Chapter 3: New Friends

They were just as curious about us as we were about them.

Wind was curious about us and invited Victor and his team back to their village. Victor did not want to offend them but was cautious about just walking into their village. I told him my team could back them up and set up a cover lane for them to withdraw out of the village if anything went bad. He was reluctant but agreed that first contact needed to be successful and good impressions at the start would help in the long run. The village was simple huts in a circle around the main community hut. Victor and his team were shown to the community hut where they were introduced to the chief a black tiger with silver stripes named Moon. He asked Victor to tell his tale then Moon would tell their history.

Victor told of our group’s mission and the battle that caused us to crash on their planet, but left out the part about being clones. The fact that there were only two males and twenty four females did not go unnoticed. Victor explained that our group was very special as most often it is an equal mix of male to female. Because we only had two males there was not any jealousy or fighting for leadership, just the leader and his second all the females were truly devoted to both of us.

Moon agreed with the special status our group showed. He was very impressed with the way our females protected him even now in the camp. Laughing he said the others watching over Victor’s group could also come and join him. Victor apologized and said next time all of our group would visit. Moon said he understood that trust had to be given and accepted.

Then he began the story of his people. As told by the elders from their elders and back to the beginning time. Strangers visited the planet and captured the closest animal to their own kind the cats of this planet. Things were done to the cats to bring them closer to the visitors in hope of saving their race. War and disease were killing them which forced them to look for ways to survive. A small science group was left to conduct the study and try for a match able to mate with their race. After several years the science group lost all its members in accidents or natural death. The results of this interference created Moon’s people. None of the original visitors ever returned. It has been 20 generations since the visitors arrived. Moon wanted to know if we knew of the original visitors.

Victor answered that we were not aware of any race similar to Moon’s group. But he also pointed out that this was a new area for us and we had not explored it at all. The truth was we were not sure where we were due to the explosion that threw our ship into the wormhole.

This was all interrupted when my team had to shoot three raptaurs that thought we might be good to eat. It was one of Moon’s clansmen that warned us by throwing an arrow into the first raptaur making it screech. It still took all our combined fire to put the three down before they reached us. This was as good as any reason for my team to join Victor’s in the village. We were given a hut to use for the night and were not disturbed. The next morning we ate breakfast with Moon and his people then returned to our ship.

We discussed the situation among our group and all agreed that Moon’s people were trustworthy and a good ally.

Over the next few months we built a fence around our ship and made repairs to the systems we could. It was certain the ship would not fly again without the main reactor’s power the backup systems would keep working as long as we had them on external power from the emergency generator and survival generators.

We hunted with Moon’s people whom we started calling felines. And were constantly working together to improve both of our camps. After continuous badgering from Moon we allowed four of our women to try to breed with four of the feline males. Thunder, Rock, Night and Swift were the ones chosen by Moon and Victor and I were mated to four females, Wind, Sand, River and Light. There was something about our DNA that would not allow our females to conceive, however, all four felines did. Another shock was that instead of one or two cubs as is normal each had six cubs, one male and five females. They were smaller than usual but seemed healthy and appeared to look just like the mothers. There was no noticeable difference in these cubs and any previous ones. Wind named her son Rhad and her four daughters Rae, Roe, Ren, Rii, Ruu all of them were puma. Sand named her son Clif and her daughters Cloe, Cera, Cala, Ceen, Cada and they were leopards. River named her son Val and her daughters Viv, Vaa, Ven, Voh, Vot they were all beautiful lions. Light named her son Tonga and her daughters Tina, Toni, Teri, Tana, Tuma with them all being tigers.