Picking Up The Pieces

When the dust settles and Sarah can no longer feel the crumbling of the universe around her, no less then 8 times had the ACP been rolled over throughout the course of the crash and yet at no point did the structure of the APC get crushed, Sarah, PFC Cruz and the rescued equipment remain unharmed.

Scanning the enclosed space of the ACP, things are scattered across the room, headsets, bullets, and bits of refuse that hadn’t been cleaned out from the APC’s last tour of duty, hardly surprising given the squads lax attitude for procedure.

At some point near the final flip the metal bars keeping the Sargent in her seat broke, whatever unseen mechanism responsible for keeping the bar from moving snapped.

With ease Sarah lifts the bar over head, rising from her seat on shaking legs, turning to spot PFC Cruz it’s clear she got off easy with a flipped stomach.

Cruz is in shock, eyes wide as she stairs down at her calve as a jagged shard of bone sticks out of the side of the muscle, at some point that heavy case she was so insistent on dragging along had been tossed about during the commotion and all that weight slammed into the side of her right leg.

Sarah doesn’t have much experience with medicine but she knows well enough that she shouldn’t touch that at least Winters is in the room, assuming she’s even alive.

Sarah reaches down, pressing a button on the side of Cruz’s seat clicking her bar out of place and allowing it to be pushed upwards and out of her way.

“Alright Cruz… I’m gonna get you out of here… we gotta group up with the rest of the squad… we can collect the supplies later…” says sarah as she gingerly grabs Cruz’s arm to help her up.

In that instant the spell is broken as the older woman begins howling with pain, fighting with all she has to stay seated to take the pressure off of her destroyed leg.

“Fuck.. s.. stop fighting me, damnit..!” Shouts Sarah as she steadily overpowers the panicked woman, swinging an arm over her shoulder and leading her out of the ACP.

“Just… just lean on me, alright..? You’ll be fine Cruz… just.. work with me here..” With great effort, they reach the door of the APC, trying the latch proves useless, it’s like the internal door mechanism is locked.

“Fuck… ok… Cruz… any ideas..? This is your baby right…?” Tries Sarah, and to her shock the woman is lucid enough to give a straight answer.

“Sh… shoot it… internal plating is… uuuughhh…! Weaker..!” She says, leaning against the wall of the ACP, trying with all her might to keep her weight off her right leg as she speaks through gritted teeth.

Thats good enough for Sarah, she reaches into a duffel bag that Cruz had brought along, pulling from its depths an Armat M37A2 Pump-Action Shotgun… these are FAR from regulation, but off the back of the chaos that reigned in the Warden for so many years, Sarah’s hardly surprised.

Pushing a few slugs into the shotgun she presses the barrel against where she imagines the internal mechanism keeping the door locked would be before pulling the trigger.

The blast reverberates across the metal walls of the ACP forming an echo chamber that rattled the mind and threatens to rupture the eardrums however it seems to have done the trick.

Sarah throws her weight against the door a second time, feeling the door give, pushing outwards a few inches and allowing Sarah to push the door to the side, giving the pair the first glimpse at the carnage outside.

The area still bares a slight resemblance to the hanger, bits of shattered or crushed metal still have the paint markings the hanger held. The space where the armory sat is completely absent in its place is a room sized window overlooking a great canyon, if any gear survived the crash it sure as fuck isn’t here.

The door to the maintenance bay is still closed, it looks intact even, if the maintenance bay did sustain any damage, Sarah can’t see it from her current position.

Along the western wall of the hanger rests the broken down remains of the Cheyanne, from Sarah’s reckoning it must have slid across the floor and crashed into the wall which combined with the crash itself tore a massive chunk out of the hull, enough for two people to escape through.

“Alright Cruz… I think I see a way out… keep it together, yeah? We’ll see if we can’t find Winters…” says Sarah as she supports Cruz once again, climbing out of the battered ACP and heading west, passing by the maintenance bay in the process.

As she reaches the halfway point she notices the unmistakable sound of metal groaning, hydraulics giving way… coming from the maintenance bay.

Sarah reaches for her side arm, lifting it towards the door, preparing for whatever is about to come through that door.

It opens a crack, then a little wider, the door clearly fighting against whatever lurks within then with a groan, the door is opened enough to see who or what it is.

Peering from the darkness is Danials, a massive gash running across the side of its face, one eye missing. He steps out and allows the jaws of the maintenance door snap shut behind him.

“Sargent McClintock, I’m glad to see you are well.” Stays the Android as he slowly approaches, hands held behind his back politely as he speaks with that ever calm voice.

“Uh… yeah… what the hell happened..? Why were you in there…?” Asks Sarah, she hadn’t been knocked out during the crash, there simply isn’t enough time for Danials to have gotten into that room unless he had entered when the ship was falling to the planet.

“Ah, yes. Well prior to the impact with that foreign body I had been communicating with Mother within her core, she calculated that the crew would fail in their attempt to steer the ship out of danger and thus I took measures to secure as many materials as I could for the survivors… this IS a hostile planet after all.” His story has holes, but not holes big enough to demand that Sarah blow the synthetic away where he stands.

“Uh huh… alright… you see anyone else..? There were people I never saw when I was searching the ship…” asks Sarah.

“When I arrived on the Engineering Deck, I noticed that the engineering section of the deck had been depressurized… it could be that our missing marines were caught in engineering at the wrong time..?” It’s not a perfect explanation, but Danials hasn’t yet proven to be defective, certainly not enough so to kill a human.

Everyone’s heard the ghost stories, androids that go haywire and slaughter a station or the ones that grow a sense of self and claim their as alive as any human, hell Sarah’s decommissioned more then a few of such examples, but Danials doesn’t seem like one of them.

“Alright… help me with Cruz… we gotta get out of here before whatever’s left of the Warden shits itself..” says Sarah, swapping places with Danials while she forged ahead, side arm ready as she peers out from the destroyed wall.

The landscape is rocky, red sand covers the ground along with dust and rocks, there’s precious little vegetation to be seen nor civilization as far as Sarah can see, not far from the crash site are rocky outcroppings and piles of debris that obscure vision of what lay beyond the region.

It appears to be in the grip of night as the stars are eerily visible, the moon casting an ominous pale light over the domain, and it’s in this moment that it occurs to her how cold it is.

The only mercy is that the atmosphere appears breathable, as would be standard for a company operated planet as old as this one, no doubt there’s already whole cities built around atmospheric terraformers supplying the entire planet with oxygen.

“Do you see anything Sargent McClintock?” Asks Danials as he approaches, Cruz clinging to him for support, balancing all her weight on her undamaged leg.

“Uh… sand… and rocks… and… wait…” that’s when she sees it, rising up over a few artificial walls of broken down ship is smoke, she had barely been able to pick it out amidst the darkness of night.

“Smoke..! Could be a campfire… could be other survivors…!” Speculates Sarah, thinking out loud before turning back to the others to urge them to follow.