole crowd was moving past them.

A lot of yelling and frantic speech was going on.

Gabe looked around, hundreds of people were pouring out of seemingly nowhere.

“Zara, what are they saying?”

“Invaders?”

He glanced at Vev and nodded. “Understood.” The robot took off down an alleyway between a clay building.

“Let’s go meet these invaders.”

“Let’s” Her savage smile came back, whatever was different was now gone. It must’ve just been his imagination, he swore that there was something...off about her. They both ran off towards the commotion.

Approaching the center they found a group of armed militarists. Two Caloriceans females and three Ithori males. They stood in front of their landed dropship. The two Caloriceans were armored pointing at the crowd, they stood behind the three Ithori. Two of the Ithori stood behind the most decorated one with their guns relaxed.

Gabe pushed his way to the front of the crowd.

“Careful around these savages.” One of the Ithori said aloud.

“They’re so animalistic..” Another one said.

Good to know that lizards had a slight bit of racism between each other. The decorated Ithori stood motionless looking as regal as possible. He looked around briefly.

“In accordance with the Emperor’s law! Everyone here must submit to integration with the Galactic Union or be eradicated!”

“Wow! Join or die. That makes my life so much easier.” Gabe shouted from the crowd.

The Galactic Union officer looked disheveled, perhaps he was hoping that these ‘savages’ wouldn’t understand him and the order to exterminate would be in full effect.

Gabe stepped out into the middle, from the distance the Ithori easily towered over him, not like it really mattered anymore most aliens were bigger than him, to begin with.

The Ithori looked really confused. Almost disgusted at the sight of Gabe, he snapped his fingers, one of the Caloricean came forward. “What is that?” He pointed at the small human.

“I don’t know, sir?”

“What do you mean ‘you don’t know’ he’s Caloricean is he not?”

The other wolf person in the back sniffed the air. “He doesn’t smell like one.”

This whole ignore Gabe thing was getting a little old and quite frankly annoying. He responded. “I’m a Human!”

“Hooman?” The Ithori was still confused, He pulled out a pad and searched all possible terms that could lead him in the direction of finding something on this species.

“Ah, and undocumented and illegal species! The mission objective is now to seize that creature for documentation.” The Ithori officer nodded his head at the closest Caloricean.

“Alright hands up!” The wolf person took out a pair of handcuffs and approached with a blaster pistol drawn. Gabe did so and allowed them to arrest him.

“Hey, can you stand like right there? Gabe pointed his cuffed hands at the sand a few feet away from him.

“What, why?”

A blood splattered as a tiny object pierced the skulls of the two Ithori standing side by side. The round continued and buried itself deep in the sand. A crater with a foot wide diameter remained. The shot was much weaker than the one that was used on the giant Salak’zak worm. But was still strong enough to leave a cavern between the two craniums. The two bodies fell simultaneously. In the current confusion, Zara grabbed the Caloricean in a headlock and held a blade to her throat. Gabe grabbed the blaster from other distracted Caloricean and pointed it at her.

The crowd was also stunned, they just witnessed five heavily armed Galactic Union soldiers get captured in a matter of seconds. Once they did register they cheered their glorious leader on.

“Alright! If you want to live, you’ll do exactly as I say!” Gabe yelled.

The Galactic Union officer had almost no chance to react, everything happened so fast it was like he blinked and the tides had already turned. Gabe looked in the distance of where the projectile came from.

VeVa had set itself on top of one of the clay buildings as a sniper position. Once it received the confirmation it jumped down, due to the short charge of the shot and the sun being up, the solar panels recharged most of the power that was used up already.

“Now drop all your weapons.” He commanded.

The Caloricean that was being held at gunpoint growled as she unclipped the strap to the heavier blaster, it dropped directly into the sand. The officer threw his pistol off into the sand closer to the crowd. Zara’s capture didn’t even get the chance to touch her weapons as Zara was the one to disarm her. Once disarmed the survivors were herded into a guarded group. They kneeled on the ground with their hands on their heads.

“We should put their heads on spears to send a message.” Zara offered a plan to do with them.

Gabe looked at the group and then back at the ship, it wasn’t large but it wasn’t small either it could fit maybe fifty people. He looked towards the Caloricean, ignoring the officer. From his knowledge of militaries back on earth, asking the higher ranked would prove to be completely useless. So the common foot soldier would probably be the better choice.

“Hey, Is that ship space ready?”

The Calorciean female looked at her officer and back at Gabe, he was still handcuffed. Her expression was confusion, she could betray her employers or die and honestly, they didn’t pay her enough to really die, she was after all a part of the excursion team “The only thing it can’t do is a jump.”

“Is there a ship around that can?”

“The purity, the carrier we came from.” She looked back over to the Officer, you could tell he wanted her to hang for her betrayal. She shrugged “I’m not going to die over a something he could easily find out.”

“Thanks!” He turned towards Zara who was now holding a blaster. “Gather up like thirty people, we’re going to space, C’mon Vev.” They started towards the ramp.

“What about them?” She yelled.

Gabe stopped at the ramp. “Oh yeah, Bring the girl I was talking to, do what you want to the rest.” He entered the ship. It was definitely different from the Warden. Everything was sleek and less gray. The control panels had blue screens, holograms displaying various things one had a slowly rotating planet. This was obviously not going to be the same as the old ship.

He explored the ship. In fact, this ship was nothing more than a transporter. It was eighty percent storage bay and twenty percent cockpit. at some point he also had Veva chew through the handcuffs.

Veva approached the hovering planet display, it stared for a moment before jamming its tail in the nearest port. The planet disappeared but showed the solar system then switched to the galaxy.

“Gabe, I’ve found data in this ships logs pertaining to where we are.” Veva unplugged from the port.

Gabe approached the robot. “Yeah? what’d you find?”

“We are currently in the Zephyr system.”

“Remember three hundred years old. I don’t know where that is.”

“It is a system inside the Milky Way Galaxy.”

“Oh cool! Are we close to home?”

“I’m curious, why would you wish to go there?”

He shrugged. “I have a lot to catch up on. Plus I really want to know if I'm one shot away from being extinction.

“In that case, Yes. we are just a few jumps from the Sol system.”

“Fuck yeah!” He brought his elbow downward.

Zara approached the two she shoved the Caloricean female forward she made an audible ‘hey’ but was ignored. “Everyone is on.”

“Great! Can you fly this?” Gabe asked the girl.

“I went through the training but never flew.” She looked away embarrassed.

“Good enough for me, to your ship.” Gabe turned towards the cockpit windows and did his best to look completely badass.

The Caloricean female sat at the center console and kicked on the engines, the soft vibrations kicked on. The ship blew sand in all directions, in a second it already in the sky. She repelled the landing gear. In moments they were already in space. Gabe looked down at her, her unbreaking stare at the console proved her lack of proficiency with it.

Once they reached orbit they could see the ship. It had a very ovular shape with a section of the front cut out. In all it was very pleasing to Gabe, This is what he wanted to cruise around with. Although it could do with a better paint job, the white and blue colors were a little too cop-like for him.During the approach, they could hear over at the communications part of the ship, Galactic standard. Seems the Purity was trying to get a hold of them. Everyone turned and sort of stared at the source. No one wanted to answer. They turned to the pilot who in turn darted her eyes around the room.

“I can’t!” She was visibly nervous. “I’m not a ranking officer!”

“Well, it’s better than not answering them.” Gabe reasoned with her.

“They’ll destroy us on sight if we’d answer.” Zara also put in her two cents.

The caloricean women sighed and pressed the button to connect.

“Purity too DP-2-3. You’re returning ahead of schedule, Everything okay?”

“Uh yeah DP-2-3 to Purity, This is Private Foriya. Everything is fine, Nothing is wrong!”

“Private? Where’s your commanding officer?”

“He uh, He decided to take a nap on the way back.”

There was a slight silence on the purity’s end before they came back. “Roger that, release manual controls private. We’ll bring you in.”

After that, the connection was severed and she disengaged manual controls. She turned around in her seat to face everyone else. She sighed.

“Good job!” Gabe gave her a thumbs up

“Keep on proving your usefulness.” Zara put a hand on her shoulder she was giving her a thinly disguised threat.

The ship jerked suddenly as they were ensnared in the ship’s gravity beam. Gabe turned to Zara “Tell everyone to get ready, we are boarding in a few.” She nodded once and went to the cargo holding area.

He turned back to the window and watched the purity slowing growing bigger.

“Gabe, every time I run scans of you, they keep coming back… with different results.” Veva brought that up almost at random.

“Like?” He questioned back.

“There is something inside your skull, Something inorganic.”

“Oh yeah, long story.” He turned his head to face Veva. “Short story, It’s a broken translator.”

“Curious, In theory, we could repair it and integrate.”

“Do you know how many games that always goes wrong in?”

“To my knowledge seven hundred forty-two.”

Gabe sighed “It was a joke, add a little humor to your circuits.”

“If you wish, Increasing humor to sixty-percent”

Gabe rolled his eyes, they were almost inside the docking bay.

“Hey! Foriya, was it?”

She perked up and looked at Gabe, “Yeah!”

“How many people crew the purity?”

“Like a hundred minus the four, you killed back on the planet.”

“Cool. Vev I want you to stay here I have a slightly bad feeling about this.”

“Understood. Idling.”

The dropship began its landing procedures. Once the landing gears touched down Gabe smiled. He told the wolf girl to follow him. He made her walk ahead of him. As such a prisoner should. Going down the ramp they spotted the semicircle of thirty soldiers aimed at the group. Every Cartollian in the docking area had their hands on their heads. In small groups, they were being escorted away.

“Well, fuck.”

Two heavily armored Union soldiers aimed at both of the two, The Union soldiers races were obscured by the armored plating and masks.

Another one of the higher ranked looking officers came forth. Except he was a Caloricean with neck length hair.

He eyed Gabe up and down. “You have some nerve coming to my ship directly.”

Gabe shrugged. “I tried.”

The officer turned to the female. “Good job in leading them here. I’ll make sure you receive the proper accolades. Now return to your station.”

“Uh...yes sir!” She saluted and ran off down the corridor behind them.

“Take him away.” The Caloricean officer nodded his way down another corridor.

One of the guards grabbed Gabe by the shoulder and pulled him backward. Veva watched from the window of the cockpit. His prime directive was to protect humanity at all costs and as of right now it seemed like a good idea to take action. Veva jumped from the cockpit down to the loading area and down to the ramp. He laid close to the ground allowing his mechanical body to disguise itself as a piece of junk on the ship. He stayed that way until the docking area emptied out. It only took a few minutes before they found no other life forms on the ship, He slid down the ramp and bolted for the nearest vent. He ripped open the granting using his teeth once an opening was made large enough he crawled his way through. The robot went through many corridors at random.

Technically, It wasn’t at random. He was following a trace of radiation that his sensors picked up on. The closer he got the more he was sure he was reaching the engine room by the time he reached another grate. He shoved his head forward sending the plate flying. He crawled from underneath he was now in a corridor with a door on his immediate right. His sensors told him that’s where the radiation was the highest. Opening the door revealed an Ithori working on a console. Veva pounced on the man before he could even make a sound, using his razor sharp teeth he tore the throat out the poor creature. He didn’t stop gnawing on the alien until it no longer thrashed about. Blood was splattered and pooled around almost every space in the console room.

Underneath the console, he tore away at the plating and pulled on random wires, until something happened. Eventually, something did. The lights went out, the soft hum of the engines, everything turned off.

Gabe sat in a glass cell with two other Cartollians. The door had a red light on the handle. In a few seconds, the area went dark and emergency power came on everything was now bathed in red. The light above the handle also disappeared. Gabe gave the door an inquisitive push and it released.

“Hell yeah!” He walked out opened all the adjacent cells with ‘his people’. About 15 of them were on this side of the wing, the other half must’ve been kept on the other side of the ship.

“Shhh.” Everyone nodded, this began as a stealth mission and it was damn well going to end as one.

Gabe took point going to the end of the room was a door, he had one of the lizard people lift the door, Another squeezed underneath he gave the all clear signal and everyone poured through one by one. A good thing about Cartollians was that they were still predators on a basic level, they still knew how to hunt instinctively on their own.

Any Union soldiers they encountered were swiftly mutilated by the Cartollians claws. Some even stayed to eat bits of the dead. Gabe also acquired a few blasters of his own. He made his way towards the bridge, the lights came back on. But it was too late, the damage was already done to troopers in the hallways.

He started towards the door when he heard a scratching towards above him, Veva came crashing out of a vent moments later.

“Hey Vev, What’s up?”

Veva was landed on his back from the fall, his chassis was heavier at the bottom of the robotic body causing him to flip in his current position. Gabe helped him to his feet.

“Mission Directive completed for now.”

“Alright…” Gabe was sure he was going to insert a joke into that sentence. Around the corner, a familiar red-headed lizard popped her head around the corner with three other armed Cartollians.

“Ah! The gang’s all here!” Gabe smiled when he saw Zara.

She nodded “Are you ready?”

“More than ever!” He pressed the door control for the bridge and stepped to the side the lizard people poured in the room but fired no shots. Gabe joined after the last of the group went in. Inside was mostly the unarmed side of the personnel. The officer and a handful of pilots.

“Alright, will the highest ranking official please step forward!?” Gabe stood at the center of his tribe's men.

The Caloricean male stepped forward. “Heh, you really do have have some nerve.”

Gabe exhaled a little bit of air from his nose. He fired point blank into the Captain.

“I’m the new captain, Any objections?” No one said anything “Good! First order of duty is getting the rest of the people onboard...you and… you two” He pointed at two Cartollians and one pilot. “You’ll fly and bring back as many people as possible!” Zara repeated his order in their language.

“Annnnd you! Tell the rest of your people to stand down and gather in the landing bay.” The pilot nodded and got on the comms immediately.

“Alright Vev, plug yourself in, We leave for Earth when we get everyone!”