Crashlanded: Chapter 1
Unknown World
The pod rumbled. The portholes on the front turned to orange. Randy gritted his teeth and clung to his chair, the safety straps digging in to his shoulders. Cassandra screamed staring at the fire licking the escape pod. Phoebe muttered to herself, eyes scrunched closed. The pod dropped through the atmosphere much too fast. Clouds came and went and forest rose towards them. The pod sailed over an ocean and deep in land. Tree branches cracked against the plasteel shell of the escape shuttle as it collided with the canopy. Randy bit his tongue as the pod jostled over hefty branches. The space dinghy bounced, flipped, and crashed. Soil and mud coated the portholes. Randy, Cassandra, and Phoebe hung upside down.
‘We have to get out. I can smell a fuel leak,’ Randy mumbled. His head felt like it had been rattled by an angry giant. His tongue was numb and bleeding and he was pretty sure he was going to throw up.
Cassandra unbuckled herself first. She fell headfirst to the roof of the pod. ‘Fuck!’ She landed on her shoulders and rolled forward, her face landing near Randy’s crotch.
‘Another time,’ Randy said sitting with his head resting on the upside down chair he had ridden in.
‘Oh shut up,’ Cass snarled and found her feet. Her head spun as she stumbled to her feet. ‘Woah,’ she walked forward treading red boot prints to the rear hatch of the escape pod.
‘Cass,’ Randy said pointing to the blood stains.
‘Shit, is that mine,’ Cass said checking her body.
Phoebe whimpered overhead. A length of steel pierced her right arm clean through the muscle.
Randy searched his jacket for cigarettes and found a half packet. He placed one between his lips but didn’t light it. ‘Alright. Cass you hold her and I’ll get her out,’ he said. The cigarette bobbed up and down as he spoke. He unbuckled Phoebe’s chair straps and held her in place by her thighs. She whimpered and held her arm. Blood dripped down the steel. The girl had turned ivory. ‘Slide her down in three, two, one,’ Randy lightened his grip and with Cass lowered Phoebe to the roof of the pod. The pod wall behind Phoebe was a gaping hole, the shell and steel structure punctured in three places. The sky shone a welcoming blue.
‘Medkit,’ Randy said.
Cass gulped and umm’d as she searched the pod for medical supplies. ‘I don’t know where it is,’ she said after minutes of frantic searching.
‘Cupboard by your left foot,’ Randy said. ‘This might hurt, okay? But don’t worry, you’ll make it.’ Phoebe groaned and nodded. A medkit appeared in his hand and he cracked the pale blue box open. Inside was a selection of bandages, anaesthetics, painkillers, and antibiotics and antivirals for all manner of emergencies. Space was an infinite and wild place untamed and always trying to kill you, in Randy’s experience. He made a firm grip on the length of steel and pulled. A wet sloshing sound came from Phoebe’s arm as the muscle loosened. Phoebe screamed.
‘I’m gonna throw up,’ Cass said. She placed a hand over her mouth and ran to the hatch. The handle spun in her hand but it was too late. Pale yellow sick exploded between her fingers and over the pod door dripping down the handle and pooling in the curved roof between her feet.
Randy injected painkiller and antibiotics into Phoebe’s arm. Cleaned it with ethanol and swigging from the bottle. It stung on the way down. He wrapped a length of gauze around her arm more times than he thought to count. ‘Have you got that door open yet?’
Cass groaned and spat yellow drool. ‘Yeah, sure,’ she said gripping the sick covered handle. Her hands slipped on the wet metal. With a little force the door popped open to a field of green. She gasped.
Randy picked Phoebe up in his arms and, avoiding the sick, stepped out of the pod and into the unknown world. ‘Holy shit an untouched world. I didn’t think there were any.’ He looked up at the three suns hanging in the sky. Two were a dull red while the third was as white as the clouds.
‘Have you been living under a rock? Thousands of the things. Only this one isn’t untouched, look over there,’ Cass said. She pointed to the left, towards a ruin of sandstone. Broken pots leaned against the outer walls and ivy had grown over most of the walls. ‘That’s old. And that’s older,’ she said pointing to a car. ‘Still has wheels. Or did have.’ The car was rusted and entwined with a hundred foot tree growing through its roof. The rubber tires had long since rotted away.
‘Well least we have a place to stay for the night.’
‘You’re mad. Could be anything out there. Predators. Natives. Pirates… cannibals,’ Cass shuddered.
‘You’ve watched too many holos,’ Randy said. Phoebe’s eyes opened for a moment before closing again. ‘Besides in there smells like shit thanks to you and this one needs rest.’
‘I’ll clean it up. These pods are full of tools for crash landings. Better to stay here,’ she tapped the plasteel shell, scratched and dented from the fall through the trees. Forest surrounded the glade. Other ruins dotted the landscape. Birds chirped and squirrels foraged while animals Cass didn’t know grazed on the tall grass.
‘Fine. You clean up and I’ll try the comms,’ Randy said. He lowered. Phoebe to the ground and found a blanket to fold up as a pillow.
‘You fucking piece of shit,’ Randy punched the comms controls with the side of his fist denting the console.
‘Not working?’
‘Not even a little. Either that or we’re very, very alone out here. Fuck who ever sent us here.’ The corded microphone dangled from the console over Randy’s head.
‘Sent? The ship malfunctioned. Everyone had to escape,’ Cass said. She had found a mop and had cleared away most of her sick.
‘Malfunction. As if,’ Randy rolled his unlit cigarette between his lips. ‘Never heard of a starship malfunctioning. Sabotage. Had to be.’
‘Why? A passenger cruiser. A cheap one at that. Not going to have nobility onboard is it?’
‘What if it did? Eh? That would explain it.’
Cass shook her head and finished cleaning up her sick. ‘We need to roll the pod to get to the beds.’
‘You’re shitting me.’
‘Not even a little.’
‘Fine. But if any of your sick gets on me you’re sleeping outside with the deer and squirrels and cannibals.’
The escape pod rocked back and forth in its trough. Randy jumped on a long dead branch he wedged underneath the roof. The pod rocked again. Cass held a second branch against the roof. The pod slid backwards pushing Cass back in the dirt as the shuttle returned to its groove in the dirt.
‘This isn’t working,’ Cass said.
‘What gave it away?’ Randy wiped his brow and felt the warmth of the sun wane. He looked to the sky. The three suns had dipped beneath the forest canopy. ‘We haven’t got long before sunset. We should eat.’
‘Fine,’ Cass dropped her branch. She untied her jacket from her waist and slid her arms inside. Cass stepped inside the pod and returned with three survival ration meals. The yellow boxes had pleasant pictures of roasted meats and steaming vegetables.
‘I guarantee that’s not what’s inside,’ Randy said tearing into one. He glanced at the instructions and rescued a plastic fork from the package. Unidentifiable coloured mush was separated into three dips in the tray covered in a clear plastic layer. He pulled a tab on the side and the ration pack warmed up. The clear plastic layer began to bulge. Randy tore the top layer off and began with the green mush.
Cass read the instructions and carefully opened the box. She slid the tray out and placed it on top of the box. She found her knife and fork, stabbed the plastic layer, and pulled the tab. She waited for a minute, counting up, and then removed the top layer. She started with the brown mush.
The pair ate in silence, seated on the branches they tried to rock the escape pod with. Randy finished the green mush with a spluttering cough and moved onto the brown. He didn’t want to know what the blue mush was. ‘This is awful. Like worse than my cooking.’
‘Isn’t so bad if you mix them.’
‘What’s the blue?’
‘No clue. No ingredients list.’
‘Oh you just know it’s some fucking mutant creature from one of those advanced worlds.’
‘You think World Hopper could afford that kind of survival meals?’ Cass said. She set the half eaten ration on the ground.
‘No. This is probably out of date by a century and been donated to write off some big corpos taxes,’ Randy forced himself to swallow the brown mush followed by the blue mush. It smelled like algae.
‘What about her?’ Cass said.
‘Phoebe. When she wakes up she eats,’ Randy finished the last of his ration and tossed the tray on the ground. ‘I feel hungrier than I did before I ate.’
The pair sat in silence. A cool evening breeze rustled the leaves of the forest as darkness descended. ’What now?’ Cass asked.
‘Can’t roll the pod. Do the beds come out?’ Randy said. ‘Fuck it, we’ll cut them out and move into the ruins.’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘Would you rather wake up to a wolf chewing your face?’ Randy scoffed and ducked inside the upside down escape pod.
‘But what about ghosts?’ Cass said. She stood near Phoebe with folded arms. The injured girl slept soundly.
‘Ghosts? You’re kidding. Wolves, bears, dartargs, roaming the forest and you’re scared of a monster from a fairytale. Fuck me,’ Randy said. He struck his palm against his head. He messed with his crash chair and managed to fold it out into its bed form. Only problem was it was on the floor, above him. ‘Do we have a saw?’
Cass exhaled loudly and stepped inside the pod. She opened a long, thin, cupboard near the hatch. ‘Yes,’ she handed Randy a saw. ‘And so you know, I have seen a ghost. Wasn’t just me either, my sisters where with me.’
‘Oh yeah, and how old were you all?’
‘In our late teens.’
Randy made a sound of disbelief. He started sawing through a piece of steel that connected the chairs to the steel frame of the pod. The steel disappeared somewhere beneath the wall. ‘And how old are you now?’
‘Rude.’
The saw screeched as it bit into the metal. White paint chipped and showered over Randy’s face.
‘Twenty five,’ Cass admitted.
‘Twenty five and you still believe in ghosts. Next you’ll be telling me about the monsters swimming through space and how you have seen the twisted beings of null-space.’
Cass opened her mouth and a short sharp sound escaped before she decided against mentioning anything.
‘No shit,’ Randy stopped sawing and turned to her. The cigarette dangled from his lip, the filter soggy and chewed.
Cass folded her arms and leaned against the wall. ‘You ever going to smoke that?’
‘I figure I have eight left and I doubt I’ll find any on this abandoned rock so may as well saviour them,’ the first steel joint parted and the bed slipped down on one side, ‘There we go. One to go. Hold it so it doesn’t fall straight away.’
There was no response.
‘Cass?’ Randy turned around but she wasn’t there. ‘Cass?’ He creeped to the door holding the saw like a knife. He peered outside to find Cass kneeling at the side of what looked like a deer but with four blue eyes and weird feathers along its spine.
‘Come here. It’s really friendly,’ Cass waved Randy over.
‘I bet it tastes delicious too.’
‘Oh shut up.’ Cass stroked the four-eyed deers face. ‘Don’t listen to him. We won’t hurt you.’
Randy approached the animal. It padded forward and nuzzled Randy’s hand. ‘How the hell have you survived this long.’ He scratched behind the four-eyed deers ears.
‘Randy… look at this,’ Cass said with a worried tone.
‘Huh?’ Randy looked to four-eyed deers rear. A stone arrow was lodged in the animal’s back, scar tissue long since healed around it. ‘That’s been there awhile.’
‘This means we’re not alone,’ Cass said, terror in her eyes.
Thank you for reading!