Date point: 4y 10m 1w 2d AV
Kayla was climbing for her life.
The air here was so frigid that each breath stabbed at her lungs with an icy spike.
Her life pod hadn’t been nimble enough to withstand the debris field that it had been subjected to on the descent to the surface. Smashing into rocks the size of cars, the gravity plating had failed and she’d been tossed around in the ship like a toy. Only an emergency stasis field had prevented her from being smashed to pieces inside of what was now a glorified tin can. From there, after tumbling another few kilometers from the sky, the last gasp of the lifeboat’s power supply had been used to decelerate for a bumpy landing.
Without knowing that the stasis field had been activated, nor that it had saved her life, Kayla only knew that the tumbling had stopped and, dazed from her thrashing, noted dully that her pod’s power had failed.
Activating the manual releases, she freed herself to see where she had landed, then gasped at the harshness that met her. She may as well have stepped into a meat freezer, and she felt goosebumps rise over her skin in a great wave of protest.
Fighting to overcome the attack on her senses, she began to dig through the emergency supplies of her ship, which had been tossed around the same as she had. Throwing warm clothing, compressed food bars, and a large jug of water into a backpack, which came pre-packed with several other essentials, she scanned the area around her ship.
The sheer harshness of the world around her was shocking.
No plant life of any kind could be seen in the clearing she was in, though she thought she might see something like trees at higher elevations.
As harsh as the world around her was, the sheer beauty of the night sky forced her to a momentary stop.
No stars filled the expanse above her. Instead, the gasses that surrounded this unnamed star system reflected the light of the sun, making the night sky glow with dazzling hues of pink and magenta, sometimes concentrating into deep reds in small dense patches.
Bathed in the faint pink light, her eyes quickly adjusted to her surroundings.
She was in the bottom of a great basin stretching in between large mountains on all sides. Barren and freezing, the landscape gave off a distinct hostility towards life.
But, it wasn’t the cold or the lack of plants that was scaring her now.
The air was wrong here.
She’d not noticed it before, because of the adrenaline and panic rushing through her system, but she already felt her lungs contracting with pain when she drew breath.
Staying in the lifepod would have been her first option, but the lack of power meant that the ship had no life support, and the atmosphere here made holing up in the pod impossible.
Moving with a deeper sense of urgency, she stayed just long enough to grab the survival knife and her T.A.S.E.R. sidearm that had flown free of its holster during the descent.
The last, and most precious, thing she retrieved from the ship was the handheld beacon that came standard with every lifepod made by Moses Byron’s company. About the size of a brick, once activated, it would send out a signal that would make it past the atmosphere, but not much farther. In order to preserve battery life, it could be set to broadcast at intervals and last perhaps a week at maximum.
However, on a more immediate note, she was more concerned with the datapad that came with the beacon, which could show her the location of any other lifepods within range of its sensor. Turning it on, she was dismayed to see that, here in the basin, the datapad didn’t register any of the other pods.
So, she’d departed.
It was most important to get to high ground, towards the sparse treeline. Hopefully if the trees could breathe up higher, then so could she. With luck, the added elevation would also enable her to pick up at least one of the other crew members that had hopefully survived the destruction of their ships.
Using an LED headlamp she’d found in her bag, she trudged up the closest mountain. Trying painfully to control her breathing, and shivering violently, she moved for the treeline.
Unbeknownst to Kayla, she was lucky that her approach went unnoticed.
4y 11m 2w 6d AV
Twenty miles above the surface, Frank was doing strafing runs over the mountain range, relying on the others to pick up traces of wreckage or distress beacons.
So far, they’d found the remains of several life pods, scattered throughout the highest layers of the upper atmosphere. However, they couldn’t find any bodies and, given the charred remains of the pods, were forced to assume that any occupants had been vaporized.
As far as finding wreckage upon the surface itself, they’d not found anything until Tricko shouted, “Frank! I found a pod!”
Bringing them to an immediate stop, Frank stood and walked over to Tricko, followed by the rest of the crew, who all crowded around his workstation.
There on his screen, a magnified image showed a black trench carved from the skin of the planet, stretching for several hundred feet and ending in a dented and ruined box of steel.
There were no signs of life near the pod.
Glancing at each other, they were aware that this was the entire reason that they’d come on this hellish and convoluted journey.
Already weary of this planet, Frank sighed and said, “Let’s take a look.”
4y 10m 1w 3d AV
Rufus Jennings, Ex-Combat Action Group Staff Sergeant, was getting his ass handed to him by the elements.
A head on collision with an asteroid had knocked him cold, and he would never know how he’d survived his pod’s crash landing. He’d woken hours later, a jumbled mass of bags, blankets, and supplies, squinting at the harsh light that filtered through the cracked and dirty glass of the front viewport.
Grunting painfully, the first thing he registered was the sweltering heat within the cabin of his ship, which he immediately registered as offensively more severe than even the worst heat he’d experienced during any of his combat tours.
Forced to take immediate action by the brutality of the heat, he leapt to his feet and began scrambling to collect supplies.
Mercifully, his personal bug out bag had survived the crash landing, intact and fully packed.
He’d only needed to grab the large water jug and tasteless food bars in an overhead compartment, along with the distress beacon, and he’d immediately set out, trying to find better shelter.
Staying in his pod would have been his first option, but the hull had been breached after tearing across the landscape of broken rock and sparse vegetation. Being completely exposed to the elements, as well as being an indefensible position in an open field, he had to abandon it.
The air stank and burned his nostrils, but that fact was overshadowed by the ridiculous heat.
Checking a multipurpose survival tool clipped to his bag, he saw that the thermometer showed a mind boggling 135 degrees Fahrenheit, and he already felt thirst clawing at his throat.
Forcing the thought from his head, he began to examine his surroundings.
He was at the edge of a clearing, with thin and short grass sweeping across it, sitting at the base of some foothills that led to higher ground. A deep ravine cut into the mountains on his left, and on his right, the vegetation thickened the higher the elevation got.
Desperate to get out from the elements, he cut into the ravine, which deepened quickly.
Feet crunching in deep gravel, the slopes on either side of him continued to rise quickly, and he was soon able to walk in the shade, which was a small comfort to him. He was breathing heavily, forcing himself to maintain a steady pace.
With any luck, there would be a cave or some kind of overhang that he could hole up in until nightfall. So far, his chances looked like they were improving.
The walls, which had previously been slopes of gravel, had become sheer cliffs that extended several dozen feet up. Dark and heavily weathered sandstone walls climbed up around him as he traveled deeper into the ravine, which now reminded him of canyons that he’d hiked as a teenager in Southern Utah.
Eventually, he came upon a sizable dome that had been hollowed out by the supposedly dead river that had formed the open tunnel of stone, with the thin canyon splitting across the roof of the dome and continuing upwards. On one side of the naturally formed room, a collapsed section of the ceiling formed a slope of large rocks piled halfway up the wall, and a depression in the center of the room looked damp, as though it was sometimes filled with water.
It was still disgustingly hot in the small cave, but he now had shelter, a mildly defensible position, and what looked like a possible water source.
“Fuck it. Good enough.” he moaned.
Linking up with other survivors could come later. For now, he was only focused on surviving the day.
Collapsing to his knees and shrugging off his pack, he allowed himself to drink deeply from his water jug, then lay flat on his back and fell asleep.
If he’d been awake to see it, he would have noticed that one of the rocks, piled up alongside the wall, shifted slightly, revealing the hidden opening behind it, as well as the set of bloodshot and yellowed eyes peering out into the hollow cavern.
4y 10m 1w 2d AV
While the air still stunk of sulphur and various other unfamiliar scents, Kayla no longer felt pain when she took a breath.
Now that she could breathe, her next obstacle was to survive the freezing night.
Doing her best to keep moving at all times, she dragged several small and scraggly trees, which had dried out and died, into a pile. Few plants grew here, and what did was stunted and isolated, but she soon had enough to last several hours. The leaves she gathered for kindling were hard and leathery, and she found them difficult to light, but, using the lighter that she found in her survival pack, she eventually managed it.
There were no caves to hide from the elements on the side of the mountain, but a large boulder helped to block some of the wind that threatened to steal her breath away from her, and she built her fire close to it.
Soon, she had a blazing fire in front of her, which dispelled the worst of the cold.
Using a large branch, she moved the burning logs as close to the boulder as she dared, and placed herself between the fire and the rock. Leaning back against her meager shelter, she felt a deep tiredness within her, forcing her to confront the fact that she’d not eaten since before the Whitney had been destroyed.
She began to take stock of her supplies, counting out protein bars and a few packages of peanuts. Her water jug was still full, but was frozen solid. Operating on autopilot, Kayla placed the jug near the flames to thaw it out a little, then continued her inventory while eating a package of nuts.
In her bag, Kayla found her large knife, a length of rope, basic first aid supplies, clothes, a reflective plastic lined fabric blanket, that she immediately wrapped around herself, some string and duct tape, and finally, a multipurpose survival tool, which had a compass, thermometer, whistle, cutting edge, and a can opener.
Studying each item in detail, she saw that the thermometer said that it was negative four degrees fahrenheit.
At last, she came to her most precious survival tool; the beacon and its datapad interface.
In the name of preserving battery life, Kayla hadn’t turned it on since she’d left her crash site. Booting it up now, her stomach fluttered when she saw that another pod was just under a mile from where she was now.
Sitting a few hundred feet under the crest of the hill she was on, behind her boulder, Kayla saw that she would likely be able to see the crash site from the summit.
Making sure that her fire had enough fuel to last a few hours unattended, and wrapping her blanket tightly around her shoulders, she gathered her meager supplies back into her bag and set out again, working to not lose sight of her fire.
Climbing the last few hundred steps to the top, she thought that it would most likely be a futile task to see the crash site in the darkness, but she was wrong.
She saw another fire, larger than her own, below her, illuminating the outline of a badly dented and damaged lifepod.
But that wasn’t what made her insides clench.
Shadows surrounded the tiny ship, rocking it back and forth, trying to tear it open and get at what was inside. Misshapen and alien, there were several dozen of the creatures, clawing at the emergency escape hatch and front view screen, which both looked like they had already suffered extensive damage.
At this distance, and with howling winds blowing back and forth over the hilltop, she caught snatches of horrific screeches coming from the shadowy monsters.
Realizing what she was watching, she felt a scream clawing its way up her throat, and she slapped a hand over her own mouth, fighting to remain silent.
Laying flat on her stomach, she began scanning the area immediately around herself, looking for any signs that she was not alone. Frantically waiting for her eyes to readjust to the darkness, after staring at the distant fire, she breathed easier as she saw that she was alone upon the hilltop.
She never knew how long she lay there, watching, terrified to move for fear of discovery by the group below, and mesmerized with horror at the inevitable fate of the pod’s occupant.
Then, a great rending of glass and metal was heard as, with one mind, the creatures collectively managed to tear open the front view screen window and began groping at the contents inside.
A terrified scream began coming from the spectacle below as the shape of a human was outlined by the light of the fire. Dragged from the pod by several of the monsters, the poor man was surrounded and set upon on all sides as the creatures tore into him, their horrible shrieks louder than ever.
As quickly as it had started, the screaming stopped, and Kayla felt her body tremble with something other than the cold. Her heart was thundering in her chest as she watched the group of misshapen beasts fight amongst each other for scraps of flesh.
Dots began to connect in her mind as she watched the proceedings, still unable to will herself to flee.
The pod must have survived mostly intact upon landing, but, for whatever reason, the occupant had built a fire. It was possible the ship had been without power, the same as hers, but the real reason didn’t matter.
For whatever reason the man had started it, the fire had drawn these…things…like moths.
Ice stabbed through her heart as she realized that she had made the same mistake, only minutes before.
With poorly suppressed panic, she looked at the much closer fire that was her own, several hundred feet down the hill from her.
She could see it clearly, as apparently deserted as she had left it, but, she waited for what felt like hours.
Then, she saw a shadow detach itself from the boulder that had previously been her shelter, and cross in front of her fire. These shadows were much closer to her than the group at the other lifepod, who were still occupied with their prize.
Forcing back a whimper, she tried to shrink herself through pure will as she saw two more shadows join the first.
Unable to control herself, tears began falling from her eyes as one of the creatures moved so that the fire sat between herself and the monster.
It was hideous.
Mutated and twisted, its black skin was a burnt and bubbling plastic. Lumps covered much of its body, which wore only the most basic of loincloths. Its arms and legs stuck out at painful looking angles, and bent in odd places, as though the bones in them had been repeatedly broken many times. Bulbous eyes sat over a wide mouth that stretched in a lopsided gash upon its face. She watched as it opened its maw over and over again, displaying jagged and malformed teeth.
Kayla tried to meld her body into the rocks below her, but, try as she might, she could do no more to hide herself than she had already done, as there was nowhere to hide on the barren hilltop.
A particularly loud screech was heard behind her, from the group that had torn open the lifepod, and her heart stopped as she saw all three shadows turn towards the noise. Her hiding place upon the hilltop was directly between the two groups of monsters.
The three creatures began moving in her direction, and Kayla whimpered in terror and slowly began to fumble for her T.A.S.E.R. with numb fingers.
Beginning to run, the three nightmares closed the distance between themselves and Kayla with frightening speed.
Bracing for her inevitable discovery, she aimed her weapon at the lead creature.
Fingers thick and slow with cold, she fumbled with the safety frantically, unable to force her hands to cooperate.
Still unable to bring her weapon to bear against the monsters as they descended upon her pitiful hiding place, she did the only thing that she could think to do, and remained silent and still, her heart slamming against her ribcage.
The creatures crested the top of the hill as one, not fifteen feet from where she lay, and continued over the hill, towards the feast that was formerly one of her fellow crewmates.
Unable to believe that she was still alive, and that the nightmares had run right past her, only one thought penetrated her overwhelming rush of adrenaline.
They can’t see in the dark.
4y 10m 1w 3d AV
The aliens had driven Jennings farther into the canyons, blocking his escape to his original entrance and making him cover unfamiliar ground.
He was faster than them, and he thought his own stamina might be greater, but they knew the terrain and they had numbers.
Grotesque and mutated, they’d begun shifting the wall of rock as he slept, and the unknown sound had caused the paranoid sleeper to jerk awake and immediately reach for his weapon. Eyes immediately drawn to the movement of the stones, he saw stubby fingered hands pushing rocks aside and widening a gap that led to God knew where.
He immediately saw, based on the number of eyes, that he was overwhelmingly outnumbered.
Grabbing his bag and turning to sprint for his exit, he saw that it was blocked by several of the most disgusting creatures he could have imagined, who seemed to be waiting for their fellows to begin pouring out of the opening that they were still widening.
Aiming his weapon, he fired a round at the closest creature, which began to twitch violently as the supercapacitor did its work, but did not fall.
One of the three creatures lunged at him, a sickening hissing noise coming from its mouth. Reaching out towards it, Jennings’s reach exceeded that of the alien, and he seized it around the throat, surprised that his own strength outmatched the creatures.
Its skin was hard and inflexible, almost like a carapace, and its fetid breath came in great noxious waves. It weighed far more than the average alien, and he realized that whatever this thing was, it had evolved on a deathworld, the same as humanity had.
Drawing his blade from its sheathe on his hip, he plunged it into the chest of the monster and kicked it back onto its back, dead.
Swearing loudly, he saw that the first monster had extricated itself from the hole that they had created, being closely followed by many more.
He ran to the only other exit, which led deeper into the canyon.
Cursing himself for being so stupid as to get cornered, he at least allowed himself the thought that the temperature was more agreeable. Dusk had settled over the world, and it was not nearly as sweltering as it had been.
Tearing along the naturally made path, he heard the screech of a hunting cry reverberate off of the walls.
Running flat out, he knew that only one option was open to him.
He had to put distance between himself and them, and hopefully come across a section of canyon that was close enough together that he could begin to climb upwards, toward the surface. But, that was easier said than done.
The walls were as smooth as glass, and he doubted he would find a suitable location to climb out from.
So, he continued to run.
It soon became clear however, that his bad luck was only getting worse. The walls were getting closer together, but they were also slanting at the wrong angle, curving inward the higher they went, still smooth and free of handholds. But that wasn’t the worst part.
The canyon was coming to an end.
And worse, he had run into what was obviously a trap.
Converging together, the walls formed a dead end, rising maybe fifty feet to the surface. Bones littered the ground around him, and scratch marks from unknown and long dead prey covered the walls. Evidence of failed escape attempts.
Unsure if he could make such a climb, Jennings had no choice but to try. Bracing his limbs against the stone, he began to slowly crawl up the canyon, trying to maintain his composure as the sound of his pursuers grew louder.
Fighting to maintain his grip on the slanting walls, sweat was pouring from him as he reached perhaps fifteen feet off the ground. Allowing himself to rest for only a few seconds, he tried to compose himself and continue his climb as the first of the creatures rounded the corner and spotted him.
Shrieking loudly, the full contingent of Jennings’s pursuers came into view, seeing him try to escape their clutches. Gathering below him, they began shouting and stamping their feet, eager to see their prey fall to his death.
Unnerved by the display below him, Jennings felt his right foot slipping on the slick sandstone, and desperately tried to brace himself and readjust. It was futile and he knew it. His limbs were shaking violently, sustained only by the flood of adrenaline that had gotten him this far.
When it all seemed hopeless, when death was seconds away, a rope fell from above, and he instinctively grasped at it. Trusting whatever anchored it above, he repositioned his feet, and began to climb frantically.
Giving everything his body still possessed, he used the rope to climb upwards out of the canyon, until he finally grasped the lip of the wall and hauled himself upwards, gasping at the foul air of the wretched world.
Flat on his back and trying to catch his breath, he heard a woman say, “Nice to see you’re still kicking, Jennings. It looks like you’ve met the locals.”
Laughing weakly, Jennings replied, “I never thought I’d be happy to hear your voice, Kayla.”