Colonies of U'u'kata

Chapter 17 - A Stack of Crates

"What is it?" Ezra whispered.

Before Rhythem could answer, he heard the snapping, crunching sounds coming toward them and his heartbeat sped up. What was that? It sounded like it was snapping entire trees in half!

"I don't know. Something big," Rhythm whispered. "All animals on this planet are extremely hostile and territorial and—"

"Sh!" Captain de'Lain hissed.

Ezra fixed his eyes on the ridge they'd been making their way toward and watched, wide-eyed, as something huge came up over it, followed by several more.

His mouth dropped open at the sight of the herd of creatures. They had to be ten feet tall and made from pure, thick muscle. They looked like an unholy mix between a triceratops, a honey badger, and an antelope, but with a thick-looking hide of bright blue. The fan of bone coming up off the back of their heads was a riot of brilliant colors and as they walked, they simply plowed right through the trees that got in their way.

"Holy shit," Ezra breathed, watching the creatures draw ever closer to the group.

"Nobody move," Captain de'Lain whispered.

There were several babies who pranced around the massive adults and Ezra easily spotted the difference between the males and the females. The females were larger, their colors deeper, and they had utters similar to a cow.

When the herd finally passed them all by, Ezra sat up and frowned after the creatures. "What are those called?" he asked.

"Jenkells," Delleth said. "Only the strongest warriors hunt them."

"I understand your kind are slowly dying out due to low birth rates and not enough females, but... there were a lot of female jenkells in that herd," Ezra said

"We cannot mate with jenkells," Delleth said in disgust.

"That's not what I'm saying. I just mean, you'd think something that affected low birth rates for the Uu'k'asht would have affected the animals as well."

"It affected all animals on my planet," Rhythm said. "We have some frozen in status, but they are the last. All life on our planet ended. The animals, the plants, even the dirt was poisoned."

"The storm did that to your planet?" Ezra asked in disbelief as he pushed himself to his feet.

"Partly. The storm affected all people and animals. It was us who killed the plants and destroyed the atmosphere."

"So... why didn't it affect them?" Ezra asked, jerking his chin in the direction of the swatch of destruction caused by the Jenkells passing.

Rhythm shrugged and shook his head as the party started to move again, but Delleth said, "Maybe it's because they're electric."

Ezra stopped and frowned hard at him. "They're... electric?"

The boy nodded. "That's why they're so difficult to hunt. Not only are they huge and mean, but they will shock the hair off your head if you touch them when they're charging."

Frowning in the direction of the massive creatures once more, Ezra said, "Huh," and filed that little piece of information away for later.

It didn't take long for the group to make it to the peak after that, but before they could crest it, one of the scouts came back and said, "Captain, the ship is right on the other side. But... there's a problem."

The "problem" was apparent as soon as everyone belly-crawled up to the peak and looked down.

It was only about half the ship, but the mangled wreckage was more than halfway buried. A camp of Tovans surrounded it and they'd built large, wooden cranes to assist in lifting out crates and chunks of mangled metal.