the cloudtrain rapidly sank inside the puddle, and a moment later came out from another, this time in a desert, after it came out the puddle closed again, and Daniel ordered Tickles to call home
but Tickles couldn't comply, this time there was no network of any kind, so he was still unable to call home with conventional methods, Daniel checked the position of the few nanites left on Verulus and realized that he was not only nowhere near Verulus, but he was on the completely opposite side as retak, like he went back and missed his stop by a few galaxies
Daniel did the only thing he could do at the moment and used all the sensors and scanners he had to check the desert around him, but there was absolutely nothing, not even a sign of life, nor a signal, nothing
the drop just like before seemed to need another 20 or 21 days to charge again, until then Daniel will be stuck here, with no other choice, but to use the itchy network to call home and tell them that he was stranded on another alien planet
the only silver lining was that while he was using it he could also test the energy infusion call
Daniel sent a message and every single nanite on verulus and they converged to the scout v2 sitting silently in the lab, the total didn't even make 1 gram, but it will be enough with the powerful people in the specter family supplying energy
like before it flew outside of the lab, but this time he found Sophia swimming in the lake, the probe approached her and said "incoming call from master, spiritual energy needed for connection"
Sophia grabbed the scout and just like Phoebe brought it to the living room while calling everyone, they knew today Daniel would use his ability again so everyone was already around the house, in less than a minute, Sophia, Vincent, Phoebe, Joseph, Andrea, and Obelix were standing in front of the probe
Sophia was already transferring energy to the nanites, and an image appeared on the holoscreen of daniel sitting in a chair behind him was a window, from which the sky could be seen
daniel saw the family gathered and said "hiii everyone, here's the thing, sister chaos offered to bring me home, but I felt that I could control my ability so I refused, and now I'm nowhere near verulus, in fact, I'm further away, how are things going at home?"
Sophia was the first to say "don't try it, we were worried sick, where are you now?"
Daniel answered "no idea, I have a general sense, thanks to the itchy network, but I only know the direction, not the exact distance, the only reason I know it's further it's because I can feel those nanites at home are more distant than before"
Sophia said "and that place you are now?"
daniel said "this is my lab on the cloudtrain"
Vincent butted in and said "are you safe?"
Daniel answered "no idea, I just arrived, I am in a better situation than before though, I have 4 M.A.R.U v3 and 11 cloudtrain fighters, all in all, I'm safe, if there is a single fourth stage individual, anything more and it becomes dangerous, but for now the planet I am on, seems dead, it's just desert"
the family was without words, he went away only with what he was wearing, and now it's talking about maru's and whatever cloudtrain fighters are
Phoebe being curious asked "what's a cloudtrain fighter?"
Daniel answered by showing a video of the attack on the retakian base, the fast and slick cylinders, conducting aerial assaults
the family was once again without words, in 20 days he was missing, he was fighting on alien planets, then they saw the robot hauling things inside the train, and thought, it's a specter alright
Phoebe who was the one more interested in Daniel's creations said "interesting, those are good I would say high third stage in speed and power"
Daniel said "the defense is also high-third stage, and I found a phaser weapon in that raid, wait till Tickles recharged his ability, then I will add it to them, and also create a maru v4, meanwhile, I will scan around, and explore this world, but I will probably just end up continuing some projects"
vincent said "did you have fun?"
Daniel smiled and said "yes, I had, I went fishing, found interesting stuff, met sister chaos, created new technologies, it was a fun 20 day"
they kept chatting for a while, after all, they were concerned and after a while, Daniel said "I better get some work done and look around if there's something useful, while I wait for the drop to charge up again, I still feel that I can control it, I must have done something wrong the last time" because they held him long enough, and he wanted to go do something
Sophia said "wait, try to discover your position, if possible it's better if you study your ability better before jumping around, we can come to fetch you"
Daniel said "I'll try, but I won't make any promises"
Joseph said "remember to call more often"
and Daniel said "sure thing, I'll leave the scout there, when you want to call me say it to it"
Daniel finished the call, and started thinking, that the scout was very useful when scanning the floating island, with the new knowledge he had now, he could build a new version with better scanners, and use them to investigate the planet, while he kept busy on the train
but before that, he had to check that everything was alright, after the jump through the wormhole, so he went to check on the fish, and they were all fine, he also noticed that the perfect environment he created in their individual tanks, was starting to take effect, they looked comfortable
he looked in the storage and everything was right too, even the mushroom growing box, he used on retak was still fine, at least if he found nothing on this planet he wouldn't starve
but he was also sick of eating mushrooms and suddenly thought of the fish Daniel decided that after he finished improving the scouts he would check on the seafood, cough I mean fish, after all, if they were no longer toxic, he would be able to eat something different, even if he didn't have any condiment
he started updating the scout blueprint, and in less than two days with all the knowledge he had already accumulated he easily made a blueprint for the scout v4
the new scout went back to being a single flying ball, but it had better scanners, was faster, and a weapon that shoot bolts like the lance was added, just in case it was needed, after all on the train he didn't have many materials, so he could only build 10 scouts, without using the more rare and precious ones, the only thing he had a load off was the antigravity mix
Tickles got to work and crafted the scouts in record time, 10 minutes each, the scouts went out the moment they were built and started scanning the desert, following a grid search pattern, apart from exploring the planet, Daniel hoped to find useful minerals in the desert, so the scouts kept scanning the desert, while the train floated in the sky following the scout's formation
learning from his experience on retak, Daniel immediately read the data the scout brought back, the environment wasn't toxic nor radioactive, but it was slightly polluted, the problem was, that after searching around for hundreds of kilometers, no signs of machinery or technology that could justify pollution was discovered, in fact, there was nothing else but desert, he ordered Tickles to warn him if something changed, then went to look at the fishes
the miniature squids were already reproducing, and he wanted the baby squids, to be born toxins-free, but the toxins were already inside the eggs, so all he could do was filter the water at a higher rate, so that the toxins that were expelled through waste, were not reabsorbed while feeding them untainted food of which he didn't have yet
after a few generations, this should remove the toxins completely, so after the parents had terminated their role, and the eggs were fertilized, he would separate them from the baby's, and if everything went well, and the babies grew up, he could dispose of the parents, since they came from a toxic environment, and ate toxic food all their life
he set another alert with Tickles to let him know when the eggs were fertilized, and went to look at the rest, the giant lobsters, the electric eels, and the carps, all reproduced with eggs, if he just had to create the right environment and wait, the only one who would really be a problem will be the lobsters, who reproduced once every two years, so depending on his luck it may take a while
luckily, the carps reproduced, all year round in the right environment, soon he should have some results, while the electric eels reproduced during the dry season, so they will take some tinkering with the environment cells, he still hadn't figured that one out
as he finished with the fishes, more data arrived, there was every possible material in the sand, but in quantities too small to be particularly interesting, and there were still no signs of life, no fauna, no flora even bacteria were absent
strangely the spiritual energy was many times higher than on retak, according to what he studied in school, this was a d-class planet, or better a planet that could support the cultivation of fifth-stage individuals, breaking through further would require going out and finding a place with a higher concentration of spiritual energy
but this didn't make any sense to Daniel, where was the pollution from if no one was here? and why did this planet seem to be 100% desert?
not a drop of water could be seen in any scan, so much that daniel decided to make immediately a water recycling system, to make sure he didn't end up consuming all the water he had, maybe he should have made a water section, luckily the fishes tank where much bigger than needed
the next day he kept working on the environment cell, so he could make a dry season simulation, when a scout found something, 27 mt below the sand, there was what looked like a building, Daniel was happy to have finally found something
the scanner said that there were no life signs of any kind, but there was a weak energy signature in its depths, so he decided to go for it, maybe he could find a computer system or something like that, that could reveal what happened to this world