Location Unknown
Azalea awoke to the steady drip of water landing on her face. She had no idea how long she had been out, or even when exactly she had lost consciousness. The crash was a blur. As the world around her came into focus, she became aware of light, sunlight, piercing through an opening above her. She tried to blink herself to consciousness. Where is my sister?!
"Hope?!" She heard nothing at first. "HOPE!" she was rewarded the second time with a cough to her right. She shook her head, trying to shake the confusion free. She saw her sister laying on her side, open her eyes, and breathed a sigh of relief. They were alive, at least. Somehow they had made it. She stood slowly, realizing the deck plate below her was resting at an odd angle. The opening she had seen earlier was a huge gash in the side of the compartment they had been in. Sunlight was flooding through, as was water, slowly dripping into a small puddle forming at the base of the compartment.
"Hope, can you move? Are you alright?" her sister was slowly sitting up, taking account of herself just as Azalea had a few moments before.
"I'm fine Zee, at least I think so. We crashed. We're alive."
"Thank you, miss obvious," Azalea quipped. "We have to get outside, see what the situation is. Are you good to move?"
Hope nodded, and the sisters carefully climbed their way towards the tear in the hull before climbing out into a hot, humid marsh. The air was thick, both with moisture and with insects, which immediately began feasting upon the twins as they emerged. They quickly got their bearings, finding the outline of the part of the ship that they had gone down with. With the ship secured for jump operations, their particular segment of the ship was empty of people. Indeed, they should not even have been there, but for their little excursion.
They found no other survivors in their immediate area, and as the day wore on, they quickly made a search of the wreckage for any supplies they could use. Thankfully, the segment of the ship that had come down with them included one of the dropship's escape pods, and so there was an ample supply of emergency rations, supplies, and an assault rifle. By the time the sun had set, they had managed to erect a shelter to keep out the elements, and started a fire.
The immediate situation in hand, and with night falling, the sisters sat beside the fire, which thankfully kept away the insects that had done their best to make a meal of the two girls throughout the afternoon.
"So what the fuck happened?" Azalea asked as much to the universe as to the sister who sat beside her.
Hope rubbed her hands over her arms. "I don't know. Obviously we misjumped, but normally that just puts you either stranded at your starting point, stranded at your destination, or 'poof' out of existence. We clearly didn't seem to end up at the start or finish or our trip, and from the itching of these bug bites, we haven't poofed out of existence. So that leaves.....I don't know.
Azalea sighed, "You're supposed to be the smart one. You got the brains, I got the boobs. If you don't know what happened..." She let her question drift off unanswered. They sat in silence for a few minutes.
"Well, we have to figure out where the hell we are. Looking up at the stars can give us some idea of that."
Azalea shook her head, "You're not going to start doing math on me, are you. You know I hate math."
Hope slapped her sister on the arm. "You don't hate math Zee, you just prefer to let me do the math. But no, seriously, we can make an educated guess based on the alignment of certain stars in the sky. I'm not saying I can tell you what planet we're on, but I can tell you maybe which corner of the Sphere we're in."
Azalea let Hope ramble on about the position of stars relative to each other, knowing that her sister understood the details far better than she ever would. Instead, she gazed up into the heavens, trying to see patterns and constellations to comfort her. It was silly to think that gazing up at the stars would bring her any kind of comfort, but it was her way of relaxing while her sister's mind worked.
Then she saw it. "Shut up, I know where we are."
Hope glared at her. "Were you even listening to me? I've figured out that we're rimward of Terra, so we're not that far off where we should be. I mean, we're not in the clan homeworlds or anything."
"We're still on Sarna."
The two stared at each other for a moment before Hope spoke up. "And you know this how?"
"Well, the constellations are unique to each world, right? We're staring up at the same sky, but from vastly different points. So the constellations that we saw growing up on Lummatii aren't going to be close to the ones on Sarna. And you may be the brains of the operation, but I spent a hell of a lot more time looking up into the sky than you did."
Hope smiled mockingly at her. "Probably on your back with some guys head between your legs."
Azalea raised an eyebrow. "Hey, don't knock it. So I may have been bored while that stupid rich prick from Menke was trying to figure out what he was doing down there, but in between making sure he felt like he was the greatest little lover in the world, I drew some pretty pictures with the constellations. And it gave me something to focus on whenever I had to deal with a less than spectacular end to an evening. But I also know these stars. We're on Sarna, I'm telling you. We must have crashed on the ass end of Jacarlos somewhere, but it's Sarna. All we have to do is make our way to some kind of civilization, and we'll be fine. We've got a gun, that will keep the bigger lizards off us, and when we find some loyal Capellan homestead, we flash our IDs, and we're fine."
Hope glanced around nervously. "It just doesn't feel right. We spent four years here. It doesn't feel like Sarna."
Azalea frowned. "We spent four years on Sarna as cadets at the academy and as a couple of rich bitches. Unless you were slumming it sometime out in the swamps that I didn't know about, we didn't spend too much time out in these parts. Trust me. Come on, we'll button up for the night, and hit the road in the morning."
The night passed without incident, and by morning, they were indeed on the road. They struggled to make a good pace with the heat and humidity, and staying on dry land through the marshes proved to be a challenge as well. Several times they had nearly been accosted by rather large predatory lizards, but each time, Azalea had dispatched their would be tormentors with a shot from her assault rifle.
They had just about given up on finding civilization for the day when they broke out of the marsh and into what was obviously a cultivated paddy field. Where there was farming, there were people. The sisters sloshed their way through the flooded paddy until they reached a raised section of land that could almost serve as a road. The vegetation was still thick, and with the waning light, they could not see very far in front of their path.
Suddenly a light snapped on in front of them, blinding them temporarily, and they could hear several excited voices. Both women shielded their eyes from the blazing light, trying to recover. A voice shouted out from behind the light, in Mandarin. "Drop your weapons. We shoot Davion rats here."
What the hell? "We are not Davions. We are Capellan Janshi. Our ship crashed back in the marsh. We are trying to make our way back."
She heard a grunt in reply. "You speak Mandarin like guests on a Davion soap opera."
Fuck. She knew that her Mandarin wasn't perfect, not being a native speaker, but both she and her sister spoke at least passable forms of the language. She placed her weapon on the ground, and her hands in the air. "You can check our papers. We are graduates of the Sarna Martial Academy, and loyal Capellan soldiers. There's no cause for alarm."
"We'll see. I still say you talk like Davion spies."
Hope whispered to her as a figure emerged from the light, carrying a rifle. "I should have done the talking, my Mandarin is better."
Azalea stared daggers at her sister. "You think these bumpkins care?"
"Quiet!" the man walking towards them shouted. As he reached them, his eyes darted back and forth between the two sisters. "You talk like Davions, look like Davions. We could just shoot you and leave you here in the marshes, save the Chancellor the time. Show me your papers, and I might change my mind."
Azalea slowly removed her ID card from the back pocket of her pants, and handed it over to the man, who looked over it confusedly. "I am supposed to believe this? This is a bad forgery to start, and the name? McCarron? As in the mercenaries who are supposedly here to protect us? The Fox is not as sly as he thinks if these are the spies he is sending us. Don't move. We will take you to the authorities, and turn you in for a reward."
"This is all a mistake. I don't know what you think you're talking about, but we are Capellan officers and-"
Her protests were cut off with the butt of the man's rifle to her jaw. As she spun around and fell to the ground, she heard her sister scream in protest, but those screams were quickly muffled. The world swam around her as she tried to get a handle on what exactly was going on.
No comments:
Post a Comment