"Do you have anything?" Seth asked, trying to keep the anxiety from his voice. It had been quite a good trip between worlds, but that was already fading as they finished making their fly-over of the Republic outpost.

That familiar, sour feeling of foreboding was pooling coldly in his intestines.

"Negative. Still zero on the comms, and nothing but a lot of screwy signals on the scanners," Kato replied, her grim voice being piped to them through the wall-mounted speaker. "I have a good landing spot picked out, about twenty meters east of the outpost in a small clearing. What do you want me to do, Seth?"

He sighed softly and looked across the small bay in front of the airlock at Jensen, then at Maya and Nova. "What do you think's doing it? Any further ideas?"

"If I had to guess, I'd say it's being done on purpose. I can't be sure, but typically when comms are this dead it means a transmission blocker is somewhere in the area. It's probably screwing with the scanners, too, but I think that's mostly the sheer amount of life in the area. I can already see dozens of creatures moving all over the place."

"Fine. Set down in the clearing. Keep on the radio," Seth replied.

"Understood."

His stomach did a little flip as the ship descended.

"What do you think?" Jensen asked.

"We do it like we planned," Seth replied after a few seconds. "Nova with me, Jensen and Maya are the other team. We stay together until we get to the outpost, and then we split up and do a systematic search of the area: building by building, room by room. Sweep and clear. There's more than likely friendlies in the area, so be careful. And if you see any hostiles that are sentient, try to take them alive. Could be we're just dealing with a busted transmitter or some inclement weather, but I'd rather assume not. Weapons check."

They all checked over their weapons, except for Maya, who just had her saber. Once their weapons checked out, he had them do radio checks. They all had wraparound earpieces fitted into their ears and throat mikes. Everything checked out. The Dauntless finished settling. Seth and Nova slipped into the airlock, opting to go first. Neither spoke a word as the airlock cycled them through. Seth felt tense, but ready. His Mod Armor was kitted out for wet weather work, checked out three times, as were his weapons.

He had a blaster rifle, pistol, some fragmentation grenades, a decent amount of energy clips, an emergency medical kit, and a sword and combat knife, just in case. Nova was similarly decked out. Whatever was waiting out there for them...

They were probably ready for it.

The doors opened. Immediately, a heavy, thick aroma of vegetation filled the air, which was heavy and moist and hot. A dozen distinct animal calls came to Seth as he moved carefully out, standing at the top of the little stairway and surveying the area. There were trees around, a ton of trees. And bushes, and vines, and flowers, and other types of plants he couldn't readily identify. The place was incredibly vibrant, bursting with color.

Things moved in the foliage.

"Let's go," he murmured. "Secure the area."

"Yep," Nova replied tightly.

They moved down the stairs and away from the ship, into the clearing. The things that were moving among the foliage seemed content to keep their distance.

For now.

Maya and Jensen cycled through and joined them.

"Anything yet?" Jensen asked.

"Well, there's a lot of plants and a lot of animals, but so far they've left us alone," Seth replied. He pointed towards the base. "You can see a sort of path there. I think they probably used this as either an auxiliary or maybe emergency landing pad often enough that they cut a path." Through the trees, he could just barely make out a hint of a faded gray structure.

"We should get on with this," Nova muttered.

"Yeah. Let's go. Eyes open," Seth replied, and set off.

It was raining, but lightly. More misting at this point. Seth took point, hitting the treeline and moving onto the rough path that led to the outpost. He kept his blaster rifle in hand and charged up, ready to open fire at a second's notice. This place was threatening. There was a lot of life around here, and he'd bet his next paycheck that most of it survived by being fast, and mean, and nasty. This was a real survival of the fittest kind of place.

Still though, they managed to make it through the twenty meters of jungle without actually seeing anything directly threatening. Seth had to divide his attention between his surroundings and the outpost ahead. He wondered what could have gone wrong. It really could be something as simple as a downed transmitter or bad weather, but he wasn't hearing anything. No voices, no hum of power, no activity of any kind, and he didn't see any lights on. The picture became clearer as he drew closer, and then, at last, he broke through the other side and the picture drew sharply into focus. And, all at once, he knew that it was not just a broken transmitter.

"Holy crap," Jensen muttered behind him.

The outpost was largely a single structure, but there were a few others in its orbit. Several windows were broken out, there was blaster scarring across several of the surfaces, and he saw at least one dead body wearing Republic armor on the nearby landing pad. Seth scanned the area, then slipped over carefully to the landing pad and the corpse. Even as he approached it, he could tell that some of the local wildlife had been at work making good use of this fresh meat they'd been offered. The man was missing both his arms and there was a lot of meat missing out of his right thigh. Seth could see the bleached white of an exposed ribcage.

He'd been killed by...

"What the..." Seth whispered. There was a dart, a metal dart, sticking out of his eye. Carefully, he pulled it out. It made a disgusting squelching sound as it came out, and a strand of goo stretched out as he pulled the dart away from the man's ruined eye, like melted cheese when you pulled a slice of pizza away from the rest. He scraped it off on the man's wet uniform and then studied it.

"What is that?" Maya asked. They had joined him on the landing pad.

"It's Mandalorian. It's a dart. They use these sometimes, but it's rare. They can load them up with all sorts of crap: poison, explosives, sedatives. Whatever they want," he explained.

"It'd make sense that Mandalorians would hit this place," Nova growled.

"Yeah, I guess so," Seth replied, but something didn't feel right. He tossed the dart away and stood up, then pointed to the nearest building. "Jensen, Maya, I want you to check these exterior structures, look for hostiles, friendly survivors, and any clues as to what happened here. Nova and I will take the main building. Advise us when you've finished with your task and are approaching the primary structure."

"Understood," Maya replied.

She and Jensen headed to the nearest building, what looked to be a storage structure of basic permacrete, and he and Nova began to move towards the main building. It was a basic two-story structure, this time built of plates of dull gray metal. As they approached the main entrance, Seth suddenly felt the overwhelming conviction that he was being watched. He froze and looked around hastily, fervently hunting his environment for his unseen watcher.

"What?" Nova hissed.

"Being watched," he muttered.

She joined him in searching, but they could find nothing. Not much of a surprise, given the environment. Seth reigned in the urge to let out his frustration, instead pushing forward into the outpost. He could immediately tell that they had opted into a very basic design. It was so basic that it made him wonder if this was actually initially built as a Republic military outpost, or if it was originally something else and the Republic had just co-opted it. There was a simple square room meant as a basic ingress, the walls lined with doors. Four of them, placed more closely together, made up the left side. Three were off to the right, and the back wall had a stairwell leading up directly in the middle, and a door to either side.

"Check right, I'll check left, we meet in the middle," Seth murmured.

"Got it."

As he approached the first door, his radio crackled. "Doesn't look like there's anything in the building. It looks largely untouched. Over," Jensen reported.

"Understood. Kato, anything on your end? Over."

"Negative. Some creatures are sniffing around the ship, otherwise there's nothing. Still nothing on the radio or scanners. Over," she replied.

"Affirmative. Out."

The first room turned out to be a bedroom. It was small and jam-packed: a bunk-bed, dresser, desk, two footlockers, and a little bathroom at the back with a sink, toilet, and shower cubicle that he would be hard pressed to fit into, let alone have sex in. The place was untouched, and after clearing it, he moved onto the next one and found it in similar condition. The next two were also sleeping quarters. All revealed nothing.

The door on his side of the back wall had a descending stairwell built into it. It went down a little ways, then folded back on itself, heading to a basement area beneath the structure. Great. Seth shut the door, then considered the situation as he moved to join Nova. The base obviously had some power left, because doors still worked, but none of the lights did. The dull gray light coming in through the broken windows was enough for now, although that wouldn't be the case once they went down into the basement.

"Anything?" Seth asked.

"A mess hall, a little infirmary, a recreational room, and an office. It looks like there was a shootout in the mess hall, otherwise this place is abandoned. You?"

"Four dorms and a basement. Dorms are empty," he replied.

"What next?"

"Let's get the basement out of the way."

He flicked on his flashlight and moved back over to the basement door, then opened it up and aimed his rifle down the stairs. It looked as ominous and foreboding as ever. With a sigh, he began moving down. While he descended, Nova backing him up, Seth got an update from Jensen. They had cleared another storage structure, finding nothing of value. They had one more building to check out and then they could join them.

The basement turned out to be smaller than he thought, and as he played his light over the tomb-like interior, he saw that it had been converted into a combination office/living area. A stack of crates served as a makeshift wall between the two areas. This place was messy, but untouched. He'd guess that it was messy from the people who lived here. At first he thought it might be a sucky place to live, but then he figured, if you were into places like this, it would be pretty cool to just have your own little hideaway.

They spent a bit clearing it, and by the time they were finished, the other team was giving their report. Maya spoke this time.

"This building is the generator structure. It's been damaged, and it looks intentional," she said.

Seth sighed as they went back upstairs. They came to stand at the base of the stairs leading to the second story. "Great. How bad is it?"

"I wouldn't say unsalvageable, but it will be a project."

"All right. Finish your sweep and meet us in here. We've already cleared out the basement and ground floor, we'll be upstairs."

"Understood."

"Let's go," he said, looking at Nova. She nodded tightly, weapon in hand, and they made their way slowly up the stairs, cautious of anything that might be lurking just around the next corner. The base felt dead to him, though. Seth was used to listening to his instincts, and they were telling him that they were alone for now. He could be wrong, but that rarely happened. Of course, this was a unique situation. He'd never been to Dxun before, and anything could have happened here. Given his track record since meeting Nova and the crew so far, it was probably something insane, lethal, and unreasonable. That seemed to be par for the course.

The stairway came to a landing, then two narrower stairways broke away to the left and right. He and Nova split up, each taking a door. They entered the room above at the same time and began clearing it. The second floor was basically one entire room. The control room. There were over half a dozen individual workstations along the walls, and a primary one at the head of the room. Seth slowly looked over the area, searching for clues, something was bugging him...

There. The window ahead of him had a hole in it, surrounded by cracks. Its trajectory brought it towards the center of the room. He tried to find where the projectile that had created that hole had landed, but couldn't find it along the wall. Instead, in its path, he found a bloodstain on the floor, near the middle of the room. He pointed this out to Nova after they had made sure the place was actually secure.

"That's disturbing," Nova murmured.

"Yeah, whoever did this..." Seth replied softly, walking over to the window and looking out it, at the dark foliage beyond, and a large tree maybe ten meters away. "They would have had to have been standing in that tree."

"That's a good shot, especially if it was one of those darts," Nova murmured.

"Great." He sighed, then turned around as he heard Maya and Jensen joining them.

"What's happening?" Maya asked.

"Well, it looks like the base is clear," Seth replied. "Split up, see if we can get any of these terminals working. I'd really like to see what's on their databases."

They all moved to different workstations and set to work, but it quickly became clear that this wasn't happening unless they provided their own power. Seth heaved yet another sigh and hit his radio. "Kato, the base looks clear. Bring the ship over to the landing pad." He hesitated. "Actually, wait five minutes, then do it. I need to get something off of the pad. Yex, you listening?"

"I am listening, Seth," Yex replied.

"Good. Once she's landed, I want you to come out here. Jensen will meet you and take you to the reactor. I want you to bring it back online as quickly as possible. Also, bring out a fully charged power cell. Kato, I want you and Seri to stay with the ship until further notice."

* * *

Seth jogged back downstairs and out into the rain, where he collected the half-eaten corpse. He brought it into the infirmary, where he found two beds occupied. Once was a man who had a neat hole in his forehead that didn't have singe marks. Seth figured it was the poor bastard who happened to be standing up there in the second story who'd taken the dart to the head. He felt uneasy. What was to stop that from happening again?

Kato parked the Dauntless on the landing pad, and Jensen and Seth went to meet with Yex. Their friendly ithorian tech passed him the portable power cell, then went off with Jensen, clutching a compact but comprehensive toolkit, to the reactor. Seth rejoined the others back upstairs and hooked the cell up to the main terminal, then fired it up. Maya got to work sorting through the data, since she was the most adept at it.

Seth spent the time he was waiting thinking about what was going on here. He had some pieces of the puzzle, but not yet enough to get a clear image of what had happened here. And he needed to figure it out fast, because clearly he was dealing with someone, or something, extremely dangerous. He'd managed to make it this far without something serious happening to any one of them, (except himself, he supposed), and he'd like to get through the whole thing with that remaining true. He tried not to pace or peek over Maya's shoulder as she worked.

"I have something," Maya said.

"What is it?" Seth replied immediately, marching over to her. Nova did the same.

"I'll need more time to sort through this, as some of it's scrambled, but all I know for sure right now is that a few days ago, they made some kind of discovery. An old supply cache nearby that they went out to investigate," she replied.

"Not much of a lead," Seth muttered.

"Yeah, but it's all we've got right now-"

The radio crackled suddenly. "Sergeant Kast, this is Kato. Over."

"Kast here, go. Over," Seth replied immediately.

"I just got a partial transmission from what may have been a Republic soldier in the region. It was very garbled, but I managed to get a very rough idea of where it came from. Over."

Seth considered it. "Where?"

"About a mile and a half due north. Over."

Frowning, he studied the others, who looked back at him. He ran through the situation in his head, then made some decisions. "Kato, gear up and get out here. You're going with me. We're going to investigate the distress call. Jensen, Maya, you'll investigate the supply cache. Nova, I want you to stay here and help Yex get this base back online. Seri, you there?"

"I'm here, Seth."

"Stay with the ship, and also get the infirmary ready. We might bring back causalities."

"Understood."

Seth took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then popped his neck. "All right, let's do this."