[ooc: we discussed this a while ago and I thought I'd write it up and drop it in here! Setting is of course The Terror and I am fine with all canon-appropriate attitudes etc - let's just set it early enough to avoid any active cannibalism ;) ]
[It felt like the cold of cryostasis. That was Lieutenant Tayrey's first thought as she regained consciousness, and had some raw survival instinct not propelled her forward, she might have sunk into the chill embrace of imagined cryosleep. Instead she unbuckled herself with clumsy, numbed hands, and fell from her seat, her shoulder slamming against the shuttle wall that was now oriented downward. Peering out the viewport, she saw nothing but white. Processing that would come later. For now, there was only action. Unlatching the right storage compartment, finding gloves, scarves, blankets, all the layers she needed to stay warm. Then the next, for rations, emergency beacons. She tried the shuttle's power, of course, but something was critically broken. She had emergency light, a valiantly struggling heater, but no comms, no engines.
The crash. It was a blank spot in her mind. A routine solo shuttle flight to observe a planet's native life forms. No trouble for a qualified astrogator โ and if something had gone wrong, she should have been capable of a controlled descent through atmosphere, towards a latitude less likely to kill her. Her estimation of the temperature, as she first stepped outside, was 250 degrees. Not comfortable, but survivable, if she took care. She'd been on expedition to an ice planet before. Inside the shuttle was warmer for now, but that wouldn't last, not unless she could get more systems online. There had to have been an initial fault, she reasoned, but whatever it was had surely been compounded by the crashdown into ice. Ice which had cracked upon impact and refrozen almost instantly.
Eternal cryosleep, she thought darkly. Like those old pioneers who went out into the black never knowing whether they'd reach their colony. The unlucky ones. Well, Tayrey had avoided that. She was alive, still, and ready to fight to stay that way. There were procedures. Granted, most of those procedures depended upon having functional communications, but her ship knew her trajectory, and they'd know that something went wrong. She simply had to hold out long enough for them to find her.
One beacon wouldn't be enough. She planted the first directly outside, a tall, cylindrical, pulsing blue light through the dim, and she tied a long strip of red around its middle, Cardalek-ribbon, the closest she could get to a signature. If her crew came to her rescue, they would know how to track her, she reasoned. Nothing else on this planet was giving off energy like that. She was supposed to be checking for resources, for animals, for physical structures that might hint at intelligent life. Not that she'd been close enough for that, before everything went wrong, but Tradeline policies were clear. No recommendations before very thorough checks, of which Tayrey's cursory flyover was supposed to be the very first.
Once outside the shuttle she trudged southwards, shivering, careful footsteps testing the crunch of the ice beneath booted feet. All the thermal layers from the emergency stash weren't enough to make her warm but they'd keep her alive. Atop it all she kept her uniform, grateful now for the heavy wool coat, its bright blue a startling splash of color. Every so often, she planted another beacon, another signal for the rescuers she fervently hoped were on their way. Otherwise, all this effort would simply earn her a slower death.
After hours at work she was ready to turn back for the shuttle, for food and rest โ but then she caught something out of the corner of her eye. A dark shape moving slowly, too far away to be recognisable. How could anything live up here? Had the impact of the crash attracted it? The beacon-light? Tayrey was ready to hurry back to the security behind shuttle walls, not wanting to risk a fight with some indigenous creature โ but then she caught it in light, in focus.
The shape looked human.
Her people, already? She stumbled forward, eagerly, towards what might be salvation.]
ooc โ This was such a delightful treat to see in my inbox!! Thank you for starting this up for us! :D
[ Time has lost most meaning, in the long days that they've been trapped out here in the ice. Yet no matter how much time passes, the cold never becomes an easier or more welcoming environment. Each day is a reminder that they are in a world they were never meant to visit, much less remain in for as long as they have.
Terror's First Lieutenant Edward Little peers across the endless white abyss with eyes squinted against the cold, hardly daring to blink the frost-coated eyelashes pulling uncomfortably at his vision. Then he sees it again โ an odd flash of blue โ and continues his heavy trudge that way. A returning party had spotted one of the strange lights and come back to report it; subsequently, Little is leading a new team of volunteers to investigate. Only a few men, and at one point he'd split off from them to continue on his own, heading towards another in the distance.
His head is dipped down, officer's cap pulled securely down over his eyes as much as possible. Multiple layers of wool and his thick greatcoat still aren't enough to shield him from this landscape, its sharp chill of wind, its bitter cold. But he steels himself through it, as he has done time and time again, and keeps marching, boots dragging across the ice.
He sees movement.
He freezes, startled. Gloved hands twitch towards the shotgun secured to his back, but he hesitates to actually take his weapon into his grasp. Could it be... one of Lady Silence's people? The man stays standing where he is, tense, and waits for the figure to approach. Once they do, he finds himself wholly and utterly taken aback: it's.... a woman, not one of the Netsilik, dressed in a blue coat that isn't altogether too dissimilar from his own in terms of neat fit and tailored in the manner of a uniform.
It's an impossible sight. How.... how could someone like her be.... here?]
Madam?[ He's taking a quick step forward, alarmed, shocked. He looks as though he's seen a ghost, uncertain as to trusting his own eyes, but that doesn't stop him from lifting a hand towards her as he ogles the stranger. (Is she real? She looks to be, somehow.) ]
[Tayrey raises a hand to shade her eyes, to see past the glare of white-on-white and look at the figure more closely. A man. Not one of hers; she knew every man on her ship by sight, and this one was no Tradeliner. There had been no civilian ships in the area. Nobody at all. This place was uncharted.
She stares at him, a dazed, almost uncomprehending look on her face. A human, where no human could possibly be. A human speaking Company Standard to her. Not Sector Standard, the lingua franca of the lines, a hybrid of spacefaring tongues โ but an older language, suggestive of an earlier era. The conclusion was startling, but inevitable: this man, or his ancestors, might have come from some lost cryoship. A slow ship full of hopeful colonists that never reached its destination, but ended up here instead.
A momentous discovery. She feels her pulse quicken in anticipation โ only for her to shiver again as she realises the flaws in her analysis. Lost colonists would have settled on a far more temperate part of the planet. If this man is out here regardless, it's by design โ and Tayrey doesn't know what caused her shuttle to crash. It wasn't kinetic weapons, else she'd have seen the damage, but that doesn't rule out electromagnetic interference, which he and his people might have caused.
Calm down, Tayrey. Assume peaceable contract. Answer the question.]
I'm not injured.
[Naturally she assumes that's what the question must mean, and she's not, at least not badly. Bruises, maybe minor lacerations. She hadn't checked. The Prosperity's doctor wouldn't like that she'd blacked out and couldn't remember the crash, but gravity alone could have done that, and it's a problem for when she's safely in the starship infirmary, not something to complain about now.
She lowers her hand, and it brushes by her coat in what seems a casual gesture, but has the felicitous effect of revealing a brief glimpse of the energy pistol clipped to her belt. She's not injured, and not helpless either.]
Thank you. I'm fine. Peace and prosperity to you.
[A cold gust of wind makes her angle her body away from him, but as soon as it passes, she stands straight again, knowing she has to keep control of the situation.]
I had an accident. Six miles north, seven? [Assigning no blame. Not yet.]
You'll have my sincere gratitude if I can use your communications tower, send out a Sibril line to the local relay station. You'll be compensated, fair contract. My captain will see to it.
[If she thought about it, she'd realise that nobody on an uncharted planet could have a Sibril line, at least not one known by that specific company name - but Tayrey's operating half on autopilot right now, hoping that this man in a strange uniform who speaks Company Standard actually has a perfectly rational reason for being here. That it will all make sense.]
[ In such an impossible situation, the mind scrabbles to cling fast to whatever vestiges of logic that it possibly can. ...Even now, after all of the unnatural things that he has been witness to โ the creature, something unlike any natural beast yet documented on Earth โ Little tries to find reason. To hold fast to it.
If she's here, then it's by intention, although.... perhaps not her own. It's possible, perhaps, that she's some sort of hostage taken by the natives to this land...
(The only other option involves the woman being part of some... expedition of her own right, but that's almost wholly far-fetched a notion. Even if she's dressed very much like a crewman...)
His wide eyes follow every movement she gives, locked on with alarm and shock, sweeping down for that fleeting moment to catch the item clipped to her belt. A weapon? She's armed?
'I'm fine.' How can that possibly be? Yet the more she reveals, the more confusing it all only becomes. An accident, a request to use aโ communications tower, Sibril line...? Little's mouth parts, but can't quite seem to find the words. In contrast to his desperate struggle to find reasoning, he's met with the sensation that this all seems a dream. But then, one word snaps him back into a certain focus, and his eyes clear, sharpen with recogntion. ]
Your captain?
[ Then she must truly be... part of some crew. ....A rescue? With an almost pained shuddering jolt of his heart within its ribcage, the man adjusts the shotgun secured to his person, shoving it back further out of the way as he moves closer, draws himself in so that he can hear her better over the howl of wind. ]
What is the name of your vessel? Who is your captain?
[ More words come in a rush as he gestures quickly with one arm back behind himself, where his footprints have already been dusted over with a fresh coating of snow. ]
Our ships are just back this wayโ both of them, held fast in the ice. Terror has the worst of it, she's leaning badly, wood split in placesโ [ The woman must surely recognise the name of the ship, because this must be a rescue. It can't be anything else. Nothing else would make sense.
But she mentioned an accident and his heart's beating faster. ]
Your ship... how is its condition? Can it still be maneuvered?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
First Contact
[It felt like the cold of cryostasis. That was Lieutenant Tayrey's first thought as she regained consciousness, and had some raw survival instinct not propelled her forward, she might have sunk into the chill embrace of imagined cryosleep. Instead she unbuckled herself with clumsy, numbed hands, and fell from her seat, her shoulder slamming against the shuttle wall that was now oriented downward. Peering out the viewport, she saw nothing but white. Processing that would come later. For now, there was only action. Unlatching the right storage compartment, finding gloves, scarves, blankets, all the layers she needed to stay warm. Then the next, for rations, emergency beacons. She tried the shuttle's power, of course, but something was critically broken. She had emergency light, a valiantly struggling heater, but no comms, no engines.
The crash. It was a blank spot in her mind. A routine solo shuttle flight to observe a planet's native life forms. No trouble for a qualified astrogator โ and if something had gone wrong, she should have been capable of a controlled descent through atmosphere, towards a latitude less likely to kill her. Her estimation of the temperature, as she first stepped outside, was 250 degrees. Not comfortable, but survivable, if she took care. She'd been on expedition to an ice planet before. Inside the shuttle was warmer for now, but that wouldn't last, not unless she could get more systems online. There had to have been an initial fault, she reasoned, but whatever it was had surely been compounded by the crashdown into ice. Ice which had cracked upon impact and refrozen almost instantly.
Eternal cryosleep, she thought darkly. Like those old pioneers who went out into the black never knowing whether they'd reach their colony. The unlucky ones. Well, Tayrey had avoided that. She was alive, still, and ready to fight to stay that way. There were procedures. Granted, most of those procedures depended upon having functional communications, but her ship knew her trajectory, and they'd know that something went wrong. She simply had to hold out long enough for them to find her.
One beacon wouldn't be enough. She planted the first directly outside, a tall, cylindrical, pulsing blue light through the dim, and she tied a long strip of red around its middle, Cardalek-ribbon, the closest she could get to a signature. If her crew came to her rescue, they would know how to track her, she reasoned. Nothing else on this planet was giving off energy like that. She was supposed to be checking for resources, for animals, for physical structures that might hint at intelligent life. Not that she'd been close enough for that, before everything went wrong, but Tradeline policies were clear. No recommendations before very thorough checks, of which Tayrey's cursory flyover was supposed to be the very first.
Once outside the shuttle she trudged southwards, shivering, careful footsteps testing the crunch of the ice beneath booted feet. All the thermal layers from the emergency stash weren't enough to make her warm but they'd keep her alive. Atop it all she kept her uniform, grateful now for the heavy wool coat, its bright blue a startling splash of color. Every so often, she planted another beacon, another signal for the rescuers she fervently hoped were on their way. Otherwise, all this effort would simply earn her a slower death.
After hours at work she was ready to turn back for the shuttle, for food and rest โ but then she caught something out of the corner of her eye. A dark shape moving slowly, too far away to be recognisable. How could anything live up here? Had the impact of the crash attracted it? The beacon-light? Tayrey was ready to hurry back to the security behind shuttle walls, not wanting to risk a fight with some indigenous creature โ but then she caught it in light, in focus.
The shape looked human.
Her people, already? She stumbled forward, eagerly, towards what might be salvation.]
no subject
[ Time has lost most meaning, in the long days that they've been trapped out here in the ice. Yet no matter how much time passes, the cold never becomes an easier or more welcoming environment. Each day is a reminder that they are in a world they were never meant to visit, much less remain in for as long as they have.
Terror's First Lieutenant Edward Little peers across the endless white abyss with eyes squinted against the cold, hardly daring to blink the frost-coated eyelashes pulling uncomfortably at his vision. Then he sees it again โ an odd flash of blue โ and continues his heavy trudge that way. A returning party had spotted one of the strange lights and come back to report it; subsequently, Little is leading a new team of volunteers to investigate. Only a few men, and at one point he'd split off from them to continue on his own, heading towards another in the distance.
His head is dipped down, officer's cap pulled securely down over his eyes as much as possible. Multiple layers of wool and his thick greatcoat still aren't enough to shield him from this landscape, its sharp chill of wind, its bitter cold. But he steels himself through it, as he has done time and time again, and keeps marching, boots dragging across the ice.
He sees movement.
He freezes, startled. Gloved hands twitch towards the shotgun secured to his back, but he hesitates to actually take his weapon into his grasp. Could it be... one of Lady Silence's people? The man stays standing where he is, tense, and waits for the figure to approach. Once they do, he finds himself wholly and utterly taken aback: it's.... a woman, not one of the Netsilik, dressed in a blue coat that isn't altogether too dissimilar from his own in terms of neat fit and tailored in the manner of a uniform.
It's an impossible sight. How.... how could someone like her be.... here? ]
Madam? [ He's taking a quick step forward, alarmed, shocked. He looks as though he's seen a ghost, uncertain as to trusting his own eyes, but that doesn't stop him from lifting a hand towards her as he ogles the stranger. (Is she real? She looks to be, somehow.) ]
My god.... Are you all right?
no subject
She stares at him, a dazed, almost uncomprehending look on her face. A human, where no human could possibly be. A human speaking Company Standard to her. Not Sector Standard, the lingua franca of the lines, a hybrid of spacefaring tongues โ but an older language, suggestive of an earlier era. The conclusion was startling, but inevitable: this man, or his ancestors, might have come from some lost cryoship. A slow ship full of hopeful colonists that never reached its destination, but ended up here instead.
A momentous discovery. She feels her pulse quicken in anticipation โ only for her to shiver again as she realises the flaws in her analysis. Lost colonists would have settled on a far more temperate part of the planet. If this man is out here regardless, it's by design โ and Tayrey doesn't know what caused her shuttle to crash. It wasn't kinetic weapons, else she'd have seen the damage, but that doesn't rule out electromagnetic interference, which he and his people might have caused.
Calm down, Tayrey. Assume peaceable contract. Answer the question.]
I'm not injured.
[Naturally she assumes that's what the question must mean, and she's not, at least not badly. Bruises, maybe minor lacerations. She hadn't checked. The Prosperity's doctor wouldn't like that she'd blacked out and couldn't remember the crash, but gravity alone could have done that, and it's a problem for when she's safely in the starship infirmary, not something to complain about now.
She lowers her hand, and it brushes by her coat in what seems a casual gesture, but has the felicitous effect of revealing a brief glimpse of the energy pistol clipped to her belt. She's not injured, and not helpless either.]
Thank you. I'm fine. Peace and prosperity to you.
[A cold gust of wind makes her angle her body away from him, but as soon as it passes, she stands straight again, knowing she has to keep control of the situation.]
I had an accident. Six miles north, seven? [Assigning no blame. Not yet.]
You'll have my sincere gratitude if I can use your communications tower, send out a Sibril line to the local relay station. You'll be compensated, fair contract. My captain will see to it.
[If she thought about it, she'd realise that nobody on an uncharted planet could have a Sibril line, at least not one known by that specific company name - but Tayrey's operating half on autopilot right now, hoping that this man in a strange uniform who speaks Company Standard actually has a perfectly rational reason for being here. That it will all make sense.]
no subject
If she's here, then it's by intention, although.... perhaps not her own. It's possible, perhaps, that she's some sort of hostage taken by the natives to this land...
(The only other option involves the woman being part of some... expedition of her own right, but that's almost wholly far-fetched a notion. Even if she's dressed very much like a crewman...)
His wide eyes follow every movement she gives, locked on with alarm and shock, sweeping down for that fleeting moment to catch the item clipped to her belt. A weapon? She's armed?
'I'm fine.' How can that possibly be? Yet the more she reveals, the more confusing it all only becomes. An accident, a request to use aโ communications tower, Sibril line...? Little's mouth parts, but can't quite seem to find the words. In contrast to his desperate struggle to find reasoning, he's met with the sensation that this all seems a dream. But then, one word snaps him back into a certain focus, and his eyes clear, sharpen with recogntion. ]
Your captain?
[ Then she must truly be... part of some crew. ....A rescue? With an almost pained shuddering jolt of his heart within its ribcage, the man adjusts the shotgun secured to his person, shoving it back further out of the way as he moves closer, draws himself in so that he can hear her better over the howl of wind. ]
What is the name of your vessel? Who is your captain?
[ More words come in a rush as he gestures quickly with one arm back behind himself, where his footprints have already been dusted over with a fresh coating of snow. ]
Our ships are just back this wayโ both of them, held fast in the ice. Terror has the worst of it, she's leaning badly, wood split in placesโ [ The woman must surely recognise the name of the ship, because this must be a rescue. It can't be anything else. Nothing else would make sense.
But she mentioned an accident and his heart's beating faster. ]
Your ship... how is its condition? Can it still be maneuvered?