After half an hour going over her findings in detail, Tim stood shaking his head still unable to fully comprehend what he'd just been told.
"What do you mean 1200 years extra, how is that even possible!" he yelled.
A few of the group looked over and started mumbling, confirming to each other what they think the heard. Soon there was the entire group of survivors shouting questions at Nicole and Tim. She sighed as she stood up, and prepared to tell the group of the terrible reality of their situation.
"Ok, ok, ok. Everyone quiet please," she said standing up on a rock and addressing the group.
"I know something about what's happened, if you just bear with me whilst I explain."
She looked around on the floor and picked up a stick, marking a small hole in the ground in front of the group.
"Assume this is earth," she said marking a point in the ground.
"And this is Lantea," She marked a second hole about two meters away.
"Our flight path was carefully planned to intercept five key gravitational slingshot points on the journey." In between the two 'planets' she drew a five more points before joining the dots between 'earth' and 'Lantea' in a zig zag line.
The group murmured, apparently even this simple interstellar map was a revaluation to them.
"The tech monkeys that put in the guidance gyroscope fucked up and it was offset by 2.38 degrees. Voyager 13 missed its first gravitational slingshot by over a million kilometres in the end and has been drifting since searching for habitable planets for us."
She drew a line diverging from the first part of the zig zag but rather than turning at the same point Nicole just carried on drawing as the line went off in completely the wrong direction to the previous plotted route.
There were some muffled gasps, before someone shouted. "That doesn't explain where we are!"
"That's because I can't tell you, don't you get it?" Nicole shouted in frustration as she continued tracing the line further and further away in the wrong direction.
"For 1231 years we drifted in the wrong fucking direction and the ships emergency system navigated 16 unexpected sling shot scenarios, it's only thanks to the nuclear cores and the solar plating on the hull that any of us survived. It was blind luck we stumbled upon a system at all, we should all be dead!" she screamed, throwing the stick as far as she could away from the crowd.
There were further cries from the survivors, murmurs of disbelief as they took in the news.
"What of the others?"
"Are we the only survivors?"
"Ah! I don't know!" she shouted in frustration. "I think we were the only pod released due to a glitch in the system but I can't talk to the mothership yet, the cpu is still figuring out why that is."
Nicole returned to the rock and sat down on the edge.
"How do we get back to Lantea?" someone cried. There were murmurs of agreement from the crowd.
Nicole snorted in contempt at the question before looking at the group, her face unable to hid the sarcasm that was about to spew from her tongue.
"Unless anyone has an interstellar fucking time machine I'd think even the dumbest person would realise that we are not going anywhere, especially not back to Lantea."
"But maybe the other colonies will rescue us?" came the next desperate shout from the group.
Nicole just laughed and shook her head in disbelief.
"Yeah, that's realistic. I mean, not only do they have no clue where we are, OR that we are still alive, OR that we are 1200 years travel away BUT there is also the possibility that none of the colonies even survived this long. Let's not forget, the arcs were a Hail Mary for saving the human race, from ourselves."
Tim had heard enough at this point and stepped in looking around the group.
"Look people, it is what it is. Let's face facts that for now, we are on our own. We need to..." He stopped, something in the tree line just off to his left caught his eye.
He starred at the spot where he though he saw movement, and was just about to convince himself it was nothing when out of the jungle a burst huge humanoid shaped figure heading straight for the group. A couple of the survivors facing in the same direct screamed, as the approaching assailant bore down on the team at incredible speed for its size.
Dressed head to foot in some sort of bio-suite, the being was easily seven foot high, its strong muscular arms clearly visible under the skin tight metallic looking clothing covering every inch of its body. Even its head was completely covered, a large helmet with a shining black visor glimmered in the sun as it ran.
The figure shouted something ineligible to the group, it's voice electronically amplified as it raised the weapon from by its side to take aim at the group. Tim was faster though, and already had his side arm up and pointing at the figure.
"RUN!" he yelled as he carefully took aim and opened fire, two round hit the figure square in the chest, but rather than drop him to the ground they seemed to be deflected by some blue force field. The figure stumbled and dropped to his knees, but looked up at Tim and shouted something in fury.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me, force fields?" Tim screamed. Looking over at Nicole he pointed to the floor. "Plasma riffle, now! Then you run, got it!"
Nicole reached down and grabbed the huge rifle, tossing it into Tim's arms before taking off, sprinting for the cover of the jungle.
The group of survivors scattered into the dense canopy as three more of the suited figures emerged on the far side of the clearing. Nicole turned to see Tim take aim at one of the closest figures with his plasma riffle and fire two rounds. No force field was stopping this weapon, and Nicole watch as the rounds tore satisfyingly through the alien dropping him dead to the ground. The others dropped behind cover immediately.
As Nicole reached the edge of the clearing and dived into the thick forest, the sound of Tim's plasma rifle fell silent. With a quick glance behind her she saw that Tim had been hit and was laying on the ground, an alien pointing its weapon directly at him as it carefully approached.
The first figure was gingerly getting to his feet, the clothing scorched and marked where the two rounds from weapon had hit his force field on his chest area, Nicole was shocked to see the effectiveness of the alien material, a military hand gun round would normally rip a human to pieces in a marines hand, even with body armour in place it would still do significant damage but this being looked like someone had thrown nothing more than a lump of mud at it.
She spotted two more survivors as they fell into the long grass from weapon blasts, but she didn't have time to stop for long as the first figure looked over at her and raised his weapon to take aim.
With a scream she jumped into the forest wall and disappeared as fast as she could away from the clearing. She could still hear the screams of the other survivors as they were either running for their lives like her, or were hit by the strange weapons.
Nicole put as much distance as she could between herself and the camp, she tripped a number of times as she tried to glance back to see if she was alone injuring her wrist. Blood spilt from her mouth from one of the falls, she just about remembered smashing her face into a root.
After a while she slowed, her lungs burning in protest before she collapsed behind a tree sobbing at what was happening. The screams from the clearing had long since fallen silent, either she was too far away to hear them or they had all been captured or killed by the suited beings. She rested just long enough to catch her breath before heading off again into the dense vegetation.
In a small opening she clambered down behind a tree and paused for breath. Her heart was pounding loudly in her ears as she tried to slow her breathing. Freezing in fear, she heard footsteps thunder into the clearing behind her before they clattered through the other side.
They stopped, clearly someone or something was tracking her and she closed her eyes, preying she wouldn't be found. Sighing in relief as the footsteps moved off she dared to peak round the corner of the tree. The coast was clear so she scrambled up from behind the tree and started moving at right angles to the direction taken by the hunter.
She had barely taken four paces however when, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted the figure, crouching in the dense vegetation of the undergrowth. It was waiting for Nicole to come out, its gun poised ready and aimed directly at her. She never stood a chance.
She screamed as she felt the impact of the shot on her left leg, it flung her to the ground face first as the power of the impact swiping her foot from under her. She rolled onto her side screaming and looked down, expecting to see blood from the impact. What she saw filled her with even more dread, there was large metal octagon clamped onto her leg that burst into a dozen metal tentacles that thrashed widely like some form of robotic octopus.
The tentacles quickly wrapped themselves around her thigh, heading up and down her legs as she tried frantically to claw them off, but this only ended up putting her hands in range of its reach.
She felt the cold metal grip her wrists and arms as they pulled her ankles up to the back of her thighs, her toes almost touching her buttocks. Her arms were next, they were ruthlessly pulled up behind her back and fussed in place in a reverse prayer position.
As the tentacles rose further up she gave one final bone chilling scream before they encased her head, fusing her mouth together and leaving her all but mute.
The hunter was now standing over her and using its foot pushed Nicole over onto her side. She looked up at the figure out of the corner of her eye, terrified as it said something to her in the strange voice.. She didn't understand the words but could pick up the spin chilling amusement in its voice, it had enjoyed the chase, and was gloating in its win.
She watched the figure press a series of buttons on a pad on its arm and moaned as she felt the metal tentacles touch her skin, somehow they had melted its way through the stasis suite without harming her.
The heavy bindings of the metal then changed, re-positioned the bonds so that minimal metal was required to hold Nicole, the bindings however were still just as effective. The initial 'shot' fell off her leg and the hunter picked it up, putting the casing back into its weapon.
As the figure bent down and effortlessly picked her up she felt what was left of the suite fall from her body, leaving her naked and helplessly restrained as she was carried back through the forest.
Nicole was carried like she was nothing more to the figure than a light bag, all the time he talked to her in the strange language. Bound as she was Nicole couldn't move a muscle, or even turn her head as the jungle canopy gave way and she was carried back into the opening.
