The Zohar III Exegesis (closed)

[Obuzeti]

The ISV Maolan Bui isn't going to make it.

When the ship had reentered realspace, it had landed on top of a patch of floating hydrogen gas, being blown idly on the solar winds. Unfortunately, a sparking circuit had been exposed to space through an open panel knocked ajar by micrometeorites, and that spark crossed through the hydrogen and ignited it in a furious explosion that had ripped the port bay in half and nearly the entire ship itself. Storage and the garrison were lost immediately as they cracked off the main hull, separated from the fusion plant and doomed without functioning power for their escape pods, if they even survived the explosive decompression that emergency-close bulkheads couldn't save them from. Death came to them, still in cryosleep. That at least was gentle.

Luckily, the fuel lines collected in the aft-side reservoir and had to do a changeover through the central torsion line - which meant that while the ship was still cracked in half, the explosion didn't chain its way all the way through the quarter-mile long ship, and instead halted just short of halfway up its length. Emergency bulkheads sealed off the lost sections and prevented the loss of more atmosphere, but it was a deathblow to the ship, no question. Not least because they'd lost the engines and were now drifting towards a nearby moon.

Forward engineering is situated about three-quarters of the way up the length of the Maolan Bui, which is the only reason that Angstrom wakes up, probably. The explosion splatters him all over the inside of his tank, and he bubbles furiously in confusion for a moment before he deploys into his maintrig and pressurizes it. The bipedal frame stiffens and then begins its shuffling walk down the walkway from his tank. The environmental breach alarm is shrieking at the nearest engineering panel, and he wishes the rig could run so he could get to it faster.

Of course, he doesn't have to be right next to it to see that the entire back half of the ship has faded red, and he froths in panic before he yanks the rig around to the right and heads for the torsion line, where the fuel is condensed and prepared for shipment to the main engine away from the converter. If it or the engines proper had gone off, they and everything within a half-parsec would have been free-floating radicals already. As it stands, the condensor is blaring alarms, and he hits the emergency vent as fast as he can get to the giant red switch, releasing all the concentrated fuel straight out into space with a bang that knocks the ship sideways with a groan of polymer. Angstrom's frame bounces off the wall hard with the jolt, and he trills in fury before setting the walker to trot up the hall towards the evac pods. Then he hears the crack and hiss of the environmental seals failing right before air starts sucking out of the compartment, and he has to blast loose his thruster pack to make it to the next compartment before he gets sucked out into vacuum.

He's in the throat of the ship now, alarms screaming in every direction at the new breach - the bulkheads here don't hermetically seal, which means the entire area is on a time limit as it leaks atmosphere. He bumbles down the central shaft for the closest pod, the entire opposite row already deployed, and only two left on his side. He manages to slam into one and light the startup procedures as he tries to calm down, keurith vibrating frantically. This isn't how he wants to die, dammit. He's getting out of here before it all goes to hell.

The ejection pod is cramped and it takes a moment to fit the walker into the depression there - the fit is tight and inflates to seal around the body, meant to hold the body safe against the jarring impact of reentry or cosmic collision. He taps the engine on and hesitates, glancing at the emergency feed. There's still a few crew signals on board, but they're pretty much fucked, except for one heading his way at high speed.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Greasemonkey Riley Worth was supposed to be sleeping; she’s tucked into her bunk alright, showered and weary after a twelve hour stint-but she had something important to finish, something she’s had to put off for too many days in a row as it was. Sure, she was due back it in six hours-but this letter home wasn’t going to write itself, and it was important to squeeze in at least a little recreation from time to time.

In all fairness however, work was her recreation-she was always the first one to sign up for overtime, and it had little to do with the money.

Riley paused to consider this for a moment-her mother was always urging her to get out, socialize in the mess hall or at the bar-but that just wasn’t her speed. She was happiest alone and working on machinery, repairing broken things with her own two hands, and maintaining things before they could be broken. It’s important work, and not to be neglected.

Still, maybe she wouldn’t mention that the overtime had been voluntar-!

The ship jolts violently; everything unsecured in the small living quarters is thrown to the floor, including its sole occupant-Riley’s bunkmate was currently on shift.

Propping herself up on one hand, the woman has no idea what the hell’s happened-only that it had to be very, very bad, the ship rocking like that. For a moment she’s just frozen there, eyes rooted to the illuminated tube that still projected her flimsy and the careful, neat script of the letter she’d been writing.

The older Worth woman had also lived a life among the stars-and she wouldn’t sit tight in her room, uncertain and terrified on what to do.

Riley snatches it up and turns it off as she scrambles to her feet, a pulse of adrenaline coursing through her as she glanced at the lit panel over the shared desk, caught sight of the cutaway diagram of the ship-and how much of it was red, critically damaged and-

Oh God, whole ship is about to be space dust.

Aquamarine eyes wide and panicky, the young woman turned and fled the room.

She doesn’t see anyone else in the hall. It’s dark and flooded with emergency red lights and blaring alarms, loosened panels to circuitry popped open, the toiletry cart thrown onto its side, bottles and soaps spilling out everywhere. There’s two directions she can flee-and she chooses the one not towards the catastrophic damage and no doubt roaring flames.

She darts through the as of yet unclosed bulkhead door and into the next hall, swiping at her wristlet to pull up her security clearance-bypassing the elevator and the next several hallways to the stairs for the maintenance shaft on her left. The door slides open with a hiss and Riley jambs it that way for anyone else who might-hopefully?-be coming behind her-but maybe they’ve already fled in the minutes she was frozen in place. She did kind of work the graveyard shift though-perhaps they’d all been on duty. Riley can’t decide if that bettered or worsened their chances-depended where they were.

Another shockwave hits, and Riley is briefly in freefall as she’s knocked off the ladder-only an elbow banging, white knuckled catch saves her from dropping nearly two stories. Her hand is a little numb from the blow, but she keeps on going regardless-there’s no time to nurse petty injuries-what was a sore joint to being blown to bits or launched into the cold depths of space?

She drops the last few feet rather than continue scrambling down the rungs, palms sweaty and her heart experiencing rapid palpitations-she could very well die down here. There are two bulkhead doors she has to beat, and if she misses either of them, she’s dead. She might already be dead.

But she can’t be any worse off for trying, right?

Riley sucked in a deep breath to keep from hyperventilating-and sprinted down the tight confines of the service hall and towards, hopefully, her salvation.

~*~

Skidding into the main corridor through a noisily popping maintenance panel, Riley’s never been more afraid in her life. She barely notices her burning lungs or the stitch in her side-can’t notice or acknowledge them, not when things are so dire.

She’s looking for an escape pod, passing sealed space after sealed space where others had already launched off. She’s glad that people have escaped, but darn it, not one pod left?!

Gone gone gone-not gone! There’s an occupied pod with an Orlaith’s exoskeleton inside, and, thank God, one right next door to it. No one was coming through those bulkhead doors even if they were on their way-they’re the last to leave through here.

She’s going to make it.

“What’s happened?” The woman calls from her own pod, starting up the basic procedures with very shaky hands. There's only one Orlaith on board-his name was Angstrom, and they've talked over radio before-but never in person. He worked in maintenence, same as she did. “What caused the explosion?” Her fingers fly over the panel and-critical failure.

“No.” It’s the door. The door won’t seal! Her left hand wraps around the gap and she tries to pry the thing out of there while her right continues to work the panel, flying through diagnostic tools and desperately trying to remember everything she’d ever read about the thing.

She’s been through the safety procedure a hundred times for this ship, for these very pods. In her rising panic, she can’t remember any of it.

It doesn’t work. It’s not going to work.

“No, no, no, no! What is-” She’d done well not to hyperventilate up to this point, but now she’s looking at suffocation and death, real, gaping, horrible death, too young and too learned and too loved to die-but here it was anyway. Her shaking hands curl into fists and Riley drives the one just above the panel, on the verge of a complete breakdown. She can’t get back through the bulkheads, and even if she could-the next bank of pods were just too far away. This had been her one, only chance, and how cruel it was for there to have been hope, only for it to be snatched away.

An empty bank with no escape pods would have been better than this. But it’s time to make her peace-except all she can feel is the instinctive, panicked terror of the end.

 

[Obuzeti]

A human skids into the far side of the corridor. Angstrom doesn't recognize her at first glance, but the maintenance patch means she's someone he's worked with. The voice makes him think it's Riley, but he's never actually met her; they worked on opposite sides of the station. He normally tended the engines, and he has to clamp down on his panic as he realizes that if he'd been there, he would already dead.

"Don't know! I woke up with half the ship gone!" Angstrom babbles, nerves making his voice warble more than normal. Orlaith always sound a little bit like they're talking through a fan, thanks to their lack of true vocal cords - they can thrum a kind of facsimile, but the more stressed they are, the more distorted the voice. "Engines or a fuel spark or tchuk if I know!"

Then her door jams, and his pulse stutters, staring at Riley as the door to his pod starts to close instead. Her pod's fucked, and there's no more on this part of the ship. The rest of it's been chunked off. She's stuck, and she's going to die.

He can hear her breathing, faint and rapid, and keys smashing as she tries to hit the diagnostics, but Angstrom can barely remember them himself, they only run them twice a year and the captain's been real slack about actual drill. He barely had the nerve to start the automatic process prompted by the ship's computer, much less do a manual reboot and launch.

The door keeps sliding down, and for a moment, all he can think about is the sound of this woman he doesn't know humming over the com, absentminded, forgetting it's on. Sometimes someone would say something and embarrass her, and she'd go quiet. But sometimes, late at the night cycle, it'd be only the two of them up, late on overtime, and he'd listen to that quiet and tuneless hum.

She's about to die, and he's doing nothing about it. But he can.

He slams forward in the maintrig, pushing its metal leg out. It catches in between the closing hatch and the floor, and crumples a little under the force before it rebounds. Then he bucks the walker forward two steps. "Use mine!" he shouts, tenor warbling in sheer, absolute terror. "Get in here!"

Then he triggers the release valve and Angstrom is propelled out of the back of the maintrig - an ooze, black and thick, that splatters against the back wall of the pod and clings hard, flattening to give Railey as much room as possible.

If she doesn't get in and he has to jettison his pod without his walker, he's as good as killed himself unless he lands in the water, and that cold realization makes his membrane tremble.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

"I-I'll figure it out." Riley responds with what little courage she has left to muster, a feeble attempt to reassure her crew mate, a last act. She can't, won't leave him to die in her place.

And then he shocks her by jettisoning out of his walker and back into the working pod. Why would- so there'd be room for both of them.

It's a level of quick, sacrificial thinking she wouldn't have managed in a million years in such a panic-and it snaps her spine straight, another pump of adrenaline.

Riley pops out of her malfunctioning pod and into his, because such a thing was not to be wasted. She twists to press her palm to the touch pad-and the door slams closed, seals.

She's still shaking, breathing in short, shallow gasps.

"You s-shouldn't have d-done that Angstrom." She worries, traces of that long ago stutter touching her words. He's saved her life, but at the cost of his -body-. The idea of that was too immense to entirely handle, not while still on the cusp of a panic attack. Riley swallows, still trembling. Concentrates past the stutter. "B-but thank you."

 

[Obuzeti]

Riley pushes her way into the escape pod, nearly falling. He gets a flash of a sharp little face, pert nose, and dark hair before she's in and then he doesn't have the light or the angle to see much of anything. It's still more than he's ever seen of Riley before, and the snapshot image burns itself into his brain.

"Aw, tchuk, don't tell me it's a terrible idea, I've already done it," Angstrom moans. The vibration of his warble is tangible - it starts somewhere near the back of Riley's neck, where a faint pulse can be felt pushing circulation through the gelatinous form. To the touch, the Orlaith is warm and rubbery - it deforms around her skin, but there is tangible resistance, and it ripples around her with the frantic pace of Angstrom's nerves. "Prime the pod, let's - "

The Maolan Bui rocks again. The quiet hum of the fusion reactor stutters, and a much deeper, louder siren goes off for a split second before the lights cut and everything goes dark and silent. An instant after that, a circuit breaker throws and the drop pod automatically disengages, the locks keeping it in place failing as designed once power cuts - without power, the pod bay can't launch, so any with occupants are automatically ejected when the power dies.

This all goes through Angstrom's mind in between two beats of keurith, and he screams, startled, as the pod blasts away from the ship on chemical pressure, accelerating towards a nearby planet as the thrusters engage. The slime clamps tight around her shoulders and back where she's shoved into his mass, and it takes a moment for him to calm down enough to let go.

"Okay," Angstrom pants. He's not out of breath, but the sound effect is roughly parallel - with his keurith beating like a snare drum, his voice rocks and ripples, the words coming out distorted. "Okay. Let me get the map up."

Something stirs out of the gelatin at Riley's side, and a psuedopod reaches up the bare foot of space they have in the pod to pod open the emergency feed monitor. The map is labeled Zohar III, and they're heading towards the daylight side of the planet. It's a Biohazard Level II planet, which means the local flora and fauna is highly hostile, but it's technically inhabitable by both their races provided nothing eats you. There's six other pods headed there with them, but that's all. A few others are heading back into empty space and already activating their cryo-seals and their beacons.

That's a fool's bet. They're a year out from civilization. The pod's battery will die long before then.

On the positive side, the map of Zohar III shows a large body of water on the side facing them. It'd be a fine place to land, and Angstrom taps it. "Water would be the best place to land, I think?"

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

The ship rocks for the third time, and Riley draws in a slightly deeper breath.

She knows what should happen next. It still doesn’t insulate her from the sudden stomach dropping shock of it-a series of squeaks rather than a scream, Angstrom holding onto her shoulders as they’re fired out and away from what was probably a disintegrating ship, mutually terrified.

And then everything is still.

”Okay.”

Riley nods mutely despite the dark.

”Okay, let me get the map up.”

Three, four minutes slower, and she would have been caught in that pitch blackness. Thirty seconds, and standing in a pod with a malfunctioning, open door-jettisoned into open space while still trying to reboot the darn thing.

She breathes, some-not all-but some of the tension draining out of her shoulders, her breathing evening out substantially. She’s two steps better than she could have been. She can be grateful for that.

“People are opting for cryostasis.” She murmurs, and neither one of them have to say what they’re both thinking. Her lack of stutter helps steady her breathing, a reciprocal, odd relationship between the two things.

Less panicked, Riley’s mind was no longer blank-the guidelines and procedures come back to her, as do the pod’s functions. That too was comforting. That said, she’s definitely not out of the woods yet.

“A hopefully softer impact for me, and by far the safest option for you.” Riley agrees, soft but tentatively knowledgeable, coming more to herself despite the still rapid pace of her heart. There’s some familiarity with his species-she knows water is his best bet, immobile as he is on land. Between the two, he had a much higher chance of surviving impact-her brain was essentially free floating in her skull, after all.

Riley’s thoughts trail off at that, and the idle consideration that sharing space with a corpse for any length of time would be traumatic. She shifts her shoulder forward what little she can in the inflated cushioning, tapping at the panel beside the door. Most of this would be automatic, but it makes her feel more in control to check, to calculate fuel and thrusters and the length of time they’d be hurtling down in re-entry.

Water was definitely their best bet-by the time the pod maneuvers over that body of water, fuel would be very low, possibly non-existent. There’d be no reverse propulsion available.

“I’m Riley.” She says softly in the quiet, tapping through data while he viewed the map. “Riley Worth? We've...we've talked a bit on the radio, before.”

 

[Obuzeti]

Angstorm winces at the woman's observation. Yeah, people are going to try to wait it out. At the very least, it's a painless end if you're wrong. "Well, hopefully someone will hear the black box's burst signal and come running. They'll be sitting pretty should that happen."

He doubts it.

Riley introduces herself, and something about the ritual of introducing themselves helps ground Angstrom a little bit. "Ah - yeah, I have. I'm Angstrom, but I guess you know that already? Yeah."

Being the only representative of his kind aboard, he'd been a minor celebrity. Humans were big fans of party tricks - little things you could do that no one else could. He'd been a Rorshach blot, had dye poured in him to make colors with, been a softball, been a dozen other humiliating things as the humans worked out their curiosity, but by the second month in they'd mostly got it through their systems and just treated him like any other mechanic. He'd preferred that, in the end. At the very least, he doesn't remember Riley's face from any of those that had bothered him at the start.

He wonders if he should mention that he'd recognized her voice, and then decides not to. Humans are weird about physical compliments.

"I'm glad you made it," he says, naked honesty in the color of his voice, before he subsides into embarrassed bubbles and instead changes the subject. "Planet's supposed to be livable, at least. Scan says there's a lot of critters. You ever had a pet?"

Angstrom cringes inwardly. That's a horrible segue.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

"Your...your voice." Riley provides by way of explanation. They both tended to work late-he must have been off-shift same as she had been, and it had certainly contributed to their survival-especially his, given what he worked on, and where. The thought makes Riley feel a little dizzy.

“And I…” She starts, a little slow. “I read career blurbs, sometimes. You’re the only one with experience on Orlaith ships.” Between that and the choppy, unique voice Orlaiths had-wasn’t difficult to piece together.

She maybe shouldn’t have admitted to the career blurb thing. She was just curious, sometimes. She liked to see what experience led to what jobs, and...work histories always kind of tell a story of their own. Considering she’d been hyperventilating mere moments ago however, Riley can’t entirely find it in her to be embarrassed about looking into her fellow ‘grease monkeys’.

"I'm glad you made it."

Only because of his quick thinking-Riley’s brow furrows as she again thinks about the extreme nature of what he’d done, ejecting his body like that. And if he hadn’t, how she would have still been in that malfunctioning pod when the power cut. For the second time she imagines having been ejected into the vacuum of space in a pod without a door.

He changes the subject before she can form an appropriate response, and Riley feels guilty for not thanking him again, saying something-and at the same time briefly grateful for so simple a distraction.

"Served on a ship with a mild Tok problem." Riley says weakly, eyeing the Biohazard designation with a small bit of trepidation. "And half domesticated one. Called him Georgie." Little guy had always been skittering around the atmosphere regulators on her shift, so she'd just started bringing him a cracker or two every night. Something else she wouldn’t have brought up under normal circumstances-feeding vermin was admittedly kind of strange

She suddenly feels more than a little awkward, and decides to go for broke.

“I’m glad you made it, too.” She’s quiet, but very sincere in this. It’s scary. It’s very scary, but they have that much to be grateful for. Everything else is...well. Riley’s mind wanders, and then she refocuses on the tasks at hand. Any problem can be solved, you just had to break it down into smaller parts. Step by step-you could fix it.

“We just have to try and land safe." That would be the next step, wouldn't it? This model of the Gevolbe series had good ratings, better than the 500 series AND the two big name competitor escape pods produced around the same time. Riley feels her heart beat steadying despite the danger-nothing was foolproof, but just thinking about the comparison data soothed her, the good and bad.

"The Gevolbe614’s got a good autopilot, so...so if you pick a spot within…” She tapped a bit on the panel, let the computer do the math for them. The map zoomed in on a slice of the projected globe. “These parameters, we’ll be more than safe fuel wise, and reentry shouldn't be too bad.”

Thrusters would engage minutes before hitting the surface, slowing them from terminal velocity and breaking up the water surface before they truly struck it. They were lucky in not needing to move very far from their current orbital position to get the water landing they're hoping for; more fuel meant a long period of reverse propulsion, which meant an easier landing in which they wouldn't necessarily be obliterated. That was the whole point of an escape pod, the desired end goal-safe delivery of beleaguered space travelers.

Against her back and curved around her right side, Angstrom is warm and oddly...elastic? She hopes she's not crowding him out, smooshing him-the inflated interior certainly did not help in that regard, but it'd at least cushion the both of them.

"...I'm...I'm ready when you are."

 

[Obuzeti]

"That'd do it," Angstrom admits, the warble in his voice settling as the sheer panic of the disintegrating ship fades with the wreckage behind them, into the distance. Orlaith speak by vibrating stretches of membrane near the keurith; it gives them a characteristic wet voice, with warble or distortion depending on both practice and stress. "Maolan's the first human ship I've served on. It's been . . . a learning experience."

Humans are deeply curious, he's found, and quick to crack jokes, talk about nothing, feel and express their boredom. That's what confuses him most about humans - their need for occupation, not just of their lives but of every waking moment. Time offends them with its passage, their literature bemoans age and death, the work clock rules the lives of the entire shift he works with - they watch it, complain about it, check it constantly. They're so quick to be miserable.

"I've seen Tok in ports. Not on board, before. I mean, obviously. They breathe air," Angstrom offers, awkward. 'They look - well, I'm sure you appreciated the company."

He's glad to seize on the subject change too, casual conversation being a gaping hole in his repertoire of skills. "Yeah, there's a sea to land in. Lots of plant life by the edge, looks like? You should be able to forage something."

It's also awkward when he realizes that he's fine as a filter feeder given a water source with active microbiology, but she has to find edible sustenance and a lot of it, comparatively. She'd be - well, no. She wouldn't. He'd help. Fish are easy enough to scoop up in the shallow water, and she should be able to eat those.

Well, at least that's one thing solved.

But then it's time for reentry, the escape pod already starting to rock as it hits the thermosphere. Heat from the friction starts to soak into the pod, already suffocatingly cramped, and Angstrom wavers. He'll be fine at this point, no matter what - there's almost no level of physical impact that can harm him - but as the pod begins to creak, he says, "Okay, initiating reentry - parachute deploying in five, autopilot guidance set."

His form ripples outward, the Orlaith version of a deep breath, as he reflexively redistributes nutrients and mass across his entire volume. "It, uh, should be fine. I mean we can set the pod computer to fire thrusters right before we hit water, that'll break the surface tension so we aren't just - yeah. Softer landing."

He'd been about to say going splat, but humans don't tend to come back from that, he remembers uncomfortably.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

"Yeah, there's a sea to land in. Lots of plant life by the edge, looks like? You should be able to forage something."

“Sure, of course.” Riley agrees, nervous but trying to be reassuring. “Water is the main ingredient for life, right? It’s going to be best for that.”

One step at a time. Shelter, water, food in that order, AFTER she survives the landing. Which she should. She totally should. Angstrom talks about breaking the surface tension of the water as they start to fall, the whole capsule shaking. She worries she’s squishing him and tries to brace herself somehow, but there’s nothing to hold on to on the door, and everything’s inflated.

She’s torn between apologizing and not bringing it up if he doesn’t-they honestly have worse problems to fret over.

“This model is actually carrying more fuel than the newer 700 series.” Riley continues, stifled in the increased heat. “Not...I mean not much more-” She realizes, somewhat embarrassingly, that it was in fact only twelve liters more. Well...every little bit counts.

It’s getting even more stifling in here, and they’re rocking kind of, kind of a lot. “And it’s heat shield tested well. Temperatures can get as high as fifteen hundred degrees celsius, on some re-entries!” That said, it’s stifling in the already confined pod, and Riley already feels like she’s got a weight on her chest from the g-forces involved. She breathes in a pant, catches just enough air to offer up another factoid. “The coating of our pod is vaporizing right now, which helps cool it down. N-neat, right?”

They are buffeting around more than Riley had ever figured on however-at least the parachute will help stabilize them.

 

[Obuzeti]

"Well, diatoms use a silicate-based skeleton and they produce about half of Earth's oxygen, so there's OH GOD -" Angstrom screams, cut off halfway through his sentence as the parachute deploys, and then the pod is caught by a vicious crosswind that throws them into a harsh spin. There's a hard rattle on the outside of the pod, like rain but with a screeching aftertone as it scrapes over the surface after impact. Then there's another hard jerk and the pod settles back into its normal orientation, but he can't feel the G forces appropriate for deceleration anymore. That isn't great.

PARACHUTE FAILURE, the pod HUD says. It's a normal-sized popup, like the one his flimsy would use to say 'you need to restart your system soon' instead of a giant blaring one like he imagines imminent death would be suited to. ALTERING RETROBOOSTER PROGRAMME FOR EMERGENCY LANDING.

"Welp," Angstrom says after a moment, his voice warbling in his throat from the residual terror. "I could use a drink right now."

His frame is now tangibly pulsating against Riley's back, not pressing her away but instead inflating slightly around her - there's no sensation of friction anymore, the surface impossibly slick so that she can't get any kind of grip or pressure on it at all. He's completely reversed his membrane out of instinct, and at this moment there's no physical force short of total disintegration that could harm him. It's what makes Orlaith such treasured engineers - they are extremophiles par excellence, sentient, and capable of dexterous manipulation given a frame to work with.

"Suppose we'll get one soon enough, right?" he jokes feebly, as the blue splotch on the projected holo-map grows larger and larger on the screen.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

More startled squeaks of alarm-and then Riley turns her head to press her mouth into her shoulder because she’s starting to feel sick.

The pod reorients properly, and thank God-humans can’t really withstand these kinds of G-force vertically-she’s got to be lying down.

“It’s okay! Everything’s fine!” Riley insists despite the higher pitched, anxiety ridden, distressed note to her voice. She’s either trying to be optimistic or in denial-even she’s not exactly sure which. “There’s a backup, we’ll deploy it last possible second-” Her arm feels like it weighs a thousand pounds but she manages to tap at the panel.

The hail, rocks or-whatever it was-didn’t sound like it was hitting them anymore, and Riley tried to manually deploy the emergency chute-and nothing happens. An alert pops up, helpfully informs it’s missing.

“...that’s okay, too! We have plenty of fuel!” She thinks. What if that’s not right, either? Despite the heat Riley feels a chill. Angstrom makes a joke she doesn’t really hear, and he’s...he’s encasing her at this point, practically-she feels like she’s floating on top of a very thick, viscous fluid, rubbery and alive. She's glad for the mechanic's jumpsuit, and then feels bad for being glad-but that's not what she's really thinking about.

Do they have fuel? The sensors seem to think so, but they just took a tumble, and if fuel splashes into the little eyelet wells, it could give a false reading. Luckily, pods always had tanks filled to capacity, cycled out every six months.

“W-who even maintained these last?” He’d feel her stiffen, and at the end of the last PM checklist was the name D. Oates. “...it was Daniel.”

A long pause, and then Riley just-sags, a dazed line delivered next, barely audible over the noise. “...I think I’m going to die.”

 

[Obuzeti]

Angstrom barely breathes. Daniel? Daniel, who he'd found sleeping once inside the engine emergency maintenance shaft, where he'd be fried if the boosters came on? Daniel, who'd never once passed his reups, who begged off studying with anyone else, who took twenty minute bathroom breaks when he was outside the ship on EVA work? Bathroom breaks in fucking vacuum?

"Fffharrrr," Angstrom groans, long and low, eyeing Riley in deep sympathy. "We kicked him off aft engineering after the boss found him falsifying checks on the fusion converter. You mean they just put him up front instead of - I don't know, making him work cleanup or in the mess?"

That's - that's really shady. There'd been a full-on investigation last Angstrom had heard of that mess, because falsifying maintenance records on priority equipment like the drive or safety measures (like the pod they're in) is actually a criminal offense. A lot of jokes had been made about Daniel dropping the soap, which Angstrom doesn't actually get - it may be a human cultural thing - but the sentiment hadn't been kind. The guy was really clumsy, though, so Angstrom could see it.

He takes a breath and says, "I got you. Don't worry. We're going to make it."

Optimism without evidence is just trial and error, Angstrom remembers, but it's not like they've got much else to go on.

But then the boosters go off, and the Orlaith lets out a whistling breath as they bleed some of the speed off at a steady pace, their plummet going from eye-bleeding terminal velocity to just uncomfortably fast. The water's still coming up, but the boosters aren't poweful enough to bring them to a total standstill. Angstrom seals himself to the walls and to Riley's back, steadying himself - and also gluing her in place by accident. "Here we go -"

Impact. It's not actually that bad - the water's surface tension is broken by the thruster's jetstream, and it feels more like an awkward plop that the bone-breaking crash he'd been fearing.

LANDING SUCCESSFUL, the screen says in happy green letters, and little fireworks go off across it. Angstrom starts laughing hysterically, letting go of everything and slouching low in the pod, puddling at the base.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“I’ve been cleaning up after him for months.” Riley dazedly confirms-and then snaps partially out of it, even on the cusp of her brain potentially about to be turned into pudding. “I was getting more and more pointed in my follow up tickets, but then he ruined Teri with a bad weld, tore her tires to pieces-oh, it was awful.” Bizarrely, Riley seems more offended by this and his lying about the engine checks than the dire nature of their current situation.

It’d been one of the few times she’d ever been upset in a contract, and she’d marched a piece of that panel straight to the foreman’s office, on the verge of tears and tantrum-and thrown it down on his desk. She had threatened to quit then and there, even if it resulted in her being thrown in the deserter’s brig or out an airlock.

It’d been one of the few times she’s ever been upset while working a contract. She had assumed he’d be relegated somewhere less technical-that it’d turned out to be their emergency systems was just...

"I got you. Don't worry. We're going to make it."

There were simply too many occurrences of her having come upon Daniel’s ‘work’ and fretting over his manhandling of the poor machines and systems for them to all flash through her mind-but a good many of the worst mistakes do, and they don’t inspire confidence in her chances.

And then a small miracle! The thrusters engage at a safe distance and don’t cut mid way in the descent, and they land rather than shatter, safe and sound and without her brain being either soup or her body splattered into boneless goop;not the efficient variety of her friend Angstrom here, either.

She hadn’t realized she was holding her breath, but now she likewise goes limp as Angstrom starts to laugh, pools at the base of the pod. Riley nervously laughs too, wrapping her arms around herself in a tight hug as the insulating walls deflate. Unlike his hysterical peals, hers are light and a little shuddering.

“D-daniel. That...that guy’s short a c-couple of screws.” They’re bobbing peacefully in the water after all of that insanity, and the relief after so much stress makes her dizzy.

“He...he c-couldn’t pour water out of a boot if-if the instructions were written on the h-heel.” The idioms carry the awkward halt of someone not used to insulting people, and indeed-Riley rarely had an ill word for anyone, let alone a fellow mechanic.

But Daniel. Daniel Oates. Riley couldn’t believe their luck, and she hopes to God these were isolated incidents, and the other pods hadn’t been mangled by him too. To be in a pod he’d so much as looked at, let alone ‘worked’ on-and those who’d entered cryo! Oh, God, what if he had fussed with those systems?! That was a job Riley wouldn’t have even attempted; life support of any kind was sticky work.

Riley belatedly realizes she’s shivering, and curled up in a partial ball. The nervous laughter had turned to shaky breathing and near tears, but they’re alright, they’re okay. They’ve made it.

She takes in a deeper, shuddering breath and wipes at her eyes, then her face-and then turns her attention to the panel, taps away from the celebratory fireworks. The door won’t open. Well of course. One pod wouldn’t close, and now this one won’t open. But her mind isn’t blank with panic this time, she knows what to do.

“Manual reboot, okay? The door didn’t...won’t pop.” She enters diagnostics for the second time today, and offers a calmer, final conclusion with a more genuine, prettier laugh. “He probably eats his soup with a fork.”

 

[Obuzeti]

"He's kind of a moron," Angstrom confirms, his voice still faintly trembling from stress and hysterical humor."I mean, he'd have to pick up the boot first, and before that he'd lose one of his boots, and then he'd mix them up by accident, put on the wrong one, then complain about how his foot is wet all day."

He lifts himself up the wall by the console display, spreading in between that and the far wall - with two opposite points of contact instead of a flat surface, he reels up at a decent clip instead of a glacial pace. "Let me - ah, he's fucked the actuators, hydraulice pressure is low. The doors keep jamming either way because the gears are catching. Maybe try it again?"

There's a groan of screeching metal, and then an echoing pop through the cramped interior of the pod. Angstrom flinches when something cool hits him from behind, and he realizes instantly that something in the sealing had gone wrong. "Uh, Riley, taking on water now."

He backflows through the leak as much as he can, seeking out where the crack in the pod's insulation is, and then pops his mass back out with a faint squeak. "Uh, yeah. Looks like the parachute mounting cracked when we got jerked around. It's just kind of - welded in place, no wonder the whole thing jerked loose."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

At Angstrom’s continuation of the old idiom, Riley actually smiles a little. “Mmhm.” She agrees about the door, and worst case scenario she might have to manually release the locks and try to force it open. That’d be a little abusive on the poor gears, but the pod was toast anyway, between this landing and Daniel’s…’maintenance’. Well it’s done its job; this was an honorable retirement.

She exhales as she navigates to a backend terminal window, tries to remember the command for those locks. That’s not really something she’s read over though, so she tries a generic line, relaxes due in part to the simple task of trial and error. It’s been a rough, very bad twenty minutes-but the worst was finally behind them.

”Uh, Riley, taking on water now.”

Maybe.

“...well that’s not good.” Riley murmurs, oddly the calmest she’s been during the entire experience so far. Save, perhaps, her earlier dread on learning Daniel had been the last technician to work on the pod. She doesn’t sound as fatalistic at least, this time.

The mechanic enters another command, white teeth worrying at her lip a little. The pod’s starting to tip downward, a bit of an uneven bob before Angstrom returns with more bad news.

Yeah. Yeah, this is definitely not a good development. And if water’s coming into the capsule proper, that meant it was already filling the casing-and yep, she’s nearly standing up again.

Her next command works, and the locks retreat with a mechanical clink-and the seal breaks with a hiss and then an immediate torrent of water starts shooting in at the bottom two feet of the door-and climbing.

“Oh yeah, this is definitely not good.” Riley presses her shoulder to the door, bracing against it while she brings her right leg up and shoves against the opposite wall. Her other foot comes next-her socks are soaked now, but that’s the least of her problems. The door won’t budge, and now three feet of it is submerged and gushing in water, filling the pod and sinking them faster. They’re full on in a vertical position between what’s already in the casing and what’s now coming in through the door, and sinking fast.

Riley makes a surprised, dismayed sort of noise as water spurts in over her head, dousing her with warm, salty water-it’s maybe ten degrees cooler than a drawn bath. The only spaces NOT gushing in water around the door at this point are the two hinges at the top.

Riley drops into the two feet of rapidly rising water and grabs onto a piece of deflated airbag, pulls it aside. She finally has momentum now-clearer headed, oddly calm-like she’s had a good cry. Doesn’t change the nature of the situation, but at least she knows what to do..

Riley has to raise her voice to be heard when she speaks next, and it’s not quite with the same stress as earlier. “Pressure has to equalize!” She tells him as she pries open a panel behind the airbag. She slips an aramid mesh bag off its hook before sliding it onto her slim shoulder, and slams it closed again. Grabs onto a piece of airbag on the door to pull herself a little, buoyed by the salt content in the water. She braces herself again and shoves at the door using her legs, twisting so her back was fully pressed against it-before relaxing, wedged in while she waits for the water to rise even further. At least she’s not cold.

“So uh, worse case scenario-” Riley awkwardly calls, the pod darkening a little as the lower emergency lights submerge.

“But h-how small a space can you squeeze through, Angstrom?”

 

[Obuzeti]

The prompt gush of water immediately wakes up Angstrom, and for a moment he glories in water; he hasn't fully immersed in months, and though it's salty and acrid, he soaks it in and filters excess minerals without so much as a conscious thought. The water level starts to rise and he comes with it, like a tarp just under the surface, one periscope-like peak coming up to answer Riley. "Alright, let me just -"

He vacuums himself under the crack in the door - he can do less than an inch if he needs to - and slides around to the rear of the pod, where the ragged remnants of the parachute hang limp out of the pod, soaking wet now at the end where the cloth has dipped into the water. He can't help but stare for a moment; they're in some kind of arid saltwater lake, just past a gigantic grove of what looks like mangroves, tall as California redwoods with gnarled trunks. There's a constant, distant croaking, and the shores are all orange-ish red, with heat shimmer obscuring the medium distance.

Angstrom shakes off his surprise and then yanks hard on the parachute casing, worming his way into the screw mounts and loosening them with hydraulic pressure. The entire panel comes loose, water soaking through immediately, and he dives back around and into the pod proper, looking like nothing so much but a thick, black underwater cape with impossible flexibility and fluidity.

"Opened the 'chute compartment, air's slipping out the back now," he says rapidly. "I'm fine, let's just - "

He takes in the rapidly rising water, and a trill of panic rises in his faux-throat before he can stop it. "Oh, tchak."

There amount of room Riley has to breathe is rapidly decreasing, and the emergency supply bundles never had rebreathers. He'd checked the manifest out of curiosity, but she'd need to find some way to filter -

Oh.

Oh, no.

Angstrom whines, long and low.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

That answers that-her crewmate slips through just fine, safe. Some part of her settles. No matter what, Angstrom will make it. That problem solved, Riley mentally moves on to the next one-HER escape, and this door.

Angstrom returns and Riley nods quickly at what he says-busy applying steady pressure against the door. She relaxes-not time yet.

"Don't worry." The young woman reassures despite the water having now risen to chest height. Some of that midnight hued hair was a puffy, swirling cloud around her shoulders. "The door will pop once the pressure's equal." Maybe. If the gears don't seize up. If the arms still extend. If the dang thing doesn't tip forward onto the door. Best not to think about any of that. Either it'd open or it wouldn't, and she's...well, she's all panicked out for today.

Angstrom makes an odd whining noise, and Riley feels like, a little-dying would let him down.

The corner of her mouth curls up, fades; but then curls again, and Riley favors him with a genuine, if somewhat shy little smile.

"Hey. This is still several steps better than where I would have been if you hadn't helped." Jettisoned into the cold vacuum of space in a pod with no door-and no one to commiserate about the ineptitude of Daniel. She tilts her head back as the water reaches her chin, and at least-well, at least there was someone to care, maybe. Selfish as that kind of was, she hadn't been alone. "So thanks again, Angstrom. Thanks, and good luck!"

A deep breath above the noisily splashing water-and then that smiling face was submerged in a billowing cloud of dark hair and salty water.

Riley -pushes- with all the strength in her core and thighs-and after a minute the door moves. That's good-thats great! She forces the door as far as it'll go, legs fully extended in a seated position, hips able to leave the door a little before she's stopped dead on the seizing hydraulic arms.

It's as much room as she's going to get, however much or little it was. She draws her legs in close and dives the little bit down for the bottom of the door, twisting around so she can hopefully squeeze through. She has to work to stay at the base-the salt content in the water makes her a little too buoyant.

Her eyes are closed tight against the stinging saltwater but she thinks there's enough room-her chest brushing a rocky bottom as she forces herself through the opening by pushing against the wall opposite the door. She slips mostly through-and then catches on her hips and rear.

Biscuits.

Riley propels herself backwards with a stroke of her arms, twists around on her smaller waist so that she can get her hands on the other side of the door, try to push on that instead, force her way through. No dice.

Her lungs are starting to burn, and she claws at the door, kicks at the wall inside, tries to swim OUT of this thing. The instinct to gasp was rising-but she can't do it. She can't get free!

Riley clamps her teeth shut and cups her hands tightly over her mouth and nose, aquamarine eyes snapping open only to find stinging darkness and the distant shimmering light of the surface.

Finally out of luck; and out of time.

 

[Obuzeti]

There's no time left to talk. He damn sure doesn't want to interrupt her, and by the time she finishes talking the water's at her chin, and there's no time left. So instead Angstrom dives under with Riley, determined to help as much as possible. The bag he shoves out to float up to the surface, and then he whips around to help yank on the door - sliding through into the actuators and replacing the actual hydraulic fluid that had drained out. It's a bootleg process, and strains him a little, but it gets them a couple inches of room maybe?

It's enough for Riley to start crawling through - then her hips catch, and Angstrom's pulse goes double-time. The black shroud darts down and flickers through and into the pod to try to push Riley through, but that's no dice; he doesn't have much leverage at the best of times, and definitely not in open water. He flickers back through the opening to see Riley clawing and kicking at the door, doing anything to get free

and how can he do any less? How can he let her die here, just because he's weak?

Angstrom moans again, soft and low, frenzied by his own disgust and fear, then pushes himself up to Riley in the water, and promptly wraps around her head. The black tar slides, inviolably, under her fingers and down her skin, sliding through the cuticles of her hair as no solid object ever could, frictionless and coating - over her face, her neck, and then sliding like the slickest oil down her skin and beneath her clothes. It's not cold, precisely, but there is a prickly sensation as the Orlaith's membrane adheres painlessly to her skin, chemically bonding. The sensation continues all the way down her body, over her hips, and beneath where the pod door has caught on her hips - and suddenly the friction of the door and her clothes against her skin is minimal, lubricated and smooth in a way it hadn't been before.

The black membrane over Riley's mouth and nose seals - and then doubles into a thin series of chambers. There's a faint sensation of suction the wrong way, like Angstrom's drawing something into her mouth - and then blessed, sweet oxygen floods into Riley's lungs, filtered from the surrounding water.

I can filter the water for you, Angstrom says. Within his membrane, the sound resonates almost inside of her head - it's coming from the back of her neck, but the vibrations that create his speech reverberate through his entire surface, creating a curious stereo effect. You should be loose. Go!

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

It’s like being dipped in machine lubricant with impossibly low viscosity-it flows over her face and neck and through her hair-black and dark and suffocating, even sliding beneath her clothes to coat her breasts and stomach.

What would have been a squeaked, dry scream deeper than thought doesn’t issue-there’s nowhere for it to go. Her calm ‘panicked out’ feelings from moments before had already been subsumed by the bone deep mammalian instinct to survive- and she has no real idea what’s happening nor is she really capable of processing it; she’s gone from the cusp of drowning to claustrophobic smothering, and Riley instinctively claws at her own face even as her legs flail within the capsule-and she slips mostly loose, bashing her thighs against the underside of the door.

And then-air.

Riley coughs on the gasping reflex, confused, panicked, sputtering-when he speaks, and she realizes she’s both free-and alive thanks to his quick thinking. Didn’t make it anymore pleasant, but she’s loose!

Riley slips the rest of the way through Daniel’s death trap and kicks off from the rocky basin-surfacing with an explosive exhale as they separate. It’s a rough minute of coughing up what little water she’d managed to choke on, eyes wide and her face hot as she stared at the dark cape like cloud

It’s not a rosy pink in the young woman’s cheeks or across her nose. Not some sunkissed, cute color-but beet red from her ears to her throat and what little of her chest and collarbone could be seen in mechanic’s jumpsuit. Her cheeks were nearly scarlet, and boiling hot.

She was mortified and doesn’t even know where to begin to process what had just happened, life saving or not, down there.

 

[Obuzeti]

When the air hits Angstrom fairly well throws himself off Riley, floating away in the briny seawater and letting himself spread out, casting the sebum free into the water that he'd accidentally ingested when he'd grabbed onto Riley. He'd always known humans were gross, but oh Tannis, that whole nest on their heads is covered by fatty secretions that's still embedded in his skin. Her nose was covered in it! And then the tangy sweat and sebum mix slathered over her skin was actually acidic, he'd felt the slight burn on ingestion.

Then he'd gotten a taste of earwax and forgotten about all the rest, because he'd had bigger problems.

The human body, in general, is gross and complex, and Angstrom spends a long moment convulsively heaving and making sure no loose particles are still floating in his membrane before he turns his attention back to Riley, who still floats alongside him, now brilliantly red. He vaguely remembers that color indicates embarrassment in humans.

Well, good.

"You're not dead," Angstrom informs her, idly drifting a few inches away. Instead, he turns his attention to the nearby stand of trees looming out of the water. Salt secretions crust the lower roots, and he quails against the thought of trying to crawl over that halite extrusion. He'd dry up five feet in. " . . . Sorry, but - no. I'm not."

It'd been disgusting, but at least Riley is alive to complain about it. This is awkward as tchuk.

"Well, at least we survived to the planet," he says, uncomfortable. "Do you need anything? I think I'm going to go check out the trees, see what's over there."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

"You're not dead,”

Under her clothes!

" . . . Sorry, but - no. I'm not."

Riley’s face was still hot and she’s still downright humiliated, but he doesn’t sound any happier than she was about it. The apology and then the correction both help to mollify the vague feelings of violation mingled with her intense embarrassment-and her eyes slip away with a nervous swallow. It’d just been...just been a way to keep her from drowning. He’d once again saved her life-it’s not like she would have rather died!

...maybe she would have. Still, she should thank him, something-but she’s not sure she could manage much in the way of speech right now, though her lips part to try and say something.

The dark haired woman closes her mouth and just mutely nods as he changes the subject. They won’t talk about it-if they’re both uncomfortable, then they can just quietly, mutually agree to forget it happened. Riley swallows again, some of the color fading as she also glances over to the massive trees, the sprawling, salt crusted roots exposed to the air.

“L-look as big as composite pillars in...in the Sefirot starbase.” She has no idea if he’s ever even been there or not, but that’s what makes it past her lips-and that’s what Riley sticks with, because it’s something she knows and something safe-no one anywhere probably had strong opinions about composite pillars in some far flung space station orbiting a slum moon. And if he DID, he was probably too polite to bring it up.

“S-six meters thick from base to connector.” And then it constricts to four-but Riley’s just socially aware enough not to go on and on about them-mostly because that was pretty much the sum total of what SHE knew about them. She clears her throat and moves to snag the strap to the bag and start towards shore near to where he’d indicated-but still a beat away. Part of the way there and with her back to him, Riley treads water just long enough to zip her coverall jumpsuit up to her throat.

Better.

And even more comforting is the fact she still has her flimsy with her, tucked into the front pocket of her clothes.

And look at this place! It’s a jungle, and what’s this orange looking deposits at the shore here? She swims as far as she can to avoid disturbing the lakebed, salt sticking to her lips-and is careful when she does climb to her feet-she’s in socks, and cutting herself on a foreign coated rock wasn’t appealing.

There should be a beacon in the bag, but Riley holds off-this may not be where they stay.

...immediate dangers related to crash landing in Daniel’s deathtrap aside, she now has to contend with the fact that they’re stranded on a biohazard level two planet. That’s about as hostile as it gets, and Riley nervously surveys the lush plant life surrounding her, sweeping her soaked hair back and pulling it through the hair tie on her wrist, a loose, messy ponytail down her back-which she keeps to the lake. Immediate concerns first-shelter, water, food. The lake is salt water, but she should be able to set up little evaporation traps easily enough, separate it out. There was bound to be aquatic life of some kind-it’s just...just another process, another procedure. They’ll be okay. They just have to take the right steps, solve the right problems in the right order.

Right? Right.

Resolve found and her mortification mostly put aside, Riley flipped open the bag to check the contents.

 

[Obuzeti]

Riley replies with something about pillars, which makes no fucking sense to Angstrom at all, and actually pricks him with something close to resentment, though he shoves it down. She might be embarassed - he catches the sound of her suit's zipper, and she's certainly not taking it off - but she's not dead, and that's taken a lot of sacrifices on his part so far.

Besides, at least she wasn't choking up bits of somebody else like he was.

Instead of responding, he swims off towards the trees, and slows down as the scale of them becomes apparent. They're fucking enormous, hundreds of feet tall easily, with thick spreading roots that tangle and wind their way down into the water and soil underneath. Soil piles up under the water at the edge of each gigantic root, and the result is a narrow, winding maze of rootsoil and salted bark that he can barely see into. There's about ten to fifteen feet of open air before the roots get too thick, and beneath that thick canopy Angstrom can hear basso croaks, so loud the water rumbles sometimes.

The upper layer of roots he can't really see from this angle, but at the very least he can make out what looks like a cat-sized ant as it wanders on the fringes, though it has too many legs and longer antenna.

Well, they're alive, but -

Something rockets towards him in the water, and Angstrom instinctively jets back, but not quite fast enough; what feels like a two-by-four smacks him in the side like a missile, utterly failing to hurt him - then it starts trying to gnaw on him. Annoyed, the Orlaith realizes he's been hit by some kind of predator fish in the side and it's trying eat him.

Being a gel with no major organs for it to hurt, he just forces his membrane up into the fish's mouth and into its gills, then suffocates it in seconds by wrapping its innards in frictionless stuffing. It thrashes briefly, then goes still. He takes a small snip of the mouth lining to test for chirality, then, satisfied that it's not got any competing protein strings, devours the whole thing in seconds by vacuuming it into his modar, adhering to it throughout and within its frame, and then degloving it from every possible angle. It dissolves into a fine mesh of digestible bits in perhaps half a minute, as he efficiently decimates it.

That'll keep him going for a good while.

Satisfied and in a better mood, Angstrom heads over to where he can see Riley at the shoreline. Best to make sure another one of those doesn't hit her in the side, she wouldn't take it as well.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

The ‘ditch bag’ thankfully hadn’t been touched by the inept Daniel-or at least she’s assuming not, given how neatly packed and complete it was. There are two tightly rolled bags for use in a bivouac shelter, and two tarps to help in the construction of such a thing. Their emergency beacon of course. Two shortwave wrist radios with built in flashlights, orange pellets she’s decently sure were for smoke signaling, a small mirror for the same purpose, two emergency flares, and an extra external flashlight. The bag also contained a hard cased first aid kit of a sort, a knife and whetstone, small case of fishing hooks, line, sinkers and filet knives, space blankets, waterproof matches, firestarters, and a long length of cording with some sort of rubberized ring tied to one end.

But possibly the most important thing she extracted was a water maker. Simple enough device that works through reverse osmosis, she’s pretty sure-there was a small booklet attached in an airtight, reusable bag, and Riley knows she’ll find solace in looking through it later. Given the salt she can still taste on her lips, it was definitely an important part of the kit. Few backup moisture traps just in case, those little gel like, ‘fruit’ flavored sustenance cubes, vacuumed sealed packets of vitamins…looked like, with some foraging and fishing, neither of them would starve, though she’ll have to ask him about orlaith diets. In all honesty the nutritional needs of any race-humans, raptorials, orlaiths-has never been of much interest to her.

Now it’s of dire importance, and she realizes she doesn't know much of anything at all really, when it comes to...well. Roughing it. Survival in general. Some of the basics sure-what was covered in the training seminars, or the brief guide that went along with the escape pod specs-but not much more beyond it.

Her entire life had been machines and their inner workings-and now she’s been thrust into the thick of an alien and hostile world with what was arguably a useless skill set. Riley pauses to consider this, eyes trailing up from the bag to the lush plant life pressing in all around her.

Well...her mother had been something of an explorer, right? Mapping out mineral deposits, scanning and logging various flora, that sort of thing. Escorting scientists in their work in the unexplored wilds of newly settled worlds. Some of that had to be in her blood, right?

Right.

Her fingers trailed to the flimsy still rolled and capped in her breast pocket. That’s what she’d do to stay sane-she’d just keep writing that letter, and she’d...she’d start a journal of some kind, record her observations! It’d give her a sense of purpose beyond not getting eaten, and that was important to good mental health, a positive outlook.

Yes, a positive outlook! She can be positive-she’s several steps ahead of dead already! And it’d be poor thanks anyway, being sour company-Angstrom had saved her life. She really, really wouldn’t want that to be entirely regrettable.

Speaking of, where had he gone?

Riley turned to worriedly survey the water behind her-but there her fellow survivor was, an inky black cloak beneath the water.

“Our kit’s intact!” The young woman cheerfully assures with a nod. “Our friend Daniel left that alone, at least.” That’d be a shared joke for a long time.

 

[Obuzeti]

"Ous willing, he died in a horrible fireball and we never see him again," Angstrom grumps. He bore serious grudges against Daniel now; he hasn't mentioned it to Riley, but if their escape pods were borked that badly, there's no telling how many people Daniel got killed through the whole ship, because it's possible he would have been working on the other pod banks through the whole ship. If he did something as simple and stupid as trip maintenance mode on the pod bay, it would take minutes to warm the thing back up to ready mode - and they'd not had minutes.

But there's nothing to be done about that now.

"Trees are full of life, there's lots of motion but I didn't bother to get too deep," Angstrom reports. "Also some kind of big predator fish in the shallows, I'd stay out if I were you. The one I found was almost five feet long."

He extrudes a periscope of black over the water, and then reangles himself towards a nearby beached shell, a little shorter than Riley but fat, like an ammonite's spiral shell. That'd make good shelter for her. "How about heading for that big shell to your left? That looks like good cover for the moment," he suggests.

The wildlife isn't all that friendly, but with shelter, survival tools, and his ability to produce seafood pretty much on demand, they've got a solid fighting chance. The cheer starting to blossom in him reverberates through his voice, adding the warm undertones he's accustomed to.