You try the lavatory sink and find some water still in the line. You suck it greedily out of your hand and splash it on your face before it runs out. Feeling a bit better and more awake, you take stock of what you have in the dim phosphorescent light of the lavatory.
You have a MPL, but before it will fire you'll need some tools to hack the bio-lock trigger since it is still encoded with the dead guard's vitals and DNA.
You have a med-kit. There are 2 doses each left of the painkiller and the nanite-gel. There are also 5 new-skin patches, an ACE bandage, clips, some gauze, a green jet-injector with 3 doses of detox, a DDP (defibrillator/diagnostic pad), an oxygen mask, and a monofilament scalpel. It might be a good idea to look for more kits, since some extra jet-injectors might come in handy.
You are wearing a ripped, blood-soaked, dirty orange jumpsuit. It bothers you, but you’re not sure if it bothers you enough to take clothes off a corpse.
You need rations, water, tools, and perhaps a better weapon until you can hack the safety on the MPL. But most of all, right now, you need a flashlight.
You cautiously slide the latch to ‘unoccupied’ and push the door slightly open to peer out into the darkness. The nightlife is noisy. The air is slightly cool and smells odd. Like a cross between tobacco and moldy cheese…
You suddenly realize how unimaginably lucky you are that the air is breathable at all. You fumble around for the DDP in the med-kit, pressing it to your forearm and hitting the button to diagnose. The oxygen in your blood is low. That explains the headache. You also have small traces of arsenic and some unidentified compounds in your system. You strap on the oxygen mask, cussing at yourself for not doing so earlier, and then, using the light from the DDP display, you find the green jet-injector and shoot your upper arm with a dose of detox. The perfect mix of nitrogen and oxygen from the mask fills your lungs and you feel your headache start to recede almost immediately. You give yourself another minute to completely clear your lungs and your head, then open the lavatory door and climb out onto the ground outside the fragmented ship's hull…
Two beige half moons shining directly overhead, along with a billion stars, provide somewhat adequate light.
There is a massive trench dug by the crash through what looks like a dense jungle. Strewn down the length of the trench, there are large and small chunks of the ship you were on. On either side of the trench, there is dense foliage and tall thin trees choked with vines.
Dark shadows prevent you from seeing much detail. The sounds from the local nightlife are loud, varied, and emanate from every direction, but it doesn’t sound like anything particularly threatening is approaching you. Still, you would feel better with more light and a usable weapon if something decides to make you a late-night snack.
You make your way to each of the larger pieces of wreckage, searching the debris for anything useful. As you walk, you notice that your balance is a little off and your legs still feel a bit weak. There must be slightly more than one gee of gravity here. It’s going to take some getting used to, and you’ll probably get tired faster…
The first thing you find is an intact, though completely shaken up, storage closet with several useful items. You find a nice combination flashlight/lantern, 6 extra power cells (which will fit both the pulse laser and the flashlight), a box of large black plastic trash bags, a couple roles of duct tape, and a gallon jug of bleach. You pour out the bleach, keeping it as a self-sterilizing water jug. You open and double up a couple trash bags and toss in the box of bags, empty bleach jug, power cells, and duct tape.
The next thing you find is a few more dead guards. You grab a second MPL (also unusable until hacked), 2 thigh holsters to carry your MPLs, 8 more power cells, and a stun baton. The safety on the baton also needs to be hacked before you can power it, but even unpowered, it’s not bad as a big stick. You duct tape your flashlight just above the baton handle so that you can wield it like a short lit baseball bat. Finally, knowing that the guards’ thicker black jumpsuits offer a little more protection than yours and wouldn’t stick out like an orange sore thumb, you break down and undress one of them, replacing your filthy-but-still-brightly-colored, thin, torn prison garb. You then continue your search a little less self-conscious…
The wreckage seems to get worse after that. Still, after an exhaustive night search, you manage to find 2 more med-kits, a couple more sinks with enough water to thoroughly rinse and nearly fill your gallon bleach jug. And a crate of 36 rations. Individually, the rations are light, but carrying the entire crate of them would slow you down, even if you stuff them all into the trash bag. Sadly, the tools you need to hack the weapon safeties prove elusive. There doesn’t seem to be much more of the wreckage worth searching, but you see that the sky is beginning to brighten with the approaching dawn. It’s time to make a decision:
If you stay with the wreckage, you might be able to find more in the daylight and you might even manage a decent shelter. Is a search party coming? Do you want to be found and rescued if it means going back to prison?
If you leave the wreckage, can you survive in the alien jungle? Is this planet inhabited? If it is, are the locals friendly? Do they have a ship to take you home? Where is home? You sigh heavily and consider your options…
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