Going Native: Smell of a Cage (ch.21) (Patreon)

For a moment, a deep cold numbness seeped into every limb as I stared at the spot that the fleet had been mere moments before. They were gone, only wreckage of a few ships remaining behind. We were left behind. On this planet crawling with scarabs. In the middle of Reach controlled space. With a massive fleet moving into position to take us out. 

They were moving to take us out. That thought snapped me back, my mind racing to come up with a solution only to come up empty. I swallowed thickly, my gaze slowly drifting down to the drop pods that were raced down to the surface of the planet miles away. There had to be thousands of them -- only instead of behind supported by a fleet in orbit, they were completely cut off. Just like we were. 

This was my fault. I’m the one that came up with the plan, I’m the one that backed Queen Teach, it was my fault that we were here in the first place. 

“What are your orders, my prince?” Matillo asked, his voice grim as we stared into the distance. I saw the Reach fleet slowly move into defensive positions in case that our fleet tried to come back. Only they never did. If they were going to engage the fleet, then they would have done it already. They would have had hours to plan in slipspace, and there was nothing. They were gone. They left us behind. 

I looked over at Matillo to find that all eyes were on me. All of them were looking at me to lead them out of a situation that I lead them into. Only I had nothing. Forget taking the planet, we couldn’t manage it with the forces that we had. We probably couldn’t manage it with the fleet and armies that we had. Our priority had to be getting out of here, but...how? Even if we did have a ship, then what? We fight through a fleet of ships?

And without that slipstream FTL, then it could take us years to reach the nearest planet, which would still be a Reach planet.

But...we...could think about that later. We had to think about the right now. What should we do right now?

“We…” They had a massive fleet. Where did that fleet come from? No, that didn’t matter either. With the scarabs that they had, they could just focus all of them on us and we would be swarmed in no time. We had to...limit their numbers or the ways that they could attack. “We go back to the base in the center of the planet. We seal off the entrances except for one, to limit how they can attack us. And throw it in a cell. It be valuable as a prisoner,” I said, tossing the Reach alien at Matillo.

It would buy time. Valuable time to figure out what we were going to do. 

Matillo nodded as if I said the most obvious thing in the world, but I couldn’t help but worry that they saw through the facade. Through the pain that wracked my body, through the rage that simmered in my chest, I couldn’t help but feel a bone-chilling dread grip my heart. I didn’t know how to describe it other than to compare it to leaning back in a chair a little too far, and it was that moment that you realized you lost your balance. 

"At once, my prince," Matillo said, starting to move before a large explosion shook the planet. In the direction of our soldiers that landed. I gazed hard at the mushroom cloud that drifted upwards, something clenching in my gut. Thousands of our soldiers were dying. Because of me. The last time I was in the Wrath State...I hadn't cared at all, but now, when my mind was clearer when I knew that every single death was my fault even if I wasn't the one killing them…  

I had to do something. Anything. I needed to stop with the self-pity, I needed to step up and not just get my team out, but those soldiers too. I...I needed to be like Bardock. What would he do in this situation? 

"Borgos and Shugesh -- you go down and cut off the exits and secure the base, the rest of us will regroup with the soldiers that landed and-" I started only to be cut off by Tora shaking his head, his expression grim. He realized just how bad of a position that we were in. 

"No," he interjected, his voice firm, "don't bother with them. Let them be a distraction while we find a way off the rock. They should buy us some time," he argued. The suggestion was sound. The soldiers that were sent down had to be strong enough to fight in ten times the standard gravity, so they would be tough. They would be able to buy some time, even if it was only a few minutes. Despite my thoughts, I couldn't help but think that using them as a distraction would what Bardock would do. It was a perfect blend of pragmatic and ruthless.

Even still, my hands curled into fists as I opened my mouth to say...something. to agree, or disagree, I don't even know. Only for a new voice to interrupt before I could say a word. 

"This is the 501st requesting immediate support! Planetary Elite Squad, do you read?" Shouted an alien in my ear through my scouter. My heart pounded against my ribs as I stared at Tora, who's gaze was narrowed into a glare. A silent challenge. “Planetary Elite Squad, do you read?!”

He was right. We should leave them behind We could try to steal a ship, sneak off the planet and take it from there. It’s what Bardock would do. 

And it was only at this moment that something occurred to me. 

I wasn’t Bardock. 

“...” I looked away from Tora as a hand went up to my scouter. “We read you, 501st. On my way,” I said, my gaze sweeping over my team to find that they didn’t look happy with the move. Only Matillo didn’t wear his displeasure for all to see, and I couldn’t be sure if it was simply because he was keeping his thoughts to himself. 

“Secure the base, I’ll go support the 501st,” I said as I turned around, speaking to the team. Something told me that if I ordered any of them to follow me then they would refuse the order. And I didn’t know what I could do if they did.

Instead of dwelling on it, my weakness and guilt, I shoved it away and let the pot of rage in my chest boil over. I raced towards the 501st, blasting through buildings and smoke, seeing hundreds of flashing lights that marked a hard-fought battle in progress. Scarabs flew in the skies, bombarding the 501st and they fought back with everything that they had. Thousands of them secured defensive positions clustered enough to prevent easy breakthrough from the other ground forces that the Reach threw at them, but spread out enough to prevent them from being wiped out in one attack. 

The soldiers traded fire from building to building, street to street, smoke billowing upwards as both sides struggled to push forward. My gaze landed on a vanguard scarab before I rushed towards up -- my blood that boiled in my veins screamed at me to lose myself in the fight, to let go of my sanity and just unleash everything that I had. Anything to distract myself from the fact that no one from my team had sought to follow me and every corpse on our side that piled up was my fault. 

It was different, I reflected as I tore the head off the vanguard. My excuses for soldiers dying in this war was always that they knew what they were getting into. That they made a choice to be here, to fight, to kill so they had no right to complain when they died. That excuse always felt hollow to me. Like it was something I could never think too hard about, else I would realize how pathetic the excuse was. 

Now...they were dead because of me. Because of the orders that I gave. We were on this planet instead of mopping up a weak one because I wanted to play at being a leader, and our soldiers were dying because of it. It was different because it was my fault. 

Ki blasts formed in my hands as I sucked in a deep breath, pushing the stray thoughts away as I laid waste to a division of scouts, blasting them out of the sky. I looked down at the ground, spotting a scarab that was punching through a defensive position right up until I raced down towards it. It barely had time to react before I closed the distance between us, punching a hole through its chest and destroying the scarab on its back in the process. 

My gaze landed on a saiyan, her eyes wide as I easily dispatched the scarab. A wounded alien in her hands, white armor stained a bright orange, while what was left of her squad laid dead in the position she was defending. They...died against a scout-class scarab. A few years ago, I was forced to flee from them but now...I had just killed a special-class scarab, and when it came right down to it, it wasn’t any different than killing a vanguard. 

“Thanks for the save,” I heard someone speak through my scouter, the same voice as before. “Above you,” it said, and I looked up to see an alien peeking its head out of a window, waving me down even as it fired down on the enemy soldiers below. I spared the female saiyan one last look before I flew upwards, idly throwing a few ki blasts as I rose, destroying some kind of war machine that they were trying to push forward. 

The alien looked like a saiyan, only the colors were inverted. Stark white hair, pitch-black skin, white pupils and iris that were surrounded by a black scalea. The same went for its armor, where mine was black, it was white and where mine was white, it was black. It really was odd just how many alien races looked like saiyans out there, I thought, and not for the first time. 

“Where is the rest of your team?” It asked as it continued to fire down at soldiers as I took potshots at scarabs. 

“They’re securing a fallback position, a base in the center of the planet,” I explained, hoping that I hadn’t just spoken a lie. If they had decided to leave, to abandon me and the soldiers...I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do. I don’t know what I could do, other than making sure I took out as many as I could before I finally died. 

The alien nodded, looking relieved for a moment before it gave me an expectant gaze. “Your orders, sir?” It asked and I wanted to curse at it for a moment. It looked at me like it expected me to have the answers, and I just didn’t. I was as lost as everyone here, but I couldn’t show it. I wonder if Bardock ever felt like this?

Probably not. 

“Push out to the east towards these coordinates,” I said, sending him the location of the entrance we had used to the base. “I’ll keep the worst of scarabs off of you, but I’ll be too preoccupied with them to help much with the ground forces,” I explained and a flicker of surprise crossed over the alien’s face. Idly, I noted that where its face creased, white lines appeared. 

“I’ll give the order at once, sir,” the alien said before I flew off to keep my end of the bargain. I flew up, over the buildings to get a better idea of the positioning of the enemy. Instead, I made myself a target because not a second later, one of those missiles streaked upwards from a vanguard scarab below. I shot it down, deleting a portion of a skyscraper while a couple of hundred feet of it raced down. 

Worried, I threw another ki blast that reduced that portion of the skyscraper to ash, not wanting it to crash on top of our soldiers. Looking down again, I realized what I had signed myself up for. Our soldiers were everywhere, avoiding friendly-fire was impossible if I used any of my attacks. I wonder if this is how the special-class scarab felt before I killed it. Hopefully, this wouldn’t end the same way. 

With that, I threw myself into the fight. My scouter flashed, marking al the target, highlighting friendlies in blue while enemies were in yellow. Nearly a dozen vanguard scarabs nearby with more on the way with closer to twenty scouts. I had to work fast. 

Two of them flew nearby, their plasma blasters carving lines throughout defensive lines, reducing everyone that they touched to ash. Coming in from above, whatever sensor that they had alerted them to my presence, but it was too late for one of them. I brought my heel down on one’s head, smashing it open with a spray of blood before using its corpse as a springboard to launch me at the second. 

If I couldn’t use attacks, then I had to fight smart. With that thought in mind, I blocked a swipe at my neck from the second vanguard unit before lashing out. Ki coated my hand, shaping into a blade that sliced through the offending arm. As it recoiled in shock, I thrust my other arm forward, skewering it through the chest before yanking my hand out, blasting the lime green blood off my hand. 

A squad of scarabs flew above the streets, ravaging the defensive positions the Frieza-force took to soften them up for what appeared to be dozens of Reach soldiers to make an offensive. I took out the scouts with the same amount of ease that I butchered their soldiers. The buildings and streets became a give of activity as the Frieza-force began to push forward through the Reach lines. Or, perhaps comparing it to an anthill would be more appropriate since soldiers seemed to pour from every crevice to advance. 

The fighting was a welcomed distraction as I fought off the scarabs and devastated the Reach forces, doing whatever I could to pave a path to the fallback point. Despite the urgings of my rage, I retained a tight grip on my sanity as we fought our way back. No matter how my body screamed at me to just lose control, to let loose, I didn't. I couldn't. Not now. 

Moving thousands of soldiers through heavily contested territory took a lot longer than I thought it would. It made sense -- most of the aliens couldn’t fly, they had to take time to advance, check buildings and make sure that they weren’t stepping into a trap, but it took so long. I had traveled the distance between the base and where they landed in a few seconds, and it felt like it took hours to get to a point where it could be said we were ‘close.’

“Vanguard, Vanguard, Vanguard,” a voice called out into my ear, bringing my attention to a vanguard scarab flying in with reinforcements as we continued to punch through the Reach defenses. I twisted in midair, tossing the two halves of a scout scarab to the side before cupping my hands to the side. My scouter picked up another five scouts being lead by the vanguard -- whoever did the callout had good eyes because they were far enough away that I didn’t have to worry about friendly fire. 

Ki built up in my hands, “Kamehameha!” I shouted, dragging the ki attack to the side to take the lot of them out. A black ball exploded in the distance, telling me that those had been suicide troops. I frowned as I turned my attention to a building filled with Reach soldiers that were offering up a staunch defense against our soldiers. 

Plasma miniguns tore through buildings and soldiers, forcing the Frieza-force onto the defense. I looked down at them, a ki ball forming in my hand before I lobbed them at the Reach forces. It hit whatever they stored the plasma in, a great big explosion went up that nearly took down a building, but when the dust cleared, I saw Frieza-force aliens pushing through. 

We advanced street to street, block to block, the futuristic city making any progress slow. The only saving grace was that the fleet that took up positions above us weren’t bombarding us from orbit, convinced they could take us out without damaging the planet any more than we have. I could only hope that was arrogance on their part rather than confidence. 

More time passed as we inched closer to the base, the scarabs slowly giving way to me as I carved a path for the soldiers. I didn’t know how many they came down with, or how many they had, but the number of allies on my scouter slowly chipped away with every minute we spent fighting. Steadily, bit by bit, they were winning even as we slaughtered a hundred for everyone we lost. They could simply afford to lose more. 

With each block that we crossed, as we neared the ruined space elevator, the more I realized how badly we needed to get into the base. There was never one major devastating attack from the Reach, but a squad lost there, or a single soldier dying to an unlucky shot quickly added up. We wouldn’t last the day at this rate. And, as we neared, the more my worries grew that we weren’t going to find a port in the storm. 

My team was made of saiyans. Most of them weren’t happy obeying me in the first place, but if they decided to leave, to make their own escape and leave us behind…

Then we were dead. 

For the briefest of moments, as we finally crossed the threshold and were approaching the fallen space elevator, I didn’t see any member of my team. A bitter smile tugged at my cheeks, unable to even feel surprised by their abandonment, only for a bright beam to light up the sky. An attack that could only come from an oozaru. 

“Get everyone up there, and then it’s a straight shot down,” I called out over general coms, getting a confirmation from that weird looking black and white alien that I spoke to before. After that, I tuned into my team’s frequency, “we’re back and coming in hot. What’s your status?” I said, trying to say whatever would make me sound professional. 

“The Reach had been attempting to retake the base, but the rest of the team has been blocking off entrances. We were forced to destroy the defensive measures to this entrance since we couldn’t take command of them,” Matillo answered me before his stark white oozaru form appeared. There weren’t words to describe the relief I felt when I heard his voice and saw him. They hadn’t left us. 

“Do we have a transportation method of getting them all down?” I asked as I fired a ki blast that punched through the chest of a scarab, killing it. I watched as the Frieza-force aliens and saiyans marched forward, climbing up what was left of the space elevator while those that could flew up. 

Matillo fired off a beam before he answered, “we do not, my prince.” Right. I turned to the Frieza-force forces, and it only took a moment to think of a plan. 

“How many of you are left?” I asked the weird black and white alien as ki gathered into my palms. Now that they were all heading towards the space elevator, I didn’t have to worry about friendly fire anymore. I fired a nameless attack at the city around us, destroying buildings and war machines alike. Anything that it took to buy us enough time to get them all out of here. 

“Just over five thousand, sir,” the alien answered a note of despair in his voice that didn’t go unnoticed. 

“How many did you start with?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking, despite knowing it was a horrible idea. I..had to know. 

“Fifteen thousand, sir,” the alien answered quietly. I clenched my jaw hard enough that teeth threatened to shatter, the rage that managed to keep such a tight grip on thrashed against the leash but I kept myself calm. As calm as I could manage in the Wrath State, at least. I swallowed thickly before continuing. 

“Get those that can fly and get them to start carrying those that can’t down. The air is pretty bad down there, so either make it fast or use an oxygen tank,” I ordered, turning my gaze to a missile that raced towards us, leaving a trail of white smoke where it went. Not liking the look of it, I threw a ki blast at it, causing it to blow up. It proved to be another one of those black hole bombs, only this one ate up entire blocks, expanding out just as big as my attack that wiped out nearly an entire district. 

That was really bad. 

“We’ll hold them off and give you the time you need,” I stated with more confidence than I felt. They only had to get lucky one, and whatever forces we had left would die. While I had to be perfect every single time. 

“Thank you, sir,” the alien said and I saw saiyans and other aliens start flying with at least two aliens in their arms or more if they had more arms. It would take some time, but they would get it done. 

“Thank me by hurrying up,” I responded, though not harshly. I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. I hadn't realized it until now, but I was getting a grip on the Wrath State. The last time, everything was a mess of rage pain and hate. Earlier, if someone so much as looked at me wrong, I had to restrain myself from reducing them to ash. Now, I almost felt...normal. The pain was still there, but I was used to pain. As bad as it was, the pain that nearly drove me mad last time was almost to the point that I could ignore it. 

"Matillo," I started as I threw myself back into the fight. It seemed that they were finding scarabs under every rock because my scouter picked up another three vanguards coming this way. "Have they managed to block off the entrances?" 

"The last that I heard was that there were three other entrances, and they had collapsed two of them," Matillo answered forming ki balls in his hands as an oozaru before he threw them in an almost random direction. As I flew up to intercept any vanguard's, I was struck by just how scenic the battlefield was becoming -- the broken pieces of the space elevator served as a backdrop, while the area around the base was slowly becoming flattened as craters appeared, buildings fell and fires raged. Thick black smoke poured upwards, only broken up when an explosion stirred the air. 

"It sounds like we got lucky with our first pick them," I commented, forming a Kamehameha in my hands before I launched it at the vanguard scarabs, managing to take one of them out but the others managed to react in time. I flew at them, cupping my hands to my side, building up ki, before I flung dozens of ki balls at them. They couldn’t escape the following hundreds of smaller explosions, even if they did manage to survive them. 

I finished them off with a nameless ki attack as they recovered from losing a couple of limbs, my eyes scanning for anything trying to slip by. As if they were drawn by magnets, my eyes landed on a missile weaving between buildings with pinpoint accuracy, nimbly sailing between wreckage and broken windows as it clung to the ground to avoid notice. I blew it up with a ki attack, but that wasn’t good. That really wasn’t good. Why couldn’t my enemies be idiots?

“Indeed, my prince,” Matillo agreed as I spotted more missiles trying to sneak by. I blew them up, quickly growing irritated with the game of cat and mouse as more scarabs flew towards us, intent on taking us all out in one fell swoop. “My prince, perhaps you should head down as well? You’ve been on the surface the longest out of all of us and this fight will not end today.” 

Right. The twenty-four-hour mark before bad things started to happen to my DNA. 

“I’m fine,” I dismissed the issue as I spotted more scarabs flying over, some going to Matillo while others were trying to go unnoticed by me. I fell upon all of them, tearing through scrabs, no matter if they were blue or black. They weren’t even trying to fight us at this point, it was just a matter of getting close enough to wipe us all out. 

“Prince Tarble-” Matillo started to argue, but I knew his arguments. 

“You can’t fight them all by yourself, you’ll get overwhelmed in no-” I started, only for Matillo to cut me off much like I did him. 

“Prince Tarble,” Matillo repeated, his tone hard and sharp enough that I fell silent. “I understand,” he continued, his tone softening ever so slightly in a way that told me he really did understand. Everything. “But this fight will not end today, and if we have any chance of surviving, then we will need you. And you cannot win this day alone either, no matter how much you might wish it so.” He said, hammering ever reason I had for wanting to stay up here.

“I…” I trailed off, finding every single argument that I was prepared to make vanish like smoke in the wind. 

“If you want to help an old man, then help the soldiers get down into the base,” Matillo continued, his tone telling me he knew he won the argument. My hands curled into fists, wanting to keep arguing, but I couldn’t. At the moment, I was the only one that could fight special-class scarabs and not be overwhelmed by a handful of scarabs. If I died then defeat was certain. Then everyone would die, and they would have died for nothing because the damage we inflicted would barely be a hiccup in their overall production. 

I couldn’t let that happen. The 501st lost two-thirds of their numbers already, and I couldn’t let my team die. What I wanted didn’t matter -- I had to do what was best for the mission. 

The mission, the team, then pride. It’s been years since I’ve heard those words, but I don’t think I understood them until now.  

“Alright,” I conceded, taking the time to wreck the skyline before I flew back towards the elevator. “Matillo?” I said after a moment, watching the ancient saiyan do battle against a few scarabs and finding surprising success. “Don’t die.”

Matillo chuckled before he answered, “as you command, my prince.”

With that, I turned my attention to the forces still trying to get down to the center of the planet. There were still thousands of them, far too many.  It was going to take ages flying them down two at a time. I spotted the alien with the black and white face, who shouted orders and tried to organize the chaos. 

“How many more do you have?” I asked, wondering just how many of them I could carry at a time. If only my arms weren’t so short. 

“We’ve gotten nearly half down, sir,” the alien responded, making me frown. “We lost a lot of our fliers during the landing,” he offered an excuse and I fought off a wince. Perhaps I should have taken greater care to make sure every alien and saiyan that could fly survived the fight here? I should have- no, this wasn’t the time to think about what I should have done, but it was the time to think of what I will do. 

I looked down at the tunnel that faded into absolute blackness. Taking them one at a time was going to take too long. The space elevator was to-

An idea struck me. My hands cupped together in front of me, forming a ball of ki. This was a space elevator -- we destroyed the original one, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t make another. Metal would be too heavy. Under ten times standard gravity, each pound would weigh ten and a piece of metal that could support the troops would need to be thick. Meaning, it would weigh tons and that was before the aliens got on. 

I hadn’t tested my strength fully in this form yet, and I might be able to pull it off, but I couldn’t risk it. If I was wrong, then I dropped thousands of soldiers into the center of the planet. 

Willing the ki into a disk, much like a Destructo Disk, I made it thicker and denser. Ki, once it became dense enough, had its own kind of weight, but it was unaffected by gravity. Once I was satisfied with the shape and density, I expanded the disk. I heard aliens gasp as the purplish blue disk formed. There were other flyers so I couldn’t take all of the room, but I took up most of it by the time I was done. 

“Get on,” I said, lowering the makeshift elevator so they could get on. . 

“Flyers, drop people off in the center and expand out,” the weird alien from before ordered and I heard some confirmations before I felt something drop onto the elevator. My arms nearly buckled underneath the added weight. The average alien weighed about a hundred pounds...so, underneath this gravity, they weighed about a thousand. 

I grit my teeth, forcing myself to stay afloat as more and more and more weight was dropped onto the elevator. I was flying thousands of miles above the nearest piece of ground, but it felt like I was about to be crushed as more soldiers got onto the elevator. Sweat dripped off my forehead, falling down below, but I didn’t follow suit. Not until we got everyone down. 

“Sir, we’re topped up,” the alien said and I took that as my cue to start my descent. I let myself drop and instantly, I noticed the problem. It was so much easier to keep myself still, but controlling my decent...it was a hundred times harder. Even still, I grit my teeth and made a controlled descent, idly noting that other flying aliens continued to ferry aliens down as well. That was good. It gave me something to gauge my decent by. 

“Sir,” the alien continued, even though we should be too far down to make a connection. “We still have most of our soldiers up here, and that white oozaru looks like he needs some help. Permission to assist, sir?” It asked, its tone grim. 

“Granted,” I bit out, letting myself fall that much faster. I couldn’t let Matillo die. I wouldn’t let him die. I...I still had so many questions. Like how he managed to use ki as an oozaru. “Tora?” I hissed, trying to get Matillo some reinforcements. “Shugesh? Fasha? Anyone?” I forced out, the elevator lurching downward as my concentration lapsed. 

“*ksh* -ble? Entrance’s ha- *ksh* sealed,” Tora’s voice answered me and I couldn’t help but feel relieved. And it sounded like they had closed the other entrances, leaving this one as the only entrance or exit. Which was both a good thing and a bad thing, but it was more good for now. 

“Matillo needs help up top,” I told him. “The evacuation is almost done, so get whoever is available to take the pressure off him,” I ordered, sweat falling off me in rivers as my muscles burned with exertion. And, for a couple of seconds, there was absolute silence from Tora. 

I knew better than to think that it was a case of our scouters suffering interference. He wasn’t answering because he was thinking about obeying the order or trying to think up of some excuse why he couldn’t. Anger flared in my chest, distracting me from the exertion, if only for a moment before I regained control over myself. 

“The team is heading up,” Tora answered eventually and I had to swallow a sharp retort that rested heavily on my tongue. Now wasn’t the time to confront him about it. 

I continued my way down, and after about a minute, I picked up on familiar power levels heading my way. They wore some kind of lighting device that made them easier to see in the intense darkness, but I saw the team flying up. 

“Tarble?!” Fasha shouted as I continued to descend, staring at the makeshift elevator with wide eyes. 

“Go-” I started to bite out but Tora cut me off. 

“Shugesh, you help him carry this lot down,” Tora order over me before the other continued upwards. I didn’t have it in me to argue with him because Shugesh cupped his hands together before forming a Power Ball. It seemed that he realized that he wasn’t going to be able to help much in his base form. As he transformed, he flew over to the wall, clinging to it as he reached out to the makeshift elevator. 

When he first touched it, I thought he was going to knock it over, but he managed to find a way to balance descending with me without knocking the thing over. Instantly, it felt hundreds of tons were lifted off my shoulders. “Tarble,” Shugesh said as we descended. “You really are a crazy guy, you know that?” He asked, his booming voice echoing in the tunnel. 

I couldn’t respond, but I couldn’t help but wonder what he meant by that. It didn’t sound like an insult, though. 

With Shugesh’s help, it didn't take much longer to reach the bottom. I slipped out from underneath it as aliens began to make their way off of it. I hadn't noticed it before, but every single one of them looked like they had been through hell. And, to my greater surprise, I recognized one of the aliens. A lizard like aliens with a pair of smaller hands coming out of its larger arms. The technician that made my scouter. Like many as they entered the base, it glanced my way and when our eyes met, it seemed to take that as a signal to approach me. 

My scouter. 

My scouter that had a crap load of information on it. 

"How good are you with Reach tech?" I asked, an idea taking form in the back of my mind. It was a long shot, more of a desperate hope, but there could be an answer on my scouter. It could hold a ticket to get us out of here -- weather it be a superweapon, a ship, a shut down code for all the scarabs or a hole in their defenses. Anything was better than the nothing that we had. 

The technician blinked as I took off my scouter, Shugesh standing behind me in his base form. "I'm fairly decent with it -- my race was a client species with the Reach for a couple of decades before Lord Frieza...liberated us?" It questioned, sounding unsure of the word liberate. Which was fair, I guess. It looked down at the scouter I pressed into one of its hands, a glimmer of surprise in it's beady black eyes. 

"There's a bunch of info on there do you think you can use any of it to get us out of here?" I asked as the alien pulled out a thingamajig that hooked up to my scouter, a bunch of data appeared on the screen before the alien made a strangled noise as it began to fly through the text on a crystal tablet. 

"You- this is the find of a lifetime! Unencrypted too! Very lucky!" It commented, sounding like a child in an all you can eat buffet. I shifted impatiently, and thankfully the alien wasn't so lost in the treasure trove of data that it didn't notice. It cleared it's throat, organizing it's search before I heard a sharp intake of breath. 

"Is that a good sign?" I asked, my gaze lingering on the data, wondering what it displayed. I saw some kind of box that looked really high tech but that was the extent of my understanding. 

The alien didn't answer for a moment, it's gaze narrowing in thought. "Possibly. The Reach were developing a new FTL drive called the wink drive. It-" it started but I held up a hand, making it fall silent. 

"I'm not going to understand how it works," I told it bluntly. "But can it get us out of here?" 

For the first time this day, I had some good luck because the alien nodded hesitantly. "I believe so. The drive is more of a teleporter, so the FTL jammers won't be an issue, but we will need to get out of orbit for it to work." 

I nearly sagged with relief at that -- we had a way out-

"But it hasn't been tested yet. The data looks sound to me, but it's still labeled a prototype," it continued, taking the edge off my relief with bad news. "And...and it's going to take time. From what I'm seeing, they have nanoforges here, so that'll help a lot but it'll still take a few weeks to make a ship that can support all of us."

The plan could still work. This just meant that the plan had to change. 

"And if you didn't have to start from scratch?" I asked, very aware of the lingering gazes on me. The expectations for me to her everyone out of this. 

The alien paused for a moment in thought before it let out a small sigh. "Three days, at the very least. Possibly four to install it and do system checks." 

Three days. We would have to hold out for three days. Could we do it? 

We would have to. 

"Make it three days," I ordered, squaring my shoulders. It looked surprised buy quickly nodded before I turned to Shugesh, who was eyeing me with a look I didn't know how to describe. Then his chubby face broke out into a fierce grin. 

"What's the plan, Boss?" He asked as I looked up at the spec of light in the distance. I had the thought earlier, but if there was any hope of victory, then I couldn't achieve it on my own. Matillo was right about that. 

"I'm going to teach you all the Wrath State...and every saiyan here how to control their oozaru form."