I awoke, lying in an uncomfortable position on something hard and metallic. There was a nasty ringing in my ears as I heard knocks, blows and steps. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed people walking by me.
The clatter of boots, the screams of people, a siren’s shriek. My eyes readjusted and I blinked slightly, seeing a flashing light in an unknown room.
Where am I?
A man with a dishevelled dark-blue uniform ran past me with panic on his face, and then after him another one, and another. Their startled eyes told a story of how they were in a rush to get somewhere. I didn’t understand what was happening; my head hurt and spun as if I had hit it somewhere.
I suddenly felt someone inject something into my shoulder, after which my mind began to clear as I regained my sense of self, yet I still had no understanding of what was happening. I was too weak to ask any questions.
“Staff Sergeant!” A man’s voice called out somewhere to my left. Turning my head, I saw a man with pale skin, wearing a medical uniform that was stained with blood. His face was panicked as he put a palm on my shoulder. “Are you alright? You seem to be…”
His eyes turned from me to a device he held in his hand as he used it to seemingly check my health.
“No physical injuries,” he recited, “just a small concussion and chance of amnesia. Great. You’ll live, now stand up and help me.”
“What…” I said with incomprehension, still not knowing where everyone around me was rushing off to.
It seemed as though my throat decided to dry up at that moment, and so I coughed. The medic patted me on the back and helped me get on my feet, which made my head swim and see spots in my vision.
“What’s happening?” I asked while I was trying to steady myself.
“The shuttle crashed,” the medic replied cooly, picking up a scanner and first aid kit. “Many are dead or wounded, and I need your help.”
At this moment I started to look around, though it was still hard to do so, and slowly began to process the situation I was in. I was standing in a vast hall, lined with metal plates for walls, the ceiling of which was damaged as wires and other assorted devices hung from it.
I didn’t immediately realise that I was somewhere in the troop landing bay; all the seats were smashed, dozens of bodies laid on the floor, some bleeding out, some already dead. Some soldiers with dark blue uniforms cleared out the rubble, taking out the crewmembers who had died, while others helped the wounded who were bleeding out on the floor.
As I shook off the dizziness, I realised that the floor I was standing on seemed uneven. Then I remembered where the nose of the shuttle was, I was looking right at it. It seemed to be pointed down.
The next moment, another voice, one more familiar, yet still unknown, bellowed out, “Attention! Depressurising! Everyone, put on your breathing masks!”
A soldier with a bloodied face came from somewhere and began handing us masks, after whom a girl ran, handing us the assorted filters.
“We don’t know if the environment outside is breathable, so put them on, quickly!” someone shouted in a commanding tone and, looking back, I saw an officer, judging by the ‘1+’ on his shoulder straps. “We must first help the survivors! Don’t let them die in the ass-end of nowhere!”
While the lieutenant was shouting, I affixed my mask, just like everyone else had, and followed the medic into a different compartment. Rubble was everywhere. Wires, fittings, and metal plates all stuck out at the wrong angles. The lighting in some of the shuttle’s compartments had failed, plunging many rooms into absolute darkness.
Most of the equipment that had been salvaged from the ship was smashed into bits and pieces and it wouldn’t likely be useful, even as salvage. But even worse was the sight of dead bodies that littered the floor. There were many, too many, and it looked like hell on earth.
I knew that the shuttle could carry up to five hundred people and seeing the bodies made me think that most of us had already died. I felt uneasy. The medic, meanwhile went through a broken door into the next room, turning on the flashlight attached to his head, finding a wounded crew member who was pinned between a fallen piece of the ceiling and the floor. He was conscious and surprisingly calm, not batting an eye at the fact his life was in danger.
“Why are there only the two of you?” the wounded man grumbled as soon as he noticed us. Only his arms were visible, the other half of his was body likely crushed, beyond saving. His hopeless situation, however, did not deter his dissatisfaction that only two rescuers were coming to help him.
“Give me my tablet, I’ll get out myself!” shouted the man to the medic.
Scanning the wounded man, the medic responded indifferently, “The airlock to the compartment with the droids isn’t opening, so until we can get a plasma cutter to open it, you aren’t going anywhere.”
“Fuck!” the wounded man spat. “And what do you think I should do? Lie here and drop dead?”
“Hey!” I heard a woman’s voice from somewhere behind the rubble. “Do you need a cutter? I can hand one over!”
“How?” I asked, looking over the wreckage. It would be impossible to pull apart, much less squeeze anything through it.
“The airlock at the stern, in the landing bay, can open, and there’s a hole in the hull here. I can give it to you outside,” said the woman.
“Great,” the doctor answered, turning to me. “Staff Sergeant, go to the landing bay and open the airlock, get the cutter and take it to the engineers, tell them what to do. They’ll figure it out.
“Order acknowledged and received!” I answered automatically and ran to the stern of the shuttle.
But who is he, anyway? I thought, trying to remember anything, anyone, yet all I got were vague impressions.
Passing through a few compartments where chaos reigned supreme, I found myself in the aft compartment, where four soldiers stood, rifles at the ready. The four were without helmets and had flashlights on the muzzles of their rifles. Upon seeing me, they all stood at attention and saluted me, placing their right palms to their temples. I didn’t expect such a reaction on their part. One of them spoke to me.
“Staff Sergeant, it is good that you are alright. What are your orders?”
I quickly explained to them what we needed to do, despite not remembering any of their names, “We need to open the airlock. The fifth compartment has collapsed and a soldier behind the rubble has a cutter. We need it to open the airlock to the droid compartment. We need to meet them outside and get the cutter. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir!” the soldiers said in unison and I could only nod.
“Then get started.”
“Yes, sir!” they responded as they moved away. One of them approached the control panel on the wall and began to work his magic, after which the airlock opened and the ramp lowered – or, rather, fell. What we saw next stunned us all.
The shuttle was filled with the sound of fierce winds and a monstrous downpour. A lush, dense jungle appeared before my eyes, covered in the hurricane’s rain, and in the distance, there was a whole path of fallen trees, almost in the shape of a welcoming arch. Further away was only an impenetrable grey fog. Black clouds constantly let loose lightning.
If it wasn’t for the glare behind the clouds, I would have thought it night. Thunder rumbled as the rain flooded whole sections of the forest, turning the earth into brown rivers of mud. Though we were on another planet, its gravity seemed to be similar to Earth’s, as was the atmospheric pressure and composition.
Stolen story; please report.
Just in case, we all checked our masks to make sure there were no leaks. Everything seemed fine. Still, catching an alien disease in these conditions would be easy, so we took a big risk when we ventured out onto the ramp. The four soldiers pointed their rifles forward out of habit, their light illuminating the puddles outside.
After a brief look, one of them responded, “Clear!”
I grabbed a gun, holding it in my right hand. It felt almost natural, giving me a sense of security and calmness. Despite the feeling, I still felt naked without a combat spacesuit. Venturing into unknown territory without reliable protection gave me a feeling of helplessness, as if I were a small child going down into the basement for the first time.
Having examined the area, and with the rain not letting up, I gave an order to the four soldiers.
“Let’s go.”
The four soldiers, the names of whom I still couldn’t recall, came out, sinking knee-deep into the mud, and I followed them, even as my legs screamed in pain about the ice-cold mixture of dirt and water.
We didn’t stick around for long, wading through to the left side of the crashed shuttle, trying to find the woman who had promised to hand over a plasma cutter. The left side of the shuttle had been fully enveloped by trees, the boosters severely damaged. The trees were too thick to see through.
I decided to go to the other side, and the picture painted wasn’t pretty, either. But then I heard it: a faint voice from the distance.
“I’m here!” The woman’s voice was heard. “Come on!”
I walked, climbing the roots of massive trees until, at last, a girl with coal-black skin crawled out of the bushes. She, too, had a see-through breathing mask on her face and was wearing an orange naval engineer’s uniform. Her black hair was neatly hidden under a helmet.
“Here it is.” She handed me the device with an ‘F’ shape, the plasma cutter I was looking for. She then pressed her hands to her belt and began to examine the weather while looking around. “It’s pouring. You wouldn’t get such weather on Alsis.”
“On Alsis?” I didn’t understand, hearing a familiar word, but not quite being able to remember what she was talking about.
“We know,” said one of the soldiers behind me, “You wouldn’t get such weather even on Mars.”
“You have rain on Mars?” another fighter asked.
“Yeah, just not acidic ones,” commented a man in a dark blue uniform who had appeared behind the girl. He held a scanner in his hands, and I noticed in a panic that he wasn’t wearing a mask. He waved our concerns away. “The atmosphere itself is breathable, but the precipitation is anomalous. The rain’s full of toxins. You’ll be fine if you get wet, but do not consume it.”
He fixed us with a stare. “The toxic sediments don’t affect the skin, but if it gets inside of you, climb into your coffin.”
“Shit! Well, I don’t want to take any more risks! Let’s go!” said one of my soldiers. We all retreated to the airlock. I found the engineer and handed him the hard-earned plasma cutter. Seconds ticked by as the engineer cut away at the debris, until, at last, the airlock fell with a loud clang. The droid compartment was open.
“Done! Activate the droids,” said the engineer to his helmet, after which the machines began to awaken. Droids of all types emerged, from the more humanoid to completely alien-like appearance. The machines were simple, capable only of obeying direct commands from an operator.
Upon hearing the command, a dozen droids went to the damaged compartments and began to remove the debris. A few of them detoured to the medics inside. I, in turn, returned to the compartment where the first man I saw lay, a drone operator, judging by the uniform that I could see in the newly-lit area. The droids were doing a fine job.
“Help me!” Shouted the medic and, grabbing the wounded man by the arms, pulled him out. It didn’t look good; the lower half of his body turned into a pulp, completely mangled. I didn’t know if he would make it, much less walk, as his stomach was reduced to a bloodied sack. He grunted as the medic injected painkillers, and I didn’t dare interfere.
Having averted a major disaster, I decided to try my luck at remembering again. I sat down on a fallen-down beam and concentrated. Soon, something prodded at my mind.
So, we were flying to Kanasis, no, from Kanasis, but we fell out of subspace into a random star system, managed to fly straight through a gas giant’s atmosphere, and then survived the inevitable overload, cruising to a habitable planet for weeks. Except an accident happened in orbit, the crew evacuated to the available shuttles and then, then…
Nothing. All I got for my efforts in trying to remember further was a painful headache.
“...shit! It’s as if I’m without legs!” The droid operator grumbled as he was examined by the medic.
“You’re not without legs, per se, you just can’t feel them yet,” the doctor said, rolling his eyes.
“What’s the difference? I still can’t use them,” the operator grumbled, more subdued this time, as he controlled the droids using his tablet.
I spent the next hour helping the injured crewmates as best I could. The droids cleared away the rubble, the engineers repaired what they could, and everyone else helped everyone else as best they could. Then, an airborne IFV pilot came running to us with unpleasant news.
“There’s an emergency! The batteries are fucked beyond recognition!
“What?” I muttered to myself. “But we won’t be able to take off without them.”
“Yes, and without the fuel, too!” said somebody else. “We still have backup power, but that’s only enough for half a day. Of course, we could attempt to make a bio-generator out of the salvage, but don’t expect it to work miracles.
We managed to gather the survivors into one compartment, sixty-one people, including me. The wounded wounded were transported to another compartment. A man with the rank of lieutenant, judging by the shoulder straps, gathered himself and spoke.
“So, our shuttle fell behind the rest of the group and crashed here, in this jungle, and we don’t even know what caused it.”
The lieutenant's voice became gloomy as his eyes hardened. “439 people died, including First Lieutenant Muhammed and Lieutenants Kazansky and Yuan. As there are no superior officers left, I am taking command of our regiment. Everyone understand?
“Yes, sir!” We all sang out in unison.
The lieutenant nodded. “Is there a Staff Sergeant Kiptio here?”
Wait… Kipito? That sounds familiar – wait, that’s, me!
I stepped forward. “I’m here! Staff Sergeant Boris Kipito on the spot!”
“Staff Sergeant Kipito, you are being promoted to the rank of Junior Lieutenant for an indefinite period, and platoon C1-2-2D4 will come under your leadership. Objections?”
“No, sir!”
The lieutenant hummed. “Alright, next one…”
And that was when I stopped listening. Ten years of service in the Republican Armed Forces of Humanity and I finally got that promotion, albeit under such tragic circumstances. After finally regrouping the command staff, the lieutenant finally gave us orders.
“Junior lieutenants, gather in the third compartment. We will discuss the situation there. The rest of you, gather your things and secure the perimeter. Everyone understand?”
“Yes, sir!” We all replied in unison.
“Great! Get to it!” The lieutenant ordered. I headed with two other junior lieutenants to the third compartment, which I saw was covered in blood, while the fourth compartment, just barely in sight, held dozens of body bags.
A humanoid tactical droid stood next to the lieutenant and displayed a holographic spherical map in its ‘hand’ while the superior officer addressed our group.
“The main group of shuttles landed about here…” The lieutenant said, gesturing towards the map that showed two red dots, the site of our crash and the landing sight of our main group. “Six thousand kilometres away, give or take.”
An enormous distance I thought to myself, slightly tilting my head to capture the reactions of my colleagues. Their faces mirrored mine.
“But it wasn’t just our shuttle that crashed. Two more cargo shuttles crashed here–” The map whirled as a completely different region was displayed, “–and here. Their condition is unknown.”
Fixing us with a stare, he continued as the map once again changed, “And a cruiser crashed here. One can only imagine the destruction the ship caused to that side of the planet. The damage would be comparable to a medium-scale asteroid hitting.”
The map altered itself once again. The presumed location of the cruiser, the ‘Zeus’, was marked in red. The yellow surrounding it was likely the most damaged area, while the green was less so. The results were not pretty.
In total, the ship’s crash affected 30% of the planet’s surface. I could only imagine what hell we had inadvertently inflicted on the impact zone. The crash of a huge ship, carrying nearly two hundred thousand people would not have any positive effects on the local ecosystem.
If there were any intelligent civilisations here, the crash of the ship would greatly alter their course, for better or worse, as long as they survived.
“Our current objective is to regroup with the 127th Army.” The lieutenant once again made himself known. We have lost all communication with our general staff. Though the atmosphere is breathable, I doubt this alien ecosystem would sate our hunger, we could starve.”
The lieutenant shook his head, looking at the floor. “Therefore, we will only use our rations and religiously filter the water. We would get to our destination using the surviving IFVs, but there is one problem…”
“The forests,” guessed one of the junior lieutenants beside me, crossing his arms. “We won’t be able to use them on the ground effectively, and if we switch to air mode, we’d use up all our fuel.”
The lieutenant nodded in agreement. “That’s right, so we’ll go about doing this in a slightly, let’s say lazier way.”
The holographic image changed and the droid showed the area where we were, a dense jungle with incessant rain and a long trail of bent and broken trees, courtesy of our shuttle.
“We will have to temporarily settle here and restore contact with headquarters, then send a signal for help. A rescue shuttle will come, eventually, though it would take some serious work to repair our relays. Any objections?”
Nobody answered.
“That means everyone is in agreement.” Said the lieutenant, taking a deep breath and wiping the sweat off of his forehead. “We’re in deep trouble now, boys.”
All in all, I agreed. All we could do was settle, restore communications and wait for the rescue, if we even could restore communications.
Our satellites didn’t orbit this mysterious planet, and the system in general had no one to occupy it. We were running out of energy, which would be used up by the end of the day, and we only had enough rations for a month. And if there was any dangerous flora and fauna, then we would have to expend our already precious supply of ammunition.
I just hoped that nothing would befall us, that we wouldn’t get into any kind of skirmish or conflict, that we all would survive this nightmare. I just hoped.