Chapter 1: Waking Up (R)
“Uhg… “
The constant ambience of strained metal and severed sparking wires was disrupted by the lone grunt. It was nearly inaudible compared to the mechanical disarray surrounding its source. Nevertheless, it was heard loud and clear by a single occupant currently conscious. Primarily because he’d been the one grunting in the first place.
Lying against the corner of the far right wall was a man clad in dirty white armor, minus the helmet. He groaned again as another wave of dull pain flowed through his body, his teeth and fists clenching instinctively afterwards.
Slowly, his closed eyelids rose, exposing a set of brown irises to the harsh yet dim red lights that were dimly illuminating his surroundings. Those brown irises quickly began moving left and right, each pass making the blurry images surrounding him more clear in his mind.
“W-What happened?” The man muttered in a semi-raspy voice, lifting up his left arm so his hand could rest atop his aching head.
The first thing the man noticed was the fact that the area was engulfed in reddish black darkness, the occasional spark of electricity offering a split second of fresh light every now and then. There were also streaks of light from apparent cracks in the wall on his left, not nearly enough getting through to offer any clear visibility.
Luckily, his eyes were rapidly adjusting to the red tinted darkness, allowing a faint outlined picture to come into focus. He saw the silhouette of the broken hand holding rail that should have been at the top of the bay, along with a couple bodies clad in the same white armor that he was wearing. The walls were also at an angle, making him believe that confined area he resided in was either balancing itself on its side somehow, or was more likely resting against something. This resulted in the fallen soldiers gravitating towards the starboard wall, each unnaturally slack in motion and in awkward positions.
Against his body’s protests, the trooper pushed himself up from the wall and got into a semi-stable standing position. There was a slight twinge of pain in his left leg, but he ignored it for the most part. He'd deal with it later, for he had other things to check on first. He advanced towards the closest armored body and crouched beside it, his left hand reaching over to the fallen trooper's neck in search of a pulse.
Nothing.
He moved onto the next body and mimicked his actions from before.
Again, nothing.
He checked two others, pressing his fingers more firmly on their necks each time. He was beginning to move more frantically with each lack of a pulse.
”No. No no no, the blasted crash couldn’t have killed them all!”
Yet, each pulse he checked told otherwise. It didn’t take long for the realization to settle in his mind, the realization that he’d somehow been the only survivor within the transportation bay. If he was lucky, then perhaps the pilots of the ship had gotten the better end of the stick and had also survived. But if the crash had been bad enough to kill all but one trooper in the main transportation bay…
”I’m not getting anywhere just by standing in here. Acquiring G.A.R. contact is top priority. Hopefully I can get evac off wherever we crashed within a cycle or two,” he thought.
Although, there was still a chance. He glanced at his left gauntlet. Or more specifically, the rectangular communication panel residing on it. But first, he needed his helmet. He did a quick scan of his area, trying his best to ignore the bodies of his fallen brethren. Thankfully, it didn't take him long to spot the lost piece of armor, which was lying on its side near an overturned crate. He picked up the sideways helmet and straightened it out in his hands, giving the piece of armor a quick but thorough once-over.
Upon seeing it in alright condition, he placed it back in its rightful place over his head, completing his armor once more. The built in HUD sprung back online almost immediately, illuminating the inside of the helmet with dull neon blue light. Any remaining shadows that his eyes had yet to adjust were quickly extinguished by the built in systems, revealing the remaining damages around him.
Not wasting time, he rose his left arm and clicked on of its buttons. A sigh of relief escaped him as it began glowing green in confirmation, signaling that it was indeed still functional.
“Hello? This is CT 3719, anyone copy?” he inquired, waiting a few seconds for a response.
When none came, he called again;
"This is Strider contacting Republic Cruiser Destrier, please respond."
Nothing. He didn’t even get any static, which only made his worries grow. Something had completely severed his connection to G.A.R. channels, leaving him effectively stranded. Stranded in unknown territory on what he assumed to be a planet of sorts that he had no intel on.
With nothing left to do within the confined ruins of the transport bay, Strider approached the large blast door that was slanted upwards. He knew it would be a long shot, but he tried the manual override mechanism next to it. This only resulted in his hand getting shocked, and the mechanism letting out a harsh puff of smoke.
To say it was fried would be an understatement. Luckily, there's a failsafe for these exact situations. He reached for the panel again, only this time sliding a transparent cover to the right, allowing access to a small red button. One quick press later and the failsafe had initiated, something he could tell thanks to a choir of beeps that began accelerating with each passing second.
Strider quickly backed away from the door, trying to get as much distance as possible from it. While he didn't have much room to do that, he was certain that he'd be fine. A couple seconds later and the door had quite literally blown itself open, courtesy of a controlled micro-explosion. A large portion of it was sent flying outwards, exposing the damaged interior to the outside world.
The transportation bay was instantly bathed in fresh bright light, and his helmet's visor quickly filtered out the harsh rays from a nearby star. It didn’t take before a vast amount of greenery came into focus. Grass littered the ground for as far as he could see. Tons of trees surrounded him on all side, each standing tall and full, giving a rather claustrophobic feel to them. Their oversized leaves also created large patches of shadows on the ground, offering some cover for possible wildlife to bask in and stay cool. There were also a handful of bushes around, some rustling gently in a faint but noticeable breeze.
”A forest, and a healthy one at that,” Strider noted, hoping from the tilted ledge of the bay.
His white and grey boots met the grass rich dirt, remaining still and steady regardless of the drop. Strider first looked to his left, immediately noticing a rather long trail of destroyed wildlife. A large dirt ditch had been created thanks to the ship's underbelly grinding through it, and more than a handful of trees seemed to have met the front of it as well.
Strider turned around and began walking towards the opposite end of the ship. As he walked, he glanced back over at the scenery on his left. Strangely enough, he couldn’t see or hear any sort of wildlife. This meant that either there wasn’t that much animalistic wildlife around, or more likely the crash had scared off whatever had originally been there.
That, or they’d been standing in a rather unfortunate location.
Upon reaching the front of the ship, Strider took notice of a heavily damaged tree that had managed to keep itself from getting completely uprooted by the crashed machine. The trunk was leaning against it in a rather unstable way, but luckily it was on the far side of the twin cockpits rather than directly on it.
Using some dents in the paneling and outstretched pieces of torn metal, Strider managed to climb his way up the side of the ship to the cockpits. Once he made it to the top, he was momentarily caught off guard by the sight of two empty seats where the pilots should of been. One of the oval casings over the twin cockpits was open, allowing him to notice an incredibly faint light emanating from within the primary flight seat.
Strider navigated his way into the vacant primary cockpit. He immediately began flicking switches and pressing buttons, resulting in a previously blank screen getting engulfed in green light.
”Good, systems seem operational enough. Hopefully I’m able to figure out where we crashed,” Strider thought, pressing a few more buttons in quick session.
The monitor flickered for a few seconds, before a long empty bar suddenly appeared across itself. A couple seconds was all it took for the bar to slowly become filled from left to right by a brighter green light, the entire thing collapsing upon reaching the other end.
All that was left on the monitor were three words in bold red text;
ERROR! UNKNOWN COORDINATES.
Strider rose an eyebrow at that, knowing fully well that each L.A.A.T. had complete maps of the known galaxy. Those things were constantly updated and distributed throughout the G.A.R., so this error wasn’t an easy one to come across.
Still, it could happen if a ship found itself in unmarked or undiscovered territory. However, he highly doubted that the gunship would have been able to reach that far from its digital map without hyperspace. Thus, Strider drummed it up to the system simply being heavily damaged just like the ship’s hull.
With that answer satisfying his curiosity, the trooper flicked a few other switches and looked over the system as it began performing a scan of itself. It took less than a minute before the screen was already filled to its limits with messages on broken and damaged things, each message longer than the last. The ship it seems has taken very extreme damage from the crash, and would have no-doubt been decommissioned and scrapped for parts in the hands of the G.A.R. back on Coruscant.
Now knowing what the ship’s status was, Strider shut off the systems to conserve its limited power supply, exited the cockpit and climbed back down onto solid ground. He took another look at his surroundings, searching for any sort of clues as to where the two pilots might've gone. Yet the scene hadn’t seemed to of changed in the slightest, meaning that he had absolutely no idea as to which way they might have gone.
That was, until he noticed a particularly scrunched up looking bush towards his right. It’s far left quadrant looked different than its right, more depressed towards the ground if only by a couple inches.
”It’s the only lead I’ve got, but I’m gonna need my weapon first. I'm already going in blind without backup,” Strider proclaimed mentally.
With that thought at the brunt of his mind, the soldier climbed back into the gunship’s transportation bay. After a bit of rummaging, he found his discarded DC-15A. The long plasma rifle seemed relatively undamaged, with the exception of a chipped stock and a cracked sight. Strider double checked its power pack to see if it had sustained any damage, before shutting it back into place and locking the blaster.
Once that was checked, he did a bit more rummaging around the area in search of anything else that might help. Thankfully, he managed to find a backpack that had taken minimal damage in the crash. Its contents had also managed to for the most part come out undamaged, hosting a medical kit, a DC-17 pistol, a few extra rations, and a set of lamp attachments for his helmet.
Strider took out the attachments and set them into place on his helmet, before slinging the backpack over his shoulder and securing it tightly to him. Now armed with a weapon and some basic supplies, he believed it was finally time to leave the crash site. But right as he began walking towards the agitated bush, he couldn't help but take one last glance at the ship, which was now the final resting place of his brothers. He gave it one final nod, before beginning his venture.
He needed to find those pilots as well as an exit from this forest, and he wasn't gonna simply lie in the rubble of a ship until they returned. That was, if they’d return. Who knows what could be lurking in that forest, eagerly awaiting him to enter their domain.
The dull ache in his left leg gradually began to grow into a more noticeable throbbing sensation. He'd put some bacta bandages on it later, for right now he had more pressing things to do. There were two possible surviving soldiers out in those woods, and he needed to find them before something monstrous got to them first.
As he continued, Strider couldn't help but notice the continued lack of any wildlife, apart from plants. Not only that, but there weren’t any tracks in the stray patches of dirt he came across. No prints of any animals large or small, not even any tracks from the pilots. The dirt was malleable enough for tracks to form, as evident of the boot marks left by himself as he passed through the patches. So why weren’t there any?
After awhile, the trooper ran across a shallow trench, which he carefully went through in an attempt to keep his leg from acting up again. Once he crossed the trench, he spotted a set of white armored legs sticking out of a bush, a set that no doubt belonged to one of the pilots. Wasting no time, he began advancing towards the fallen man.
"Pilot? You alright?" Strider questioned as he advanced, his guard already raised as his nerves began to climb.
When the clone gave no response, Strider began pushing twigs and leaves out of the way until he spotted their helmet. He rolled the pilot out of the bush and waved a hand above their helmet's visor, still no response. He checked for a pulse, which sealed the deal for the pilot.
Strider mentally grieved for the loss of yet another friend and brother, before something out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. His gaze quickly locked onto a part of the pilot's chest piece, which appeared to host large gash marks firmly slashed into it.
"What the, these claw marks are massive!" Strider noted, tracing one of the slashes with his pointer finger. What kind of creature could've done this?
As if the force itself had read his thoughts, an audible snapping noise suddenly rang throughout the area, catching Strider's attention. Slowly, he poked his head out of the bush, Decee primed and ready as he advanced towards the source. He took cover behind a large tree trunk, taking a cautious peak around it into a small open clearing amongst the underbrush.
What greeted his eyes was something he wouldn't forget anytime soon.
A large creature that shared a slight resilience to a loth-wolf stood before him, except it seemed to be made from an amalgamation of bark, large twigs, and leaves. It's sharp fangs appeared to be chomping down on something, and it took Strider only a few seconds to realize what.
The helmet of the other pilot.
Strider felt what was left of his last ration meal try and resurface, but he fought back the urge to vomit. The wolf bit into the helmet again, this time with enough force that made it shatter in its mouth. Strider tried to look for a body nearby, but no signs of the pilot were anywhere else.
"That walking woodpile ate him!?" Strider questioned, taking aim at the wolf.
But before he could pull the trigger, two more wooden wolves emerged from the trees behind the first, their yellow eyes scanning the area in search for something else to eat. Strider lowered the blaster at the sudden change in numbers against him, and as quietly as he could, took off in the opposite direction from the newly formed pack.
The trooper ducked beneath some low hanging branches and vaulted over a couple bushes, trying to find his way either back to the gunship, or some sort of vantage point. He stopped his rapid pace and frantically looked around, trying to identify anything that he could use as solid cover. Yet no matter how hard he looked, nothing popped out at him that could be used well. Only tree trunks and bushes far too thin to effectively mask his solid white armor.
In the distance, he could hear what sounded like howls, most likely from the pack. Either they’d found something exciting, or discovered his trail. Possibly both.
And just when he thought things couldn’t get worse, the light around him caught his eye. It was far darker than it had been when he’d first left the gunship, dark enough to elect turning on his helmet's newly added headlamp attachments.
He glanced upwards through a small hole in the underbrush, spotting a rapidly darkening sky above.
Night had fallen...
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A very intriguing premise so far, I'll be keeping an eye on this one.
However, I would strongly recommend proofreading or picking up a credible proofreader. There are some very noticeable spelling and grammar errors.
9695733
Sorry about that, i'll try to keep the grammar correct. Thank's for telling me.
I feel like there is a 50% chance of random explosions bringing you to EQ :I
*looks over to gas oven* "HHMmmmhh....."
I don't know what rules do you have for corrections so until I know such I'll post them in the comments while reading:
Interesting so far!
I mean... at least try to kill the thing that might not have killed the pilot yet? Or a better view to see if he’s alive?
HELLO THERE
9983280
Ah general Kenobi
9832192
Well then, better ensure I die by explosion. After setting lots of MLP related objects around me; you know, to make it seem like a ritual and not just some random deatj – might increase my chances.
Oh crap.
Are we sure the clones are not from the U.S.A "all mah bros are dead, I'm hurt there are wooden ass hat wolfs trying to eat mah ass for dinner"
"At least I got mah gun I like mah odds".
hmmm, how about you climb the trees? CT's are more than capable of crawling their way up in trees as is shown by the animated show so saying that there is *no* cover is quite dumb