Hello all! You are now reading Part 2 of the Rogue Geek's first mission story for @gmuxx's #steemwars saga.
- Part 1 - A Milk Delivery by @carn a.k.a. Carn Tusk
- Part 2 - The Milk Hunters by raiserxn a.k.a. Trailblazer
- Part 3 - Milking Thieves!, by @xanderslee a.k.a. Fertherther
- Part 4 (Coming Soon) by Noridia
- Part 5 - Sorry, Doc, by @carn
Trailblazer didn’t expect to find himself in a sticky situation when he volunteered to go undercover on their first mission as Rogue Geeks.
“I should have stuck to piloting Carn’s space fighters,” Kar muttered when he slipped and fell face-down with a splosh on a small puddle of Ungbug leftovers.
“Ewww! Gross—” He squealed and stopped shut, seeing that he can’t get any grosser. He was already covered from head to foot with thick green mucus-like membranes from man-sized Ungbug egg shells that lay scattered outside before entering the Snore-lak, a huge labyrinthine cavern where the Ungbug queen and her thousands of baby Ungbug hatchlings live.
The Ungbug milk produced by the Ungbug queen is famous for its medicinal use and is known to be the rage among Time Lords for nefarious purposes. Bounty hunters and anyone with enough spirits can sneak into the queen's lair can pose as a baby Ungbug and stowaway some milk. They just have to cover themselves in the gooey membrane-like substance from freshly-hatched Ungbug eggshells and no one can know better. Unless they get too close to the mother queen, who knows the smell of her babies all too well. The Ungbug queen lays eggs once every 10 years so the competition and stakes to get the much-coveted milk is quite high.
They looked at each other, hoping anyone would volunteer. An incessant humming of starship engines, Noridia’s keystrokes on the keyboard and the popping sound of bubble wrappers are all that could be heard as the rest of the Rogue Geeks thought on who is the best to go.
“Since this is no easy task, let’s use this randomizer tool to choose who will go,” Noridia said.
She pressed a button on her laptap and after a few seconds of processing, Fertherder’s name appeared on her console.
“Oh, I get to go,” Fertherder looked surprised.
“Let’s do it again?” Fertherder pleaded. Noridia re-started the randomizer tool, and Fertherder’s name appeared once more.“And again?”
Fertherder’s name came out twice from the randomizer tool after two more tries.
“Alright, I guess I’m the chosen one. I’ll go,” He said, looking dubiously at Noridia who was hiding a devious half-grin smile.
“Hey, I ran out of bubble wrappers, “ Kar said.
“Let me go in your place Fertherder, I wanna squish some bugs.”
“Sure thing, Kar!” Fertherder happily replied.
Trailblazer mused on the previous events that led him to the sticky situation that he’s now in.
He flew to the village of Ung armed with spray bottles of insect repellants and insect killers besides his default armament of beam saber, pistol and sunglasses. As Carn briefed earlier, they are to deliver the 235 pints of milk to Time Lord Gmuxx in Spewn F4F, for reasons the Time Lord alone knows. What’s more, they were specially instructed to keep its temperature above 93.6F.
He met a few locals living near the Snore-lak cavern and they told him about the best ways to forage Ungbug milk is to pose like an Ungbug by being and thinking like an Ungbug. An elderly local guide assisted him to the outskirts of the Snore-lak cave.
“You see, Ungbugs keep our farms in balance. They eat Lamytes that plague our camino crops. We’ll have poor yield if not for them, ” And the guide told him how their yield dropped below living standards when swarms of Lamytes devastated their fields for years, uncontrolled by the Ungbugs. It was when one of the hunters killed the Ungbug queen and a horde of her colony for sport from several decades ago.
“Are you alright?” Asked the guide.
“Yes, am fine,” Kar replied between stifled sobs, drying away some tears and caring not to lift his sunglasses too much. He rethought about squishing the Ungbugs, and just look for more bubble wrappers elsewhere.
“What happened to the hunter?” He asked.
“They ate him.”
“Ungbugs used to be harmless creatures, feeding only on wandering Lamyte tribes and fungus that grow in the Snore-lak cave but now they maul humans that come too close,” the guide replied.
Kar thought about what the guide said, as he tiptoed stealthily to the center of the cave where the queen’s nest is. Ungbug mucus membranes oozed from his boots and dripped all over from his person as he walked. He had faith that his un-cool disguise will hold just like the local guide said, and more surely if he will not cause too much commotion.
“Oh, there they are! And they don’t look squishable.” He walked hesitant to a long line of Ungbug hatchlings no bigger than a pony, waiting for their turn to receive a sac of milk from the mother queen. He bent his back a bit lower to mimic their hunched backs, and stretched his arms a bit forward to look like mandibles. Adult Ungbugs litter all over the nest, as if watching over the hatchlings and their queen, who is about the three times the size of space fighters.
The Ungbug queen spits out large sac-containing milk from her mouth, and hatchlings catch it with their mandibles, one by one from down below. Then they pierce it with needle-sharp tongues and sip the milk until the sac is deflated.
He caught his milk in both arms without any adventure and was about to tiptoe away to safety when a wave of low rumbling Ungbug murmurs rose to a hissing pitch. The mother queen who was too busy spitting out sacs of Unbug milk stopped and slowly reared its giant head down to him.
“Must think like an Ungbug, act like an Ungbug,” Kar panicked as he buried his head into the milk-sac, thinking with all his heart that he’s an Unbug. He can feel the queen’s gooey saliva adding more to his viscous dripping disguise. A foul taste of the sac’s tough hide brought him back to his senses.
“I think I smell human snack,”
He can swear he heard the hissing murmurs say.
“You mean, like the one gramps ate years ago?”
“Yes, but I can’t be entirely sure...”
The hissing murmurs died down and the Ungbug queen resumed its work of spitting out milk sacks. He tiptoed away slowly but steadily away from the nest to the cave entrance, his boots still oozing out Ungbug mucus. He thought he felt the ground was softer than before, his footsteps sinking a bit and making an impression.
A few more minutes of walking and he was finally out of the cave, into the sunshine. He grinned triumphantly as he held the dripping trophy with both arms into the sky.
“Mission accomplished!” He shouted at the top of his lungs. He sent a radio signal of his coordinates to Fertherder so he can pick them up.
“I’m out now please pick us up before the milk cools down.”
“Stay where you are and hand over the Ungbug milk.”
He heard a deep voice say. He looked around and saw a Hurricane Shooter, holding a blaster pointed at him from not far away. About ten more Hurricane Shooters clad in their light white protective armor and grim-looking helms emerged from the surrounding boulders and bushes.
“Hello, there soldiers. I have not yet been informed that Ungbugs are declared endangered species, surely they are fair sport and not yet property of the Imperial Order?” Kar asked.
“Yeah, they’re not. They’re a fair sport for everyone and so does anyone who steps out of that cave. Now hand over your Ungbug milk to us or else,” The Hurricane shooter sliced his index finger across his neck.
“Why don’t you get it yourselves? There’s plenty inside,” Kar asked, irritated.
“Why would we when we can have yours?” The Hurricane shooter retorted back with an evil laugh.
“Give it up, we just don’t want to soil our white uniforms.” One hurricane shooter said.
“You have no idea how tiresome it is for us to keep it clean and shiny all day,” another said.
“Get him, boys.” The hurricane shooter’s leader motioned his troops towards Kar.
Kar glared long and hard at the approaching hurricane shooters beneath his sunglasses. He glared harder ‘til his eyebrows ache but they kept on advancing.
“Whats this, my signature death glare isn’t working?” He asked, baffled when he realized that he doesn’t look too menacing at all this time.
That was when he charged right back into the cavern.
“After him, don’t let him in too far!”
He heard frantic voices yelling after him followed by shots of blaster beams. Stray beams rushed past his face and skidded on the cavern walls as he sped to a spot where he saw a small swarm of Ungbugs before. The yelling voices turned into throes of despair followed by buggy screeching sounds.
“One down, we musn’t venture in too far,” He heard a hurricane shooter's voice echo inside the cavern.
“There he is!”
The remaining hurricane shooters ran after him, their swift, agile footsteps padded by the cave floor that has now become soft and moist. Blaster shots went wide all around him. They haven’t run far from the entrance when Kar felt a rocking tremble from the ground that swayed him to his knees.
“Seriously, an earthquake at this time?!” Kar said as he leaned into the cave wall for support when he slid and fell down.
Kar swore as another enormous tremor hit the ground. The cave turned vertical and upside-down, tossing him along with it. He rolled and tumbled down uncontrollably into the dark abyss that was the center of the cave, and a mix of hurricane shooters, blasters, white helms and Ungbugs sped past him in free fall.
“What the hell is THAT,” A wide-eyed Fertherder said as he piloted his starship around the vicinity of what used to be the Snore-lak cavern. He had just entered planet Ung’s atmosphere after receiving Kar’s call.
“Trailblazer, do you copy?” He called Kar over the radio, steering his starship around the gargantuan writhing mass of what looked like a chubby alien wyrm, wriggling thrashing and chomping on top of the rocky landslide of the mountain cliff. He has last detected Kar’s GPS coordinates in the area where the Snore-lak-wyrm is. The Snore-lak burped and smiled contentedly as it lay down to rest.
“Guys, I think we have a situation here and we had better abort the mission,” Fertherder called Noridia and Carn as he hovered around the stilling Snore-lak. Kar’s radio and GPS signals are down.
He hovered around the Snore-lak some more from a safe distance to look for any signs of Kar when he heard a long, mournful whistle from the giant wyrm. Its small eyes popped open in surprise, looking disgusted then it started contorting and convulsing in weird angles, as if in stomach pain. A few more minutes and it reared its mouth high up in the air. It spat out human-looking figures one by one, hurling them in different directions. Then with a mighty roar it hopped its way to the nearest mountainside across the region, burying itself with the Ungbugs.
“Or maybe not,” Fertherder called back as Kar’s GPS signals came back to life. He followed its coordinates to a nearby forest.
Kar can remember almost switching faces with the Hurricane shooters and the Ungbugs as they churned in a dark, sticky void inside the Snore-lak cave. Then he felt a flying sensation, of wind rushing past his face and the weight of gravity pulling him down.
He was falling.
“Owww, ouch, hey..” He groaned as he fell on top of leafy tree branches and wild bushes that cushioned his fall.
“Owww… that hurts,” He landed sprawled on his back with a thud on a bush. He felt relief when saw Fertherder’s star fighter descend a few meters from him.
“Trailblazer. You alright?” Asked Fertherder who rushed to him carrying a first-aid kit. Kar moved his arms and felt around his bones and muscles.
“Thanks, a few broken bones, is all. But none too many, ” Kar replied as he struggled to stand up while Fertherder helped.
“That was some giant wyrm. Let's go and meet up with Noridia,” Fertherder said.
“Here you go. I think I’ve lost them,” He said as he pulled out the Ungbug milk-sac from his knapsack. It was then when they discovered a blinking red GPS transmitter attached to it. They can’t shut it down and can’t pull it off either because the tough milk-sac looked like it will tear. Soon enough, they saw Hurricane shooter star ships hovering near them.
“Make a run for it Fertherder, let’s regroup later, ” Kar shoved the Ungbug milk-sac to Fertherder.
“I’ll take a dip in the river and find a nice, hot bath in the village.”