Chapter 41: Following a Trail

Sam, and Aaron paced around the perimeter of their landing zone with detectors searching for, well anything really. The four of them had touched down near an abandoned transponder they had found. Likely where the alleged pirates had landed at some point in the past. Their own small shuttle had touched down in a clearing they figured was used by said pirates, given its proximity to the transponder. Other than the transponder itself though they hadn’t found much yet. Mostly random scraps, but every now and then something of more note popped up.

“Hey sis, I got a beep.”

Samantha trotted over awkwardly to where her brother was. She wasn’t used to wearing clothes, much less the protective environment suit she was stuffed in now, but all three of her parents had insisted. Her brother had already started to scoop up some top soil over his discovery. It looked like some sort of broken necklace or piece of jewelry.

“Something the locals would have worn?” She asked.

“Ya looks like the stuff on the video, so some were here.”

“And got their jewelry torn off.”

Sam nodded and the pair started to circle around their find. They started to find some other random bits and bobs, a ring here, a circlet there. The trinkets were starting to form a line as they found more and more, a line leading away from the landing zone.

Sam pointed off, “Guess they were coming and going from that direction. Or coming if the kidnapping theory is correct.”

“I think it is” her brother said with a weird tone. Sam turned to see Aaron holding up what looked like a discarded pair of handcuffs, made with chromed steel and very very unlikely to have been made by the locals. It was tarnished and stained with something that might have been blood.

“Ahh crap. Well catalogue it I guess. We should look farther in, see where this goes.”

“We shouldn’t stray too far, you know.”

“Eh, the folds will be setting up our base station for hours, they wont notice. Not to mention its obvious no one’s been here for a long time. The transponder was totally overgrown. There’s not even any footprints left in the dirt before us.”

Aaron let out an exasperated sigh but followed his sister as the pair went deeper into the forest following the loosely defined trail of lost bits of jewelry. It was definitely not lost by just one person, or even a few people. Quite a number lost what they were finding over time. Based on what they had seen of the locals on the feeds, the kind of jewelry found was mostly the sort the local females wore, though there was some male styles mixed in as well. That wasn’t too surprising, it was a fact that if someone were looking to traffic a person for sexual purposes the most likely victims would be women. In the modern day of advanced automation and manufacturing slavery pretty much only existed as a sexual practice anymore.

“They must have been at this for awhile…” Aaron trailed off.

“Ya”

“Much more than just the one girl we saw the video of.”

“Ya…”

“When should we go back? I mean...” Aaron was quieted by Sam clapping her hand on his shoulder, “What is it?”

“Shhh” She responded and knelt down. He followed, “I thought I heard something.”

“Seriously sis, we should go back” Aaron muttered. The pair were rather far from the landing zone now. And while neither could see any sign of any locals, or any people at all, something eerie had settled in.

Sam found herself agreeing with her chicken brother at last, “Ok, lets go back, we found a trail we can tell the folks about” she said and nodded then turned to start to leave.

No sooner had she turned around than something big and heavy came in from what would have been behind her and clocked her square in the face. The protective face mask shattered as Sam was send onto her ass. The suits were environment suits, not armor, so a hard enough hit could damage them. In this case the thing that hit her was a large black iron rod. At least judging from what was soon jabbed into her chest pinning her to the ground. The rod was held by a large male or the local species. He looked like an oddly greenish vulpine sort of race, at least as far as she could tell. He wore wooden armor and an elaborate face mask.

Glancing over to her brother, she saw him tackled by two more of the odd males. They pinned him down and then started to smash at his face mask with a sharpened rock, breaking the face shield for him as well. Sam glanced back at the man pinning her and snarled, just in time to see him pull a small item out from inside his armor and flick it at her. It was a small bag of some sort that let out a puff of mist when it hit her in the nose. Her head started to swim immediately, her vision darkened, and as she tried to call up her implants to send a message to her parents she wasn’t sure she managed to finish it before she passed out.

Sam woke with a start and groaned looking around. Wherever she was now was dark, but not totally so. She could see enough and looked around, first at herself. She was back to being naked, and the comfort of not having the bulky suit on aside, it meant that someone had relived her of all her equipment. Well almost all of it. She called up her implants and…

No signal.

“FUCK!” She shouted her herself frustrated. Her implants were all working fine, but had no connection. Were they being jammed somehow? No... there was no was these locals would know how to make a jammer, much less a simple ham radio! She paused and looked around at the stone walls of the room she was in. It was more likely she was just in a cave. Lots of rock to prevent a signal from getting through. That also meant that her locator beacon wouldn’t work here. Hal wouldn’t be able to track her in here, but if she got anywhere near the surface a signal would get out and they’d come running.

Now she just had to do that. She stood up and went to leave the room. There were no bars. And for that matter no door. It confused her at first why she wasn’t locked in, until she felt a yank on her ankle. Glancing down she saw the forged iron manacle on her leg.

She swore again. Without any gear, getting that off would be hard, her implants wouldn’t help much either, even the ones that didn’t need signal weren’t the external sort, so she couldn’t just produce a lockpick out of her arm or anything. She groaned and sat back down. She clearly wasn’t going anywhere for awhile.