Shuttle Interior
With the hatch opened light flooded inside the dark passageway and lit up the interior enough to see by. There was no clear power going to anything besides base power which did little more than keep passive systems on but nothing active. The ESDR did eventually kick on, albeit late as surface vents began to suck up smoke less effectively than the now venting open hatch making it a bit easier to see and breathe inside the shuttle's cabin.
A side effect of this was the manual unlocking of interior doors due to now active fire protocols as the cockpit hatch unceremoniously flung open due to the angle of the shuttle and bathed the rest of the cabin in the red light of an open oven as embers flew out only to be sucked out by the open vacuum of the nearby emergency hatch. The inside of the cockpit was obscured by the heat haze of the fire raging inside of it and gave an indication that if there was any chance the pilots had survived before it was confirmed now that they were no longer among the living to be in such an inferno.
Slowly helping one another towards the hatch with those able to release themselves towards the now open hatch and out of the suffocating sea of choking and burning smoke, the hatch was poihnted slightly up due to the angle of the shuttle and there would be a clear drop for them with Carina at the furthest from the hatch due to her scrounging the wily young medic tripped suddenly on something and landed hard enough that if not for her feminine traits and padding of loot she may very well have broken her jaw on the deck. Looking behind there was an offending and familiar capsule a bit larger than her head she had tripped over that was wedged between the underside of a nearby seat as the familiar MEC-H capsule of the deceased officer she had been tasked with transporting along with the others in the storage somewhere in the shuttle had tripped her up. Still well intact she was halfway towards reaching for it by sheer unconscious action when a hand shot out from the dark beside her and locked a small feminine but an iron-like grasp of a hand around her wrist.
Golden eyes peered almost hooded from the deck as the elf stared at Carina almost in a daze with her glossy-eyed stare reflected by the fires of the cockpit until they fluttered closed and the grip on her wrist loosened and fell off as the elf began with a cough of blood to begin spasming and seizing into a clear tonic seizure beside her.
"The transponder?" Kirill asked, looking briefly deeper into the shuttle,
"In the cockpit, perhaps beneath it were I to guess." He made a clear assumption that he was unsure as they both got out of the way for Francis who came out alone this time.
"Hit your head, Kilgee?" Francis wheezed, clutching her injured side while catching her breath in the freezing but fresh air as she joined them, referring to Tobias the name she was clearly more familiar with and unbeknownst to her the still mystery it presented.
"Only saw you come in that way, nothing for at least a hundred meters."
Looking out into the tundra her estimation was more or less accurate; There were oceans of debris and even a few distant forms moving around another section of wreck likely doing the same as them, but nothing in between but snow and still forms already being dusted over with a blanket of white.
"Side hatch is open!" Somebody shouted, and a few of the mercenaries helping evacuate started outside and around the shuttle to help where they knew there were now survivors. Kirill started off after them and shared a glance with Tobias after finding no other survivors in her last trip Francis did as well.
Cargo Hold
"What are these?" One mercenary questioned, pulling out a large durandium cylinder from the crate Tanya had unlocked and examining the MEC-H closely before cursing at the irony. Each of the crates contained simular contents as dozens of containers were observed and then left to check others. The only ones Tanya could not open were almost certainly personal effects and kit belonging to individual squaddies which were dragged outside the shuttle and piled up together into the snow. One of them she was lucky enough to come across was her own and opened up via her biometric data.
All her personal effects in the world including her weapons which easily had Their trigger locks removed, and spare magazines which no Nepleslian let alone a Kuznyetski would neglect to travel without. There was no Golem armor, useful as the insulation in it might be, but her cold weather gear at least was present and basic travel and survival supplies every marine traveled with.
Eventually, however, she and the others were forced out as a ceiling vent began slowly flooding the cargo hold with smoke from somewhere and she was pushed back into the sub-zero degree arctic if a bit better off now equipped.
Boxes of locked gear crates along with some she could not open bearing the mark of the SAW corps and the NYRDs were piled up in a windbreak as a few mercenaries dug with pieces of the shuttles panels to create a bowl around the entrance to stop the wind from pushing snow inside the cargo hold and sealing it off and to protect them from the harshest of the freezing winds. Perhaps ten feet above and to the side of them a hatch had been opened and someone fell rather than jumped out of the hatch to land in the snow while entwined with a woman in marine fatigues who immediately sputtered awake shocked by the cold as Vai was given the most extreme case of a cold-water wakeup as she fell into the soft but cold-burning snow.
There were others up there, and hot-choking smoke was gushing out from behind them and into the open air as the vacuum it caused stopped the visible cockpit from burning on its exterior as the flames began to pull
inside. There were forms rushing from the far end of the shuttle, practically beating a path through the snow towards them as well as seemingly most of the survivors from their part of the shuttle one way or another began to converge towards the cargo hold...
