Adrift Among Amens (closed)

[Scuttle Buttin']

It was all very routine, until it very suddenly wasn't.

The trip from Luna to Earth was supposed to last two weeks; if they were quick, they may even have a couple of days off after their deliveries were made. Time down the well, with a real sky and full gravity, was a rarity none of them planned to lose the opportunity to enjoy, and it was decided among them before they left Luna that come hell or high water they were getting their time off.

Such naivety; how can one know what hell is when they've not yet experienced it?

The crew that left Luna consisted of 12: 9 employees of Bulan Lunarworks, and three pilots with Pope-Sanchez Shipping, the company contracted to handle the transport and delivery logistics. Once they landed in Toronto the Bulan employees would depart in groups of three to make their deliveries and enjoy their time off as best they could.

What were they delivering? Not even they knew. Bulan Lunarworks was not in the habit of sharing their operations with people that didn't need to know, and the group of people that rattled and jostled their way down to Earth did not need to know. The lower gravity of Luna seemed to be necessary for the manufacture of whatever it was they were riding with, but they were all left to speculate as to what it may be that was code-locked in the large cargo crates they'd placed in the hold below them.

For his part, Emil Ariake was curious but wouldn't allow himself to become preoccupied with it. It seemed like a good way to lose himself a job that paid well and gave him the occasional trip back down the well, and he had no intention of letting his curiosity cost him that. Some day he may find out, the right offhand comment from someone as they made a delivery, but for not he was content to keep his head down, do his job, and wonder to himself.

The trip was, like every other trip he'd made for Bulan Lunarworks, uneventful and routine as they touched down in Toronto and the crew set about loading their cargo into the wheeled transports bearing the Pope-Sanchez Shipping logo that they would use for the final leg of their journey. Once everything was loaded and secured, he joined Juston and Vele in the cabin and settled in for the ride.

There was one other bit of curiosity that pricked at Emil's mind, something else locked away that he couldn't see the truth of, though this was a far less tangible thing: was there something between Juston and Vele? Had he not held a bit of a candle for her himself he may not have even picked up on it, but there seemed to be the occasional glance between them, a familiar look that held on too long, and he felt his stomach roll a little every time he saw it. Maybe something had been going on for ages and he'd never actually had a chance with her; maybe it was new, and he'd squandered what opportunity may have once been there. Unlike the goings on of Bulan Lunarworks, this didn't feel like a mystery he could be content leaving unsolved, and the time they would spend make their way to the delivery point in northern New York would hopefully give him the answer he sought. It might mean alcohol played more of a role in his free time than initially planned, too.

The trio had hours to go until their first of two deliveries, the transport bumping it's way across increasingly rural terrain. It was not built for comfort, a cost deemed unworthy when the suffering was not by those who controlled the purse strings, and so they jostled along together, working their way through renewed Canadian wilderness. Emil, for his part, was content to occupy his time with busy work and listen to the bits of conversation that flowed between the pair seated in front of him, searching for hints of the thing some part of him already knew to be true.

With still an hour to go, exhaustion was sweeping through Emil's body with a vengeance and he could find no compelling reason not to give in to it. "Wake me when we get there," he said to neither of them in particular, and swiped clear the screen of his hand terminal. A final glance of his dark, almond-shaped eyes was cast at the pair in front of him, first Vele and then to Juston, and then he crossed his arms over his chest and leaned his head against the small window next to him, closing his eyes.

It was not the most comfortable nap he'd ever had. He was not terribly tall, 5'8" on a good day, but the back seat of the three-person cabin was still cramped. Still, he managed to drift off until a sharp rattle under him woke him a short time later.

"The fuck was that," he heard Juston say in front of him, and he opened his eyes to find the man leaning closer to the terminal in front of him, searching for the cause of the sudden jolt. Rubbing the heels of his hands in his eyes to wipe the sleep from them, he turned eyes to the window next to him, leaning his face close. It was difficult to see through the reflection of his own face looking back at him, the lightly tanned skin of his mixed heritage rendered odd and translucent by the glass of the window. There did seem to be some distant light, but it was hard to make out exactly what it was through the trees as they slid silently past outside.

Juston's voice grabbed his attention once more.

"Everything reads fine, it must have-"




He opened his eyes, and regretted it instantly. The pain in his head was intense, washing over him in waves, threatening to make him vomit. He was looking up at the stars, but they looked strange, patchwork, as if some of them had been extinguished. He realized dimly, distantly that they were wrong, too. Wrong stars, wrong place. This was not the right view from Luna, and it didn't make sense.

Somewhere off to his left, a bird chirped feebly.

Through the pain, knowledge filtered back to him. He wasn't on Luna, he'd come down the well. He was on Earth, staring up at the night sky, and he couldn't remember why. Carefully, slowly, he rolled onto his side, and gradually worked his way to his hands and knees, and then he regretted that more than he did opening his eyes.

Vele was with him. Some part of him reminded him of this fact, reminded him that his eyes had swept across the back of her head just before everything went black and he woke up here.

"Vele?" he croaked out feebly, swaying on his hands and knees as a wave of nausea washed through him. Squeezing his eyes shut, he took in a breath and let it out slowly, then another.

"Vele?" he tried again, his voice a little stronger this time.

Another breath, despite how it hurt to breathe.

Carefully, he tried to climb to his feet.

 

[PlayfulLilDarlin]

The contract had been for four years with option to extend if she and the company worked well together. After three she'd been eyeing the door. But that was before Juston had hired in, he was Luna born and raised while she was an Earther who worked to get out of the cycle of UN support. Like hell was she going to live like that, waiting for some stipend while she sat in some hovel all day. No, she started working her way into jobs at twelve and learning how to fix things. One thing that was always needed no matter where you go is someone who can repair things others are too cheap to replace.

Six years of learning was like a formal education, and she was quickly brought into service for a small shipping company that dealt with moving ore. She spent two years apprenticing there for next to nothing before she got her big break when there was a big break, hull breach on a long run to Ceres. She slapped on a patch and save the precious O2 from being depleted and they finished the run. It got her noticed and poached at the distinguished age of twenty, into Pope Sanchez shipping.

She wasn't the best pilot, a back-up at most but she learned everything she could to leverage a better rate on contract and her demeanor tended to make her easy to work with. Juston had been assigned to help her sharpen her skills as a pilot and they'd clicked right away. He hadn't had the same trials she did growing up and had more of a formal education, but she saw that as something good. Here he was some smart, clean cut Luna guy slumming it with the Earthers. Things had started to look like they were getting serious and that was what they were discussing just before this trip down the well. If they wanted to extend their contracts and request assignment together. That was about as serious as either one got, but it was something. Was whatever they had worth a couple more years to find out?

She'd looked over at him, not really smiled but just gave him a look. They rarely said things in front of the others, it seemed rude or something to her. And they had Emil along with them this time. He'd been characteristically quiet; she'd almost forgotten the laconic man was with them in the hauler until he mentioned he was going to get some sleep. She looked back and nodded, letting him know she'd wake him when they arrived but there was no reason for all of them to stay awake for the drive.

It gave Vele a chance to relax a bit, her hand brushed Juston's as she reached for a container of water, they both smiled at the other. She was about to say something, bring up a subject that they'd danced around but never addressed directly, but there was no time like this she supposed. Her words were caught though when a sudden force shook the cab of the transport. Juston yelled and she grabbed hard onto the roll cage but whatever it was seemed to pass quickly enough, and she relaxed down until the floor of the machine bucked up under her. Everything went blinding white, there was a sick feeling of weightless ness and then it went dark.


There was a loud rush in her ears, it was like the time she saw the ocean and hear waves crashing on the shore, just rush after rush after... she placed it a moment later. It was her heartbeat. Above that she could hear her name, but she couldn't make it make sense. Vele pushed up and met immediate resistance, she craned her head around from her prone position to see one of the large side doors of their transport was laying across her. "...the hell?" She wriggled and kept turning her body until she was able to get out from under the heavy metal and then she saw it.

The remains of the machine were strewn around them, the sealed containers in the cargo hold had flown all over. But the front end of the hauler was... it was <i>gone</i> "Juston!"

She scrabbled to her knees and then to her feet, two steps forward and she stumbled again slamming to the ground before she took time to find her footing. Her gaze was fixed on the crunched, compacted metal that had been the cab of the hauler and the part of a hand she could see within. "No."

She repeated the word as she staggered toward the wreckage, nothing had set in yet. What had happened, why it had happened, none of that had sunk in, just a hand and a crushed heap of metal that used to be a transport.

Something had happened and the training she'd had for medical kicked in, shock. Yeah, that sounded right. Whatever flipped them over had thrown her clear but not without injury. She reached up to feel her head and her hand came back tacky. Blood. That made things easier to clarify in her thoughts. Vele needed to get help, she needed to-oh god Emil! That was the voice she'd heard. Juston couldn't have survived the crash, but Emil may have, and she had to find him.

She limped back toward the wreckage. "Emil?"

She called out to him but avoided looking at the cab of the hauler anymore. She didn't want to see that. "What the hell happened? Are you ok?"

 

[Scuttle Buttin']

It was like he could feel the rotation of the planet beneath his feet, as if he was somehow acutely aware of the way the big ball of rock spun through the big empty of space and he had become the point on which it spun. This was preposterous, of course, there was no force that could turn him into the axis on which the planet spun, and even if it did would he be aware of it? He didn't think so. Or maybe he would feel it more? No, his rotation would be slower, wouldn't it?

He couldn't decide, but it didn't matter anyway because, again, nothing in existence could make that happen. Except maybe that protomolecule thing that had fucked up Venus and made the Ring Gate? But that was something he'd only seen in reports, it's not like he had any contact with it himself. No, this had to be something else that-

"Emil?"

His thoughts were interrupted by someone saying his name, and he frowned in annoyance at the charred bit of leaf he had been staring intently at as he tried to work out the problem of the earth's strange new rotation. Why couldn't people just leave him to figure things out? Always with the goddamned interruptions. Whatever. Focus, Emil. The answer felt close, and maybe if he ignored them they would go away. He felt so close to having the answer. Maybe mass was what he was missing? Was he even sure he was still the same size? Had something happened and he'd taken on so much mass that it was changing the rotation of the earth? It was possible, though it meant he would have to get off planet before he could investigate it further. Mass like that could really fuck things up for people down here, and he didn't want to be responsible for that.

Straightening himself slowly, his legs still a bit wobbly as he adjusted to the newfound awareness of the planet's rotation underfoot, he turned his attention to whoever it was that had decided to interrupt him. He should contain his annoyance, he decided, because they might be able to help him get out of here so he could look into this further without the risk of hurting anyone.

His heart sank when he saw her. She was pretty, under it all, that much was obvious despite how rough she looked; but oh, she looked rough. Cuts and abrasions, a small trail of blood that seemed to have worked it's way down from her head to curl around her neck and stain the collar of her shirt. Was she missing a shoe?

No, wait. He was missing a shoe.

Why was he missing a shoe? He just got those shoes was looking forward to breaking them in down here in the higher gravity, getting the cushion to really form around his foot. How irritating. He frowned, looking at the woman who approached him without really seeing her, his mind still tumbling through things.

Okay, Emil ol' buddy.

New plan.

Get new shoes, because you seem to have walked off with only one of yours, which was a truly silly thing to do and you really should pay better attention to whether or not you've put both shoes on before you go wandering off to change the rotation of the planet.

Oh, right, the new plan.

Shoes, then get off planet to avoid any disaster.

Good plan?

He nodded to himself, the world shuddering like a top losing balance and threatening to fall over, his wobbly legs managing to keep him upright. But only just.

Great plan.

Blinking, his dark eyes focused again on the woman who seemed determined to make her way to him, and through dry lips he said, "Shoes? New shoes?"

He blinked again, his brow furrowing. Why was he talking about shoes? The woman came nearer to him and he could see her face clearly for the first time, and at last recognition clicked in.

"Vele!" he said with a smile that hurt to form for reasons that he didn't understand but was certain had to do with the shifting gravity around his missing shoe. "Did you bring me shoes? I need new shoes before we can..."

His words trailed off, and he realized he didn't know how to end them. Before they could what? It felt like he'd had a plan that he suddenly couldn't remember. It must have something to do with the reason they were in this strange forest with trees that had few branches and even fewer leaves, but he couldn't remember why they were there either.

He was staring with glassy eyes at the circle of blood on the collar of her shirt when it all rushed back to him, and he took an unsteady, staggering half-step back. Wide eyes swept up to her face.

"Oh, fuck," he said, flooded suddenly with the intense realization of fear and pain and confusion, and then he said again the only words his mind seemed capable of producing now.

"Oh, fuck."

 

[PlayfulLilDarlin]

Emil looked rough, she scanned him quickly for apparent wounds but didn't see anything beyond abrasions and the entirely too easy roll of his eyes. He must have head trauma, what was he talking about? Shoes? she looked down to see his bare foot, abraded and bloody with dirt caking to the blood. He was unsteady on his feet, but his gate was even more or less. He didn't appear to have broken his legs at least.

"I don't know what happened. Some sort of shock wave is the best I can figure." She moved closer gently reaching up to let her thumb lift his eyes lid and search for signs of hemorrhage. She checked both, he had a blood-filled left eye and signs of maybe a detached retina, but she couldn't tell if there was more. She needed a medkit. They needed a radio. Fuck. She was going to have to get in the transport. Which meant she was going to have to face whatever was in there.

They had probably both sustained more harm than was readily apparent but if she could just make sure he was ok that was something. She had to do something because she couldn’t make what happened not happen. Why it happened wasn’t even something she could let herself think about yet No, step 1 in a critical situation was to assess the health of the group. She had to do that. Work it through by the numbers. Numbers were good, they gave her order if she just worked by them then the rest of this was just background noise.

“I need to get into the hauler. Are you-” She was cut off by his realization and she gripped his arms tightly. “Emil, something happened, something big. I’m going to get us out of here but I need to get inside the hauler and get the medkit first. Think you can help me with that?”

Emil was strong, he might not have been a genius like the company always seemed to want to stick on the teams but he was a hard worker and powerful. He'd always done his job and if she needed help he’d been able and willing to do so. “It’s going to be ok. Hear me?”

She wasn’t sure which of them she was trying to convince, nothing was ok. Juston was dead, something flipped the hauler, and the air felt wrong, too much static to it, too much pressure building. It wasn’t right. Maybe they could find a radio inside undamaged. The key to getting anywhere and getting help now was getting into the hauler first, getting them both checked for injuries that could be fatal if untreated, and making a plan from there.

She gave his arms another squeeze before she stepped aside and tried to wrench open the side panel door. The metal was buckled and bent and it fought her with the angry cry of protesting steel. “Come on, come on.” She brace a foot to give her better leverage and heaved at it but only managed to slid it a few inches.

 

[Scuttle Buttin']

Some sort of shock wave...

Emil watched her as she moved closer, keeping his head still as she checked his eyes. His mind, however, was focused on what she'd just said. Giving him a problem to work on, one that wasn't sending him down rabbit holes of delusion brought on by head trauma, helped to clear his head. He was sore, it hurt to move and he could only imagine what color large parts of his skin would be in a few hours, but slowly he was feeling more like himself.

Some sort of shock wave...

Her hands were on his arms then, and she was looking at him intently. He nodded slightly - it would hurt to do more than that - and sucked in a deep breath through his nose that expanded his chest and filled his lungs, holding it for a moment while his eyes remained focused on her face. Puffing out his cheeks, he exhaled slowly, wincing at the pain that rippled through his body as he did.

"Okay," he said at last, more for himself than for him, "Okay. I'm okay. I'm here. Let's see what we can salvage."

Some sort of shock wave...

There were a few small fires around, he noted with a scan around them as they made their way carefully to the hauler, but nothing that would result from a typical bomb blast or some kind of combustive explosion. It was almost like they'd been hit by the biggest, shortest hurricane in history. Turning his wrist, he glanced at his hand terminal - no connection to the rest of the world, but the screen still glowed with life. A nuke close enough to do this kind of damage but far enough away not to vaporize them, would've still caused enough of an EMP blast to fry their terminals.

None of it made sense.

She was right, though. They had supplies in the hauler, and if there was a radio still intact in there they may be able to get in touch with someone to find out what the hell happened. And to be picked up, of course. His eyes slid over the damaged, dented, devastated exterior of the hauler, and he shook his head. It was equipment designed to take a beating, and it couldn't stand up to whatever had given this one. It almost seemed unbelievable that they were still alive.

The stubborn resistance of the ruined metal frame set his teeth on edge a bit, but seeing her able to move it a little gave him some hope that they could get inside. They needed some kind of leverage, though, more than just grabbing and pulling. Some kind of lever, something to pry the door open. He spun in a slow circle, the motion making his head spin a bit, his eyes scanning the area surrounding them even as he swayed slightly on his feet. At last, his eyes settled on a thick branch a dozen feet away that looked as if it had been pulled from tree by whatever had taken them out.

"Hang on," he said over his shoulder before making his way over to it. With the foot that still had a shoe on it - seriously, how did he lose a shoe? and where? - he stepped atop the branch and pushed down with his weight. It seemed to hold him without any obvious sounds of cracking, which seemed like a good sign. Maybe...

"Vele!" he called out over his shoulder. "Come help me with this, I think we can use it to pry open the door."

It was, for the moment, a possible solution to a problem. A small step in the right direction. But something was still nagging at his brain.

Some sort of shock wave...

 

[PlayfulLilDarlin]

While her ears were still ringing Vele didn’t feel the other distorting effects of what she was sure was at least a mild concussion. Feeling fine in and of itself was probably a symptom of however bad a knock she’d taken. But that was something she couldn’t afford to focus on right now she had more important things. She couldn’t do anything about Juston but Emil was alive and seemed mostly ok. His bizarre lack of shoe aside. His eyes were too glassy and rolled a little too easily but there were stims to help with that in the med kit.

Her back stung and the metal handle of the door bit into her hands with each tug at it, but it wasn’t budging more than the scant amount she’d already managed. Emil stepped away and she gave a few more tugs before she heard him call out to her, hand still on the handle she turned to look at what he’d found.

Huh. Why hadn’t she thought of that? Improvised tools were sort of her thing, maybe she had taken a worse hit than she’d thought. Even more reason to get inside and get some medical attention started. She released the door and walked over to the downed tree, happy to note her steps were not nearly as staggered and wobbly as they had been previously. So, she was regaining some of her senses at least, that was a good thing.


“Ok, you take that end, I’ll take this one. This should make a good lever if we can get it wedged in behind the forward bulkhead.” It had good solid steel there and would be an excellent anchor to push against.

She bent to pick up her end of the large branch and realized her head swam when she stood again. Yeah, they both needed stims and the sooner the better. And to find his other shoe, how exactly had he been ejected anyway? She’d caught enough of a look at the front to realize she’d gone out the side window but with the door as jammed as it was how did Emil get out? If he’d been thrown out the back, he might have sustained worse damage than she estimated. From the lack of blood soaking him it would have to be internal and that was bad.

They were who knew how far from anything, with nothing like proper medical tech, she could prolong their survival, but she had no idea how long. Whatever happened had fucked them up.

What had happened?

She still couldn’t remember, just the bestial bucking and heaving of the transport, wind, lots of wind and what felt like an enormous hand pushing her down into the ground after she’d been thrown from her seat. She’d tasted iron and ozone, blood and charged air. Something big. Whatever it had been, it was something big. They needed to get into the hauler and get help.

‘Ok,” She braced an end of the branch into the opening they’d managed and fed it through to hit the bulkhead. “On three?” she took up her place, ready to heave the lever and open the door. If everything worked.

 

[Scuttle Buttin']

Emil was focused, determined. In part, it was because keeping his mind on the task at hand helped to stop him from losing the thread of it in his jostled, shaken brain. At this point he couldn't even remember what he'd been talking about when he had first seen her, a thread that led nowhere now lost to time. The other reason he kept himself so focused on getting into the hauler was that it helped to drown out the pain that seemed to be racing endlessly through his body, making him agonizingly aware of seemingly every nerve fiber he had. It was this that caused him to grunt as they lifted the large branch together and moved back to the hauler to wedge it in.

Once upon a time he would've done more to try to hide the pain he was feeling, and the struggle it caused, from Vele. Funny the way the world blowing the fuck up could strip away all those silly bits of sophomoric masculinity.

It was slow going, but eventually they managed to work it between the door and the twisted frame of the hauler, and push it in so it was against the bulkhead. As long as the branch didn't break - please don't break, please don't break - they would be able to get the door open. Something about a long enough lever being able to move the world flitted through his mind, and he blinked at the branch once, twice, staring without seeing. The world had definitely moved, but it wasn't a lever that did it. An explosion? Their hand terminals still worked, so he was pretty sure it couldn't have been nuclear. Conventional explosives seemed like they would come with a lot more fire and heat, but he couldn't be entirely sure. It was possible, at least. Couldn't rule it out entirely. An impact of some kind? The asteroid spotters would've taken care of anything like that. A large ship, maybe, though it was hard to imagine there wouldn't have been even more destruction if anything with reactor fuel on it had hit with enough force that the shock wave could brush them aside like so much kindling. Something natural? He went through a quick list in his mind, none of them fitting with what it seemed like had happened. So what else could-

"On three?" she asked, interrupting his train of thought and pulling him back into their situation. His mind had wandered again.

Shit.

"Mm," he said with a nod, aware that he had no idea how long he'd been standing there and left only to hope it hadn't been noticeable. He moved close to her, their shoulders nearly touching, four hands stacked one right after the other against the branch. They'd moved as far out on the end as they dare, both of them certain to be keenly aware that the branch snapping suddenly as they were pushing hard against it could be very bad for both of them. Desh xash deya, as a Belter he worked with seemed to say with a regularity that should've been alarming. Where was that skinny bastard to warn him of danger when he really needed it?

Rotating each leg on the ball of each foot, he made sure he had the most stable footing he could get in the dirt and debris, and bent his knees slightly, ignoring the pain that fired through his thighs and back. Time for that later. Sucking in a deep breath, he puffed out as his cheeks as he exhaled slowly, readying himself.

This is going to hurt.

"One."

Thisisgoingtohurt.

"Two."

Thisisgoingtohurtthisisgoingtohurthisisgoingtohurtfuckfuckfuck.

"Three."

It hurt.

His chest rose as he filled his lungs with air, and teeth clenching together as they pushed together. Pain screamed up his legs, screamed along his spin, screamed through his shoulders and arms and neck, and then he realized that he was screaming, his mouth open wide, lips pulled back from his teeth as he pushed on the branch. The sound that came from his throat was raw and animal and matched only by the loud protesting of the hauler's frame as it fought and bent and then suddenly, with a final pop of defeat, gave up and released the door. The branch, it's tension suddenly gone, moved away from them and fell to the ground with a thud muffled by other fallen debris, and Emil stumbled forward, just managing to catch himself on his hands and knees before he planted his face on the ground.

Crouching there, on his hands and knees, missing a shoe and almost certainly with a concussion, Emil Ariake began to laugh. The effort of it rattled his ribcage, hurt his lungs and stomach and throat, and he didn't care. It was all so fucking ridiculous. Alone with Vele at last, a thing he'd wanted for months, and they were concussed and stranded and had no idea if they'd live through the night. The only way ending up alone with her could've gone worse is if they were tossed out an airlock together. It was hard to rule the possibility of it out, at this point, despite having their feet on Mother Earth. It was hard to imagine another way that things could go worse.

He was still laughing as he climbed slowly to his feet, the sound foreign and harsh and pitched higher than normal even to his ears, and then things got worse.

His eyes found the newly created opening into the cab of the hauler, and his laugh vanished as if it's existence had never been more than a rumor. He swallowed past the lump in his throat, his sandpaper tongue swiping across cracked lips.

"Vele," he said, his voice cracking, his hand reaching out blindly in the direction she'd been before the branch sent him toppling.

"Don't," he said, swallowing hard again, his eyes wide and staring, and he couldn't look away to find her, to help his hand move to her and keep her from looking in.

"Look," he said, a wave of nausea roiling in his stomach, like someone had just replaced it with a cauldron of bile.

"Don't," he said, more quietly, wanting to be forceful and warning her away and finding instead that it took more effort to fill his lungs than he seemed to have right then.

They hadn't opened the cab of the hauler; they'd opened Juston's tomb.

His death had not been a clean one.

 

[PlayfulLilDarlin]

They heaved together and the door protested with its loud screech, a high-pitched sound of rending metal, before the door gave way. The sudden loss of tension made them both stagger, months in space without benefit of Earth norm grav had set their bodies up to suffer in these conditions. But it would have been far worse if they were born belters.

As soon as the space permitted Vele surged forward but Emil beat her to the gap and the tone of his usually steady voice affected her more than his words. "What.. what is it?" But she knew, she'd already seen what the compression had been to the front of the hauler. Had she not been thrown free she would have been crushed beyond recognition. What was worse than that?

Actual recognition. Oh god, was Juston... how much of him remained intact? He could not have survived an she'd hoped it was quick and clean as her ejection had been but what if it hadn't been? She didn't even know how long she'd been out he could have been suffering while she lay meters away relatively unharmed in comparison. That was what made her knees give out on her. Vele collapsed to the ground, a heap of limbs gracelessly falling onto her ass. A flood of unconnected thoughts and pain and fear came pouring out in tears she took moments to realize she was crying, worse still was the keening sound she heard when rising and falling like a wounded animal. And then she realized it was her.

"We," she tried to speak and faltered into a cough from her tears. "We need the med kit, the scanner, anything else lose in there." She couldn't see past the rent edge of the door now from where she'd come to sit, but her eyes returned to it over and over. Juston was in there, someone would have to tell his family. She knew he had some but had no idea anything about them. They hadn't even gotten that serious yet and now he was gone.

Her job was to be the strong one. She was supposed to fix things and yet there she sat, ass in the dirt and broken in ways she wasn't even sure of yet.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." She repeated it softly, to Juston, to Emil, maybe even to herself. She wasn't sure what had happened, but this wasn't the way things were supposed to go. It didn't end like this it couldn't.

Usually the one with a plan, the thinker, she was struck dumb and had no idea what to do in that moment.

 

[Scuttle Buttin']

He felt bound to the earth where he stood, as if his feet had grown roots that sunk deep into the ground and moving from that spot would prove impossible. Distantly he was aware of Vele next to him, of his hand still rolling pointlessly through the air, groping for her but too lost in his own horror to make any real effort to find her and keep her from images he'd never be able to scrub from his brain. This was all supposed to be a routine delivery, how had it come to this? Whatever this even was.

Emil caught her crumble out of the corner of his eye, and it was enough to snap him out of it the daze he'd found himself in. Moving to her, he crouched between her and the open door of the hauler, his knees complaining angrily as he bent until his face was level with hers. Realizations flooded through him was he looked at her there, battered and dirty and crying; if they were going to get out of this alive they would have to depend on each other, and that meant she needed him to do this. He knew what was in there, and he knew how little he wanted to climb into that hole they'd opened and search through the cab for the things they would need, and he knew that she might never be okay if he didn't do it and she had to.

"Look at me," he said as he reached out to her, his hands firm on her shoulders. "I know it's bad. We don't know what happened, communication is down, we're both hurt; it's bad. I know you can feel it like I can. There's nothing more we can do for Juston now, and nothing more he can do for us. We're going to have to focus, and be smart, and depend on each other to get through this. Okay? I'm going to go in there and get what we need, and then we need to go look for help."

His eyes were intent on hers, sharp and focused; something about seeing her fall to the ground as she did, the tears that formed lines of dirt on her cheeks, had helped to clear his mind, bring him back fully to the here and now. More awareness of the pain came with it, but he was using that to fuel his urgency, keep his attention on the task at hand.

"Take a minute while I'm getting any supplies I can find. Close your eyes, shed your tears, say goodbye. Do it here," he said, squeezing her shoulders a little tighter for emphasis, "And then we'll do what we can and start moving. I'm sorry, Vele, I wish I could give you more time, but we don't know what happened, we don't know if it could happen again, and if we're out in the open when it does..."

His voice trailed off, the implication clear. Whatever did that to the hauler would find little resistance when it came to pulling their bodies apart.

"Stay here, okay?" he said, squeezing her shoulders again, "Please. Stay here."

Releasing her, he stood much to the displeasure of his knees again, and turned to go into the hauler. Pausing with his back to her, he sucked in a slow, deep breath, welcoming the pain that accompanied the expansion of his chest, and then crossed the distance and ducked inside.

It was worse than he'd expected.

The air smelled of ozone and burnt plastic and something foul and unfamiliar that repelled him down to his core. He wanted nothing more than to turn and climb back out the hole, vomit up everything he'd eaten in the last week, and then get as far away from this place as he possibly could. Instead, he breathed through clenched teeth as little as possible and tried to search as quickly as he could. He vomited just after he found the med kit, and was dismayed to find that it didn't help the terrible combination of smells that filled the air. He didn't want to look at Juston, had gone into the cab of the hauler with the plan of keeping his eyes off him unless absolutely necessary, but nothing inside there was where it should be, including Juston's organs. Avoiding looking at any of it would be virtually impossible if he hoped to find anything; hell, touching some of it might be impossible.

Breathing a bit raggedly, he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and began the search. The faster he worked the sooner he would be out of this chamber of nightmares and back into the relatively fresh air. Broken glass and jagged shards of metal made the work slower than he would've liked, but a short time after climbing into the hauler (minutes? hours? he had no idea) he found the med kit, a bit dented but still seemingly intact. Blindly, he tossed it over his shoulder and out the open door, confident that if it had survived whatever had done this to them a little tumble in the dirt outside wouldn't be the final straw. Best to keep his hands free, anyway.

A few more things followed the med kit out the door of their ruined transport: a contained of water, the twin of which was found with a gash along the side and the water gone; a radio that seemed broken and useless but was worth taking a look at anyway; three loose packages of food, still mercifully sealed in their foil pouches; and lastly, the thing he'd nearly forgotten before he climbed back out. He didn't think of it as something that might prove necessary, and didn't think he would find it intact when it did occur to him, but despite the dull metal of the outside being quite banged up, it was still closed and so he knew what was held inside should be fine.

Climbing out of the cab of the hauler, his eyes going first to the scatter of items he'd thrown out and then to Vele, Emil held a rectangular metal case in his hands; the handle had been sheered off and lay somewhere, lost forever behind him. Inside the case was a long rifle, and three small handguns of differing size and caliber. Emil enjoyed target shooting - was actually quite good at it - and while there were ranges he could go to on Luna, nothing compared to doing it in a full one g. There was not a lot of ammo in the case, he'd come to shoot targets after all, and what was there was not guaranteed to be lethal, but it was better than nothing.

"Vele?" he called out to her as his feet found the ground again, realizing for the first time as the air hit him that his body was soaked with sweat, "Are you with me?"