Technophilic Nightmare

It all happened so fast for Randall. One moment, they were entering orbit around an exoplanet a hundred lightyears from Earth, investigating an unusual radio broadcast from the planet, which they only knew as A-11Z. The next thing they knew, a debris field which had gone undetected tore into the side of their ship,

The Maxim

, and caused its orbit to destabilise. The debris, it was travelling so fast, unusually so, their normal defences just couldn't handle it.

So Captain Moira Carrow ordered the crew to the lifepods, and it was a short, terrifying run to the launch bays. His suit got singed by fire, but thankfully it wasn't very flammable, and his pull-on mask protected him from smoke, and any potential atmospheric breaches... not that there were, given all the fire.

And then, another short, terrifying stint... this time, the hard burn towards the planet in his six-person lifepod, the emergency craft ejecting itself as far away from the ship as possible to avoid being caught in any potential explosion.

Five other people on his pod, with more than a few others jetting away from

The Maxim

. Hopefully, the full one-hundred person crew got of the ship safely.

Then there was the re-entry, the pod rattling so hard he thought it was going to tear itself apart. And then, the automated systems calculated a steep glide slope, found a relatively flat place to land, and warned the occupants to 'brace for impact'.

Randall did, and he feared he was going to be knocked unconscious if his buckle failed halfway through the landing, the terrifying screeching of metal deafening him, the shaking horrendous.

And then, it was all quiet and still, Randall groaning as he did his best to recover his senses.

He looked around the pod, a bit of smoke filling the air with a haze, the other occupants groaning groggily as they recovered from the crash.

"Alright, sound off, who's alive?" came the voice of the man in the front right seat.

There was a chorus of voices, and Randall added his to the mix. Everyone was alive... for now.

"Alright... stay in your seats, I'll check outside atmospherics," he said, unbuckling from his seat and shakily walking down the middle aisle to a small computer at the back of the pod.

"Alright, looks good out there, clean oxygen. Keep your masks on though. Remember regulations."

Disease was always a factor, but fairly low in priority, as most alien diseases couldn't handle an immune system it never evolved with. Of course, with the little information they had on A-11Z, they never knew if they encountered some dangerous chemical phenomena. They also came with short-ranged radios, but they lacked anything more sophisticated than a simple holographic HUD with a compass. They were survival masks, they only had the barest necessities.

His compass was going haywire though. It either hadn't configured to the planet's magnetic poles, or there was something weird going on with them. Either way, they weren't going to rely on them any time soon.

The man punched a button by the two side doors, and they slowly split in half, folding up and down to allow egress.

Randall and the others got unbuckled, found their survival kits beneath their seats, grabbed the survival gear from the floor lockers, including a long-range radio, and got themselves together.

"Alright, Randall Koch? You keep an eye on our rear, watch for any aggressive wildlife, or anything in particular," he said.

Randall nodded, though he still didn't know the guy's name. For now, he was just gonna stick close to this group.

Their first plan of action was to find the ship's crash site. Depending on how well the emergency auto-landing system functioned, there might be quite a bit to salvage. As well as survivors who didn't get to a lifepod.

But how far away that was, was anyone's guess... well, not for long.

"Good news,

The Maxim

went down only a hundred clicks from here, just over those mountains," the leader said, pointing to a slate-grey mountain range in the distance.

It was also the first time Randall actually took a chance to observe his surroundings; their lifepod had gouged a deep furrow of orange-red soil, almost the colour of red dirt, but chunky like normal soil. All around them was an expanse of golden-yellow grass, each blade only a few inches high with tips split like a trident.

The alien world didn't seem too alien so far, but the orange-yellow sun above was starting to dip towards the horizon.

He didn't think they could cover that distance in that amount of time. Oh well, what was one night's stay on a barely-charted alien world with more nights to come?

He did have one question though.

"Will we have to climb those mountains?"

The group leader shook their head.

"Fortunately not, aerial scans showed a pass through the mountains that should be easy enough to traverse. Alright, let's get going," they said.

It was enough for Randall, hefting his pack and moving off.

They had to spend a night in the middle of the grassland, pitching quick-set-up tents and enjoying a gourmet meal of dehydrated survival rations and treated nutrient water. Energising, but a little bland.

At least it made him sleepy, and made his wake-up easy, as the group quickly broke camp and continued moving, taking the route through the mountain pass as the grey monoliths either side of them loomed over threateningly.

But on the other side, they saw the remains of the elongated, ovoid hull of

The Maxim

, having crashed through a small forest of strange trees, that looked almost like off-colour broccoli, each grey woody branch splitting into smaller branches, capped with mint-green balls of leaves.

The open wound on the ground still smoked with debris, and the ship itself was cracked all over, its integrity thoroughly compromised.

But the ship hadn't exploded, even if it was releasing a hazy plume high into the sky. That was good. And more, other survivors were visible, and already contacting Randall's group over the radio.

The captain was alive, Moira organising the survivors into teams to prep for a long-term stay.

By the following day, a small camp had been established - at an appreciable distance from the wreckage, and with makeshift blast-shielding set up - and more survivors arrived, but things were not adding up; volunteers had gone into the ship to look for supplies, using what hazard suits they'd managed to take with them on some of the lifepods, and to find survivors or remains, as well as intact logs.

Well, there were no survivors inside, nor bodies, and the logs said all crew safely evacuated the vessel, and roughly landed in the same area according to emergency protocols, to ensure a relatively quick regrouping.

But only about sixty of them had made it to the wreck site. The others could still have been lost, or perhaps fallen victim to unknown hazards of the planet, or even burned up in atmosphere, though that seemed unlikely.

The collection of large tents and make-shift lean-tos was buzzing with activity all the same, and Randall was busy washing himself down in a makeshift shower.

His frame wasn't the most athletic out there. Not fat or chubby, especially since he had a smooth belly, but a bit on the 'softer' side. His skin had a slight tan to it, which helped to hide all the tiny scars he got from his nine years of work, ever since he signed up to be a 'spacer' at 18, though he had no idea he'd ever end up working on an exploration vessel.

Nor did he ever think he'd end up stranded on some distant alien world. He sighed, sitting on a stool placed in the middle of a tub, hooked up to a solar-powered pump to move the used water back through a filter to be reused in the reservoir above the shower nozzle. Of course, the water was only warmed by sunlight, and there was no pressure, the pump only to get the water recycled. Gravity did the rest.

Speaking of which, gravity was a little strange on this world, fluctuating anywhere between 0.83 Gs around the poles and 1.24 Gs in different parts of the equator. Where their camp was set up was at a slightly unusual 0.9 G.

The planetary rotation was also rather slow, each day about thirty-two hours and twenty-seven minutes. They'd have to deal with that until rescue came.

He tried not to think about the chances, wiping water through his curly black hair, staring at a mirror tied to the rod that supported the shower nozzle and reservoir, his blue eyes staring back at him, and the slightly harder face compared to his body, that scar on his lower lip, right on the middle quite evident.

He brought a hand to his chin, and rubbed it softly, wondering if he was ever going to grow stubble. Then again, not growing facial hair was going to be helpful, one less thing to worry about.

He washed between his legs, thankful similar applied to his pubic hair. A simple genetic mutation that affected hair growth everywhere except for the small mop on his head. It did mean sweat wasn't an issue.

He sighed, and then turned off the water before his time was up. He wiped himself down with a towel, and donned his suit; the skin-tight garment was now supplemented with additional vests and pocketed pants, making him look a little less... for the lack of a better word, 'explicit'. It took getting used to, how tight these suits hugged the body, more so than a lot of the casual civilian suits common among people, though he'd gotten used to it long ago.

With his bathing done, he meandered through the paths worn into the grass between the tents, folding structures, makeshift shelters, and found the tent where Captain Carrow was leaning over a map.

A stocky woman with dark skin and short hair, she filled her suit nicely, though nobody was brave enough to say anything provocative. One, it would've been a HR write-up. Two, Moira Carrow was a woman of presence, she knew how to run a ship and though fair, she didn't take shit.

Her green eyes were strained though, examining the map made up of a large flexible digital screen, showing aerial scans from the various pods whose occupants made it back. There were blurry areas, and areas that analytical AI had done its best to fill in the blanks, though the margins of error were high, as the warnings denoted.

"Ensign Koch reporting, ma'am," he greeted.

She looked up at him, her strained eyes a sign of of her lack of sleep, and the stress no doubt weighing down on her.

"Ah, good. I want you to assist the salvage team at the crash site. We have no more hazard suits, so you'll have to make do with a DC mask. You won't be doing anything more dangerous than necessary, I'm not about to take dangerous risks. You'll be sticking to the stable areas. Make sure you listen to the salvage team. If they tell you to get the fuck out, whatever the reason, you do so, come straight back to the decon tent outside the camp."

"Understood, captain," he answered.

Moira sighed, and gave him a sympathetic look.

"I'm sorry about this, we're just stretched thin as it is, and I don't know when or

if

the rest of the crew is going to turn up. Maybe we'll get lucky and find a spare cell for the buggy we salvaged. Getting that running should make things a little easier."

"No, I understand... I'd feel like I'd be doing a bit more anyways," he admitted.

"In that case, please do find a usable cell. I want to head to this location," she said, pointing to a highlighted location on the map, a blurred location at the far end of the mountain range. It looked like there was a slight crescent shape in the spine of crags, though what might've been there was impossible to tell. "Lifepods didn't get a good look at this location, but we think it may be a potential source of our mystery broadcast. I know we're in a survival situation, but if the radio broadcast was not natural phenomena, then it's worth investigating."

"Understood," Randall answered. He wasn't exactly sure what to do with that information, he wasn't anyone important, but the captain was missing half her support staff, and probably wanted everyone on the same page.

"Good. Best get going then, it's a bit of a hike to the ship."

Randall nodded, and left the captain to her devices, speaking to another crew member who handed her a PDA.

Randall found a large pack with a weight-distributing frame, slung it on his back with a small bag of food, and began the two kilometre walk to the crash site.

The broken shape of

The Maxim

looked sad in the morning light, still issuing smoke into the air. If the ship were to explode, the camp would hopefully survive mostly intact, though anyone at the site likely would not.

It was a risk they had to take, in order to get supplies and parts, and any salvage they could make use of.

Randall saw the tracks in the ground made by the sleds the work teams were using to drag material back from the wreckage, since they had no working vehicles, just yet. The buggy had already been rolled back to camp, but its battery was apparently not installed when they found it... a bad stroke of luck.

When Randall neared the wreck, he donned his DC mask, a heavier duty, full-head covering mask that had a membrane to cover his neck and seal to his bodysuit, and was able to connect to a sixty minute oxygen supply, and sported additional filters as well as advanced sensors to detect hazardous materials and chemicals, hull breaches, and to help see through smoke. It all made the mask quite heavy, but at least it was rather useful. Its only downside was it only had basic shock protection, and without a proper suit, it couldn't protect someone from more severe hazards like radiation for longer than it took to remove oneself from the danger zone, or to effect a quick or emergency fix before leaving.

Hazard Suits were better in that regard. But they only had a handful, and all nine of the ones they had taken with them and recovered so far were in use, Randall spotting one of his crewmates carrying a small crate to a sled, the bulky suit covered in an orange, synthetic material that made them look more cumbersome than they actually were, deceptively agile despite their bulk. They were a fully-sealed system with a powered exoskeleton frame hidden beneath the outer cover, providing additional strength for working. They could recycle a user's exhalations for a while, atop of their base six hours of air supply. They had more advanced HUD systems, and automatic sealants in case of suit tears, and a full air conditioning system.

The only difference was, though perfectly capable of protecting the wearer in space, they weren't designed for EVA, and had no dedicated mounts for EVA thrusters, or the same level of protection against solar radiation and micrometeorite impacts, and slightly less redundancy.

But one would rather be in one of those than what Randall had.

That same crew member walked up to Randall, nodding their head, their face visible through a dark, ovoid visor.

"Randall, is it? Glad you could come, we needed some help. With just nine of us, getting this shit sorted isn't going too quickly. Just stay here, sort the salvage, place what you can on the sled. Don't go into the ship, yeah?"

"Yeah, I get it," Randall answered. The other man nodded, and turned back towards a hole that had been cut into the side of the ship, its underbelly partly buried or collapsed in the ground.

The ground beneath Randall's feet was churned, and felt warm through his boots. He saw how the 'salvage area' had been set up next to a gap in the ship, where the rear end had effectively snapped off during the landing, leaving decks and hallways exposed on either side, but fortunately fuel, water, and oxygen lines, among other things, were not busy spraying their contents all over; the emergency cut-offs had done their job.

He looked to his right, and saw that the rear end near the engines had been sealed off with simple warning tape, and radiation signs. The reactor had been taken offline, but the engineering compartments would largely remain off-limits until the rest of the ship was adequately salvaged.

Looking around,

The Maxim

was in worse shape than Randall thought, walking through the divide between the rear end and the rest of the ship, he saw a maze-like mess of bulkheads and hull sections on the starboard side of the ship, the port side having remained mostly intact. The front of the ship had almost severed much like the rear, but the rest of the ship save for the large chunk missing out of the starboard side and scattered across the ground like it'd spilled its guts, seemed to have maintained structural integrity.

Randall wasn't about to go crawling around inside the ship itself, he wasn't that brave or stupid. Even the people in the hazard suits were moving slowly cautiously, one of them climbing down a collapsible ladder, a box descending on a simple pulley system next to them. They picked it up and placed it on the sled, the box too big for Randall to move, but it was marked as being full of foodstuffs. A valuable find.

He returned to the sled, and started sifting through more boxes and piles of salvage, sorting out what was most immediately useful and moving it to the sled. Power packs, the odd tool, portable lights, medical supplies - an incredibly valuable resource - and any scrap that they needed in the moment for some makeshift use back at the camp.

As he was sorting through the salvage, he heard a shout from a woman.

"Hey, over here!" Her voice was carried by her hazard suit's integrated speaker system. Useful in loud environments when not everyone had radio headsets.

Randall left his post and found her, in amongst the wreckage on the starboard side, next to a freight container, its door open... revealing another buggy inside.

"I didn't think we'd find another. We had three, but finding even one intact was special," she said, some of the others showing up. "Another is even better."

"Not much good without a compatible fuel cell," Randall said.

"Which is why we should find some. It'd make surviving here a far easier prospect," she retorted.

Randall couldn't argue with that. He helped her roll the buggy out of the freight container, checked it over to see if it was damaged, and then moved on the look for fuel cells.

It was a simple design, a roll-cage with basic doors and a windshield on the front, with room for four occupants. There were racks on the top and the back for carrying gear and equipment, and the electric engine was mounted on the underbelly of the design, protected by a sturdy titanium cowling, which also kept its centre of gravity low.

The wheels were airless, sporting shock-resistant, honeycombed structuring designed to endure all manner of rough terrain and abuse.

Randall decided to look around himself, hoping to luck upon compatible cells.

He sifted through warped sheets of metal and carefully moved the heavier, sturdier chunks of bulkhead out of the way, part of the cargo hold breached, hence why the buggy container was here at all. There were crates everywhere, but a lot of the supplies and equipment were trashed.

Then, he found a reinforced crate marked with a low-hazard warning. He wiped some soot across one of the labels, and surged with elation when he saw the words 'Fuel Cell', among with a few others.

He opened the sturdy latches, flipped up the lid, and sure enough, there was a trio of rectangular cells, silvery grey in colour with flip-out handles on their top. A small electronic screen lit up on one of the cells when he put his thumb on the button beneath it, indicating a full charge. The other two were the same. And they were the exact sort needed for the buggies.

"Guys, I fucking scored!" he shouted, and a nearby crew member in a hazard suit rushed over, clapping when he saw what Randall had found.