Endlessly Stretches the Nameless Sand
by Wuckster
The feeling of numerous slimy insectile legs crawling across her face stirred Captain Langolin back into consciousness. She swatted instinctively at whatever the thing was that was invading her personal space. Her hand connected with something large and wet and she heard a splattering sound as she knocked it away. She sat up and struggled to keep her eyes open as she slowly began to regain her senses. Her head felt like it had been smacked silly with a large metal pole.
She heard a hissing sound off to her left and turned to see a multi-legged creature the size of a large rat charging towards her. It had several arms sporting pincers, three long tails with sharp stingers at the end, and a gaping mouthful of jagged fangs with slime dripping off of them. She wasn't sure if this was the same creature she had forcibly ejected from her face or a different one, but either way it looked angry and seemed determined to inflict some serious harm on her. She reached to the holster on her right leg and found her blaster was still there. She drew it quickly and pulverized the creature into smithereens as it was mere inches away from making contact with her.
Captain Langolin stood slowly to her feet, making sure none of her limbs were broken. She was battered and bruised and had suffered numerous cuts and gashes, but she thankfully appeared to be intact. She dusted herself off and ventured to look around.
A large red sun hovered about halfway up the sky, giving the atmosphere a faint pink hue. A small purple cloud floated near the horizon, but otherwise it was clear as far as the eye could see. She appeared to be in a vast desert filled with green sand dunes rolling off in all directions. There was a sparse amount of vegetation, a spiny prickle-bush sprouting up here and there, but mostly there was just the emerald colored sand everywhere. She thought she could see a dark smoke cloud off in the distance, but it seemed much too far away to account for the acrid stench of burning metal and electrical wires that was wafting in the breeze that blew at her back. Turning around she saw a much larger smoke cloud that appeared to originate from just beyond a large green sand dune.
She hurried to the top and then paused when she saw the flaming wreckage of her ship at the bottom of the dune. Memories came rushing back to her and she suddenly knew how she had found herself in this predicament. There had been a distress signal originating from a rocky planet orbiting an uncharted star. Commander D'xjan had sent her and a small crew to investigate, but it had been an ambush. A Xylerian fighter ship had been laying in wait and got the drop on them as soon as they had come out of light speed. A furious dogfight had ensued, resulting in a violent crash landing on the planet below. Judging from the second smoke cloud in the distance, she was pretty sure they had at least taken the Xylerian bastards down with them. Captain Langolin must have been ejected from the ship at some point during the crash, which explained why she had woken up in the middle of the desert with that alien bug crawling over her. But what had happened to her crew?
She made her way quickly but carefully down the sand dune. The smoke was thicker down here and she had to cover her mouth with her vest as she approached the smoldering wreck. "Travorson?" she called out. "Moretti? Jinghausen? Can anyone hear me?"
She passed a couple of charred lumps of burning flesh that were vaguely human shaped. This didn't seem to bode well for the survival of her crew. The heat from the wreckage was intense and she wasn't going to be able to get much closer to it. Anyone still inside of the ruins of the ship was certainly dead and she doubted if she would be able to salvage any supplies from it even after the fire burned itself out. She could only hope that some of the other crew members had been flung from the ship as she had. She began calling out names again. There had only been ten crew members including herself, and she could confirm two deaths, although she couldn't identify the blackened remains. That still left seven people unaccounted for.
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