Shuttle
As to answer Claytons question in part the doors down the way opened and an unassuming Kuz like the hundreds of others in the shuttle skirted past with some haste and past them down the way and to the sealed and reinforced bulkhead that led up to the pilot's cockpit. A panel slid seamlessly open beside the door and the man huddled over it speaking to the occupants on the other side. Borok gave a look over his shoulder but then went back to his banter as the elf Trilliana slid out of her seat to join the man who, with a dismissal, came to Boroks side.
"Theys grillin the pilots but clear they ain't got no boarders, boss." The man gave a cautionary glance to the marines present before continuing.
"They not atmospheric so cant follow us in and bout to lose their window and cant do nothin no how so close; By the time they come about we already be hittin atmo even if they wanna try to bluff and get us to turn back."
"They will most certainly try to obstruct us at the planet's starport." A hauntingly melodic voice that was too quiet to have carried over everyone present as the elf casually slid beside the man that looked nothing like her despite claiming to be her
son and looking thrice her age. The two shared a knowing glance that even with some clear tension in the air from the show of force didn't seem to diffuse the massive SOLs demeanor.
"I do apologize for the trouble but you should make sure you have your orders ready. We will make sure you disembark first with your belongings so you don-"
The world went black.
Stenkagorad
"Wake up, kid." A distant gravelly voice stirred Tobias Carrick awake as his world turned to burning and pain. His whole body was sore and felt horribly burned on his arms, legs, and face in a strange way that only continued to grow until inaction forced his eyes open and his body to jerk and spasm for breath as air failed to fill his lungs and all he saw was
white.
There was a feeling of all-encompassing pressure on his chest and despite inhaling sharply the only thing to go down his throat was cold and semi-malleable.
Space?
His arms refused to move and his head was forced to his shoulder as a horribly cold fluid went into his ear and only added to his thrashing. His legs, were not pinned by whatever and he was able to kick and push until something gave and there was a bright blinding light and enough room that he could breathe and pull himself out of what was clearly snow by the whiteness and way it burned his bare skin.
The first thing to hit him was a strong gust of wind so sharp that the cold hurt him
physically as it immediately burned his ears and arms and his already semi-soaked shirt and trousers stuck to his skin almost starched with ice.
The next was that he could not see. The world was blurry and confusing and nothing more than the experience of looking through an ice cube as his brain tried to process
where he was and
what had happened. The blank spots in his memory immediately sent up warning flags of his experiences as an agent for the
---- -- ----- before it came back to him in pieces.
Shaking, falling, an explosion, the intense G-forces, then...
The shuttle had entered the outer atmosphere and then shortly later a jarring volt slammed him against the wall and he woke up here.
"Nothing quite burns like the cold." A pop in his ears as sound returned like a coming distant tide and he jerked his head to the side as a silhouette stood over him still a blur as it walked just out of his peripheral.
There was another, louder sound now audible above the still-biting wind as something audibly
exploded to his side a ways away. Rubbing his eyes until he could see and shielding them from the glare of sun on the snow was a scene of near apocalypse.
The shuttle, all hundred meters of it, was broken apart like the shell of an egg against the ground as what seemed like miles of chunks of shuttle and debris were scattered out on an open frozen plains that went on for near eternity with the exception of some kind of distant forest perhaps a couple miles away. The front third of the shuttle seemed intace but was warped where the nose had smacked the ground and crumpled the cockpit as a tin can eluding to the impossibility that the pilot or his copilot might have survived if the front of the shuttle were not currently on fire.
Tobias had been thrown from a giant hole in the side of where he could guess that his compartment had been and was only a few hundred feet. There was another pop as sparks flew out of a panel and just barely over the cuff of the wind someone was screaming. Another breeze practically shot him onto his aching feet and stumbling forwards as a primal part of him told him that the kind of cold he was experiencing was certain death. Getting closer it seemed as though the shuttle had seemingly landed not poorly almost a mile away but had with such force that it had overtaken whatever landing gear it possessed and had hit belly-down and began to drag across the landscape as it was torn apart.
in the distance were a lot of black shapes unmoving on the ground and so very few moving around or on their feet at other pieces of separated shuttle. The gear and boxes and debris everywhere made it unclear how much of it was corpses...
Entering a trench carved out almost twenty meters in width and half again as deep that traveled the length of the crash he was at least shielded from the wind but was now shivering uncontrollably as he was able to stumble towards a form close to the shuttle.
One of the kuz girls was huddled over an unmoving form and was violently spasming and shaking as she
screamed at her partner until no sound came out and then would intake a sharp breath and continue to wail as if it would wake the corpse. It was unclear as to which of the girls was which with one having an indentation large enough to cave in half her skull and the other having a slush of frozen blood covering half her face and side that had already frozen what looked quite painfully but seemed unnoticed as the girl was likely in shock.
"Over here!" Someone shouted from
inside the back of the megashuttle that was currently leaning back enough to act almost like a ramp as someone fireman carried a kuznyetski mercenary out and deposited him at the base of the ramp where two more mercenaries came out from underneath it to pull the injured man underneath the shelter of the shuttle.
Francis Euphoria looked to have gotten it a lot less worse than himself. Her blouse was torn at the back and on one side to reveal a deep laceration of deep red that was partially obscured by a makeshift bandage of what looked like a bundled-up shirt and a too-tight belt holding it in place.
She stared at him half in a daze herself before someone else dragged out another mercenary as Kirill handed him off to one of his comrades.
"Sir!" He greeted Tobias with more clarity than Francis seemed to have; Who seemed to shake her head to focus and then jogged back into the shuttle.
"Most of your comrades are still inside but I think they're ok." He gestured where the mercenary he had just dragged out had been taken.
"If you're hurt we're setting up triage under the shuttle; But if you're of sound mind or at least body we need help evacuating the front of the vessel before the fire spreads."
Without another word he went after Francis as another mercenary staggered out with someone but this time went
past Tobias and laid the man out beside the dead kuz girl and her grieving lover and a line of dozens of others. Unmoving lifeless eyes stared into the sky from the dead man as the one who deposited him too ran back inside.
Out on the plains a half mile away, a segment of the shuttle separated from them visibly
exploded like a can of beans in a fire.
Shuttle Interior
It was dark as hands shook them awake before passing by and trying others. Caffran, Quilly, Lupin, Clayton, Vai, Carina and others woke sorer than they had ever been in a dark only penetrated by a few portholes bleeding in sparse rays of white light. It was a miracle that nothing was broken on any of them, but Quilly could
feel it in one of her wings from a spike of pain that something was fractured or at least sprained at hurt to move her wings.
"If you can move get up, if you're hurt call out." A familiar voice urged as Francis passed.
"Start grabbing bodies or salvage whatever you can; The shuttles burning up!"
Shuttle Exterior.
Tanya had missed the other marines as they passed but was made aware of them by her fellows after the fact. Being amongst her kinsmen again had been too distracting to have noticed them when they passed upon boarding the shuttle before. The friendliness of her people, the smell of gun oil and pyapth had been a reminder of home and had lost her in her own little world even as a whole cabin full of her people had integrated her back into them like she was a part of their clan and not a single curious or mistrustful eye had landed on her and assumed she did not belong amongst them.
But then the shuttle had crashed and split, and half her cabin that had not been buckled in when they had hit atmo had simply
fallen out as the pressure ripped them from the vessel and scattered them away never to be seen again.
She had not been on of them. But somehow had ended up outside the exterior of the shuttle half in a daze and was only just coming too. There were people running about around her dragging boxes and plastique crates out from a giant rent in the shuttle's belly and towards the now
back of the much shorter shuttle where they would dissapear back under it. There was no clear direction until one of them stopped and seemed to notice her for the first time.
"Cousin get inside the ship." He ordered and still dazed she was gently guided into the hole in the vessel and sat down amongst the debris before he too was gone. Others came in from time to time to grab items or search through what they could open until the dark was broken by the discovery of a large, arm-thick glow rod that was thrown in the middle of the floor.
There was clothing, personal effects, bags and boxes, and military crates. A few of them even seemed familiar with the SMDIoN military markings on them that belonged to the marines. The Kuz did not approach those, but it seemed obvious by a glowing pannel on one of them that at least one had tried but did not have the owner's clearance to gain entry to its contents...
"Cold weather on me!" A kuz mercenary shouted not too far away from her as jackets and trousers, boots, gloves, scarves, and other items of thick winter-weather gear was haphazardly thrown under the light.
"Anyone find meds yet!?" another shouted.
"Find one of the marines, they can get us into the milspec they should have meds!"
