A night of drinking, an escape pod, and no rescue beacon

"Well, that'll leave a divot in your forehead."

Sonya had found the loose panel that had gone careening off of Michael's head when the escape pod had broken atmosphere. She could tell it was the one that had gone careening off of Michael's head because it was noticeably bloodier on one side than any other.

Tammy, who was examining him, lifted the bandage and shrugged, "For what it's worth, it'll scar but the shape of your skull is basically unchanged."

"Sure feels like the shape of mine changed." Margot clutched her skull in one hand and a bottle of water in the other.

"He might have actually lost fewer brain cells, all things considered." Abby moaned from her spot reclining on a set of seats like they were a makeshift cot.

"There is some actual concern of that," Tammy responded casually, "Michael, can you tell us what you remember from before touching down?"

Ten hours earlier

Even on a ship of geniuses and experts, somebody needed somebody to push a mop every now and then.

As opposed to drawing lots or having a schedule, as humans, especially smart ones, are fundamentally lazy creatures who would rather bargain around things than do honest work, the crew of the Plymouth made room for a small selection of menial staff. Among them of course, a few cooks and engine heads, a single horrifically overworked bartender, and roughly a dozen sanitation workers. As all of these were thankless but necessary jobs, the crew quarters for this select few were far above standard fare. However, among this group, a pecking order was quickly and implicitly established. Of course, the bartender was at the top, then the chefs, then the engine heads, leaving the lowly janitors as the lowest rung on a totem pole that already sat ingloriously but necessarily at the base of a far nicer totem pole.

Michael didn't have much room to complain, aside from the times where it fell on him to mop the VR decks. Realistically, he shouldn't have even been on board. He had no doctorate to speak of, he barely got his GED. However, in the search for people to hold the inglorious jobs of space travel, he'd won the lottery, both literally and figuratively. He'd just been another factory worker, but when his DNA was submitted (without his permission) by his bosses into the drawing for a spot on the ship, he'd been one of fifteen workers who showed enough genetic diversity to qualify for the drawing. From there, he'd won. It was the first time in his life he'd ever won a contest like that, and he fucking hated it.

As it turned out, nobody, not even in the name of genetic diversity, wanted to shag the janitor.

Fantasies of being the sole man aboard a ship of horny women quickly melted from his mind after the first week on the job. When he did get a word in edgewise with a female passenger, it was usually a "Yes Ma'am" as one of them was leaving the VR deck and telling him that it needed cleaning. He didn't need to be told this, the VR deck always needed cleaning after use. Nobody went in there to play video games. After a few months of this, he managed to trade a couple of drink coupons to a co-worker to have them take over VR deck duty for a month. He instead got to clean the escape pods for that time, an area of the ship where the floors tended to be far less sticky.

He had been in Pod 23-B when he'd heard voices coming down the corridor.

"And so I said, "That's not an Erlenmeyer Flask, that's my vibrator!"

From down the hallway came the sound of women's voices, about as obviously intoxicated as a human voice could be. He'd gone back to work, keeping an ear open for the sound of puking, as "the hallway near escape pods" quickly turned into the duty of "the guy who cleans the escape pods" when accusations about uncleaned puke started flying.

Unfortunately, or perhaps, fortunately, the voices drew closer until they entered the escape pod bay.

"Sonya, this isn't your dorms!"

Four women, off-duty clothes, likely lost while returning from terrorizing Jeremy at the bar. By the look of how some of them lurched around, they might each have spent more drink coupons getting to escape pods than he had.

"Shutup is a shortcut!" The tallest, a lanky blonde with short hair slurred back. She had the telltale build of a security type. Perhaps the only squad that had less of interest to do on a daily basis than sanitation or linguistics.

After a moment, the security chick saw Michael and came lurching over to him, leaning into the door of the escape pod as he cleaned.

"Hey, is this Oscar-Fifty?" She whispered, clearly trying to ask for directions without her friends hearing.

Michael shook his head, "November-Thirty, you gals took a wrong turn back in Botany."

"Ohmigawd I told you!" A voice came from the back and security winced.

"You didn't tell me shit!" She hollered back. In a second, her gal pals gathered around her and leaned in the door with her.

"She said it was a left in Papa-Twelve!" A round-faced girl in coke bottle glasses exclaimed at Michael from beneath one of security's stocky arms.

"I dinnot!" Security shouted at her.

All of them were using outdoor voices in a room designed to hold at most three people comfortably.

"Hey! Whassur name janny?" Another girl slurred from over security's other shoulder. Darker skin, freckles.

Before Michael could respond, a voice came from behind all three, "Ohmigawd you cannot flirt with sanitation!"

"I'm gonnaga do it!"

Security tried to move herself out of the doorway but the girls around her were leaning on her now.

"He's cuuuute!" Glasses slurred.

"Gettoffme!" Security grumbled, her arms starting to shake under the weight.

Instead of listening, as the girls on either side of her arm chattered, they leaned more on her and less on the doorframe. A path of attrition that would have likely lead to the same result without direct interference, however, a moment later, the previously hidden fourth figure leaped onto security's back.

"Piggybaaa-!" She cried out, trailing off as the girls collapsed into the escape pod in a heap.

It wasn't security's fault, even if she was the one whose flailing hand snagged the panic pull cord. Less than a second after clearing the doorway, the magnetic lock door snapped shut with enough **** to sever anything left in its wake. A misfortune that the tumbling pile of drunken skin collapsing onto Michael just missed out on. A moment later, there was the sharp hiss of the pod uncoupling from the ship.

In that moment, as the sole sober person out of the five in the three-man-sized escape pod, Michael somehow remembered his training. As gravity weakened and the pod flung away from the ship, Michael managed to pull the drunken, giggling girls into the safety harnesses. He even remembered to unseal one of the side panels to reveal extra emergency harnesses. What he didn't remember was how to then secure the loose panel, a forgetful mistake that came careening into his forehead when they hit the atmosphere of a nearby planet twenty minutes later.

***

"For the record, we are grateful for you keeping us alive." Tammy, coke-bottle glasses, responded to Michael's recounting of events.

"Speak for yourself, might have been better than starving to ****." Sonya, security, responded dejectedly.

"If this is the planet I think it is, we're probably fine." Abby, dark skin and freckles, grumbled again from her cot.

"You want to unseal the escape pod and find out?" Sonya shot back.

"We're going to have to eventually," Tammy responded matter-of-factly.

"For the record, I apologize." Margot, piggyback enthusiast, slurred from her seat. "And if we die, I take full responsibility."

"We're probably not going to die," Tammy responded again.

"Do you actually believe that?" Sonya grumbled.

"Would knowing for sure bring you any shred of comfort?" Tammy responded without taking her eyes off of Michael's now-bandaged head.

"We're scientists, realistically we have a better chance of surviving here than anybody else." Abby posited.

"Yeah, I got one for you, a security chief, a botanist, a doctor, and an engineer all fall into an escape pod," Margot whined from her seat.

"And a sanitation officer," Tammy responded, tossing a final wad of bloodied bandages into a jug.

"Right, and a janny." Abby groaned.

"Great, he can keep our lean-to and grass skirts clean." Margot quipped.

"He's a set of functional hands, it's something." Sonya mimed zipping her lips.

"And the only male here," Tammy mumbled.

"Cool it, we'll get the beacon working before we need to entertain that line of thought." Sonya mimed zipping her lips more violently.

"I didn't hate that line of thought," Michael mumbled.

"For now, let's get the beacon up, even if the Plymouth has been at full burn since we left, it should still be in-system."

"About that..." Margot winced, then pointed to the beacon controls.

A panel-corner-sized gash had been cut into the main beacon switch. When Sonya turned the panel in her hands over again, the opposite end of the one that was covered in blood was covered in burn marks.

"Fuck," Sonya mumbled under her breath.

"Blame the janny for having a perfectly reflective forehead." Margot winced.

"Michael's forehead is quite flat." Tammy agreed.

"In my defense-" Michael started but was ignored.

"Guess we have to rip the bandaid off eventually," Sonya gestured to the door.

"Yeah, rip off the bandaid and the surface of our lungs while you're at it." Abby lamented.

"Would you prefer that or dying slowly in here?" Tammy asked calmly.

"That."

"That."

"That."

"I mean, we don't have to open it-" Michael started, but the hiss of the door opening made the rest of what he was saying irrelevant.

Everybody froze in unison as the outside climate came rushing into the cabin, all of them holding their breath in anticipation. When they could resist no longer, each of them finally took a cautious breath. The air didn't kill them, at least not immediately. Instead, they were welcomed out by the salty wind of the sea and the sound of birds overhead. Slowly, they poked their heads out of the pod one by one.

They were on an island, not much bigger around than a mess hall. More importantly, they had landed square on top of a small wooden shack.