Chapter 3: Refuel

"Hey, if you want to explore after landing you can. Don't venture out too far." Asus tells her as the under thrusters engage and they begin to land at his pre-determined location.

"Is the planet dangerous?" She asks which immediately regretted due to the thought of getting criticized. However, she was quite surprised when he gave her a legitimate answer.

"No clue. I have never been here myself but, according to the archives, this place does have both non-hostile and hostile life. It's unknown if there are any people on this planet but your safety is priority one. Don't go out of my sight you understand?" He asks looking back at her and she nods.

"I won't." She confirms and he nods satisfaction before swivelling back around and activating autopilot.

"Alrighty then. Let's go." He says unbuckling himself and walking towards the rear.

"Wait a minute. Where are you going?" Crystal asks as the door slides open.

"Huh? I'm going to the back door." He answers quizzically.

"But I thought the canopy was how one entered your aircraft." She says slightly confused and he stares back seemingly confused as well.

"Ah. Cause you entered through the canopy right?" He asks remembering the day he first met her and was assigned this mission. "That was because that was the easiest means of entry at the time. The real entrance is in the back where supplies and fuel are stored."

She couldn't help but feel even more confused after his answer. Up till now, he had been extremely cold towards her. He wasn't quite that nice to her yet, but he was a lot more approachable now and she couldn't help but wonder why as she undid her seatbelt and followed him. Maybe it was because of how he treated her prior, but she still couldn't fathom this new display and was doing her best to drive away all of the now worst-case scenarios populating in her head.

As she followed him it was only now that she was realizing that she had never properly looked at him. His entire body was covered in a thin body-conforming suit that almost made it look like it was his actual body. There were red lights where his ribs and spine were located. She also noticed that he was actually wearing some type of helmet that didn't cover his face. As she continued to look him over she saw he had a huge almost cylinder-shaped pistol on his right hip.

It only took like a minute to arrive at the back of the ship where all the fuel and supplies were, and she stopped as he turned and stood facing a locker. He opened it and pulled out two weapons. One was a roughly 1.5-meter rifle that had a magazine that was at least 17 centimetres long and 8 centimetres wide. The second was a smaller rifle. It was maybe half a meter long at most and had a maybe 10 centimetres long, 5 centimetre wide magazine. She watched as he proceeded to place a small cylinder type object on the side.

He then pulled out a headpiece that seemed similar to a semi-monocle that would cover the right eye and was a clear blue color. He then pulled out a remote-shaped item and held it over the rifle and headpiece. There was a soft triple beep, and he tosses the remote back into the locker. He clips the biggest rifle on his back and walks over to her, holding out the headpiece first.

"This is the RX79Z 9th Generation Scouter used by the Primordial Republics snipers and scouts. It provides almost every detail of what you're looking for if you know how to use it. I've it set for the lowest information output. It's also been synchronized with your rifle so unless you're trying to make shots greater than 500 meters you shouldn't miss any target." He tells her as she puts on the scouter and then he hands her the rifle. "Don't worry about it killing your target. Every weapon in our arsenal fires either plasma or high-velocity explosive shells. Whatever your aiming at will take significant damage. The Emperor has provided us with the absolute best technology and equipment." He says proudly.

She didn't really understand what he was talking about, but she smiled and thanked him anyway as she takes the rifle from him. He proceeds to tell her the current plan and that she has five hours to stretch, walk, sightsee, or whatever else she wanted while he refuelled and let the engines cool down and restabilize.

He watches as she slings the rifle across her chest and then walks down the small ramp and heads towards the river. "I definitely feel less bad now. I shouldn't have taken my anger out on her." He tells himself as he grabs the fueling line from the shelf and connects it to the fuel container. After checking and making sure it was secured he walks out the line to make sure it's not tangled anywhere and goes outside and connects it to the drop tanks. He gives it one more look over and pulls the drop tank's fuel cap lever to open it.

He looks out towards the river and sees the princess crouched on the edge of the river shore one hand playing in the water. "What is she, a child?" He asks himself, as he walks back into the ship to start the fuel transfer. He pulls the lever connecting the two parts and the soft gushing of fuel can be heard from the hose. He looks over at the other fuel containers and gives them a quick count. "Nine left huh? That's roughly three months' worth of fuel if nothing goes wrong." He thinks to himself as does the quick fuel-to-distance conversion in his head.

After that, he heads over to the storage crate of supplies and re-rationed them to a 60/40 ratio. "A single Meal Ready to Eat is designed to last a day. I don't need as many as she does. I'm not going to force her to have the same diet as me. Based off of this and we'll say she eats three a day, that's... carry the 5, divide that by .9... five months' worth of food. Under the assumption, she eats three a day. If not then that is roughly seven months of food. Good. That means we can resupply every six months."

Everyone knew it was supremely harder to get long-term supplies outside of your home systems. It wasn't because of financial reasons or anything like that. It was simply the fact that not many species shared the same food type. A good example is the two of them. A Primordial was essentially a carnivore. They could only eat a specific plant type, or their body couldn't process it and they would fall ill. A Chalmayan on the other hand could eat almost anything they wanted and be fine.

That was one of the main reasons for the ships in the fleet having such large fuel tanks. The Emperor wanted to make sure his troops were able to get into a system that had a similar food source to them. It was barely two hours later when Crystal began yelling excitedly about something.

"HEEEY! MAJOR! LOOK, LOOK! IT'S A METEOR! OOH THERE'S TWO OF THEM!"

"A what?" He asks turning his head and looking over at her after hearing her yell at him. He had been sitting on the ground doing a weapons check and making sure he would be able to use it reliably in the event they got engaged. He sees that she's pointing to the sky in the direction of the ships nose. He grunts as he pulls himself up and begins to walk out and see what she was yelling about when a series of explosion fill the air and then a voice crackles over his headset.

POOM, POOM, POOM

"Brother, if you can hear me, the enemy fleet has located your vicinity over. If you're on this planet I recommend you get off of it on the double and high tail it out here."

He dashes out of the ship and turns to where Crystal was pointing and just barely catches the familiar scarlet red, arrowhead shaped outline of a Tracer. A Primordial light fighter that excelled in speed.

"YOUR HIGHNESS! GET ON THE SHIP NOW!" He yells realizing the situation they were about to be in. He runs to the drop tank to disconnect the fuel line. Once he arrived his blood ran cold as he saw it was only 95% refuelled. He desperately tried to push the lever back up and cut the fueling but to no avail. "FUCK."

Races back inside and looks at the fuel container. He couldn't just cut the fuel prematurely. He had to wait until it was done, or he would run the risk of damaging the fuel line. He gave the area a look over and confirm everything was bolted down or welded to the wall or floor. "Fuck it, we'll do a live takeoff." He says before running to the cockpit. To his surprise, Crystal was already him her seat and buckled up. Honestly, he had thought for sure she would have done the stupid thing that all people did in the movies and still be outside gawking at him idiotically asking why, despite the obvious danger headed their way.

"Did I make a mistake?" She asks nervously rubbing her knees together as he stared at her. She had thought for sure when he yelled at her to get on the ship he had intended for her to get buckled in. Apparently, she had been wrong and now she had ruined the small amount of kindness he had begun showing her... Or so she thought.

"Good job princess." He says patting her on the shoulder and giving her a thumbs up. He then gets in the pilot's seat and begins flipping switches. The engine roars to life and then he suddenly stops.

"Uuum... Major are you alright?" Crystal asks seeing that his bent index finger was frozen on a switch.

"Fuck it's a trap. Princess, begin activating the cloaking sequence now. Hit the orange button that says cloak and touch everything that flashes white." He orders her and she desperately starts looking for the button he told her to hit.

Luckily it wasn't too hard to find. On her left side arm panel there was a console and in the front middle area was a square button with CLOAK in bold black letters. She quickly pressed it and doing as she was told began sliding her slender finger across the console flicking switches and pressing buttons. She quickly runs out of flashing lights and soon the entire console flashes green for a second or two and turns off and she immediately begins to worry that she made a mistake.

"I'm s-s-sorry Major. I don't see any more lights." She says as he just finishes flicking his switches. She watches all of the lights on the pilot's console go out and the soft hum of the ship completely shutting down fills the cockpit. She flinches slightly as he swivels around to face her, and she prepares to get yelled at.

"What color did the console flash?" He asks and she swallows nervously.

"Green." She answers and he leans back in his chair.

"Good job princess. For a minute there I thought I would have to do the cloaking myself."

She couldn't help but sigh in relief and smile stupidly at his praise. She quickly swivels around herself and covers her face, so he doesn't see her reaction. After she felt like she had calmed down she swivels back to face him.

"Why did we shut down the ship and activate the cloaking device? Wasn't that your comrade I heard over the scouter? Shouldn't we have escaped instead like he recommended?" She asks innocently and he shakes his head.

"That wasn't a friendly ship. My people would never bring a Tracer planet side. The metal is too thin to support planet entry and exit. It's a one-way trip if you use one." He answers dryly. She goes into thought and just as she starts to open her mouth to speak he interrupts her.

"..."

"Some of our ships were stolen." He says just as she got ready to make the connection.