Gabe shot up from the position in the chair, He started to cough which turned into violent gagging. His eyes began to water, every breath he took was painful. In a short amount of time his eyes began to adjust to the darkness.

Fires started almost around the room, the ceiling could not be seen as smoke covered it. Gabe got up from the chair but immediately fell to his knees. His vision began to turn hazy from the amount lack of oxygen.

The air filtration system kicked on. The smoke was sucked downward into the vents located on the sides of the rooms.

“Good evening, Gabe”

Gabe continued to cough in spurts as his lungs cleared up.

“Couldn’t you...Have done that...Sooner?” He was using the armrest of the chair to hold himself up.

“I could not, My systems are still on limited power. I prioritized your safety once I was able to.”

Now completely standing and coughing only moderately, Gabe took out his blaster and aimed it at the window. The view had become completely dark, It was unlikely the bridge was buried since the stars could be observed from the deck.

“Wait!” The intelligence made a sudden outburst.

Gabe closed one eye and aimed down the sights of his blaster. “I’m sure broken glass is the least of yo-”

“Can...Can you take me with you?” V.V.A interrupted Gabe’s reasoning.

Gabe dropped his arm to the side in confusion. “Why?”

“I’ve spent three-hundred-seventy-five years without activity, without interaction, without…”

“You’re lonely.”

The artificial intelligence was silent for a moment. “Yes...I was lonely.”

“I didn’t think a computer would have a sense of sociability.”

“I was created to adapt and keep the crew happy.”

Gabe wasn’t sure whether or not he was feeling pity or empathy with this computer. Beneath the surface, they were both practically one and the same, lost in a time in alien worlds. But the AI did try to kill his new friends. Gabe’s feelings were really conflicting.

“...” Gabe hesitated with his answer. “...Okay.”

“Thank you.” The robotic voice felt as though there was a tinge of emotion to it. “I will lead you to me.”

The elevator door unlocked and swished open. The light above flickered to life but quickly died due to the power restrictions.

Gabe assumed this was how he was being led. He entered the elevator, the door closed behind him. The elevator began to move downward without the buttons being touched. The ride was much longer than that when he first came up.

The lift eventually came to a stop and released its doors. The corridor he was now going down was less friendly and more maintenance heavy. The walls had instead of being flat metal were pipes of varying sizes. In between the gaps were cables.

The maintenance lights on the floor strobed going straight to an intersection and turned right. He followed. Every now and then the pipes would blow excess steam possible to alleviate the heat from the crash.

Eventually he came to a metal door. There was no marking, no designs. Just a bland, grey door. The door unlocked itself and raised upward.

He was rewarded with a minimalistic circular room. Wires were virtually everywhere.

“So this is you?” He walked all around the room. Looking at the computer chip that was V.V.A.

“Yes, Please be careful when you remove me.”

He placed a hand on the potato chip sized chip and pulled upward. The chip came out without much resistance. V.V.A was now in his palm at his mercy. He stuffed the chip in his pocket, he’ll figure out what to do with later.

“Okay…” He looked around, finishing this minor quest made him feel like something grand was suppose to happen, but nothing did. Guess he’d go with his original plan and leave.

He retraced all of his steps to the elevator. Instead of going to shoot out the glass he went to the airlock like a normal person.

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This time the door didn’t need to pressurize this time so the mechanism worked almost instantly. Gabe looked down at the 4 meter drop. The way the ship landed it had left the nose slightly on an angle. The ground was dirt or rocky but sand, great. Gabe was facing against his hardest enemy yet.

He took a few steps back and launched himself off the edge. Before he made contact with the ground he tucked his body inward and rolled. The sand caused his recovery to shift in balance landing him on his back.

“Haaah.” He let out a sand as his entire body was now covered in sand. He walked away from the wreckage to get an accurate description of the damage. Fires had sprouted from almost every vent that allowed for the ship to disperse heat.

Even if he was going to use the ship as a makeshift shelter he’d have to find a way to extinguish the flames. But first he’d have to find a source of water, which seemed like a rarity on this planet. So he abandoned any hope of salvaging the ship and let it burn.

“Alright.” He was now standing. He pointed north “Eenie” He pointed Northwest “Meenie” He moved to point towards West “Minie” He stopped in direction of southwest. “That way.” He began his journey into the night of the desert.

When morning finally came Gabe had been walking for hours. The twin suns were high above, sweat beaded down his face. He dragged his feet in exhaustion.

He had been walking shirtless with his shirt wrapped around his head to keep his sweat from his eyes.

His expression was that of a zombie, his eyes baggy, his lips dry and his legs burned from the constantly shifting sands.

“Waaaaateeerrr” He groaned and dropped to his knees.

In all honesty, he should have searched the ship for water, sure it would’ve been three hundred year old water, but at least he’d die faster from drinking that then he would having his bones bleached in the scorching heat.

He dropped to his stomach as he laid there he wondered if the girls were looking for him. It was probably unlikely, after all he hasn’t exactly proved he was any more useful than just knowing how to use his environments.

Before he closed his eyes to resign to his fate, he saw a small reservoir of water. He pushed himself off the ground to get a better look, It was probably another mirage. The first time he thought he saw a thorny plant start dancing.

He fixed his positioning and rubbed his eyes. The image stayed constant to what he perceived. His self preservations kicked in, he didn’t even remember how he was standing or how he was sprinting to the small lake.

The closer he got, the more sure he got that it was a legitimate source. When he reached it he was one hundred percent sure he wasn’t going to start drinking sand.

He stepped into the ankle high pool, he bent down to scoop some water into his mouth. The cooling liquid wet his dry tongue, refreshed his dry lips and quenched his thirst.

“Aaaah.” He sighed cupping the water in his hands letting it waterfall over his head. For some reason the water started to bubble and vibrate. But he hadn’t noticed from his splashes.

Then he remembered that he had a V.V.A in his pocket he stepped back into the blistering hot sand. He reached into his pocket. As he was looking downward he noticed that the water had overflowed onto the sand as it rushed past his feet.

The pond collapsed into itself and a 5-meter yellow-horned pillar was erected in its spot.

“Wha-” Gabe wasn’t able to finish the sentence before the yellow pillar began to fall in his direction, doing a quick run to the left he was able to narrowly dodge the impact. The pillar then began to burrow itself into the sand, disappearing from site.

The ground began to tremble all around him. He pulled his blaster out from the holster and shot into the ground. The sandworm roared and the trembling dissipated.

He sighed point at the ground in all directions. “That was a little too e-” series of dust clouds started to shoot out from the ground almost 10 meters away. He shot in the direction of one of them. The sand that was currently being pushed away simply moved to the side and missed the laser.

“Oh boy.” The best thing to do now became obvious, he tried to take off and run. His clothes had been wet causing them to become heavier, the sand was still sand so it was safe to say, Gabe was fucked.

He turned back around to face the speeding dust spewing monsters. He fired so more ineffective shots. The worms were dangerously close at this point. Gabe’s fate had been sealed...if it weren't for the three levitating sand vehicles that formed around him. One of them actually managed to ram the nose into one of the worms. It squealed and pulled out.

The remaining worms burst from the ground. One went airborne in an arch over the vehicles and harmlessly landed on the other side. The other emerged just underneath catching the vehicle in its maw. Chunks of metal flew from the sides as the sand boat was crushed from the middle. Bodies fell down and landed in the sand.

The two other sand boats fired harpoons that had been attached to rope. The spear penetrated deep into the creature, purple blood oozed from the wounds.

Gabe looked down at the body that had fallen close to him. The person had looked quite humanoid except they had a long scaly tail that thinned out the closer it got to the tip. They also had quite leathery looking hands that looked more like claws.

The armor wasn’t exactly high-tech, sand colored leather vests, tight black pants and a helmet that segmented itself the more it went downward.

The boats fired another two harpoons into the worm, then began to pull back into both of the machines. The entire upper half of the worm was now suspended leaving it only to thrash about in an attempt to escape.

The boats released its passengers who threw spears and shot arrows into the worm until it died. The aliens cheered in their victory. Bows were held high in the air, spears were pointed to the sky.

Then one of them started to walk towards him. Their armor was decorated with crudely made knives and bones of what was probably other inhabitants of the planet. They walked with an oddly feminine sway. They removed their helmet to reveal short braided red hair.

Gabe decided not to move, they’d probably catch him anyway.

“Hey.” He waved a hand to them. “Thanks for the he-”

She backhanded him sending him to the ground. She said something in a very serpent language. Before he knew it a crowd was starting to gather between them, all of them still cheering and yelling.

“Ugh, I probabl-” He tried to pick himself back up but she kicked him even further away, he skidded across the sand.

“This shit again?” Using the space she provided for him he got back up and put his fists upward to his face. Now was the time to fight.