Wayward

Through The Looking Glass

        Tib sat down at a unoccupied window booth in the Semper Dicata club. His surroundings felt like a distant echo in the off duty engineering suite. Word had just come in that the engineer working on the gravity anchor had, indeed, been killed in the landing incident. He knew that death would come eventually on this project but never did he fully believe that it would be one of his own, though he knew that was a mislead belief at best. After all engineers had the highest casualty rate of any ship board personnel in the fleet, next to tactical officers. As Tib somewhat came back to reality, he stared at the planet that Admiral Maxwell had put his flagship into orbit of. His mind tried to understand this completely unnatural planet, not only in its biome structure- with dried up oceans separated by jungles, mountains, and full oceans- but in the aura that it projected onto him. There was something this planet harbinged, something that deeply unnerved Tib.

        "It is quite a different piece of space dust isn't it?," a German-accented voice asked as they took a seat across from Tib. Tib changed his gaze to meet Sheeb's lightly colored eyes, which looked somewhat cold behind her glasses. "Yeah, you could say that, if it weren't for its rings, I would've been fine with flying by it," Tib said with a sad undertone and shifting his gaze back to the planet. "Look, Tib, we both know we are not going to sit here and talk about a glorified space rock," Sheeb said with a look of knowing sympathy. "Oh, so what are we here to talk about?," Tib said with an almost seething anger in his eyes. "Tib, you can not be hard on yourself, I have been through this and it's the reason why I don't call the shots on the Defiance anymore, because I couldn't move on from something that was out of my control to begin with." Tib looked at her for a moment with a look in his eye that said he knew what to say, that he understood, but truly he was at a loss for words. To say he was angry at himself would be an understatement, because he was the one who designed the schedule that put that engineer there, but to say he didn't feel torn would be an understatement as well, because the point she made was true. It didn't matter who he had assigned to that gravity anchor station, they would have died. "So what do I do then Sheeb?," Tib said quietly. "Your crew needs you, Tib, they need you to be strong, we understand because we all the feel the same way, but we need you," Sheeb responded placing her crossed arms on the table separating them. "Well you'll have me, I'm sorry, but I came here to spend a few minutes alone," Tib said turning back to the planet. "That's all I wanted to hear, Tib, let us know if you need anything, and for the record," Sheeb said while standing up, "I have got your back." Tib met her gaze and nodded before turning back as she walked away. For Tib, the stress was almost palatable. Maybe he really was starting to lose control with having these what he didn't know what else to call but nightmares. Tib wasn't though, as his true worst nightmares lied ahead of him.

        An hour ago, Kelvin Yalui had boarded a survey ship that was intended for atmospheric observation as a flight engineer. Kelvin had hoped this trip wouldn't be too long as he was waiting to get back to the off duty suite with Tib and the other Lt. Coms. Now Kelvin found himself lying on the jungle floor in an opening in a reddish-purple canopy. As Kelvin tried to sit up he found himself under debris. He surveyed the area and saw he was surrounded by ruins of what seemed like an open area court and pieces of spacecraft. Kelvin's tinnitus came to an end and his memory came back to him in a rush. He remembered watching the engines temperature suddenly spike, the  resulting engine explosion, the pilots' desperate attempts to keep the ship aloft, and finally the inevitable crash. He had been in crashes before but this was especially violent. Kelvin's mind started to clear from it's haze well enough for it to register his ears hearing the reports of marine plasma rifles and shouts of the wounded from the crash. "I think that one frightened them off, but we need to move now, were down to reserves in plasma!," he could hear a marine say that was positioned near one of what used to be a stabilizer for the craft.  As Kelvin moved the debris off of him with a great effort and stood up, the first thing he felt was pain from the gash left on his leg from the debris, which he now saw was a piece of deck plating. Kelvin brushed himself off and began to take stock of the situation. The dropshift they were using as a observation craft lay completely wrecked at the end of a large and long gouge in the ground that Kelvin saw began almost three hundred feet from where the wreck lay. There were dead mangled in the wreck, but that's not what surprised him. The researchers with weapons and frightened marines did. "What's going on,?" Kelvin said as he approached the marine closest to him, who was standing near what looked like some hastily set up positioning using pieces of the wreck and cargo that wasn't removed before flight.  As he got closer he noticed a lieutenant's insignia on the chestpiece of the marine's armor. The marine wasn't wearing a helmet and looked young to be a lieutenant. "Oh good, another body bag," the marine said with a grimace, "long story short, we're in a pretty bad place and we need all hands on deck, no comms, and no ride out of here," the marine said, while gesturing to a rack of old, solid projectile based rifles, "make yourself useful and grab one of those." It had been a while since Kelvin had seen one of these, but he knew how to handle one from his doubling as a security guard from his past stationings. Kelvin walked closer into the mangled wreck and picked up one of the rifles with a click coming from the rack release. Weird, it was heavier than he remembered "So what's the plan lieutenant..," Kelvin trailed off as he turned back to the marine and couldn't see a nameplate. "Kellerman, Max Kellerman, and since our Lieutenant Commander is in that heap of metal," Kellerman said while nodding toward what was left of survey ship, "that means I'm in command now." "So what's the plan then?," Kelvin aksed.  "I'm saying we take this little bit of comms salvage we have and make due east to the nearest mountain until we get exfil." Kellerman answered authoritatively, pointing to a massive white peaked mountain hanging just over the purple-reddish canopy. Kelvin stared up at the majestic point which interrupted the planets blue rings in the planets magenta sky. "Help me with this comm equipment," Kellerman said as he started walking to the back of the downed ship.