Annika had not ridden in an escape pod before, and she found little to recommend the experience. No sooner had they been violently thrust from the dying transport, the impact slamming all of them against the walls of the pod, than the deck bucked upwards under the power of the breaking thrusters. Annika was somewhat fortunate in that her fall was cushioned by Orion's body, though the knights muscled chest was scarcely less yielding than steel might have been. A slender hand grabbed her and hoisted her upwards with surprising strength, the pilots concubine had somehow managed to strap herself in and Annika took her help gladly getting the crash harness around her own shoulders. Logan Christopher, better and anticipating disaster than the rest of them had also managed to, more or less, keep his feet and was strapped in, though he seemed to be praying rather than offering aid. Annika supposed that as a member of the clergy she ought to have applauded that, but as someone in need of help she found her piety somewhat strained. Her instructors had liked to say that the Pancreator helped those who helped themselves, Annika preferred the way the al'Malik guardsmen back on Istkar put it. Praise the Pancreator and pass the ammuntion. 

Alarms began to sound as the sickening sense of falling increased. Ragnar and Orion had managed to get to their feet now and though they looped the crash webbing around them, neither buckled themselves in completely. Annika did pray now, invoking the Pancreator to guide them to a safe landing and asking forgiveness for the use of her other, less holy arts. The crash webbing smashed downward into her shoulders as the final stages of the breaking thrusters fired, and then, with a shattering crash of rending steel, they hit. For a few seconds Annika's mind went blank, shocked out of coherent experience by her brain bouncing of the inside of her skull, then she was lucid again. There was hiss of invading steam and then a gush of water as the outside environment infiltrated the escape pod. Annika pulled free of her crash webbing without difficulty, it having been set for a larger person than her slight form and stepped across to the exit panel, slapping the manual release. There was a dull crump as the explosive charges in the lining of the door, designed to free a warped hatch, went off and the door flew from its hinges, water rushed in, almost but not quite knocking the priestess from her feet. Bright sunlight flooded the compartment, refracted into rainbow brilliance from the billowing steam hissing of the surface of the friction heated pod.

Annika stepped out onto the lip of the hatch and surveyed her surroundings. The pod had come down a hundred meters or so from an idyllic looking shore. Gentle surf lapped at the pod, hissing as it found high points on the hull that had not yet been quenched. Colorful coral spread out between the pod and the beach where strange twin headed trees rustled in the breeze like palms. The pod was only about a quater submerged having landed on the reef, smashing the coral beneath without quite punching through it. Around them were numerous dead fish with twin tails and flat leaf like profiles. Their skin had been blanched a pale pink by the heat of the pods decent. She turned and looked back into the pod, iris flaring to adjust to the interior lit mostly by emergency chemical lights. To her immense relief Orion was up and moving, helping the strange servant to get free of her own tangled restraints. Ragnar frustrated by Logan's lack of progress, grabbed the scraver by the neck and pitched him bodily out of the hatch to splash into the hip deep water. The pod shifted and began to tip backwards towards the deeper water on the far side of the reef.

"Go!" Orion shouted and handed the slave woman up to Annika who grabbed her by the wrist and tossed her into the water with as little ceremony as Ragnar had shown Logan. The Vuldruk ripped a survival pod away from the wall and clambered up through the hatch a heartbeat ahead of Orion. The Priestess the Knight and the Reaver stepped off onto the coral shelf a moment before the pod toppled backwards into the deep water beyond the fringe of the reef, hissing and spitting as it filled with water and began to sink out of sight. Overhead large birds began to circle and caw, attracted by the dead fish.

"Well," Annika said, taking the emergency pod from Ragnar and withdrawing the auto-inflalting raft.

"At least wherever we are has nice beaches..."