When the captain came to and his eyes finally found focus he saw something out of the cockpit windows that he’d never seen before, trees. Sure, they’d landed on plenty of remote planets and seen trees in the distance or they’d looked down and seen scorched trees where the Honshu had landed but never had he seen branches and leaves directly outside the window, pressing up against the transparent titanium to be precise.
Light filtered in through those branches and it was the only thing that illuminated the cockpit. All of the lights were off. The ship automatically cut cockpit lighting whenever natural surface lighting was detected but he couldn’t help but wonder if it was something else. Were the batteries completely dead? The hum of the ventilation system wasn’t there and that was not a good sign. Even when set down on a world with breathable air the fans should at least be active, drawing in fresh air from outside.
“Faust, you still with me?” despite how weak he felt the words sounded loud in the deathly quiet cockpit. He heard something stirring from the direction of the pilot’s chair but couldn’t see Emily.
“Faust?”
“Captain? What happened?”
“You crashed my ship is what happened.”
Faust responded with a laugh that quickly turned into a cough.
“You okay up there Faust?”
“I don’t think anything is broken sir, I’ll be okay when I catch my head.”
“Any idea on our status?”
He could hear slim fingers tap away at her controls but just as he’d expected they were non-functional.
“Everything is dead sir.”
The pilot tried to stand up but instantly slid back into her seat and hit it with a thud hard enough to cause a large puff of dust to rise up from it, clearly visible in the rays of light coming through the tree tops. A moment later the captain heard her grunt loudly, she’d managed to jump from her seat to some of the controls near the front of the cockpit and grab on. The ship was sitting at roughly a 30 degree angle and artificial gravity was offline so trying to get a look out of the window was easier said than done.
“Just looks like forest sir, as far as I can see.”
The captain, still pinned against the wall at the back of the cockpit, grunted his displeasure.
“What about you? Everything still in place?”
“I definitely feel like I’ve had a rough few days but I’ll live.” he tried to get himself righted but slipped and banged into the floor. “We’d better go find Ansul and see where we stand as far as the ship is concerned.”
Pilot Faust agreed and after an extremely awkward few minutes spent trying to orient themselves the two officers were finally able to make it to the access tube which of course provided its own rather unique set of challenges with the ship being at such an odd angle. It took some doing but eventually they were able to scramble down the tube and found Ansul on deck five, just outside of the drive room.
“What the hell were you thinking?” the Martian asked his captain rather frankly. as he and Faust kneeled down to check on him.
“Ansul it was either activate the NC inside of the Crux and take our chances or get incinerated by the Prometheus’ vulcan cannon.”
Ansul shook his head. “I see your point. Well, I take it by the enormous impact and the fact that we’re laying on our side that we didn’t get shot out into the void.”
“No we’re somewhere with stars. I took a reading before we crashed but the ship’s data-tapes couldn’t get a fix on our position.” the pilot said.
“For all we know we could have been shot so far that we’re in Andromeda to be honest with you. We really don’t know.” Captain Tarsik admitted.
“Well, at least we’re not in the void.” Ansul said. “Why did we crash though?”
Faust immediately jumped to her own defense. “When we came out of NC-space we were deep in the gravity well of whatever planet this is and our vector was all wrong for escape. I could have tried to break orbit but we might have not had enough power. Either that or we would have escaped but then been adrift with next to no battery reserve to keep us alive.”
“Core flamed out?”
“Yep, and we were at 28% battery power when we came out of NC.”
“That’s really strange,” the Martian commented, “even if the core flamed out we still should have been at full battery reserve.”
“I can’t explain it either Ansul.” Pilot Faust confessed.
“Regardless,” Tarsik started, “the situation is that we’re now crashed on a planet in some unknown region of space with no, or virtually no, battery power remaining. We have no way to restart the core and even if we did we’re laying at such a strange angle I’m not sure we’d even be able to lift. That’s assuming the engines are even still there.” the captain would never be pessimistic in front of auxiliary crewmen but these two were his closest friends and to be fair he was in a truly crummy mood. He looked over at Faust, “I told you that we had too much lateral coming down. Why didn’t you listen to me?”
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“If it hadn’t been for that lateral movement we would have impacted at five times the speed we did and none of us would be alive to be discussing this Captain.”
Both of them immediately caught themselves and broke off the argument. It wasn’t going to help their situation any if they started bickering.
“Let’s get down to the loading bay and break-seal, see what’s out there. If we’re incredibly lucky there will be some kind of technological civilization on this planet. Regardless we need to know where we are and what resources we have at our disposal. After that we get everyone to work on repairs, we’ll sort the power issue out when that time comes.”
“The emergency lights are still working,” Faust pointed to the glowing orange sconces on the wall, “so we must still have at least some power.”
“Emergency lights run off of their own battery backups.” Ansul stated.
“Oh.” Emily said disappointedly.
Just then Junior Pilot Herschel and the doctor came around the corner. Perhaps fell around the corner was a better description. The captain reached out and grabbed both of them, preventing them from slipping further down the corridor.
“Thanks Captain, that could have been very unpleasant.” the doctor remarked. “What happened?”
“We had to hit NC inside the Crux, we got thrown somewhere and now we’ve crashed.”
“The crashing part we’d already deduced Captain.” the doctor meant no disrespect by his tone, he simply spoke his mind, “Exactly how one crashes in the middle of the Crux was what had Herschel and I confused. Any idea where we are?”
“We don’t know, some unknown planet in some sector of space we can’t identify.”
“Glad to see you’re not charcoal Herschel.” Faust smiled at the junior pilot.
“Why would he be charcoal?” the captain asked Faust with a questioning look.
“Oh…remember me saying that we’d rerouted power from the Mark IX?”
“Yes I do remember that, and that’s why we ended up having to activate the NC inside of the Crux and why we’re now sideways on an alien planet.” his directness clearly indicated that he wanted answers.
Trying to redirect the captain’s anger away from the pilot Herschel spoke up, “We diverted power to the old TAP device and used it to overload the tower and generate the environment field so you could escape.”
Captain Tarsik ruffled his brow in confusion. “No. Crewman Jones blew out the relays and that’s what activated the tower.”
“Negative sir,” Faust spoke again, “the tower lit up before we detected any explosion.”
Tarsik thought about it for a moment, “Well in that case I suppose Ansul, Jones and I owe you our lives. Commendations are in order should we ever get off this rock. I expect you’ll get my big gun back online ASAP though?”
“Oh absolutely sir.” Herschel said as he came to attention as best as he could on the slanted floor.
“The sentry gun!” Ansul interjected, “Jones’ bomb must have deactivated the sentry gun. That was lucky.”
The captain patted his old friend on the shoulder. “Of that I have no doubt. Let’s see if luck holds out a little longer though. Let’s break-seal and see if there’s any help out there.”
Faust and the captain helped Ansul to his feet and the five colleagues made their way to the now-treacherous access tube. As they descended through the bowels of the ship the occasional crewman would pop his head in and ask what was going on. Each time they simply instructed the crewman to follow them down to the loading bay. Upon arriving they found Crewman Jones already suited up and waiting for them. A couple of other crewmen from the lower levels of the ship had also joined him and were digging through lockers prepping to break-seal as well. The first thing the captain went for was the trusty spiral-ray pistol that he’d felt so incomplete without while aboard Aeolus Station. Actually getting to the equipment lockers was quite a challenge in the ship’s current situation but being accustomed to adversity they all managed eventually.
In total 15 souls stood by as Jones took the initiative and hit the switch that opened one of the loading ramps. The large door opened slowly and several small trees underneath could be heard snapping as the force of its hydraulics smashed them into the ground with many tons of force. Everything looked just as it had from the cockpit, lots of green vegetation, very dense. Because of the way the ship was perched the door could only open a fraction of its normal range. Still, it was enough for everyone to walk through if they bent a little to clear their heads. The ramp was at a strange tilt that made it difficult to descend so they had to help each down.
Faust had carried a scanner with her. She held the boxy device in her right hand and waved it around as she fiddled with some of its settings.
“Good news is that there is nothing toxic in the atmosphere and the life forms within scanning range all seem to be bio-compatible. So there’s air and food here.”
“Bad news Faust, give me the bad news.” Tarsik said as his eyes scanned the forest. There could be any number of dangerous creatures, intelligent or otherwise, watching them from behind any one of those trees.
Emily’s face scrunched into a concerned little frown, “The bad news is that I’m not picking up anything in the atmosphere that would signify industrialization. No large electromagnetic signals either. I don’t think there’s anybody here that can help us Captain.”
Of course given the choice between a pristine world fully capable of supporting life and being marooned in the void to slowly starve and suffocate this planet was the ideal choice, but Tarsik was a spacer, he had no interest in a planet-bound life and he was certain that most of his crew didn’t either. While it was a relief to know that at least basic survival was possible for the time being he tried to put the thought of being stuck here forever out of his mind.
“Ansul you take Riley and Tsankov. Inspect the outside of the ship to see what kind of damage we’ve sustained.”
Barely had he finished his sentence when a rumbling became audible through the brush, some place off in the distance. The hair on all of their necks began to stand up and the sound closed in on them, fast. Bird-like creatures who had only just returned to their nests took wing once again from the tops of the trees around them and the captain reached for his sidearm. Everyone froze, most with their weapons at the ready. The intensity of the rustling plant life seemed to diminish as it got closer and then when they were certain that whatever was making the racket was within 20 meters of them it suddenly stopped. They all looked at it each other questioningly but a low and deep growl instantly turned their attention back to the forest. Without warning a figure stepped from the brush. Standing there as large as life before them was none other than a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
The captain locked eyes with the beast, “Oh you have got to be shitting me!”