Endure

Karakan

Tal woke up.  He didn't know how much later, or even if he'd been out at all.  He was still in the pod, but outside the plastiglass chamber wall was a solid brown.  Tal couldn't tell which way was up.  He was dizzy, and his side ached.

Tal tried to get his bearings, he watched the tangled ends of his seatbelt float slowly around in front of him.  He realized that they weren't floating at all, they were hanging down.  Now that he could tell which way was up, Tal clumsily undid the knots he had whipped together earlier.  He pulled free and landed with an awkward thud on the plastiglass.  Looking through it, he now could see that the pod was partially buried in the earth.  No, dirt, Tal corrected himself.  Earth was as good as gone.  As was his entire old life.

Tal looked around the pod for a way out.  He saw it fairly quickly.  A gaping hole was ripped into the pod, and through it, Tal could see the morning golden sky.

He hefted himself up through the makeshift exit with difficulty.  His side hurt a lot.  So much so that Tal put his hand to his chest to see if there were any broken bones.  His hand came away bloody and he grimaced with pain.  He hoped he wasn't too badly injured.

Looking up from his wound, Tal could truly appreciate the Karakan landscape fully.  There were no trees, or indeed any kind of vegetation that he could see, but the desert was amazingly flat.  All the way to the horizon, he saw nothing but sand and dirt.  With the most interesting feature being the uncanny regular white stones that were laid out for miles almost in a grid.  In the direction of the setting moon was the slight silhouette of mountains, almost too far away to reach.

"Wow."  Tal was deeply impressed with the sheer vastness of the planet he was standing on.

Tal turned back to the wreckage of the shuttle and groaned.  It was worse than he had feared.  There wasn't a piece left of the shuttle that he could recognize, so twisted and shattered were they.  The pod at least was intact, with the exception of the giant hole in it and the engine lying several meters away.

Suddenly, Tal's ribs flared with pain, and he doubled over.  His hands shook and he fell to his knees.  He ripped his standard issue tunic open and looked at his wound.  A short wedge of metal protruded from the gash.  He touched it, and the pain grew so intense that he almost blacked out again.  His vision blotchy, he gripped the offending object and began to pull it out.  His fingers were slippery with blood and it took him several tries, but the tip of the metal finally emerged.

Tal was losing blood, but his mind couldn't focus.  He knew that he needed to stop the blood flow, but he couldn't think.  He struggled to his knees, then fell back again.  He ripped another piece off the end of his tunic and wrapped it tightly around his torso.  He struggled with the knot for a moment, then laid on it to keep it from coming undone.

The night came quickly, though Tal didn't see it.  Then the day came, and the night came after that.  And it continued for some time until Tal finally awoke again.