New Mission: Escape the Crash Site
*Escape the newly created military zone without being noticed. Escape the region within five kilometers of the crash site.
The other two choppers took off to the periphery of the radius to patrol while the first squad of five searched the area around the impact crater.
"Damn!" whispered Melbourne to himself frantically as one of the soldiers found the body of one of the thugs.
"We have a casualty!" exclaimed the soldier. "Think the artifact did this to these people?"
"It's Cosmist in origin." responded one of the other soldiers. "Anything is possible. We should secure the area and seek out any survivors who may know what happened here."
As Melbourne crawled slowly through the brush, carefully and painfully avoiding twigs that could snap under his weight, he heard another soldier walking towards the dead body.
"That looks like a knife wound." said the second soldier. "Did a group of people arrive concurrently and get into a fight over the artifact thinking that they could make some bitcoin?"
"We need to tell command to send us thermal goggles at least for these missions." complained another soldier. "I'm calling in for backup and the military police. We need specialists in forensics here A.S.A.P."
"I found another two!" exclaimed the receding voice of a soldier who was searching the area in a pattern that spiraled out. "Blood stains over here as well!"
Melbourne finally arrived at a less dense region further away from the receding voices of his hunters and could no longer hear what they had to say. He could now pick up the pace and move in a squatting pattern as suggested by the Aclito.
Eventually, he had made his way far enough from the squad of soldiers that he could pick up into an all out run.
"Be careful." warned the Aclito. "The choppers are still in the sky hunting for survivors. Video data from the crash landing has given me a detailed map of the local vicinity so I can guide you with some degree of accuracy. You need to try to stay beneath the conifers, however. You will be noticed if you go running through an open field or clearing. I can analyze your progress and give you path suggestions to make tracking you more difficult. They mentioned they do not have thermal which is good news for you but they will soon bring in a team who will and who is far more experienced at tracking than them. Time is of the essence."
Lines appeared in Melbourne's vision glowing blue to indicate the way he should travel. The way was labyrinthian and Melbourne stopped in anger born from the fatigue he was already feeling.
"Are you serious?" asked Melbourne mentally. "You want me to jump into that dried up riverbed, run down it and then climb back up about 100 meters east?"
The G.U.I. had responded to Melbourne's description of direction with the addition of a compass widget that showed him where he was going. Convenient and potentially very useful, but Melbourne was too tired to care.
"A straight path is easy to track once they have your trail." explained the Aclito. "You will slow them down by making them more cautious. Trackers will have a more difficult time following this path."
Melbourne sighed and did as his Aclito suggested, jogging to the riverbed and struggling to climb back up out. Still, the Aclito suggested more similar paths. At a certain point, Melbourne started to wonder if he was being led around in circles as he jumped into a similar looking ditch for the fifth time, turning left.
"Relax." responded the Aclito. "That channel is 12.3 centimeters more shallow than the previous one on average."
As Melbourne slowed to a walk, he could here the sound of running water. The path led him straight in that direction. Melbourne expected to run alongside the stream for a few minutes, but his temper soared as soon as the Aclito's suggestion led him to walk through the shallow stream, soaking his boot. If that wasn't bad enough, the opposing bank was full of foliage denser than he had ever walked through. Also, he was expected to wade upstream through the middle of the river for about two hundred meters before climbing out.
"I am not doing this, Aclito!" exclaimed Melbourne in anger. "Reroute!"
"I am willing to comply if you insist, but I must advise you that the harder your path is to traverse, the harder you will be to track." said the Aclito with cold logic. "This path will maximize your chances of successfully escaping the military zone without being found and taken in for interrogation. The water will erode your Are you sure you wish to reroute?"
Melbourne sighed in resentful acceptance of the machine's undeniable logic and shook his head.
"Fine, I'll tough it out. Better to have chiggers and all over my body than to spend the rest of my night in a military brig somewhere."
Melbourne reluctantly waded through the freezing cold stream, the water rising almost to his knees at the center. As he walked upstream, he got about fifty meters before he could bear it no more and waded to a shallower region. He then climbed up a one meter high bluff into the dense foliage and gritted his teeth as he was swarmed with mosquitoes. Pushing through, he continued to follow the path laid out by the Aclito.
After about an hour from the river crossing and fighting through more torturous evasion paths, Melbourne got a red warning light and a message telling him to duck into the shade.
Just as he got under the cover of a dense patch of sagebrush, a spotlight flew over him and continued on to the north. One of the patrolling choppers continued on, not seeming to notice Melbourne at all.
Melbourne breathed a sigh of relief out loud as the chopper disappeared. If that was just the helicopter's patrol route, Melbourne should be almost out of the military zone.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity of slow crouch walking through the sagebrush field, Melbourne got a message from his Aclito display.
Mission: Escape The Crash Site
*Escape the newly created military zone without being noticed. *Complete
Mission Accomplished: +20XP
35/100XP
Melbourne felt a twinge of disappointment. Evading capture by trained military soldiers of the Martian Republic and suffering greatly in the process just to evade incarceration and possible execution for an accident and he only got 20XP? Granted, it was more than that given for defeating a group of 3 thugs in combat, but they were relatively weak and not very intelligent anyway.
Melbourne excitedly walked from the eastern side of the military zone from which he had emerged and northwards along the Isidis Sea towards home. As he watched more military choppers and VTOLs pouring in from all directions, he was grateful he got out of there in time as he dreamed of Lambdanville and the warm apartment bed that awaited him at his parent's house. They would be furious that he was so late coming back home but he was legally an adult now so hopefully they wouldn't be too punishing.
By the time he finally got back, he knew for the first time what it was like to fall asleep while you walk. He'd heard of such things in survivalist stories but never had he been so tired himself.
Sol was already rising on the horizon as Melbourne arrived back in Lambdanville, heralding the beginnings of a new day for most and a new life for him. As he walked back into the small town filled with gleaming white buildings with geodesic dome rooms, he picked up a jog and ran back to his apartment where he put food in the microwave and instantly fell asleep on his bed afterwards, leaving it to go cold.
***
A few hours after the late high school graduate returned to Lambdanville from an unexpected adventure that he originally expected to be a fairly normal hike, a female lieutenant walked into town with an entourage of the most expert trackers based around the Isidis Sea.
"Sorry ma'am, but that's the end of the trail." said the soldier somberly as the dirt path became concrete and asphalt. "All we can conclude is that the survivor lives somewhere in this town. It is called Lambdanville, for your information."
"Very well." said Lieutenant Lavender, pulling out a radio. "Lavender to Sergeant Keyne. I am reporting incident 1346. I repeat, incident 1346. John Doe is somewhere in Lambdanville. Did forensics successfully preserve the blood samples we requested?"
"Yes ma'am." responded Sergeant Keyne over the radio. "They are already en route to Fort Isidis."
"Good." said Lieutenant Lavender. "See to it that a full gene sequencing is done ASAP."
"I told them you wanted it done." assured Keyne. "I want to know who was at the crash site and somehow managed to evade my team long enough to escape the military zone. They know how to track and I don't think they would have any trouble finding a normal civilian. Whoever this character is, he or she is definitely interesting."