Wayward

Resonance of Thunder

The air in the pod was still as Tib came back amongst the living. The pod was deathly quiet and a ghostly light shone only through the back hatch, which was now directly above Tib. He moved to unstrap himself and realized how big of a mistake that was as he began to feel the pain his unconsciousness had been hiding. If only the pod's flight control instrument hadn't failed he wouldn't being suspended like this. Tib's hand found the release and pressed it as he made sure he was holding on to one of the grab bars firmly. His weight shifted quickly as he unstrapped himself but it wasn't something he couldn't overcome. Tib quickly clambered up and opened the hatch using the emergency hydraulic release. The hatched hissed and quickly moved to the side. The light from the planets sun nearly blinded him before he could cover his eyes, which had grown accustomed to the dark. A dull humming quickly became noticeable him as he pushed himself on top of the pod which almost coincided with the pounding of his headache. His eyes adjusted to the overcast day and was awestruck with where they landed. In front of Tib lie a sea of harmonically vibrating crystals, and a large part of the Ragnus's midships. the grey ship's hull plating was mangled, twisted, and charred with a barely visible UP-T-20 before the piece of the ship ended in jagged and stripped edges. The crystals engulfing Tib, and the small piece of the Ragnus, seemed to be white and purplish in color and varied in size. They were a stark contrast to the dark gray, jagged, twisted, and mangled piece of the once mighty warship. Tib could make out signs of life from the wreck, though they obviously weren't human, and were probably just more of the flying creatures circling overhead. Tib let the scene soak in. They really were stranded on this curse of a planet. Tib was preparing to step down before he suddenly thought of Sheeb. He turned and crawled back into the dimly lit pod, who's only light from ousting was now crowded with the shadow of Tib. Careful not to fall and injure himself, Tib quickly found a footing in the bow bulkhead, which now was the floor of the pod, to release Sheeb from her seat. It took a few moments for Tib to find the release but was fortunate enough to know the release by memory. As soon as the seat straps uncoupled, Sheeb hunched forwarded, heading straight to the pod floor. Tib had to move fast, but luckily caught her before she added to her already probable concussion. "Don't worry, Sheeb, I gotcha " he said as he began to move her to a less dangerous position than the seat. Sheeb felt much heavier than she looked, though Tib knew the shock the landing gave his body was a factor in that. After a few minutes Tib managed to lug Sheeb up the pod and through the hatch. The pod was big enough to lay Sheeb down, luckily enough. Tib quickly took off his jacket and placed it under her head, hoping the less stagnat air would help wake her up. He looked around and decided it was best he went back down into the hatch to see what he could do to bring power back to the communications relay while he waited for her. It didn't take Tib long to get down the pod to the main computer display, though he was beginning to feel exhausted. He pushed the pain in his shoulders aside and pulled the release on the maintenance hatch beside the comm relay to begin to troubleshoot it. After looking over the panel for a few moments it, Tib knew that, miraculously, the overload safety systems had just kicked on when they crashed landed and that the pods power systems were working as intended. Tib quickly flipped the few switches he needed to re-prime the power relays and was greeted by a hum and lights within the little space life boat. The comm relays interface flickered to life and immediately opened with hundreds, if not thousands, of emergency signals. A smile came across his face, this was at least something. That meant there were others, many others. Tib slid off his wrist comm and hooked it into the interface as he set it to be uploaded with as many signal origin points as it could. Tib left the comm to be set up as he climbed back up from the depths of the pod to Sheeb. He pushed himself up right beside her and sat back down on the edge of the pod. The hulk of the Ragnus stared back at him. He gazed over the horizon to get a true visual of where they were. It seemed they had landed near the end of the crystal sea as some of the planets jungle and mountains were a very short distance to the left of where they had landed. A few of the mountains looked familiar, after all he had set the pod to land near the original crash site, but he didn't want to get his hopes up, knowing better than to trust a malfunctioning pod. He looked over at Sheeb, who looked like she was sleeping now more than the painful look she had earlier, and thought about leaving her. It was a thought Tib pushed out of his mind quickly as he done so many times before on this God forsaken mission. Satisfying his wander lust wasn't worth the life of a friend. Sheeb meant alot to Tib in many different ways, like Lark and the rest of his friends did. Lark was a little different though, and he wondered at this point if she was still alive out there. He hoped so. He hoped they're journey could continue on in this wild fire of a universe. He knew with the large amount of survivors that had just landed with him that atleast some of them had to have landed very near the crash site of the initial dropship and therefore that meant safety in numbers for Lark and Alex. His mind trailed off to Julian. Did he make it off the ship? Julian was a good kid, he didn't deserve to die like that and if he did, then in Tib's eyes, that meant the officers that lead them like sheep to the slaughter deserved to be vented into space. Even that punishment felt light to Tib right now. He took deep a breath. He felt calm right now, but he knew overthinking things would change that very soon. He felt alarmingly calm in fact. Maybe it was alarming because he had never been in a shipwreck before and didn't know how or what to expect, but that didn't matter now. Tib knew things were out of his hands. What had been done had been done and they were stranded. There was no going back now, only pushing forward. Tib suddenly noticed a eerie hush had fell over the crystals during his train of thoughts.. The hair on the back of his neck stood up. He looked around quickly and was  met with the gaze from a horrid looking creature standing amongst the crystals. He could only assume that it was one of the flying creatures he had seen in the distance. It was easily approaching twelve feet in height as it sat on the ground. It had a skeletal form to it and was ghostly gray while being nearly translucent. It's long protruding mouth seemed to be proportional overall as a beak to a bird, but the teeth it had inside it were not. The creature was eyeing him and Sheeb. Tib slowly moved his right hand towards the holster for his plasma side arm as he put his hand on Sheeb's left leg. The creature made a beyond nightmarish call as it lifted itself onto the largest of the nearest crystals in a flash. It began to hum in tune with the creature's call. Maybe these creatures and crystals were symbiotic in a way, Tib thought as he drew his plasma pistol and began to slide Sheeb into the hatch as he threw his jacket down below to try and cushion an improptu emergency landing. The creature peered at him with a seemingly human scowl and outstretched its wings. Tib was awestruck by how truly massive this monster was. It seemed to be almost twenty feet in its wingspan. Tib overcharged his pistol. If he was going to fire on this animal he wanted to be sure one shot was enough. Just as he was about to squeeze the trigger the monstrous creature took flight and flew away from the pair, seemingly no longer interested in its bewildered intruders. Tib watched in silence ready for the giant "bird" to turn around, but it seemed as though it was more interested in the Ragnus than Sheeb and him. He looked back at Sheeb who he was beginning to worry about now. She had been unconscious for more than what he figured would be normal. Tib hoped she would be fine, but he was an engineer, not a doctor. She looked fine for now, but he decided it would be best to put her back into the pod. Firmly grabbing ahold of the edge of the pod and bracing himself. Tib slowly and methodically lowered Sheeb back down onto his jacket he had thrown down earlier. He sat her with her back against the portside wall and quickly grabbed a magnetic lock and a plasma rifle from the wall locker. He reached over her, to the communications relay and grabbed his wrist comm which had to be reactivated after sitting so long. He quickly threw it on and climbed back up to the hatch with his new rifle loudly clanging off the side of the pod every few rungs. Tib made sure to scan the area before he came completely out of the pod, and was greeted with silence other than the hum of the crystals. Tib shuffled out and closed the hatch behind him, sealing it with the magnetic lock, which loudly stuck to the hatch and began to hum. Now there was no way in or out without his personal identification. He looked back up to the sky to see if the weather would permit him such a trek. It seemed to be about the middle of the day, but the overcast sky made it difficult to tell. His comm automatically pinged with a distress signal from a pod about half a mile from them heading towards the mountains. Tib hoped he would find something. He had to. Tib looked one last time down at the hatch and slid down the side of the pod onto the ground. He stumbled a bit on the upturned dirt and shattered crystal all around the base of the pod, but quickly regained his footing. He took a moment afterwards but began to move on. It didn't take him long to get to the nearest crystal in his path. Now that he was on the ground, Tib found the crystals height made them almost impossible to see over, only catching glimpses of the forest every so often when the crystals hadn't yet reached their full height. Tib looked back at the pod one last time before looking down at his comm. He felt a sense of guilt for betraying his earlier notion of not leaving Sheeb, but he felt it was needed now. Tib, comm on his left wrist and rifle in his right hand slowly walked into the sea of crystals and continued on his search for help. This was it, there was truly no going back now.