Castaway Planet

Galactic Calendar 259872/ 2000 [ Sol Year 4387/ Day 152 of 365. Sol standard year]

Escape Capsule of Spirit of Adventure cruise ship

Unknown location

Within Escape Capsule 0980

Galactic Standard Time / 1710

“Warning, impact imminent!”

A man with short blue hair and red eyes blinked as he woke up. The feel of his clothes told him that he was still wearing his orange jumpsuit. As he blinked through the fog, allowing his eyes time to adjust. The muffled blaring sound became clearer with each passing second. Where was the chief? Was his section late for their shift…again. He wondered how long before a threat of docking their privileges would follow. He wondered if getting a job on a cruise liner was the best way to leave his world sometimes. But any planet in a solar storm as the spacers say……..

But then he heard a siren, a siren that he had only heard during drills. For a second he was confused but then his training took over. He jolted back to full alertness as he realized he was in a chair, not his berth. Looking around he saw he was in a chamber of some kind about twenty feet across with five rows of ten chairs. He was in the main chamber, in an escape capsule.

But how could that be? According to everything he knew about their course, they should have still been in deep space while the hyper engine was undergoing a maintenance cycle! They were nowhere near any known planet, and they were in a heavily scouted sector well away from the Frontiers!

Red lights blared, bathing the compartment in shades of crimson. He stilled. They were making an uncontrolled descent.

And he had other ways to keep his memory, ways he thought were unblockable. Whatever this was, it was beyond any precautions anyone could have taken.

“What happened to the Spirit?!” A female voice called out from his left. He looked and saw a woman in the same jumpsuit as him with black hair in a neat bun looking around with a scowl as she woke up.

“Don’t know but brace yourself!” An older voice called from behind them moments before the speaker blared again.

“Warning, impact imminent!” The speakers reported and then screams came from all around the man who only gritted his teeth.

“Stay in your chairs! Hold on good and tight, may luck favor us all!” A voice full of that command quality that so many officers had called out from one of the chairs to his left. The man grabbed onto the restraint holding him to the chair, closing his eyes.

The chamber shook as they hit something and then went still.

The man went still, listening as the sirens died down and only the silence of the grave echoed around the chamber.

A few moments later the cabin’s lights went back to a normal shade. As they all tried to absorb what happened, the computer reported their status.

“CAPSULE secure. Sensor detectS optimum atmosphere for all ocCUPANts of Escape capsulE. No com wave transmissions detected.”

The man groaned as he reached down, removing the harness with stiff limbs. He ignored the tension in his neck as he looked around as he stood up. A chorus of moans and grunts filled the chamber, and he tried to make sense of how he got there. Two rows ahead of him was the main viewscreen. It was supposed to show what was outside the pod but he saw it was cracked down the middle. It must have broken in the crash landing or before. If it was broken, then other things might be too, and he felt fear shoot through him as he realized what might be broken as well.

Before the man could move he felt something on him. A frown formed when he reached down to his right leg and felt the outline of something surprising. So he had that with him when he got into the capsule then? Later, for now, he had to see who was there. He looked around and tried to do a head count when a voice called out his name

“Wait, Jinn? That you?” A voice to his left caused the man, Jinn, to turn his head. He saw a tall man who looked Jinn's age a row back and towards the right. The man had brown hair, blue eyes, and pale skin in an orange jumpsuit like Jinn’s. The only difference was a belt full of tools around the man’s waist.

“Al, you’re here too? Any idea what happened to us?” Jinn asked and Al shook his head. Al was a friend Jinn had made when he came aboard. Around Al’s right eye was a tattoo of a white outline of a cogwheel, the mark that he came from a world where the Engineer’s School held power.

“No idea…… hey what are you doing!? Yeah, you by the ‘lock!” Al exclaimed turning his whole body around. Jinn followed his gaze and saw an older-looking man, fat and balding in a black tuxedo by the airlock. Jinn felt his blood freeze, he knew what the man was trying to do.

The man turned and scowled at the two of them as more people reacted and got up. “You heard the computer, I’m not spending more time in this tin can than I have to!”

Jinn felt a flash of fear at the man’s actions. He remembered how his trainers had stressed that even if a computer’s first report was that things were safe, it didn’t mean that it was true. The only way to be sure was to check that the computer and sensors were working and then do a manual test. Otherwise, something could have been missed or broken in a crash.

As the other people in jumpsuits reacted, most of them tried to stop the man. The deckhand that was the closest to him even tackled him away from the airlock, their combined weight carried them to the floor. Jinn breathed a sigh of relief the tackled passenger reacted badly, thrashing about and trying to get free.

“Please sir, stay calm! We can’t go out just yet!” The man who tackled him said. The fat man just struggled harder and looked around, crying out to the other passengers.

“What are you afraid of!? Why are you keeping us in here!?” The man bellowed and some of the passengers started to react.

One grabbed Jinn and started to shake him. Jinn felt anger at the stupidity before him, hadn’t any of them ever learned what to do if you were in an escape capsule? Or was he like the rest of the passengers, someone who thought that nothing would ever happen to him?

“Why are you stopping him!? Aren’t you supposed to protect us while we’re on your ship!?” The man demanded and Jinn kicked out, hitting below the man’s belt and the man dropped to the floor. A few of the passengers tried to help the deckhands but others tried to stop them.

Jinn looked towards the airlock and saw the first passenger being freed by two of the passengers. The fat man then lunged for the airlock, his hands flying towards the controls.

“NOOOO!” Most deckhands and some of the passengers yelled as the man activated the doors. The other deckhands all held their breaths in fear. As those who fought against them saw their reactions, some started to feel fear. Those same people then started to worry that the deckhands might have been trying to keep them alive.

“The computer said it was safe, what did you…….you all thought we would die if I opened it, didn’t you?” One of the passengers asked with a shocked tone. As the other passengers all paled in horror, Jinn closed his eyes as Al glared at the fat man by the portal.

“The computer could’ve been broken in the crash you idiot waste of starfire! You always check the computer and then you do a test before going outside! Always! We don’t know what’s out there, you could have let in a gas that caused us all to die!” Al rasped out as the man only looked at him with anger and walked through the portal.

“Oh, you gotta be kidding me!” Jinn exclaimed and Al looked around at the other passengers.

“Jinn, we gotta get control here. You go after him! Try and keep him safe while seeing where we landed," Ali said as he looked around the chamber, trying to find anyone of higher rank to take command.

Jinn nodded and scrambled after him, cursing in his head as he ran. No matter what, he was a deckhand of the Spirit of Adventure! And his job was to protect the passengers, even from their own stupidity. Coming out of the capsule, he saw that they were at the bottom of a crater that looked to be at least twenty feet deep. He looked up and instinctually first and saw above him a sky was a clear and beautiful blue, like his homeworld. He couldn’t see the sun but with how bright it was it had to be in the afternoon of the local cycle. The sounds of loose dirt falling caused him to glare up at the passenger as he climbed up the walls to his left.

“Hey, hold on!” Jinn called out in anger and the passenger just snorted.

“Screw you! Once I get back to civilization I’ll post such a bad review that your company will go under! When I……. when I….” The passenger trailed as he reached the top and started to stammer.

“What is it?” Jinn asked as he looked at the man. For the last few minutes the man had been acting like this was a walk through the park to the hotel. His personality was a mix of both arrogance and ‘he was in charge and knew best’. But the way he reacted was causing Jinn to get all kinds of warning signals. After Jinn climbed up the crater wall, he blinked in shock. The crater was in a clearing with a ring of trees with purple leaves and black bark around it. Flying through the air were long red worm-like creatures. They had wing covers in a triangle formation with their true wings long and colored bright jade. Looking down at the ground he saw white grass all around with blue bush-like plants here and there.

He turned around in a circle, seeing a large mountain in the distance to the right. As more of the survivors joined them at the top, none of them spoke. Jinn saw Al in the crowd and saw the look in his eyes, the same look Jinn knew was in his own.

“I haven’t ever seen trees like that in the wild before on any world, not in those numbers outside of gene-sculpting or colored water.”

“And those insect-like things, what are they?”

“There isn’t a world in range of the route that has anything like this on it, where are we!?”

Jinn looked around at them and saw eyes widen and faces pale in horror. He could see how everyone could go wild and run into the wilderness, and he couldn’t let them do that. They didn’t know where they were and anyone that left…….. might not come back. He had to do something, anything to keep them from rioting.

“Hey, HEY!” Jinn called out and everyone looked at him.

“I’m hearing a lot of poor me right now people! We’re alive, we don't know where we are true, but each capsule has FTL repeater systems, they’ll find us!” Jinn bellowed and the others looked at him. “We can’t be the only survivors; there have to be others out there!”

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Another escape pod opened, and out of it came three beings six feet tall. They were all wearing green helms that hid their faces and green armor, green gauntlets over their hands, and green boots over their feet. Each of them was carrying a green metal rifle with a red crystal halfway along it. At the top of the crater was a black insect that was five feet tall. It had four mandibles in an ‘X’ formation and six legs that ended in spikes. It looked at them before charging at them.

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“I doubt that we’re alone! But remember the Spirit has a Crash Transmitter! They’ll find it and us before too long, maybe a month or a bit over!” Jinn said and the others all nodded as they smiled. That was true and if the Spirit was destroyed, the transmitter would activate. The only way it wouldn't activate was if it was destroyed. But the chances of that happening were extremely low. Everyone was excited since it was common knowledge that it was protected in a cube of the hardest material ever found.

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A snowstorm buffeted a region of snow and ice. A debris trial over a hundred miles long, it ended in what looked like the front section of a spaceship over a thousand feet tall. The ship was bisected, the back section open to the elements and not sparking, as it had been drained of all power. The most curious thing was a small half-square of circuitry with a black metal outline. It was about ten feet tall and wide and seemed to be built into the ship. But the strangest thing was it was at the exact end of the portion of the ship. Like whatever had cut down the ship had wanted this one square cut it in half.

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“You sure?” A woman with short black hair in the deckhand jumpsuit asked and Jinn nodded at her.

“Yeah,” Jinn said with a grin as he looked around at the others.

“Let’s be honest, we are in danger. But if we keep our heads we might survive after all. And really, what’s the worst that could be out there besides animals and our comrades? Jinn asked and looked around as they all started to smile. Jinn breathed a sigh of relief, he had done it.

<>------------------------------------------------<>------------------------------------------------<>

Out on the open ocean on a moonlit night, a forty-foot-long ship with black sails moved over the waves. From the pitch black wood of the hull to the sails the color of the abyss itself on the two masts this ship was a beacon of terror. Along the side of the ship were white bones used as armor. There was a large skull that looked reptilian on the bow in place of a figurehead, and it had two curved horns. As the ship sailed on the figures were revealed to be reptilian humanoids. They were five feet tall with black scales. They had fangs sticking out of their mouths bellow two eyes. They had short red spikes in place of hair with two ears on the sides of their heads. They were all dressed like human pirates from the time of Columbus, some even had eye patches.

As the ship sailed on, one of them came out of the hold. This one was dressed like the others but it had a belt with two swords sheathed on its sides. It had a large triangular-shaped black hat with a large red feather going up on the right side on its head. Around its neck was a green crystal shaped like a grinning skull with horns on the sides.

It looked around, seeing the work of the others before it turned and walked towards the stairs to the steering wheel it climbed up. At the wheel was another one of the reptilian humanoids. This one had a bandana around its right eye and a large axe on its back.

“How many cycles until we reach the Steel Island and its consorts?” The newcomer asked the helms being.

The helms being looked up at the stars overhead gave a dismissive snort that caused the newcomer to wince as he looked over the ship, seeing what the helms being must have.

“At a guess…….the winds aren’t good, and with the damage, we’ve taken and lost crew……. a week, maybe more if we come across another one of those beasties cap’n, but I’ll be able to get us there!” The helms-being rumbled in a raspy voice.

“Good, without a Prophet we’re blind. The best thing is to live off the food on the Weaker and wait to join up with any fleets that come to try and take the Star Beast,” The Captain snarled back and the helms-being laughed evilly.

“Best we could do, and if the Admiral bites it, we can probably take over a few other ships to rebuild our fleet!” The Helms-being said the captain grinned.

“And if there are newcomers, more slaves for us!” The Captain said and they laughed as the ship sailed on.

As the ship moved on it never noticed that far behind it a good fifty feet a tentacle that was five feet wide thrust out of the sea, point at the ship, then reveal a large eye on the end. It looked at the ship for moments more before the eye was covered and the tentacle slipped back into the water. Moments later a large black mass below the sea’s surface moved after the ship.

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“After all, this is just a planet we can breathe on, and we’ve got air and probably food from this place that we can eat! We’re not leaving the system until we get rescued, true. But we just need the beacon to stay on and we’ll get back the Federation!” Jinn finished his speech and looked around at the people, seeing the looks of relief as the exact circumstances they were in came through to them all.

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New harvest of test subjects from Construct encountered during cool down cycle; multiple life Templates were collected. Templates 10049 dominate with other templates from political entity 1074. All templates have Nano-Scale Augmentations within acceptable levels. All Templates identified as Sample Group 98764

Construct split into sections to destroy signal that ENEMY could detect, loss of Template from actions minuscule in comparison to the total harvest

Harvest automatically split into groupings within parasite templates from construct.

Construct that carried them split into sections, some still have Template within and will be inserted into all BIOS

Report on BIO 07

Harvest sampling split into groups and sent to locals within BIO 07 successfully; random sampling grouping put into Sub location………

Alert; Template 00002 life code detected within harvest! Location in BIO 07

Report on Life Code of Templates. 00002 gene line confirmed, multiple sub-Templates within Template 00002 grouping

Alert; Entities within Templates 10049 have combat level 5 Nano-Scale Augmentations within group of 10049 on local setup in Formation 3948

Actuate Construct units; Biped Stealth subtypes to monitor Templates 10049/ Send Construct units Flight Strike against Template 00002

Continue Experiment within Sub location or awaken Purge Templates from holding site?

From Main Intelligence; The experiment continues within all BIOS; protocols to be followed. Purge denied.