Thread: The Crash Landing (Hareem x Moon Struck Fox)

Tess Minari was a freelance explorer, owner of a small, long-range vessel designed to be operated by a single person, though capable of carrying up to 5 or 6 in relative comfort. Whilst humanity had spread relatively far into the galaxy from Earth, their progress was still slow due to limited official resources available for exploration. The government only had so much money and manpower available after all, and the terraforming and settling of new planets was a lengthy and expensive progress. And as territory grew, more ships needed to be available for patrol and defence purposes. It was thanks to that state of affairs that the freelance exploration industry had sprung up. Those brave and perhaps foolish enough to take their own private ships and fly out into uncharted space, never before scanned by human ships or probes, could make a lot of money for mapping out new star systems and navigational hazards...provided you made it back to sell that information of course. Competition was fierce, but the galaxy was so big that there was always somewhere unexplored on the border of human space, so it was rare that any real fighting broke out between explorers. Infact it was rare that they even come into contact with one another besides venturing back to government space stations to sell their newly created star charts, only staying long enough to sell their information before returning to the stars. Tess, despite her young age, only 20 years old, was one of the best. She had come across her ship in a scrap yard when she was only 14, having spent 4 years personally restoring, rebuilding and repairing it into the top of the line explorer that it was today. In the following 2 years she had braved sectors of the galaxy that had swallowed up many more experienced explorers, never to give them back. Already she had amassed enough of a fortune to retire in relative comfort, but it wasn't about the money. For Tess, it was all about the exploration itself. And besides, as a kid she'd always promised herself she'd never retire until she had a very planet all of her own, not just a house. Her current trip had started out like any other, carefully plotting a course, conducting long range scans as she streaked towards the border of explored space through the Steller Slipstream her ship was creating to get around the limitation of Light Speed, passing beyond the beacons marking the edge of human territory like she had done dozens of time before and then turning all scanners up to full. The next few hours were uneventful as usual, a few star systems, mostly empty with nothing but asteroids, but one star system seemed to gain Tess' interest. A Quadrinary star system of a very unique nature, 3 suns in stable orbit around one another at the center of the system, with one final sun actually orbiting around the very edge of the system, with several planets in orbit between the sets of suns. Oh this was definitely something worthy of closer investigation. On entry into the system, on the far side of the fourth orbiting system for safety, Tess began to focus her scanners on the various planets of the system. The planet furthest out was unremarkable, a Gas Giant containing little in the way of valuable resources. A small amount of Helium 3, though not enough to dedicate a mining station to if there was nothing else in the system. The planet nearest the three stars in the center of the system was again unremarkable, a rocky ball with an atmosphere of carbon monoxide and argon. It had a few interesting rare minerals used in the construction of Slipstream cores...definitely worth a follow-up investigation. It was the central planet that was the most interesting. It had a breathable atmosphere, very similar to that of Earth, definitely compatible with human anatomy. What was remarkable about it was the size. Somehow, despite having a breathable atmosphere, the planet was almost twice the size of Jupiter, by far the largest Earth-like planet ever discovered. Oh yes...the discovery of this planet was going to be a huge payout for her. As she moved in for a closer look though, entering the magnetic field of the planet, something went wrong. Alarms started going off over all her control panels, klaxons blaring and red lights flashing. Wh-what?! Expert hands flew across the control panels, but every control was completely unresponsive, the primary engines completely cutting out, the ship plummetting towards the atmosphere, a streak of light across the sky of the alien world as the ship fell. Shit shit shit! Tess grabbed the manual controls, attempting to kick in whatever she could and pulling back on the controls in an attempt to level her descent. Just when all seemed lost, the thrusters kicked in at the last second, the nose of the ship tilting up just enough to avoid a devestating crash, but the ship instead bounced off the ground, kicking up rock and debris as it smashed through trees and fields, before finally settling to a rest, almost a mile long trail of destruction behind it. Unnngh..... Tess rubbed her head, unfastening her safety harness and coughing as the cockpit filled with smoke. She stumbled around through the smoke towards the escape hatch, slamming her fist into the release control, causing the hatch to blast off the side of the ship, Tess tumbling out of it onto the ground and coughing as she gasped for air. D-damn.....what the hell....happened...? She coughed as she crawled away from the crash site, intending to wait for the smoke to die down before heading back in to survey the damage.