"Graph 1138 was nothing special. Just another dry rock with the slimmest potential for life floating in the endless void. Or so we thought that was till we met the locals, and they told us a legend. The legend of a star that fell from the heavens and from the fire emerged a metal fortress and a wounded titan. Did he come to conquer, to fight, to pillage? No! He came to build, to prosper, and defend." Data logged 44851.
Alarms blared as Thomas tried to pick himself up, which turned out to be a massive mistake. He was covered in his own blood. A small badly dinged up med bot ordered him to lay back down as a fire bot chugged by.
"Crew status?" Thomas groaned. The med bot projected his vitals he had a broken rib a puncture wound and a hairline fracture in his left leg. It was honestly a small miracle he was alive let alone in this good of shape. The bot had already done most of the work and a spider like printing drone was encasing his leg in a cast.
“Ok, so my vitals are rough but stable what about the others?” The projection flickered for a second as if hesitant before projecting.
‘Current crew count one.’ Thomas quickly inhaled something he regretted seconds later when his ribs screamed in pain forcing him into a coughing fit. The small med bot restrained him to keep him from moving.
“No no that can't be right have you scanned the entire ship?” A diagram of the ship’s current status popped up in front of him as it began another scan. He watched for an agonizing forty minutes as it scanned and only one life sign was found on board. In the engine compartment where he was currently laying. He wasn't given more than a few seconds to process this as the med bot injected him with a sedative.
The following next few weeks were just a blurry mess. The Med bot saw to his needs and tried to make him as comfortable as possible. Once he was cleared to move on his own the Med bot finally let him off the sedatives and lowered the pain meds allowing him to get up. The first night in his own bed was glorious. The next day however he went to work supervising the cleanup. The surviving bots had done their best but even they weren't in the best condition so his first line of work was to get as many of the bots back up and running as he could. So, they could properly start getting the ship at least as functional as was possible. This meant he was more or less confined to his workbench supervising the repairs occasionally stepping in when needed and fixing something himself. Though the Med bot wouldn't stop following him around until he finally got the cast off.
At this point, he was slowly but surely working his way to the rear landing Bay. He was going to try and get the hydraulic system back online so he could straighten the ship by deploying the ship’s landing gear. Having had to live in a crooked ship for a few months now was getting on his nerves. When he finally made his way to the hydraulic system, he was extremely relieved to find the hydraulics themself intact and still pressurized. He couldn't say the same for the automated deployment system but that was fine. He could just go to each and manually release them then turn on the flow from there. However, that did end up taking him another month and a half to work his way through the ship. Between damaged corridors depressurized cabins and just the sheer amount of thrown around debris there were no straight paths to reach them. Though eventually when he did manage to release all the valves and lines. It still took hours to deploy because he was running a single pump with the reactor on idle cause he couldn't bleed the heat enough without spinning up the drive. Slowly and shakily the ship deployed its landing struts it then took him another two hours, a little bit of guesswork and a level to get the ship mostly even. Marbles still had an odd habit of rolling forward and left but hey it was to the point he couldn't tell just by walking down the corridors. It wasn't until he was trying to straighten out the ship that he realized he had enough control over the hydraulics he probably could get the lower Bay doors open.
Up until that point, the idea of going outside hadn't really crossed his mind, he was too busy trying to get the ship back in working order. The few exterior cameras that were still working had shown him a rough orange and red, wasteland. Though he guessed if he ever hoped of trying to make it off this planet he needed to start on external repairs as well. Plus, he needed to find raw materials to be processed by the ship's onboard nano forges. He could only cannibalize so many surplus supplies crew belongings and scrapped systems before running out of materials. That and he really should get around to burying the rest of the crew's bodies.
He had done his best to preserve them until a proper burial could be given. He knew most would like to be transported home, but he wasn't even sure he could get himself off this rock.
Thankfully it turned out the atmosphere, though rough was close enough to Earth that he'd only need a filter and some basic coverings to protect him from this system star. While this planet had a similar atmosphere to Earth it was a bit thinner than Earth’s but nothing, some heavy duty sunblock or some basic coverings couldn't handle.
He decided to go with a helmet that had a built in heads up display visor capable of polarizing and filtering unit. He had dug out some old plaid shirts that was a bit too big for him but had long sleeves and a pair of overalls. Though the place looked like a desert it was surprisingly cold, though he guessed that was just another reason why it was so lifeless.
He grabbed the shovel and a pistol just in case. He readied a small group of bots to inspect his surroundings, and, well, he now understood why the ship was tilted so badly. He was currently parked on top of a small hill the ship had been leaning over. Even with the legs all the way deployed it would still be touching the belly of the ship. At least he was able to balance it out well, mostly he definitely needed to do some digging, but first the graves. He sent the bots off to work on the ship they could probably dig all the graves in an hour or so but that didn't seem right to him. So, he set to work digging the graves himself, it took him close to a week to finish.
Well, he assumed, the planet’s rotation, or lack thereof was so slow one day was roughly three years on Earth and night wasn’t for another two years or so. Regardless he had managed to bury most of the crew.
He still hadn’t been able to find a handful of the crew members and he hoped he didn’t find them in the ship. A vehicle lander was missing along with two escape pods. So, others might have survived, at least he hoped they had. He sighed as he planted the last of the simple markers. He had made to mark the crew's graves they were little more than a stave with their name on it, but he hoped it be enough.
"May you all rest in peace." He said his voice muffled by his helmet but as he started to turn back toward the ship he noticed something flashing off in the distance. Thomas’s hand shot up to the controls on the helmet zooming in on the object. He was too far away to get a good look, but it was metal and moving south from his position.
"Computer launch a recon drone metal object moving south southeast locate and track." He ordered sprinting off it took him twenty minutes to release a rover loaded with a few days’ worth of supplies and grab an accelerator rifle. They weren’t as powerful as a firearm but much more useful in his opinion and it wasn’t till, he was driving off after the drone did he realized he had also brought the shovel. oh well, maybe it would prove useful.
The rover bumped and growned over the rough terrain. Only able to speed up above a crawl when he finally made his way down to the flatlands in the valley below, but by that time the object was far out of sight. Thankfully the drone was doing its job, but he still needed to catch up. He stomped on the gas finally picking up some decent speed but unfortunately, the Rovers weren't exactly fast to start with. With a top speed of about 55 mph on flat ground it would take him a while to catch up.
Copper Crater was a small town built inside the impact crater of a large meteorite. Mostly made up of copper zinc and led. The town had loosely been set up to mine these metals shortly after they discovered that the remaining rock was surprisingly good at growing crops. So, the crater had been converted into a makeshift farm and it was surprisingly effective to the point the empire kept it running after the mines started to dry up. That was till the river started to run dry, there was a small river that ran near the crater. The townspeople had jury rigged a very crude aqueduct which required them to manually turn a crank to have a bucket pulley system dump water into it and run it down to the fields. However, since the last thaw, the river had slowly but surely been shrinking. Making it harder and harder to maintain their fields to the point where they were barely able to feed themselves. If the situation didn't improve soon the town would have to be abandoned. The problem was the citizens couldn't leave the crater. The crater was for a lack of a better word a penal colony. The people here weren't hardened criminals or murderers, they were the poor and unwanted, but the empire didn't care. All it cared about was its quotas getting met. When the first shipment was a little short it was overlooked. When the second was worse, they were told to step up production when the third was shorter, still, they became belligerent. When the workers explained that they simply could not provide more food the one who had was beaten. When another suggested that they check the river for themselves and maybe even see if they couldn't send a party upstream to see if there was a blockage or something causing the river to resend. When the few men who were sent out returned, he too was beaten for wasting their time. Now the time had come for the fourth delivery if they could even call it that. Three crates of preserved food, and even then, they weren't going to have much left for themselves. Not counting what they have been slowly putting away from each harvest for the freeze. That was after rationing to get by with as little as possible to try and pad out the shipment.
“What the fuck is this supposed to be where the hell is the rest of the delivery?!” One of the guards growled at the site. There were supposed to be four wagons worth of food, not three crates.
“We, we, were sorry Sir, but we simply don't have enough water, our fields are dying, and the river is getting too small. No matter how much manpower I devote towards shifting water to the aquifers at this point it won't help and we're all but starving as it is. If we give anymore, we would have to cut into our rations for the freeze and as things stand, we'll be scraping by as it is there simply isn't any more to give. I can show you the storehouses I can show you the fields but unless we can do something about our water problem we simply cannot offer anymore.” The village foreman pleaded for them he had been clearly rehearsing this for quite some time he had even cut his own rations, so he'd lose whatever form of fat he had to make it clear that they were in very dire straits. He wasn't even lying by much after the last winter they had lost three families to starvation. They had dug a new storeroom underneath one of the existing ones and had been secretly storing a little extra food just in case but despite that, there really was no more food to give.
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“This again you have water in the river I don't see why having to walk a few extra steps to fill a bucket and crank it up into the aquifer is so hard. But since you seem to refuse to follow orders and step up production you leave me with little choice.” The soldier said before stabbing the foreman in the side leaving him to bleed out.
“Men gather up the food! We will be filling our quota and backlog, then once we return from our delivery and have made our report. We will do a full inventory with a new administrator if things don’t add up all assets will be terminated.” The soldier said coldly to the horror of the town’s inhabitants.
They knew there was little they could do against them. They would take most if not all stored provisions except for those they had stashed away. Their only hope was that the new supervisor would understand their situation and provide solutions instead of executions. Though they had little hope for that, it would take a miracle to get the right of this situation. Surprisingly one was about to show up just not in the manner they were expecting.
Thomas’s Rover skidded to a halt just outside of the large crater he was really regretting his rush. He hadn't linked the Rover to the ship's relay, nor had he managed to grab anything that would be capable of communicating with the drone directly. Well in theory his helmet could but it would need to be a lot closer which meant he needed to stand right underneath it. Currently, it was circling the crater so either it had found the object, or it had gotten lost. Either way, he needed to go check it out and the walls were too steep for the Rover to climb. Well, that wasn't true but the material it was made of was too loose to climb at that level of incline. Sighing, he strapped his rifle onto his back and snatched up the shovel, surprisingly it would be of use here. Using it as a cross between a walking stick and anchor he made his way up the loose earth that made up the wall of the crater. However, he was absolutely flabbergasted at what he saw when he reached the top. A small town absolutely surrounded by wilted and dying fields. At one end there was a wooden scaffold with a walkway that looked loosely like an aqueduct leading to a large water tower in the middle of town. On the opposite side was a road that led to a tunnel where he saw a small group of individuals, most likely the ones he had been following. He was so shocked that he hadn't watched his footing carefully enough and found himself tumbling down the hill, this unknown to him and to the shock of his observers would be the very miracle that would save them. The thud of Thomas hitting the ground was enough to at least rattle the whole village. The whole town came out to inspect him believing the Titan was dead.
“Well, well well looks like you might have just found the solution to your little problem. Meat is a valuable resource as it’s hard to come by, and this, whatever it is should have more than enough meat to make up for your deficit. We'll take what we need now while you carve it up to pay off your debts and will let you keep what's left. Once the new supervisor arrives and whips you all back into shape hopefully, none of you will have to die for these failures. Now get to work boys gather what we need from the storeroom!” The guard shouted to the shock and horror of the civilians. They could only watch as they not only took from the storehouse but took anything they wanted from their homes. Thankfully there wasn't much for them in a small town like this but because of that the captain quickly became dissatisfied with what they were able to gather.
“What the hell is this is this really all you could find where's the rest of it.” The captain barked, turning to Kerri the former foreman’s assistant.
“It's like we keep telling you because of the lack of water from the river we can't grow more food! This is all we have! You are even taking the supplies we had set aside for the freeze. If this is not enough to convince you, fine but please put in a request for an engineer to try and build an extension to the aquifer. Or see if we can't find an underground water source or something. The whole purpose of the current aquifer was to move water from the river and then have us transported to the fields. Now we're having to move water from the river to the aquifer and then to the fields. We literally need twice the amount of manpower than we currently have to keep the current system functioning.” She tried to plead only to be backhanded by the captain.
“I want an explanation not this useless prattling. If you can't make yourself useful by answering, then maybe you can make yourself useful some other way.” He said, grabbing her dress and ripping it off. This would be his last mistake.
Thomas winced at the sharp squeak like cries of one of the creatures surrounding him. He turned his head to the side to try and get a look at the noise, seeing two of the larger creatures covered in simple metal armor holding down another smaller version of the creatures. While a third one in armor ripped the cloth covering off the smaller one it wasn't until the armored one began to remove his own coverings did it click what was going on. Still slightly concussed and in a moment of fury Thomas his hand larger than the creature slammed down on it leaving nothing but a bloody smear. He started to get to his feet, he wasn't sure what was going on but he knew two things for sure, one the armor ones weren't friendly two he had really fubar’ed first contact protocol. Thankfully his shovel had landed nearby. He grabbed it and used it to help support himself as he got to his feet. He looked down when he felt something hit his chest seeing a small arrow having gotten caught in the flannel of his shirt. Looking over at the two in armor he saw one was holding a crossbow.
“Cute.” He said his steel, polymer, and leather boot slamming down on them. He felt their armor crunch like a tin can under his boots.
It was then he heard the growl of some small dog sized lizard things the locals apparently used instead of horses. One of the guards tried to make a run for it on a wagon pulled by the lizards Thomas started to go for the rifle on his back only to realize it wasn't loaded. So instead, he picked up his shovel and readied it like a javelin, and to his surprise more than anyone else. He actually managed to hit the wagon. It took less than a dozen steps to reach the wagon and retrieve the shovel. He then realized the locals had created a small tunnel placed into the hillside. Taking his shovel in hand he stabbed the blade of it just in front of the tunnel. If one of the creatures tried to squeeze through, they could probably fit but they weren't getting the wagons out. Thomas had seen at least six armored ones when he had fallen, he had at least to his knowledge killed three. Looking back over at the wagon he was pretty sure the runaway was dead. Considering the lizards that were now free and had started to chew on him. Their thin little teeth were unable to get through the armor. Though they were starting to figure out how to get past that he figured when he saw them rip one of the limbs off and swallow it. Regardless there were most likely only two armored aliens left.
He reached into his pocket pulling out a pellet cartridge filled with simple BB palettes. He loaded it into the barrel of the accelerator rifle sort of like an old musket. He set the rifle to single fire instead of a burst shot mode. The rifle worked by loading multiple pellets into the gravity chamber that the accelerator rifle used to hold ammo normally for single shot mode. He would prefer to use darts they were reusable and packed a heck of a lot more of a punch. In this case, it probably be overkill the dart would likely go through a single target and a couple of buildings. Keeping that in mind he turned the power to low at this setting it wouldn’t be much more powerful than a BB gun. Though at their size that would probably be about the equivalent of a cannonball hitting them. Thomas reached up and pulled off the accelerator barrel shortening it to a pistol with a stock. The accelerator barrel was the thing that actually was able to raise it to lethal levels. The whole purpose of the accelerator rifle was mostly to accelerate small objects to velocity. It had various uses from painting to pest control and right now he needed pest control. In its pistol grip form it was fully reliant on the gravity chamber for firing. To bring it up to speed you'd have to pull the trigger to speed the projectile up in the chamber then release the trigger to fire it. He pulled the trigger and entered a firing stance sweeping the buildings he didn't think they had anything that could really hurt him, but he wasn't risking it. He had just barely reached the village it had only taken him a few steps, when he heard a squeaky cry. What he assumed was the female from earlier was being held with a blade to her neck by one of the armored creatures. Another pointed its crossbow at him while the one with the blade started shouting. He ignored the squeaking sound they probably called a language. He had his helmet taking audio clips for later translation. Meanwhile, he was calculating vectors on how to take down both targets though he needed time. He lowered his weapon, keeping the trigger pulled, and took a step back.
“What in the name of the gods is that thing?” The guard with the knife said not taking his eyes off of the giant.
“I don't know I've never seen anything bigger than a razor before.” The other said.
“Hey, girlie, you got any idea what that thing is? Weight is that why there isn't enough food you've been bribing that thing to protect you or something.” The guard growled.
“No, we've never seen that thing before.” The assistant said just as scared as the guards were, maybe a bit more for the knife to her throat.
“Yeah, then why is it protecting your village? If it didn't care about yal it would have killed, you with us.” The guard growled bringing the knife closer to her throat. This caused her to panic, she swung her elbow back colliding with the face of the guard. Causing him to stumble back and slice her arm with the knife. She didn't manage to make it far before she stumbled and fell but that was just what he needed. As the guard raised his knife to stab her a single metal pellet hit both the guards leaving nothing but a puddle of red mush from the waist up. Thomas let out a long sigh as he slung his rifle on his back.
“Well, that's over.” He said, taking a look around only to remember the shovel he’d left blocking the town’s only way out.
‘Yeah, I probably shouldn’t forget that.’ He thought, heading over to the tunnel and retrieving his shovel. With it in hand, he began to look around.
One of the first things he spotted was the almost naked and probably still terrified creature he had assumed to be female. Clutching her arm which was leaking a blue almost clear translucent substance he assumed was blood. Which reminded him, judging by how wet his pants leg felt he probably needed to patch himself up too. He couldn't clean her wound, he didn't know what would be toxic to her, but he had to hope the sealant spray would work. He approached the tiny creatures finally taking the opportunity to get a good look at them. Five sets of eyes gave them nearly 360 degrees of vision they could only not see directly behind them but what he assumed was the front of their face resembled the basic human symmetry. They had six arms with three shoulder joints on each side, a rounded torso, and four legs. What he assumed was the genitalia were in the chest region. Now he wasn't the xenobiologist so he couldn't be a hundred percent sure on most of that, but he could make educated guesses at least.
He started to kneel in front of her as he pulled the mini med kit out of his pocket. It was little more than a pack of alcohol wipes and a bottle of ceiling spray to seal the wound but as he kneeled, she had finally noticed him.
She panicked, desperate to escape him as she backed herself into a fence post.
Seeing her fear, he stopped for a moment trying to think of how to communicate his intentions Finally coming to a conclusion. He pulled up his leg to show off the wound. This caught her off guard, not only was she not expecting this, but she had never seen a creature with red blood before. He quickly cleaned the wound and sprayed on the sealing spray. Now while it still left the wound open it stopped it from bleeding, he then tapped his arm pointed to the spray, and held it out for her. After a few seconds and repeating it, she finally got it and held her arm out. To say getting it on the wound wasn't easy would have been an understatement he had to drip feed it out carefully pushing it till it dripped out and landed on the wound and repeating until he covered the wound. As he would have covered her entire body in a quick acting adhesive spray if he had done it normally but after a few seconds he had managed to do it. It wasn't his cleanest work, but it was at least serviceable.
He then stood up and looked around noticing the fields. He approached them and scanned them. He was mildly concerned when he found they were dead and not that they just looked weird. He didn't know anything about the local fauna, but everything needed water, right? When he went to go inspect the aquifer, he found it dry as a bone and after another rough hike up the hill found the nearby river nearly bone dry as well. There was a good two feet between where the aquifer bucket crank was and where the current river was. As he was no geologist, he was a damned engineer and was doing a lot of stuff not in his job description, but judging by the grooves in the ground the water used to be further up. Still scrambling back over to his Rover. He hopped in as he couldn't think of a better way to improve relations and establish himself as the good guy than fixing their water issue plus, he needed water too. A short bumpy ride later, he found himself running up the Creek bed or probably to them riverbed that was just wide enough for him to use as a roadway.