#zarck

Prologue (status: incomplete)

The Commander was sick of waiting and watching in silence. 

Waiting on a solitary distant planet for upwards of five entire years, devoid of any other kind of social contact, had started to take its toll. Zarck had to give them at least a little bit of credit, as it took them years for that distress beacon to be activated, spewing out their signal to anyone who would listen and come to their aid. It definitely outlasted his prediction that his wayward team would barely last a year by themselves without getting killed, or even worse, tainting the Pupa’s evolution so severely that their mission would culminate in utter failure.

But he certainly hadn't expected the team to last that long. Yes, under the right care and proper attention, the Pupa should have only needed a year or two to mature and see the terraforming cycle to completion, but seeing as they hadn't wrecked it up in maybe six years he couldn't help but be intrigued by their pure dumb luck. That Korvo he had left "in charge" was truly never meant to be leader, Zarck often mused to pass the time, and if anything this utter failure even after so many years of denial (for surely it hadn't taken them all that time for the mission to fall apart, those stubborn, pigheaded adults must have put off sounding the alarm for a while), proved that Zarck had been exactly where he needed to be: in control.

The first two years of waiting had been his most difficult. He had waited, at first eagerly, to detect that distress beacon within the first six months, knowing very well the group did not have the skillset to take care of the Pupa without him-  he hated being put with the most clumsy, naive set of Shlorpians on the homeworld to work alongside, but there was no fighting those who had made the decision to pair the team in such a way. After the first few years, counted with pebbles, sticks and scratch marks littered all over his tiny escape pod, he had begun to assume the team had already perished, none of them around to even sound the alarm, but he paid those dark possibilities no heed. After all, it was merely a What-If situation. No matter what, with the right quantum entanglement technology, this make-believe reality would cease to exist upon the press of a button, and everything would be restored to how it was supposed to be. No questions. No arguments.

Korvo’s reckless stupidity would prove his inability to be team leader, and he would surrender the position instantly back to Zarck as soon as he realised it was not all that easy as it was made out to be by their Commander.

Oh, how he longed to see the look on that idiot's face.

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