Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ladybird" data-source="post: 2874354" data-attributes="member: 10689">Episode 2: Don't Drink the Water. Part 7 - More Aliens, Less TalkingKed’rec and Joe followed the winding path of the river upstream, their feet crunching softly against the sandy soil.They didn’t say anything.The sun rose higher as the morning wore on, burning away the faint misty fog that rose from the dark-brown stream and beating down with bright heat through the two men’s hats.They didn’t say anything.With a silent step and sharply upraised arm, Ked’rec stopped abruptly, pointing off to the right. There, leading up a hill, was a side trail, winding its way through the scrubby trees. Joe didn’t say anything.The Jaffa kept his arm up, head cocked to listen. There was the sound again – a tiny, barely-audible rustling. And then Joe saw it: rooting through the dusty sand at the foot of an evergreen bush, was a small animal that bore a general resemblance to a chipmunk, except that its face was wrinkled and flattened like that of a bat. Joe let out a snort as he caught sight of the decidedly non-threatening creature. “Ugly little sucker,” he muttered, and started to push around the Jaffa to continue heading up the path. “What about the trail that goes up the hill?” Ked’rec asked, raising his eyebrows mildly in response to Joe’s scornful reaction.“Later,” Joe shrugged. “Let’s follow this path to the end before we look at that one.”The path narrowed as the stream dwindled smaller and darker on the way to its source, and the evergreens gathered more thickly together until both river and trail faded into a large, forested boggy area. The water was the color of strong coffee, but it had none of the brackish or decayed smell that Joe would have expected. “Guess we found where the brown was coming from,” he grunted.Inside his head, Orieth was buzzing with intellectual curiosity. We must get samples of all of it! Water, grass, trees, soil – if there is any sediment in the water, we must get that as well.Shut up, Joe thought back automatically.Isn’t that what we’re here to do? Orieth sounded vaguely hurt, and Joe wasn’t sure if it was his own remorse or his sensation of the symbiote’s wounded feelings that made his next thought a little gentler. Yeah, all right.Joe spent a few minutes gathering samples, with much more care than he had originally planned, then looked up to see where the Jaffa was. He saw Ked’rec on the other side of the bog, holding the video camera that they had brought with them, diligently filming the bog and the surrounding trees. “Guess we’d better report,” Joe muttered grudgingly, and reached for his radio.Kathleen answered Joe’s call almost immediately, her voice crackly over the radio but bright with interest after he finished his brief outline of what they had found along the way. “Have you found any feeder streams? Or springs?” she asked. “Or is the bog fed by groundwater coming up?”Joe paced slowly along the edge of the bog, circling around on the opposite side from Ked’rec. “Yeah. Got a little spring. And it looks clear, too. Weird.” He lifted an arm to wave to Ked’rec. The Jaffa, intent on videoing another one of the little bat-chipmunks, didn’t notice Joe’s gesture for a few moments, but then came over to turn his camera on the tiny bubbling spring.“So if the water is clear,” Kathleen was saying, thinking aloud in the long silences between Joe’s laconic statements, “then whatever’s turning the water brown must be in the bog, not the water. Maybe there’s a source of fresh, non-contaminated water around, then.”“Yeah,” Joe agreed noncommittally. “You know, the water doesn’t smell bad…” He could hear Reinhart shouting frantically in the background, “Don’t drink it! I know it won’t hurt you, but still, don’t!” Joe rolled his eyes and said, “I’ll check in later. Over and out.” Laden with samples and video, the Tok’ra and the Jaffa wound their way back down the trail towards the village. Ked’rec stopped at the intersection with the side path again, checking warily around the corner through the trees (to Orieth’s approval) before leading the way up the hill.“Footprints,” Joe grunted.Ked’rec leaned over, narrowing his eyes at the faint tracks in the sandy soil. “Mostly animal,” he observed. “Although there are a few human tracks as well.”The human footprints grew more plentiful and more distinct as they went further along the path and up a hill, until they reached a clearing – in which stood a small cabin. It looked like a single room, made of logs from the trees whose weathered stumps still stood around the edges of the open field, surrounded by an area of flat ground and a small but neatly-cultivated garden. Farther back, the trees thickened, growing more closely together to form a leafy barrier to whatever lay behind the cabin – close enough to indicate a river, perhaps, down behind the crest of the hill. “Should we approach?” Ked’rec asked softly.“Yeah.” Joe replied, his voice just as subdued. “Quiet. But not sneaky.”They edged carefully into the clearing, skirting around the edge of the trees at first, and then venturing out onto open ground towards the cabin. After a few yards, Ked’rec halted, with another one of his wordless raised-hand gestures to bring Joe to a stop too. There was a man behind the cabin, bent over as he worked in the garden. He was dressed similarly to the people in the village, but his clothes were slightly rougher and more patched, and a fur wrap lay over a stump next to him, discarded in the rising morning heat.The Tok’ra and Jaffa stood motionless for a moment, watching, until the man stood up, stretching his back – and caught sight of them. Without a word and without a second look, the man lay down his hoe and walked straight off into the trees.“That was most curious,” Ked’rec observed, after a moment of confused silence.“I dunno,” Joe grunted. “He saw strangers, and walked away. Probably the most sensible thing I’ve seen all day.”</blockquote>

Verification