I walked around the Danger Sled surveying the damage done to it during the rough landing. Private Hudson stood several feet away, cradling his pulse rifle in his arm and keeping a look out for anything near. Queen Galacta sat on the steps leading off my ship, staring blankly towards the wilderness.

“Oh man,” Hudson said as he looked up and down the side of my ship. “Game over for the Danger Sled, huh?”

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” I replied. “Fortunately for us, those things fell for the old ‘fire the torpedoes into the side of the cliff to make it look like you blew up’ bit. Unfortunately for us, we took some significant damage during the dogfight. This thing isn’t going to fly without a lot of work. But you know, any landing you can walk away from…”

“And then what?” Hudson’s voice cracked. “In case you hadn’t noticed, there ain’t anything around. Think we’re going to find a gas station nearby? You saw the readouts, there’s nobody here. Nobody.

I stepped really close to the private. “Hudson, I need you to keep it together,” I growled in his ear. “The Queen hasn’t moved since we crashed. She’s going catatonic or something and I can’t take care of both of you.”

“OK OK.” Beads of sweat formed on his forehead. “But how are we gonna get out of here? What do we do, man? What do we do?”

“Well, I got all the systems shut down on the Sled in case those things can detect infrared,” I answered. “We can only assume that they can. I downloaded a map of this area into my Wristcomm. According to it, there’s a tunnel a couple clicks that way. We can hole up in there until we get a plan together.”

“Yeah, but what if they’re in there, like an ant hive or something?” Hudson asked. “You can count me out of that, man.”

“It’ll be night soon. You want to stay out here alone in the dark?”

Hudson was silent for a moment.

“OK, man,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“So overwhelming,” the Queen spoke up. “There is a strong psychic presence on this planet. It is powerful, so primal.”

“Welcome back, your Majesty,” I said to her. “Can you walk? We need to move away from this area.”

“They cannot be stopped.” The Queen stood up, still in a daze. “They won’t stop.”

“That’s fine, ma’am,” I replied, starting to guide her away from my craft. “Let’s just keep moving.”

“Hey what’s this?” Hudson looked up the path we were heading. “Looks like a lost doggy. Here doggy doggy doggy.”

The creature leapt up at him and immediately pinned the marine to the ground. Snarling and snapping, it was about to tear into him when I blasted it with one of my pistols.

“Disgusting,” I said while looking at the smoldering corpse.

“Bad dog! Bad dog!” Hudson yelled at it. “What’s the chance of that thing being out all by himself?”

“Not good, I bet,” I answered.

We quickly but alertly moved out with Hudson taking point. I was twenty paces back and guiding the Queen. Of course, I had no idea what would be waiting for us in that cave. I only assumed that it couldn’t be any worse than what was out here.