Chapter 3: Battling Some Local Fauna

Watching as the man who called himself Jake dove into the ocean, Derek waited for a minute before he took out his PDA from inside of his clothes. Turning it on, he noticed that a strange message had appeared on the screen.

(All blueprints have been corrupted and were deleted for the preservation of the PDA and Alterra databases)

Shocked, Derek took a few steps back before he sat on the floor of the life-pod and started breathing heavily. That single message basically doomed him and any other survivors on the planet. Putting his face into his hands, he started laughing, and then sobbed.

Five minutes passed before he stopped sobbing and regained enough clarity to think about how to potentially survive on the planet, and there was a single thing that would drastically increase their chances of survival.

The man named Jake, who he didn't know anything about, and who seemed to have an unrivalled sense of bravery. Even though they were stranded on a planet with gigantic hostile lifeforms that could potentially kill them in an instant.

Wiping away his tears, Derek stood up and examined Ryley, who was still unconscious, and he found more injuries than what Jake was able to see. Not only was there a bump on his head, his pupils were dilated, which was a common symptom of a concussion after a head injury.

Opening the small storage compartment that held the med-kit, Derek opened the med-kit and took out a syringe and a bottle of pills. Injecting Ryley with the syringe, Derek watched Ryley for 30 seconds, and after 30 seconds he saw that Ryley was waking up.

Groggily opening his eyes, Ryley saw that the person in front of him wasn't the man named Jake, but someone he knew very well. It was Derek in front of him, a coworker of his, one that he thought he wouldn't see ever again even though there was a small possibility of it happening.

Rubbing his head, Ryley felt the bump before trying to stand up, but he was stopped by the metal bar that held him to his seat. Fumbling around for the button to release the metal bar, he touched it and waited for the bar to move up, but it didn't.

Touching the button again, all he heard was an shrill electronic noise before the panel short-circuited and released. Falling to his hands and knees, Ryley looked at Derek, who was holding a bottle of pills, and just stared at him.

Opening the bottle of pills, Derek read how many were supposed to be given to someone and raised an eyebrow. It said to give the entire bottle in case of emergency, but that would probably kill Ryley since there were 100 apple-seed sized pills in the bottle.

Taking out a single pill, Derek put the lid back on the bottle of pills and took out one of the two bottles of water from inside of the small storage container that was built into every life-pod.

The main reason why Derek didn't follow instructions blindly, like most people would, was that he knew what pills were since he had taken them before. As for how he had taken them before? When he first started working on the Aurora, he was what someone was called in the days of old, a 'Junkie'.

Sneaking into the medical bay of the Aurora, he had found the bottle of pills and read the instructions on the back, and he followed them. Downing the entire bottle of pills, he almost died in under a minute.

Surviving only because one of the doctors had been passing by the medical bay, Derek made a vow to himself on that day, to never abuse drugs or follow instructions blindly. However, he didn't know why the bottle itself had instructions to take all of the pills, which would end up killing the person using them.

Another minute passed by and Ryley was feeling much better than before, his pupils became a regular size, the bump on his head had already disappeared, and he felt full of energy. Standing up with the help of Derek, he took a nutrient block out of the small storage container and split it with him.

Sharing a bottle of water, they sat in silence until they suddenly asked a question at the same time. "Do know who Jake is?" They when then surprised since they didn't expect to ask a question at the same time, but they also got the answer to the question.

Starting to talk about Jake and why there were no memories of this guy being onboard the Aurora ever since they had started the journey, Derek and Ryley would continue to talk about the man in question. Meanwhile, Jake was struggling with his own problems.

Jake's next destination was life-pod 3, he wanted to make sure that they were all right before he tried going anywhere else. Vague memories of the distress call from life-pod 3 flashed across his mind as he remembered that they encountered something shortly after landing.

Luckily, life-pod 3 was closer than life-pod 4, but he had to pass through the Kelp Forests and many Stalkers to reach the life-pod. It was a minute after he had left life-pod 5 when he reached the Kelp Forests, quite a bit slower than his original speed, but he was already tired.

Once in the Kelp Forests, he barely had time to react when a stalker appeared from behind him and nearly tore his arm from the rest of body. Looking at the stalker that barely missed him, Jake stopped swimming forward as he noticed that more stalkers were approaching.

Circling around him like sharks, one of the Stalkers made a sudden acceleration of it's movement and tried to attack Jake. Because he was in water, he wasn't able to move as fast as he would like, but that didn't stop him from delivering a solid right hook to the face of the Stalker.

The force delivered was halved due to them being in water, but that was still more than enough to knock a few teeth out of the Stalker. Yellowish-green blood started mixing with the water surrounding the Stalker as it screeched in pain while retreating.

Swarming towards him after one of their brethren was injured, the rest of the Stalkers wanted to rip Jake to shreds. It was a group of 8 Stalkers that had surrounded Jake, one of which was out of commission and had fled from his location.

Nervous because of the sharpness of their teeth, Jake cursed while pulling his right arm back, and then he delivered a punch that was like that of a cannonball. Connecting with the head of the closest Stalker, Jake's fist had much more force than the previous punch due to him preparing for the punch rather than an instinctual reaction.

A flurry of punches were then delivered to the other Stalkers that were trying to attack him, most of which instantly killed the Stalkers since the fist connected with their skull and caused fragments to puncture the brain.

However, he wasn't unscathed. Receiving multiple lacerations and a few bites on his arms and legs, he was starting to become fearful because of the fact that he was loosing quite a but of blood, and the Stalkers could smell that fear.

Because his blood, which already sent the Stalkers into a minor frenzy, now had the hormone that was released when he felt fearful was present in his blood sent the Stalkers into a more crazed frenzy. Not all hope was lost since there was only a single Stalker left.

With a thrust upwards, Jake launched himself out of the water slightly. Raising both arms and clasping his hands together, he brought his fists down like a sledgehammer onto the head of the last Stalker, smashing it's head and causing brain matter, flesh, blood, and bone fragments to scatter like a mist in the surrounding waters.

Falling back into the water, he swam back upwards and stabilized himself while trying to regain his breath, which was quite difficult. Shaking his head, Jake checked his wounds and realized that the bleeding had already stopped, and he continued swimming towards life-pod 3 while in pain.

It took less than 3 minutes for the fight with the stalkers, so he still should have enough time save all of the life-pods remaining. Continuing to swim in the direction of life-pod 3, Jake's speed was reduced significantly because of his injuries, but he could see life-pod 3 in the distance.

Another 3 minutes passed as Jake finally reached life-pod 3, who's survivors were messing around with a seaglide, and grasped ahold of the lower rung of the ladder attached to the side of the life-pod.

Catching his breath for a few seconds, Jake then climbed up the life-pod, which shook with his weight when he was fully out of the water. The occupants of life-pod 3 had screamed in surprise when they had first heard something climbing on top of the life-pod.

Looking up, they saw an unfamiliar face staring down at them through the glass of the top hatch, and they stopped screaming. Inside the life-pod was a man me a woman, the man was currently doing something with the seaglide while the woman sat on the side and watched.

Opening the hatch, Jake looked at the two survivors tiredly while leaning half of his body into the life-pod, and then he looked around to see if there was anything different about the life-pod, but there wasn't except for it's occupants.

The man had blond hair that was tied in a ponytail reaching his shoulders, his eyes were blue and bright with a hint of well hidden concern within them. He had a small nose, ears that were a little larger then average, thin lips, and sharp eyebrows that made him look stern.

As for the woman, she had long waist length auburn hair, hazelnut coloured eyes that were filled with a little fear and curiosity, and a small button nose. She had full lips that were covered in cherry-red lipstick and slightly parted due to seeing Jake.

"Do you have any water or nutrition blocks left?" Asking this while looking at the woman who was just sitting there, Jake shifted his gaze to the man and seaglide he was working on, but he couldn't understand what he was doing to it.

"Y-yes, we do. We haven't touched the nutrition blocks or the bottled water since we got here. William has been trying to rig a power cell to the seaglide so we can possibly find land or perhaps other survivors, but it looks like you found us first. I'm Mary by the way."

"Oh, well you might want to hurry up with that, I can see a few alien creatures that are already being attracted here by the smell of my blood. I don't really think that you will want to find out just how terrifying these alien creatures can be."

After saying that some of the bloody water that was on his upper body dripped down into the life-pod and landed on the floor. Both Mary and William gulped after noticing the bloody water dripping off of the man's body.

"Grab the water, nutrition blocks, the medical supplies, and the flares and follow me, we need to head back to life-pod 5 and get out of this area, it's too dangerous here. Oh, also, my name is Jake." Finished speaking, Jake sat on top of the life-pod for a minute before he heard a small voice from behind him.

"J-Jake, we are ready to go." Mary was the one who spoke while looking up at the top hatch of the life-pod, watching the back of the man named Jake.

Retrieving his gaze from the ocean, Jake looked back into the life-pod and saw that the two survivors had grabbed everything he told them too and had put it into a makeshift bag made out of some kind of unknown material.

"Great! Let's get moving, I don't want to be here when the predators of this area finally arrive." Taking the makeshift bag, Jake then proceeded to help William and Mary up, who gasped when they saw that he was naked.

Mary blushed while William was shocked, but they quickly snapped out of the daze when they saw that there was no boat or any kind of object for seafaring. "How did you get here from life-pod 5?" William asked while thinking that it was impossible for him to have swam for all this time.

"I just swam here. No time for chit chat, we need to go. You two can use the seaglide while I carry the supplies, just make sure you keep up." With the last words, Jake looked in the direction of life-pod 5 and jumped into the alien ocean.

(AN. Sorry for the long awaited chapter, I have been very busy lately. I quit from my job since they were taking advantage of my age, and I'm taking driver training to get my license. I will try to make sure that there are more chapters so you guys don't have to read for so long.)

(P.S I changed her name from Meredith to Mary since I realized something while writing the next chapter. I can't tell you what it is since it would be spoilers. Peace.)