Jason Halstead - The Colony

“ All this rain, is the stream really necessary?” Sasha kept looking up and down the stream. Klous would have chuckled had he not shared the experience of being chased by a cross between a dinosaur and a chicken.

Klous looked at his people. Well, he couldn’t really call them his people anymore he supposed. Still, they looked to him because that was all they knew. Sure, the Black Hole hadn’t been a place for a close knit family and crew, but they’d shared it at least and knew how to get along with each other. Or how to avoid each other, in the case of Cooper.

“ Something in the air, the food, and the water helps speed up recovery on this rock,” Tarn said. “Eric was a goner when we crashed, had a piece of metal sticking through his belly. Kira took care of him and instead of him dying after a couple of days like he should have, he got better.”

“ Love of a good woman,” Eric said, glaring at the former pirate captain.

“ A woman that conspired with me to have you captured and killed,” Klous reminded him.

Rather than seeing Eric bristle with anger, as he’d expected, the man shrugged. “She wasn’t herself then.”

Sasha snorted quietly beside him. Klous saw Kira glance over at her and then away quickly. He reached over and took Sasha’s hand to squeeze it and tell her to be quiet. She jerked a little at the contact, then gave him a shy smile. Klous realized she thought he meant something by it. He almost laughed until he realized he’d never done something like that before for a member of his crew. Maybe he did mean something?

He pulled his hand back, a little confused by his own sudden emotions. “So who was she?”

“ Emily Bradford, a bounty hunter and an assassin,” Kira said. She turned to face him. “Stick around long enough without getting killed and I’ll tell you about it. Until then, just remember what happened to you and what happened to your man and don’t fuck with us.”

He felt as much as saw Sasha stiffen beside him. Klous looked at Kira and saw that the woman had no bluff about her. He heard Tarn chuckle off to the side and remembered how the man had seemed nothing but impressed with her time and again, and he had been a Marine FIST, the best the military had to offer when it came to special operative.

Klous nodded finally, reaching a decision. “Cooper was my younger brother. He had a problem, he liked to hurt things. Anything really, but people the most. Like I said, he had it coming.”

The expressions from Lizzie and Sasha were the most notable to him. Open-mouthed shock at his admission. Klous shrugged as he met their gazes. “None of us are innocent, but Cooper…well, he was about as bad as they come.”

“ Your brother?” Sasha whispered.

He nodded. “Didn’t need nobody knowing that though. Now I guess it doesn’t matter.”

Her hand found his this time. He found it comforting, but only after he forced his confusion aside. He noticed Lizzie look over to Ling and found that the large man was looking back at her. Klous smirked and returned his attention to Kira. “Just try not to kill anybody else without giving them a fair shake first? Yes we were pirates and yes, we’ve done bad things…but other than Cooper none of us done it just because it was fun. Money? Yes. Revenge, maybe. Fun? No.”

Kira nodded.

Jeff broke the somber conversation by standing up with some assistance from Sharp. He moved his neck and arm about, then grimaced. “It’s better, I think. Doesn’t hurt as much to breathe and I don’t feel as weak anymore.”

Sharp clapped him, lightly, on the shoulder and turned to the others. “Let’s head back. Rain’s keeping the animals in hiding but our lights are sure to draw something out sooner or later.”

Klous looked at the lights and frowned. If they brought in more predators like the chickasaurus why where they using them? “Sharp, why not put them out?”

“ Only thing worse than letting the jungle know where we are is stumbling around in the dark and not knowing what might be coming for us.”

Klous nodded. The reasoning was sound and, after what he’d seen, he’s rather take his chances than trust to blind luck.

They walked back through the jungle, moving quicker now that Jeff was improving almost by the minute. The stream was another small one that ran through the jungle and was located only a few minutes from Treetown. They made it back without incident, aside from Lizzie slipping on the muddy ground. She twisted her ankle in the process but Ling was there to help her up and carry her back. Sasha and Klous shared a knowing look as they walked.

“ Hey Sharp,” Klous asked at the base of the ropes that led up to Treetown. “We put a salvage beacon out in orbit around this planet. We called it Vitalis, but if you’d like we can change it when somebody comes and finds us.”

Sharp looked at him for a long moment, then offered what looked like a genuine smile. “Vitalis is just fine. Come on up, we’ve got some expansion to do in the next few days if you guys are going to be comfortable.”

“ A beacon?” Kira asked.

“ Yeah, probably be a few years at best though. We did what we could to jam your signal then when we got here we figured on the potential of the place. Figured it was undiscovered, but if we marked it we’d claim it under salvage law. No telling what we might get out of it.”

“ You can’t salvage a planet!” Eric blurted out. “What, you plan on strip mining the place?”

“ The Terran Coalition has been searching for a habitable world for over two hundred years, since before they even reached Earth’s moon!” Aran interrupted. “Even with ten of us we could still all be wealthy beyond our wildest dreams!”

Klous nodded. “He’s right, we figured if you were still here we’d eliminate you and stake our claim on it.”

“ So why tell us now?” Klous noted the barrel of Tarn’s plasma rifle just happened to be pointed in his direction as the big man asked his question.

“ Like Aran said, there’s enough to go around, besides that, you guys saved our ass out there.”

Sharp chuckled. “Not being stupid again, are you?”

“ What? I don’t think so.”

“ You’re a pirate!” Kira spat at him. “You never cared for what other people had or did unless you could take it from them or use it to your advantage.”

Klous felt something snap in his brain. It wasn’t an epiphany but rather confusion threatening to make his knees buckle. “How does that make me different from you?”

Kira stared back at him, her expression stony for so long he thought the storm might pass before she so much as blinked. “Come on, let’s get under cover,” Sharp suggested.

“ Wait, he’s right. I was like that. It’s complicated, but I’m not that person anymore. I can still do what she did, like make you cry like a baby, but Emily Bradford is gone.” Kira turned to look at her crew and then at Klous and his. “This place has a way of changing people, whether they want to or not. Even Tarn’s less of an asshole than he used to be.”

“ Hey!” Tarn protested.

“ She’s right,” Sharp silenced him. “Here I was figuring you was the one that sold us out, but the way you’ve been — the way we’ve all been down here had me doubting. Now we know it was Emily, but it looks like she’s already been taken care of.”

Kira’s eyes found Eric’s for a long moment until she bit her lip and smiled. He returned it, allowing her face to return to the blank mask of business Klous had become accustomed to on her. “Either we kill them now, if they’re going to be trouble, or we stick it out and see. Besides that, we’re light years outside of Coalition space, we may never see another person again. If we want to survive as a species here we need as large a gene pool as we can get.”