Engineer’s Audio Log Day 1.1

Dear Diary, I hate everything.

My legs hurt, my back hurts, and my head hurts in multiple places. I’m not quite sure where I am and if my still spinning vision is anything to go by I may be slightly concussed. Ugh… God, my mouth hasn’t been this dry waking up since college.

…

I should probably record this properly so that if my corpse is found in 5 to 10 business days, they’ll know what happened. That means I’ll have to get up. Alright ughhhh…

Engineer’s Audio Log Day 1.2

This is Henry Mason and you’ve tuned into 104.3 THE CRUNCH where I deal and you reel!

Engineer’s Audio Log Day 1.3

WELCOME TO THE TWILIGHT ZONE.

Engineer’s Audio Log Day 1.4

Ok, actually starting this properlike. I’ve taken the opportunity to drink some water, cry over everything hurting, and check the general area. It’s… grim but I think I can pretty safely say I’m the only one still living around here at the moment. Honestly, for the life of me I cannot figure out the why’s of them attacking us. They clearly had something on our tech given all our stuff was going haywire but like last time I checked we were on relatively good standing so what gives?

*Sigh*

Shame I can’t just ask. I’ve only found one xythalaxn and he didn’t seem particularly keen on answering my questions on account of the massive hole in his chest. Serves him right though the bastard. Blow me up will you?

For the time being, I’ve decided it’s probably for the best I stay put and wait for backup so I’m talkin’ and hoping it’ll calm my nerves if nothing else. I’ll probably delete this later as I’ve some things to say but here we go. I’ll start off on the mission and work my way up to current time.

Weather’s been acting up for the last little while and Command had the bright idea to try and watch it. Wow! Now we can check our screens instead of sticking our heads out the window. Outstanding!

Honestly, the idea isn’t bad in and of itself since our botanists kinda do need to be in the know so they can prevent our baby crops from getting demolished and frankly if they were the ones calling for it, I’d be all in on the idea. Hoooowever, the whole idea is kinda undercut by the funny timing where Command allegedly lost a bet and would be having to sleep outside for the foreseeable future…

Actually, I can’t blame them for that. I totally would have abused my power like that too. Regardless on the why’s of being out here, we were asked to put together some weather spikes to monitor everything. Easy peasy, we had the schematics and it was mostly a matter of adjusting the plans to work appropriately with what we had in mind. Me and the other two shield guys, Danny and Steve, ’ve not had a lot to do since we’d finished the base’s defenses a few weeks so it was nice to actually dig into things again. Frankly, I’d rate it better than even odds we were asked to tackle the issue to make sure we didn’t start building new problems. We didn’t run into any big issues in the design and assembly stages and were able to make pretty good time on the project.

Originally, me and the guys were all just gonna go together and space the planting of all three spikes out over a few days. Make a proper hiking trip out of it, drag along some nice blankets and sandwiches for picnics. You know the works. Command had other ideas though and slapped us in three separate combat units so we could deliver them all at once. They said something about us needing, and I quote, “protection” and “oversight”. I got assigned to a dude by the name of Johnson. Bit of a stick in the mud about procedure and general sightseeing but nice enough that I didn't have any real complaints. My heart absolutely goes out to Danny though because he got stuck with the officer whose name I’m forgetting but is in charge of running PT. Poor bastard probably had to do lunges to his site.

Anyways, we grabbed some rations, slapped on our hiking boots, and then set out into the wondrous unknown. A very “nice” 5 hours of intermittent hiking later and we got to where we currently are. The trip was kinda boring honestly, consisting of us hiking past the same 50 trees copy pasted along our trail and me calling for breaks to double check the weather spike to make sure it didn’t decide to break on us. Fun fact, anything you built will gladly stop working the second you take your eyes off it. Vigilance is key for projects like this or… was anyways. Spike’s broken now. Suppose in a round about way of thinking, I did take my eyes off it and it is broken now. Hmm…

Well, I guess the only thing left in the trip to talk about is the fight. I think the first sign things were wrong was the fact that all my stuff stopped being able to talk to home base. My datapad has a 50 some odd mile connection range and should be good about staying connected. While I was trying to figure out the whys of that, our guns started misfiring. I’ve a sneaking suspicion the two are related but I’d need to get home before I could test anything properly. Regardless, the fire fight broke out pretty quickly after and I got ragdolled by a blast. Frankly, it's no small miracle I escaped with as few injuries as I did. I think the weather spike may have taken the brunt of the blow.

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All that brings us to the now with me standing in the middle of the forest at… 9:46 in the morning if my datapad isn’t lying. Date time tells me I was out for about a day and a half so someone should be coming by to get me soon. Now, you might be saying to yourself, “Hey Henry, didn’t you plan out this trip? How come you can’t get back on your own” and to that I’d respond that you’re right and I probably should but still can’t. The original plan was for us engineers to use our datapads to keep track of our location but mine isn’t telling me anything helpful right now. The exactities of where I am are an enigma known only to the people back at the base, the dead xythalaxn with the glossy eyes over the hill from me, and the birds that keep screaming their songs and unfortunately none of them are talkin’ right now. Well, the birds are talking but they aren’t saying anything actually helpful. All this to say, here I shall stay until someone comes to take me away!

Ha, that rhymes.

Engineer’s Audio Log Day 1.5

It’s now a bit past noon and nobody has shown up yet. My datapad still won’t connect, I’m currently maybe mmmh… maybe 90% of the way through my water, and have a grand total of 1 protein bar for food. If they don’t show up by this evening, my best bet is probably to scavenge my escort for supplies and try making my way back home best I can. I’ve not gone through the dead folk’s pockets yet as it kinda felt disrespectful and a little bit icky but I’m not particularly keen on dying out in the forest.

In the time since my last recording, I’ve gotten a bit more familiar with my surroundings. Fortunately, it was pretty easy considering the land around me is all fucking foresty hills. Seeing miles of the same over and over really has given me helpful information that I can surely itemize.

Surely.

I really hope someone shows up soon because I’m not particularly keen on trying my hand at putting the wilderness survival training course I took into practice. I would have paid much closer attention during training if I’d realized it would become relevant so soon.

First things first, I should probably start putting a plan together for shelter tonight. If nobody shows up I’m gonna be sleeping under the stars again before heading out tomorrow. I’m a bit concerned about rain given the ominous clouds from when we were marching out but right now they seem to have cleared up. Can’t hurt to try and set up shelter regardless but I reckon I’m probably fine so long as I have something thrown together by tonight. Fortunately, the weather is pretty mild in this area. From my understanding, that’s why we actually chose the area when we were deciding where to land and set up shop. Nice weather tends to give you a bit more leeway with getting the crop situation started.

I’m getting sidetracked but shelter should be something I can manage pretty easily in the short term. Worst case, I can use our rifles to blow some branches off the trees and use any scavenged materials to add a covering to it. Actually, I may be able to use the xythalaxn’s stuff to start a fire. The stuff they fired at us earlier had plenty of “zest” aka explosive power to say the very least. All this may sound a bit excessive for starting a simple campfire but to quote my esteemed colleagues of the engineering school, “There is no kill like overkill!” and if I use a thermo detonator to start my fire who’s really around to stop me.

That should take care of tonight but the next issue, water, is going to be a bit harder to deal with. The route we took didn’t have us crossing any streams or rivers but to be fair, we did specifically aim to avoid them for obvious weather spike related reasons. I think we veered east a bit to avoid a river? Maybe? I’m not super sure and I’m not very keen on betting my life on it.

Putting aside the water issue for now, food isn’t an immediate issue but a very permanent one. The wildlife on the planet isn’t edible and I’ll have to get back to base if I want to be able to eat. I know this because way back when we landed one of the security guys tried to cook up one of the local rabbit equivalents. Poor man ended up bedridden for a few days after that stunt leaking unmentionables out of both ends. Command called us all in for a formal meeting the next day to issue a formal warning about eating the wildlife as if any of us had missed the sounds of violent sickness. The bio team said it was something to do with the protein composition of the local critters. Regardless, food will be a hard deadline for me getting back to base.

I guess the plan is that I scavenge what I can, head a bit more west than south, and hope I find a river if I can’t find the base?

Yeah, that sounds workable.

Engineer’s Audio Log Day 1.6

A quick little recording since I ended the last one but the compass on my datapad is dancing like it can hear a mariachi band. I managed to scavenge a decent bit of water and a few more protein bars so I may try and wait an extra day for help and or my datapad to sort itself out since it seems like I have the time.

Engineer’s Audio Log Day 1.7

It’s now late evening and I have some good news and bad news. Bad news, I’m not the only thing alive in the area. My fellow inhabitant is a very big, scary, and quiet predator that looks like a witch mixed a pillbug with a panther and then proceeded to hit it with the ugly stick until it stopped moving. Just thinking about it gives me all sorts of goosebumps.

I had been trying to see if I could get one of the datapads I scavenged to start working when the thought struck me to check and see if the xythalaxn had any tools. I’d already stolen his gun but had initially ignored his backpack. His pack had been ribbons given the nature of his wound and I’d ignored it on my first round. I wasn’t expecting anything useful but boredom and frustration have the ability to make a person want to double check things.

When I returned though, his body was gone. I’d like to say I realized something was wrong immediately but I figured I had just gone to the wrong area. It wasn’t until I heard some crunching coming from one of the nearby trees that I saw the horrendous creature. I made the decision any sane man would. I mag dump the xythalaxn weapon into the tree haphazardly and legged it in the opposite direction.

So the good news is that I’m now hopefully much closer to the base and have found a river.