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Captain Raptor had his jaws clamped so tightly, he knew he'd chipped a tooth somewhere. But that was the least of his worries, as he continued to tug of the steering mechanism. Overhead, sparks hissed out at him from the controls and an unnerving heat washed over him as slowly, the clouded view on the dashboard cleared and a desolate tract of seemingly endless gray terrain greeted him. The captain was slightly relieved that it was a clearing and not a ridge of rocky mountains in which he had to make his crash landing. Slowly, but steadily, the craft leveled with the ground. With every second, the features of the plain became more and more distinguishable. It scared the captain immensely, and it was all he could find in himself to do to continue leveling the ship and reducing the speed as much as possible.

Everything seemed to go silent the moment before impact. The Captain shut his eyes. A deafening peal of sound, short but louder than the roar of any dinosaur, had his head instantly ringing. Like a doll, the velociraptor was thrown to one side of the ship, and when hit hit against the wall, though all sound seemed plugged, he could hear a sickening crack that came from somewhere deep underneath his shoulder. He didn't even have time to shriek out in pain as he was tossed to the other side of the ship, this time hitting his head on the controls and rendering him unconscious for brief periods of time. In this fashion, the entire course of his has crash landing seemed broken. In one instant all he could feel was this stabbing pain in his shoulder; the next, he was sprawled forward on the controls.

And in the next, everything was quiet.

The ship had stopped moving, and suddenly, everything appeared surrealily calm. Captain Raptor's head was still spinning, and at first, all he could discern were faint silhouettes and blurred shadows. He tried to move, and a ripple of pain shot across his body. The captain gave a small shriek and realized with a small tilt of his head down that one of his legs was pinned by the wreckage. He couldn't move it.

The glass of the dashboard had shattered; the entire exterior of the ship appeared totaled, but miraculously, some of the ship's systems still appeared intact -- among which was the homing beacon, just above the pilot's seat.

And just out of Captain Raptor's reach.

A raptor's arms may be inadequate for a great number of things, and despite how much it hurt to move, the captain tried to shift himself over to reach it. He tried to use his snout to flip the switch, and with every attempt, pain from his immobilized leg shot out. Over and over again, he had to remind himself, a captain never gives up... a captain never gives up... a captain never gives up. His eyes watered with the burning effort and after a series of tries, the switch flipped and a red LED flashed to the melodious beep of the homing beacon.

Captain Raptor let out his breath and fell limply to rest his aching body. He could sense a looming darkness beginning to creep up on him. And for a while, he allowed himself the rare luxury of not having to worry, falling back on the comfort that soon, his loyal crew will be here to rescue him.

The Megatooth landed on the landing pad of the military base. The pad itself was cracked and had some blaster marks embedded in it. Bricthorous stepped out immediately as the exterior door of the ship opened. He did a sweep of the immediate area through the sights of his blaster rifle. Upon seeing nobody, he lowered it. "Clear!" he shouted.

On cue, Angleoptorous and Threetoe disembarked from the ship, though still holding their own weapons; Angleoptorous carrying his one blaster pistol, and Threetoe carrying one in each claw. Everyone turned towards the military base, which seemed to have taken a beating recently. Blaster fire remnants, explosive marks, burn marks all over, all the doors and windows had been blown out. Bricthorous raised his rifle, aiming at the door. “So much for those ID cards,” he mused, leading the rest of the group towards the building. He took up the front, Angleoptorous took up the middle, and Threetoe took up the rear.

The three stacked up against the side of the doorway, and Bricthorous, after a pause, instantly pointed his rifle inside and looked around. Seeing nobody, he motioned for the others to follow him, which they did with haste. At every corner, Bricthorous would look around it to be sure that it was clear, and Threetoe would do the same if they came across a three or four way intersection. They came across nobody up until they saw the main hallway take a sharp turn towards the left, with a sign directing towards the bomb shelter. There, a young adolescent pterodactyl and a triceratops (different from the one they saw in the transmission earlier) clad in tattered clothes, but labeled with a distinct red symbol on their shoulders, were camped out in front of a door, blocking their way. As trigger-happy as Bricthorous tended to be, he knew that force wasn’t the only option here. He held his rifle down, in the “not hostile but able to use it at a moments’ notice” pose, and walked casually towards them. The two adolescents’ heads snapped to his direction and they instantly brandished their rifles (inaccurate, old, and cheap weapons intended for mass-production, commonly used by rebel groups and pirates, according to Bricthorous’ knowledge of weapons) at him. “You!” the triceratops shouted, “who are you?”

“Don’t worry,” he tried to explain, calmly, “I won’t harm you unless you try to harm me. We can talk this out, can’t we?”

“Who sent you here?” the pterodactyl demanded.

“Our superiors sent us here,” Bricthorous explained, “to make sure the guys here were all right. Would… it be too much trouble to ask you how everyone’s doing?”

“Wait…” whispered the triceratops, “he doesn’t have the sign of the Red Spade! He’s not with us!”

Threetoe immediately burst out from behind the corner, brandishing his pistols at the two, though somewhat shaking and breathing heavily. Bricthorous heard the clatter of Threetoe’s claws on the cement floor and felt that the smarter idea, based on the present situation, was to raise his own rifle at about the same time as Threetoe began to brandish his pistols.

It was lucky, because as soon as Threetoe showed his weapons, the two rebels lifted their own weapons. They pulled off a couple shots before Bricthorous shot off three well-placed shots into the torso of the pterodactyl, who fell over instantly, and aimed at the triceratops, who was himself hit by multiple, rather erratic shots from Threetoe’s dual-wielding pistols. Bricthorous walked over to the triceratops, hoping to interrogate him, but was forced to club his head with the butt of his rifle when the triceratops pulled out a pistol on him. Bricthorous looked at Threetoe, annoyed. “Next time, if you shoot somebody, try to actually aim, all right?”

Threetoe, still shaking, nodded and slowly reloaded his pistols. “Professor!” Bricthorous called out, “it’s all clear!”

Angleoptorous emerged, looking concerned for the bodies in the hallway, but pressed on anyway.

The three met little resistance up until the actual door of the bomb shelter they were looking for. The card reader was still intact, but upon trying their security passes given to them by mendestebar, those proved to be ineffective. “Apparently,” the Professor mused, “this is a much higher level of security than just getting into the base. Maybe there’s a communication link from here to the inside…”

After a few minutes of searching, they found a screen with only one button. Threetoe pressed it gingerly, and then yanked his claw back, as if expecting to be electrocuted by it. It at first appeared to do nothing, but after a few seconds, the face of the triceratops that contacted them earlier appeared on the screen. “Who… oh! It’s the Captain Raptor squadron! Where’s the Captain?”

Bricthorous lowered his head. “Long story. But, in short, he’s MIA. We need this base for our ship to be repaired and… well, safe in general. Can you let us in?”

Within minutes, the door opened, after a series of complicated locks could be heard clicking into the unlock position. The door opened vertically, and the three were greeted by the Triceritops, who introduced him as Private Donison. Apparently, he and three others, whom he didn’t introduce, were the only soldiers in this base who weren’t either captured or killed in the attack on the base. He agreed, after some talk, to help them find Captain Raptor’s escape pod and have the others repair the ship while they were looking. The bunker had a spare hovercraft with a mounted turret and a couple onboard weapons, along with an onboard computer that would likely locate any distress signals, as the craft was intended for a mass disaster scenario to look for survivors.

Captain Raptor woke up to the sound of silence. The first thing he noticed was that he could hardly move. He was laying on a makeshift bed; a couple blankets and a flaky pillow thrown on top of a creaky mattress with him thrown over as well. He turned his head to the side and saw that his small arm was hanging in a casted sling around his bent shoulder, which still ached painfully. A gooey salve was secreting out from under the bandages. Though it hurt to move around, he decided it was well-treated.

The ceiling was jaded and slightly cracked. It held the captain's interest for a couple minutes before he swung himself around with a groan and sat up. Immediately he heard rattles and looked down; both his feet were chained to the wall. He looked forward and saw the bars to his cell. A looming reality dawned on the raptor as the gravity of his current situation began to dawn on him. He tried to push off the bed, but wobbled around dangerously unsteadily on his feet, so he sat back down again.

Beyond his cell was a lone desk upon which sat a lamp, a tablet, and a stack of papers. There was also a blaster. Captain Raptor looked down, and sure enough, his utility belt was gone. He had to expect that. Beyond the desk was a door. And from the door came a bunch of raptor... chicks?

Four of them. They came chirping and hopping about boisterously, snapping and nipping. One toppled over, and two others fell on top of it in a blurry ball of scales, tails, and claws. The fourth took notice of Captain Raptor. The two locked eyes, and the youngling cocked its head to the side questioningly before it was bowled over by the ball of other chicks. If Captain Raptor thought the ceiling was interesting, this certainly held his attention before a hulking, muscular brontosaurus ducked through the doorway. He stood off to the side and huffed noisily at the younglings. Immediately, the got off one another, yipped out an apologetic groan, and marched up. The eyes of the brontosaurus followed them out before they were then turned to Captain Raptor. This guy was broad; his arms crossed were like tree trucks and his fists were boulders. A heavy artillery rifle was slung across his back.

"Who are you?" Captain Raptor asked. "What am I doing here, you have to let me out!"

"Quiet." The brontosaurus ordered in a fittingly deep voice.

The room was filled with heavy footsteps... no, not footsteps. Clicking sounds. A raptor entered the room -- a female raptor -- without looking around. "Stand down, Fennor." She sat herself down at the desk, picked up a few papers, examined them, then tapped her claws on the tablet. It instantly came to life and displayed a holographic display of windows, which she manipulated and wrote on before tapping on it twice again, and the display was turned off. As if suddenly remembering he was there, her head snapped up at the Brontosaurus. "You may go, Fennor."

Fennor the Brontosaurus grunted, then exited out, closing the door behind him.

The female raptor scooted up her chair and continued to work before Captain Raptor cleared his throat and rattled his chains a little. "Umm... excuse me, but --"

"My questions first," the female raptor stated down at her papers. After a few more minutes, she swerved around in her chair to face him. She wore a metal bracer device on her scrawny wrist, and a navy blue beret [the captain found that especially... appealing]. Across her snout were yellow stripes, and her green eyes could bore holes through almost any dinosaur.

Almost.

Captain Raptor didn't know what he was in for; at this point, all assumptions were dangerous.

The soldier took the remaining three to the hangar, where all of the vehicles appeared to be destroyed or damaged. All, that is, except for the huge concrete block which contained the hovercraft which they intended to use to find Captain Raptor’s escape pod. Before long, Private Donison managed to get the hovercraft out of the case and running. Donison mounted in the driver position, and the rest took the three front turret positions; Bricthorous at the main turret, Angleoptorous at the front-starboard turret, and Threetoe on the front-port turret. Once everyone was ready, Donison hit the accelerator and the craft sped forward at a moderate pace, which quickly picked up once they had cleared the hangar for a few miles. Angleoptorous momentarily abandoned his post at the turret and punched in the ID number of Captain Raptor’s escape pod distress signal. Immediately, a radar map of where the signal was originating from in relation to the craft’s current position came up on the computer. Donison took note of the direction and adjusted the hovercrafts’ bearings accordingly.

Soon enough, after what felt like an eternity to the Captain Raptor crew, they came across the wreckage of the escape pod. “There!” cried out Threetoe, pointing his right claw at the wreckage, almost as if he had seen the Captain standing there.

Donison fish-tailed in front of the wreckage and parked it. Everyone disembarked with as much haste as they could muster and immediately scoured the remains of the pod to find any clue of their Captain having survived. After a good twenty minutes of searching the wreckage, they found no sign of him. “Bricthorous,” called up the Professor, “it’s very clear that he’s been here, but he left.”

“Left?” inquired Bricthorous, his head popping up above the wreckage, up from the process of him looking around, “but why?”

“Why else?” said the Professor, “he was taken away against his will!”

"I'm telling the truth," Captain Raptor growled in a dangerously calm tone. "My squadron is an emergency response team... NOT a part of the Jurassican military."

So far, he'd been at the same process of catering to the onslaught of questions for several hours. Though he tried to give them reason to believe he wasn't lying, he also tried to be as vague on certain details as he could. The female raptor, whom the captain had discovered whose name was Veloca, continued to pace back and forth across the room. Her own killer claw clicked somewhat differently than the way Captain Raptor's usually did. "We intercepted a message from you and your crew requesting permission to land on military ground," she said. "How can you claim to have no affiliation with them when you even had the access codes for back-up?"

"You mean the ones that didn't work?" Raptain Raptor tried to take a step forward, but the chains at his ankles rattled and pulled him slightly back. "If you were really listening in on us, then you'd know that we got no response from them. We were attacked by a band of space pirates just before atmospheric entry."

"FOOL!" Veloca suddenly screeched at him. The move was so swift that Captain Raptor actually jumped back a little in surprise. "You didn't get a response from them because they were the ones attacking you!"

The Captain opened his mouth to speak, but no sooner snapped it shut with a click. His head cocked slightly to the side and he blinked quizzically. "That's not possible."

"Isn't it?" she scowled. "You saw how well-organized they were. No junkie space pirate around here would ever think to attack in a pattern like that, and a captain such as yourself ought to know it!"

Poor Captain Raptor was at a loss for words. The only defense he could come up with were questions of his own. "Why would the Ionathon military attack us? It just doesn't make sense!"

"Of course it doesn't. Because they didn't just attack you, they attacked themselves as well."

Captain Raptor snarled at Veloca. He was tired of trying to figure out everything she meant. Fortunately, Veloca got the hint and cared to elaborate more on her previous point. "Another reason why the Ionathon military didn't acknowledge your access codes is because there was no base to receive them. You see, Captain Raptor, you and your crew have been expected for some time now. At first, we didn't know why the Ionathon military began targeting their own facilities. Not until we discovered you were coming as well. Then it all made sense. Knowing that you were on your way, the Ionathon government thought to... exaggerate the situation a little more by making it seem that we were the ones responsible for all the damage."

"We would've already worked with them... why would they hope to gain our favor again by attacking themselves and framing the rebel forces?"

"So you admit it... you ARE military." Veloca growled at him.

Captain Raptor growled back.

"You were sent here to keep the peace on Ionathon. Unfortunately, our government interprets 'keeping the peace' as destroying any and all resistance to it."

"How do you know all this?"

"We have spies," Veloca said, continuing to pace. "So do the government."

It was then that the Captain Raptor had a most horrifying thought. He jumped up and his chains clanged noisily against each other as he poked his snout directly at Veloca through the bars of his cell. "My crew... My crew was instructed to rendezvous with the Ionathon military base that got destroyed. Destroyed by its own forces. What's going to happen to them?"

To this, Veloca stopped pacing. "It's likely the military took up our insignia and placed some units to act as our people. Assuming they were able to get through them without a problem, if that's the case, then what's certain is that they've fallen into a trap and are probably dead."

Now, it was Captain Raptor's turn to act ferocious, swiping his claws madly at the bars, making a huge ruckus. He roared out angry, vociferous cries, high-pitched and threatening. "Don't you talk about my crew like that!" he shouted. "They're alive. And they'll be coming to get me!"

He continued thrashing about until the large brontosaurus with the heavy artillery gun across his back came in to see what was the matter. Veloca turned towards him and proceeded to head out. "He's not in any condition to be of much use to anyone," she said to Fennor. "Let him sit here for a bit and have it soak in. But watch him."

Fennor nodded and entered the room and Veloca left, slamming the metal door closed behind her.

Captain Raptor continued to rage until exhaustion made him fall asleep.

The rest of them shuffled through everything that was in the wreckage. There was practically nothing of use to them, and even less of use to help them find out what happened to their Captain. “Even a dimwit would know that the base is that way…” Bricthorous mused, looking at the faint outline of the installation in the distance, “and he’s not heartless enough to not at least go to find the wreckage of the ship before giving up hope on us! GRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAH!” he roared as he grabbed and launched a sizeable scrap of metal from the pod into the distance.

The professor looked at the sight forlornly, but kept searching with the soldier. “Well… whatever you think might have happened to him certainly didn’t happen here, even if at all…” he noted, then trailed off.

“What is it?” asked Private Donison.

“The footprints… they’re shallow. Look,” he said, crouching down and pointing to the impressions in the ground that lead up to the capsule and away, “this wasn’t a long-term patrol that picked him up… these guys packed light… they’re close by!”

Donison and Bricthorous immediately snapped to the battle-ready positions and scanned the immediate area through the sights of their weapons. Threetoe did the same, though more shakily. The professor, on the other hand, did nothing. “Donison,” he said, “Is there anything like, a cave complex or abandoned structures anywhere around here that you know of?”

Donison nodded, “Yeah, ten clicks to the south-west there’s an old building we used to use as practice for entry tactics, and then target practice. The place is so shot up we stopped using it, so-“

“What?” demanded Bricthorous.

“We dropped a bomb on it… but it didn’t decimate the entire building like we thought it would, so we just assumed it blew out the basement, but we never went in there… too hazardous, our superiors told us… so they made the place off-limits and build a training room inside…” Donison swore loudly, “everyone forgot about it… but the blown-out basement could easily allow for someone to build a network of tunnels under it! That’s probably where the attacking force came from!”

Bricthorous was already at the hovercraft’s turret, “No time to waste, soldier, get us over there, on the double!”

The rest of the group lit up and hopped on. “Full speed ahead, gents,” Donison shouted, “hold on to your guns!”