“There’s more of them today, huh?” says a marine looking through his binocurs, watching the far ridge.

  “Yep,” his partner groans as they continue to keep watch high up in their tower. It took some time, but the perimeter wall is now finished: high polycrete walls topped with barbed wire. Obstacles such as tank traps are scattered in front, along with a deep ditch to deter any assault. Automated turrets are constructed atop the wall every few hundred meters as their first line of defense.

  Checkpoints are at each entryway, with watch towers, pillboxes, armored vehicles and a military barracks. Nearby are usually some locals—warriors armed with bolt-action rifles. They didn’t know what they were doing at first, camping next to the checkpoints with hastily built tents, or sometimes a repurposed shipping crate if they were lucky. But their usefulness became apparent when more outsiders arrived; these warriors would then intercept them outside and anyone they didn't recognize was driven away.

  Those trying to get in are slowly amassing outside the camp. Even a number of Europeans have tried to sweet-talk their way in, offering goods to trade. Countless other gates are having the same issue, and they can tell one of these days these people will converge at one checkpoint and try to break through. “We might need to call in a flight of Hornets for backup if they decide to py,” one marine says, watching them from the watchtowers.

  “I’m pretty sure a single Scorpion tank would be enough to deter them.”

  “Meh, I just don’t want to hunt them down if they run for the jungle.”

  _____________________________________________________________

  “Can you do it or not?” With the mothership avaible to them, repairing the Prometheus would be an easy task. But to get the ship airborne again, R7 thrust couplings had to be installed. The blueprints were readily avaible in the foundry’s database, and producing them wouldn’t be a problem at all. However, with the ship’s size, more than two dozen of them had to be fitted along the ship’s hard points—an additional weight that they did not have enough nding gears for.

  “Of course I bloody can! Who do you think you’re talking to?! Do you want me to mount them? Fine! I'll mount the bsted things myself! But the ship would crash deeper into the earth, and the overstressed nding gears would do jack to stop it! We’ll be scraping across the continent long before those thrusters give any lift!” ships of this css are simply too rge, too heavy and aren’t meant to take off again once it nded to begin with. They are called Starships for a reason, built in outer space or low gravity moons

  To fully repair the damaged nding gear, a shipyard had to be built around the vessel, with heavy docking cmps to stabilize the ship. But if they could build that, why would they need to bring Prometheus to space in the first pce? Secondly, to construct such an industrial complex, materials from the asteroid fields near Mars were needed, trapping them in a vicious cycle.

  Captain Irons had to be patient with the Master Sergeant; he was, after all, working the hardest among everyone on this base. Apart from the ongoing ship repairs, war factories had to be repurposed to create structures out of polycrete. Initially, Heron dropships would pce down firebases, pillboxes, and bunkers all over the camp, but now, facilities and living quarters for civilians and locals alike had to be built, especially since more of them seemed to be arriving ever so often.

  This, of course, meant his engineering teams were everywhere, working around the clock to keep everything running. Not to mention the ship they found and had been working on for the past few days. “Oh, and those ODSTs!” Donovan shook his fists in anger. The Helljumpers were tasked with taking care of the locals, which ended up with them... ‘Strategically Transferring Equipment to Alternate Locations’ in order to provide.

  Rubbing his temple, Irons could feel himself getting older by the second. This was why he retired from service. But another war came in and he was soon reactivated when casualties became untenable. “Chief, didn’t you request this meeting because you have something to say to me?”

  “Oh right, yes.” Bill ran his fingers through his beard, trying to recall what it was. By the time he entered the room, all his gripes and compints poured out, making him forget the reason he was there to begin with. “Ah! Right! I remember. Food shortages. At the rate we are consuming our supplies, we’ll be out of food in a month.”

  Samuel was taken aback. “What do you mean? Don’t we have Aeroponics for that? How many people are we feeding?” Had the local popution ballooned out of his control? Their attention had been focused on trying to understand where they were and that derelict, though a good distraction for the rest of the crew, added to the logistical nightmare they had to juggle.

  “It’s the meat that’s the problem. Aeroponics can do fruits, veggies, grains, and the like easily, but without resupply anytime soon, we’ll end up feeding everyone pnt-based nutri-bars. Not good for morale, those are.” Carriers usually keep their complement of marines in cryostasis, but with the power grid still being worked on, the cryobays are currently out of order. With everybody awake, everybody's got to eat.

  Irons scratched his head, unsure how to resolve this. But they still had time—a month to find a way. As he pondered, the intercom by his door beeped to life. “Captain, this is Corporal Red of the 129th.”

  Samuel pulled out a pocket watch and checked the time. “Right, I do have another meeting. We’ll discuss this ter, Master Sergeant.”

  “Uh huh,” Donovan grumbled, nodding before heading towards the door. As it opened, he gred at the ODST before making his exit. Red stood there, holding his breath, knowing the kind of trouble they had been causing the past few days that the engineers had to fix. He soon approached the table and made a firm salute.

  Irons sat behind his desk and reciprocated the salute before pointing at an empty seat with his open palm. “At ease, Corporal, and make it brief.”

  “Sir, thank you, sir, but I prefer to stand.” Samuel simply shrugged, gesturing for him to start as he went through some paperwork. “Sir, the leader of the locals is offering terms of an alliance.”

  The Captain frowned, unsure if he had heard correctly. Looking up at him, he asked, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Sir, in their culture, if a weapon is given to them, it means that the other faction is requesting an alliance.” Red didn’t know this at the time, nor had he thought much of it. But he did recall giving Kasongo a knife. Irons, on the other hand, knew that the ODSTs were allowing the locals to keep and train with the captured firearms, even providing new ammunition made with the ship’s foundry—one of Donovan’s compints earlier.

  “Surely this must have been a misunderstanding.”

  “Yes, sir. Multiple times we tried to make that argument, but the tribe chief was insistent on formalizing the pact. He has offered some terms.”

  Irons rubbed his temples, knowing what a headache this would be. They do have Professor Reed, an expert in culture, whom they had purposely kept in the dark, but if this continued, they might not have a choice without risking offense. “What do they want?”

  Red pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket, trying to make sense of the list before him. “Well, they want training for their warriors. Chief Kasongo wants to recim the nd for his people and needs more weapons and ammunition for that. Secondly, to ensure the safety of the noncombatants, he is requesting food, shelter, medicine, and protection for them.”

  “We can’t sell them modern weaponry, Corporal.” But they didn’t really have any ‘money’ to make any sort of trades either. Samuel doubted credits would be of any use here. The ship was carrying nearly a hundred thousand metric tons of gold and silver they used for electronics. But as currency, such was rendered useless due to the advent of asteroid mining. However, in this era, precious metals were acceptable.

  “Sir, the foundry was able to replicate the ammunition for their weapons by scanning the dimensions and composition of a tempte. I believe we can do that with firearms too.”

  “Not without Chief Donovan’s consent you don’t.” Their demands were pretty easy to fulfill, but if that was the case, why would they ask for ‘payment’? It was a matter of pride. To be treated as equals at the negotiating table. Irons would have preferred if they could resolve this issue amicably, but with the ensvement of an entire people, that was simply impossible.

  “And what do we get in this exchange?” Samuel had some reservations. So far their requests had been pretty tame, but in the long run, these people would be exposed to things beyond what they could grasp. That might be why he was trying to come up with an excuse to refuse the offer.

  “They offer to act as scouts, guides, even to patrol the perimeter. Non-combatants would work on minor tasks around the base. And finally, they wish to trade mostly textiles and livestock.”

  Irons couldn’t care less about the textiles; the ship's Aeroponics could whip up any pnt-based silk in no time and create clothing of any design. The livestock, however, did catch his attention. Surely Bill hadn’t told anyone about the food shortage; it would have caused great panic among the crew if he had. “Why livestock?” They could probably task the locals with taking care of the livestock, as he doubted any of the civilians they had knew how to handle farm animals, let alone seen one.

  “Chief Kasongo said he had men scout the camp several times and found no animal farms within it. Having to feed this many people, he deduced we are either receiving supplies from the outside or consuming what we have in stock, neither of which is sustainable with this many mouths to feed.”

  Able to surmise that, Captain Irons thought he might have been underestimating him. But he didn’t know how many animals they could bring. If there weren’t enough of them and with only a month to spare, it would be difficult to create more of the animals even with artificial means. But it was a start. Perhaps they could ration until the animals could provide offspring. “I’ll have to discuss this with the senior staff. Thank you, Corporal, for bringing this to my attention.”

  “Sir.” Red nodded but remained standing before him.

  Samuel frowned a bit, expecting the man to return to his post. “Is there something else, Corporal?”

  Red hesitated at first but eventually spoke. “A number of the patients who had undergone the neural chip augmentation have started to act differently due to their increased intelligence and learning speed. The others are thinking of cutting off their own hands just to get the same treatment.”

  Iron groaned audibly, knowing what a can of worms he had just opened. “Don’t tell me this is part of their request too.” He pondered what he could say to stop them from wanting this. Telling them that only the wounded may have it would probably cause the warriors to charge the enemy with suicidal fervor in hopes of getting augmented.

  “A caveat of one of their terms, yes. I just… didn’t read it earlier. Sir.” Red understood what a disaster this was.

  Rubbing his temple, Irons sighed. It might be best to get the specialist ready to attend next time. Shelving this issue for a ter date seemed prudent, as wiping out a culture from the very minds of their people was just genocide with extra steps. “Is there anything else?”

  “They want to have the prisoners released to them, sir.”

  “No.” He said firmly.

  _____________________________________________________________

  “Look, just be thankful they just took it, alright? They didn’t even question why we had one in the first pce,” says Mike as he hooks up the fuel lines, watching the pressure gauge.

  “Hey man, I had to fight tooth and nail for that podium. At the very least, they should reimburse me,” Tom says, double-checking the seals of the ship, still annoyed that a piece of their vessel was ‘commandeered.’

  “We never had any use for it anyway! This ship can’t hold an AI!” compins Jack, trying to reconnect some systems back online. He has to reroute various cables since many of them were once connected to the now-missing AI podium. Groaning, he can still feel the pain of his wound; there are probably still some micro-crystals in him, which he feels whenever he stretches his arm.

  “I was working on it, alright?! That’s what the podium was for. I could’ve gotten enough parts to install the infrastructure for an AI,” Tom counters angrily, waving a wrench as he does so.

  “This is my ship, you know that, right? Not your pyground to test out your madness on. Besides, what AI? Do you really think we can afford one?” Dave is at least thankful that ONI did not pry further, as finding parts for this aging ship sometimes had to come from not-so-legal means.

  “You’re only saying that because ONI got involved. You’ve never compined before about all the other modifications. Just imagine, even a dumb AI would do wonders,” Tom muses, wondering if they could find one in the Rubble; the bck market there is quite extensive.

  “You’ll get us into more trouble if you keep this up,” Mike says, shaking his head.

  “Excuse me.” The crew’s bickering screeches to a halt when a woman’s voice is heard. The ship’s bridge is not that big, with cables and machines, all non-standard, running all over the walls, floor, and ceiling. They just got back to base after a resupply run to the mothership and weren’t really expecting any visitors.

  Corporal Alice remains outside while Private Ryan tries to find his footing, as the floor has more cables and pipes than actual floor space. They are the MPs tasked with guarding Professor Olivia. The two were not to interfere with her, giving her as much freedom as possible without letting her escape or go into restricted areas.

  “Private, there isn’t much space to move here. Can you please wait outside?” Olivia smiles at the MP, who then nods and agrees, taking the nearest exit he can find without stumbling out. Reed soon turns her attention back to the crew. “Hello. I’m sorry, but I would like to know, is this ship networked to Prometheus?”

  “No?” says Mike. The Captain then elbows his side, making him jolt. “I mean, no, ma’am. It is not.” A mysterious woman accompanied by guards looking for a non-networked computer leads them all to only one possible conclusion.

  “Perfect, may I borrow one of your consoles, please?” Though hesitant at first, Jack soon clears out his desk for the professor to use, getting rid of empty MRE wrappers and coffee cups. “Thank you,” she says, smiling before she gets down to business.

  On the other side of the bridge, “Hey, do you think you can see what she is doing?” asks Mike as he turns to Tom.

  “Are you mad?! That is ONI business! I don’t want my head on a spike anytime soon!” says Dave.

  “Shh! Keep your voice down! Aren’t you even a little bit curious?” replies Mike mischievously.

  Peer pressured, Tom begins rerouting some network cables while Jack does his magic with the ship’s local server. With both of them working, they manage to create a loop within the system, masking their intrusion. Once they are connected, however, the other computer is already running on overdrive with the sheer amount of data flowing through it, giving them only a mere glimpse of what is happening as the system stutters.

  They can’t believe how much information is being transferred right now, with files marked as confidential fshing back and forth between two data drives. Trying to keep a copy of it themselves would be difficult, as there is simply no hardware on the ship that could contain all of it.

  The Captain is a bit relieved that the woman is not going through their logs, watching her every move. She is instead looking through Jack’s music files. Selecting one, a song soon pys in the background with her quietly humming the tune. The crew turns, staring at her as she nonchantly grips them in fear.

  Minutes pass, and finally, the file is copied. Standing away from the console, she ejects the two data crystals and hides them on her person separately. She soon turns to the crew, “Thank you for letting me use your computer. I saw an extensive collection of music there, so I left a little gift. I hope you enjoy them.” Smiling once more before making her exit.

  The crew doesn’t move at first, but the moment they are sure the coast is clear, “Check it! Check the computer! Check everything!” They run every anti-intrusion software they have, anti-virus scans—everything from top to bottom is tested and cleared. But it’s possible it’s an ONI program, way beyond what their feeble software could find.

  When nothing comes out, all are simply distraught. They might need to wipe the entire system clean. Jack soon sits back down at his console, worried that he might lose his collection. He begins looking around for anything out of the ordinary. The only new thing is a folder beled ‘Music.’ “It's several hundred petabytes rge. It's taking more than half of my drive space,” Jack reports. Further inspections reveal it has hundreds of thousands of individual files stored within. “It’s… just a bunch of media files, music.”

  “How many songs?”

  A pause as he scrolls through the folder.

  “All of it.”