Thread: The Darkness of Space (QueenChaos & JuniorWizard)

The long out of use colony planet, designated LRT-03 for being the third planet in the LRT system had long been considered just another one of those backwater rocks. Settlers had been sent to it, maybe they died on the way there, maybe they died when they settled and found out they didn't have enough resources to sustain an economy, maybe a million different things. Though Tessa and her crew were freelancers they knew well of the governments of various alliances, always looking to take as much land as they could, looking to send their own citizens out in small groups to seed the universe. Always something or other about seeding the universe with humans, a brand new frontier and some other shit to convince the poor bastards to take a meal ticket in exchange for a one way trip to some backwater, at best they spend the rest of their lives moister farming or surface stripping a planet for a government trade ship that comes by once every ten years. At worst, they didn't live the first ten. The universe was certainly full of wonders, just as much so as it was full of horrors, Tessa and her crew knew that, but most people growing up in a cushy sowed planet didn't know so much as the thought of a struggle. Still, a signal meant at the very least they had made it safely to the planet and gotten their communications relay up and running, even if every one of the poor bastards were dead it would still be worth it to get the scrap from their station and arrival ship if nothing else. Or, it would have been worth it if the sky didn't crack apart, the rushing sounds of wind ripping the young women from the safety of their descending pod and sending them scattering to the wind. The loss of a shuttle was no small deal, but the fact that no one was impaled or ripped apart in the crash was a miracle in and of itself, although Alize had remained behind with the rest of the skeleton crew, no help would be coming for them until they made help for themselves or had been gone long enough for the crew in the air above to begin to take issue with it, a situation they would hopefully avoid finding themselves in, considering their lack of ground bound supplies. At this point the mission was mostly a wash, there was no way a backwards colony planet such as this one was going to have enough for them to sell or scrape to make up for a lost shuttle, let alone the amount of time they were going to waste on this rock, god forbid anyone on the ground crew suffer and injury and need time to recover. Tessa was a good and fair captain, but you would have to be insane to work for her, the body count on her ship was ridiculously high, even for a freelancer who loves to throw themselves into danger it was near unprecedented. Tessa operated at a pace that most simply couldn't, the skeleton crew she considered her core were probably some of the few women in the universe who were actually willing to put up with her wild, forward plans. Even then her allies often met her unstoppable attitude with sarcasm and mockery, knowing full well that they were probably the only people who could do so without getting a knife between the ribs from her. Still, it was hard to argue with results, Tessa's company was never short of funds, and she was more willing to go into high risk situations knowing full well she had the credits banked to repair the ship dozens of times over before they ran dry. The downed pod had been damaged too much to restore anything, even lighting or communications, the ground team was doomed to have to settle for natural fire for their warmth and their light. They would certainly need to, as night grew closer on the planet the green light of the sun tinged the entire surface a dull, murky green, descending into complete darkness at night, more pitch black than the women had ever known due to the lack of a natural satellite. Lucy had to maintain the fire with a fervor that almost made the watch meaningless in and of itself, the light only reached a few feet in either direction and more than likely served as little more than a beacon to the women in the otherwise pitch black landscape. Not only that, but as the sun dipped on the horizon they women were faced with the terrifying reality that they were now in sub-zero conditions and it was rapidly growing colder, considering how hot the planet registered during the day, it seemed almost unbelievable that it would get this cold at night, the fire providing the smallest amount of warmth, the cold of the night attempting to close in around it and smother it out like an assassin in the night. One can only wonder for Jade and Lara, being alone with no one to share body heat and possibly without the necessary tools to create a fire could spell a deadly end on a planet like this, and a frankly ungrateful one, to die cold and alone with the only allies never even knowing what happened to you such were the risks of Tessa's bold plans. Far away from the initial crash site, to the east and closer to the colony station the signal was coming from than anyone was Jade, she had been thrown out right as the ship ripped apart, tossing her in nearly the opposite direction of her friends, leaving her nothing to soften the blow of her crash aside from the fact that the seat of her pod had been ripped from the ship with her still in it, slamming into the ground in the chair threatened to snap her tail bone and shatter her teeth as they clamped together, but luckily she managed to avoid the fate - perhaps through skill but more than likely through sheer luck. It took her nearly an hour to manage to get out of the chair that had saved her life, the belt had become stuck and the manual release was crushed in the landing, finally managing to snap it open it was only then that Jade was able to properly examine her surroundings. To her west she could see the start of a thick, choking jungle. The 'trees' if you could call the black, twisting things with long 'leafs' of strange spinning red matter made the entire jungle idea seem like a concept only thought up in a madman's dream, the jungle itself looked almost as horrifying as any brutish monster she had ever faced. Unlike her allies, she found herself in a rather open area, a small field dipped between the edge of the jungle and sheer cliffs to her east. The colony station was almost due east of her position, not that she would be able to scale these cliffs without the right equipment, she would certainly have to go around them. Still, she couldn't see the edge of the cliffs in the distance, and night was rapidly closing in, to her east she can see some small, whistling caves situated under the cliffs. While they might look scary, they would definitely shelter her from the elements and hopefully keep her warm. Lara however had it the worst of any of them, her landing involved hanging onto a sheer piece of metal she'd managed to grab mid-air as she was yanked from the ship. The size of the metal had done something to slow her descent, and that might have been the only thing that prevented her from pancaking onto the ground after the fall. However that might have been for the best as instead the young soldier found herself slamming face first into a murky swamp, her grip on the metal sheet effectively acting as a boogie board that carried her across the dank waters, kicking up more and more debris, water and mud into her face. It was only when Lara finally let go that the metal shot from under her and she began to roll through the murky mud, face slapping against the thick blackness several times before she was finally left gasping for air, chilled to the bone due to the coldness of the water, probably already riff with strange alien diseases from all of the swamp water she had just swallowed. Despite all the commotion, even as she lay there in silence all Lara could hear was the soft shuffling of plants, branches and leaves in the wind. Not a mosquito, not a frog or alien frog or whatever else would be out here. None of that, instead all she could find was the occasional twitching vine in the periphery of her vision. Despite her absolutely beaten up body, laying cold and getting colder as the sun set, Lara was lucky to have even survived the fall, even more lucky to not be covered in leeches and mosquitoes. Still, night was closing rapidly and the young soldier didn't have many options for warmth out here in this stagnant, wet swamp. She would have to work something out, and fast.