[right][sub]Ellara, northern continent, deep inside the Red zone[/sub][/right]

It was dark and her head was pounding. Ugh. How much did she drink last night? Her mouth was dry and one of her arms was twisted under her at a very uncomfortable angle. She tried to roll over, but something heavy was all around her, holding her down. 

Wait. She hasn’t been drinking. No, because after months of doing nothing, they were finally heading out, on some special mission to rescue aliens who crashed in the red zone. The mission. Yes, she remembered now, the ship exploding, searching the nests, the pterroes everywhere… The pterroes! They were flying and she was falling and falling and falling. Yuki tried to get up again, her heart was racing, panic threatening to take over. What happened to her? 

Was she dead? It was weird because she didn’t really feel any sharp pain, certainly not like when she broke her arm or when a Screecher spear went through a dent on her suit right into her shoulder. The suit! Of course, she was still in the suit, but the controls weren’t responding. She carefully wiggled her fingers and toes. Some mild soreness, but other than that, it was good, no broken bones or dislocated joints.

Getting out of the exoskeleton without the servos working and any outside help was tricky even under normal circumstances. Now, when the suit was not just offline, but apparently damaged in several places, without even emergency power, it felt nearly impossible. Yuki didn’t really have any other choice though, so she wiggled and twisted her limbs to reach the emergency cotter pins designed specifically for these situations. Ten minutes later, she was finally able to open the suit enough to slide herself out, looking almost like a snake shedding skin.

It wasn’t dark. Her helmet was buried deep in dirt and mud, which was obscuring her vision before, but now she could see clearly it was around midday, the sun was high in the clear sky with just a couple of white clouds floating around. Perfect weather for a jog in a park. For being stranded in the middle of nowhere… Well, she could have been worse.

After quickly scanning her surroundings for any immediate threats, Yuki knelt beside her beloved suit. The metal cracked in several places, the hydraulic fluid was leaking from torn tubes. A long sigh escaped her lips and her fingers stroked the colorful markings on the shoulder. The thing was done for. She grabbed the knife that was still attached to the suit at waist level. The soldiers rarely ever used it during combat, but it was a useful thing to have around in emergencies. There was a tiny flint and steel in the handle for making fire and a small compass. Plus, it was a big sharp knife.

A strange noise made her turn around swiftly. What was it? She couldn’t see anything, but that hardly meant nothing was there. On Ellara, every inch of ground was home to some lethal danger. It was noon, the beams of sunlight coming through thick vegetation above her created a lot of creepy shadows. She was in so much trouble. The panic threatened to take over and Yuki let it. For ten seconds.

It was noon. The fight happened sometime around morning, which meant…

[i]One…[/i]

… the transports were long gone. Nobody searched for her. Why would they? Her heart raced so fast she could hear it. Anyone in a five miles radius could hear it.

[i]Two…[/i]

Has anyone ever survived being carried away by a pterro? How did she even survive?

[i]Three...[/i]

She looked up. Looks like the beast dropped her on the biggest tree around and she fell right through its crown...

[i]Four…[/i]

… breaking a ton of thick branches on her way. Had she not been wearing her suit, she would have been impaled…

[i]Five…[/i]

...at least a dozen times. She was alone. Sniffling, she wiped the tears from her eyes, smearing mud over her face.

[i]Six…[/i]

Alone in a swamp swarming with crocoes, giant mosquitoes and devil knows what else. 

[i]Seven…[/i]

The alien ship crash site was 212 miles from Omega station and they have traveled at least a dozen more to reach the pterro nests. That is like a ten days walk.

[i]Eight…[/i]

Unless something kills her. All alone, surrounded by bloodthirsty fauna and flora, without any equipment, weapons, or supplies.

[i]Nine…[/i]

And the best of all, deep within the Screecher territory.

[i]Ten…[/i]

Deep breath in. Deep breath out. 

“Alright, panic time over. What do we have?” 

Not much, one would say. One totally busted exosuit, broken beyond any point of use. The datapad on the suit forearm was detachable but also shattered to pieces. So far nothing. A knife, compass, and means to make fire. That is going to be useful when the temperatures drop after sundown. 

“If I’m still alive by then you mean?”

If she was still going to be alive by then. She looked down on her body to acknowledge another problem. The bruises that were just coming up were fine, she was used to having them. The issue was she was only wearing a thin T-shirt and shorts. There was no need to wear too much clothing while in the exosuit. For one, it could get very hot in it, but more importantly, the fabric messed with the motion sensors, making it harder to operate precisely. Some people even went so far as to go in completely naked. Yuki was not one of them and she was really glad for it now.

“Boy was it really annoying seeing Douglas’ dong every time we geared up.”

Her look traveled further down to reveal the biggest problem of all. Her bare feet. Her toes twirled in the cold mud when she imagined walking over 220 miles without shoes.

“Not a pretty image, huh?” She sighed. “Alright, what was the first step? Set your priorities?” She vaguely remembered that from the survival training. “Damn, I should have paid bigger attention. So, priorities.”

Nobody was coming for her, nobody knew she was alive, so there was no point in staying in position and trying to make some signals. She was deep inside a no-fly zone, there was no chance someone would accidentally see some makeshift HELP ME sign made out of stones. The Hyperion and other ships in orbit probably had eyes on the general area, but she could never create something big enough to get their attention. Which meant she had to get back to the Omega outpost on her own.

“Priority one: staying alive!”

That was a big broad thing to focus on, but as a general motivation, it worked. 

“Priority two: not getting eaten or killed.”

That was better. The immediate area around her seemed safe for now, but that could change. Crocoes could travel great distances when sensing prey. She was safe from pterroes, but there were other dangers, like gigantic life-sucking mosquitoes and other things, a lot of them probably not even discovered yet. Sighing, she took the wet mud into both hands and started to rub it all over her skin. It stunk horribly, but it should protect her from the mosquitoes. Croco feces would be even better, but that was a bit dangerous to obtain.

Next, she found a suitable stick and sharpened it with her knife to make an improvised spear. It was always safer to put some distance between the person and the attacker. Chasing a mosquito away with a knife just did not seem like the right thing to do.

“Priority three: water.” Water was always important. Fortunately, it wasn’t too hot, and the sun up north did not have the scorching power it had around the equator. But still, the body needed water and she needed the body to carry her back home. The suit was equipped with an integrated hydration bag with a decent water supply, but it got punctured in several places and was empty now. Yuki carefully extracted it, desperately trying not to tear it even more. There were big holes in the middle and top, but the bottom section looked fine. It was not going to hold much, maybe a liter, two tops, but it was better than nothing. 

Yuki made a hole in the swampy ground which soon started to fill with water. Dirty, stinking, grey water. Taking her shirt off (good thing she was still wearing a sports bra underneath it), she used it to gather as much muddy liquid as she could. Then she filled the remains of her hydration bag with it, carefully filtering it through two layers of fabric. It was certainly not perfect and she still needed to boil it to make it drinkable, but she could do that later. She used the damaged part to create a strap to hang the water container over her shoulder, carefully tying it so not a drop of precious liquid would be lost.

Goosebumps popped up on her naked arms. The wet shirt would do her no good now, so she decided to get moving to get warm. She needed to find a safe place to stay the night, which the swamp certainly wasn’t. Ideally, she would head to the wrecked ship - even though the remains were destroyed by the explosion, it was at least a good orientation point. Plus perhaps there were some supplies or gear to scavenge.

“Or there is a functional communication device. How nice would it be not having to walk all that way back home? Just say ‘Hey guys, you kinda left me behind, so come and pick me up.’, wait for a Limo, and then enjoy the huge rounds of drinks everybody owes me for FUCKING ABANDONING ME HERE!” She knew her anger was deeply unjustified. Shouting out loud really helped against the frustration building inside her, but overall it was a very bad idea. As was confirmed seconds later when she heard sounds of grunting and snorting and very loud sniffing from a bush just a few dozen meters from her.

“Shit, shit, shit,” she hissed quietly, looking around for some shelter. Whatever the thing was, it sounded large. And this was Ellara, so it most likely wouldn’t hesitate to eat her. Or at least kill her and bathe in her blood or something. Because the sounds were getting closer fast, she quickly climbed the nearest tree. It was not really a great idea, but she couldn’t come up with anything better.

The grunting creature made its way under her and stopped. It looked… Well, Yuki wasn’t really sure what it was, but it looked like a very hairy pig with huge tusks and three pairs of limbs. Two back pairs functioned as legs and the creature could walk upright, leaving the third pair free to function as clawed arms. All and all, it looked like a fucking centaur with a boar head. “A pigtaur,” Yuki chuckled quietly. The name really made no sense, but neither did the creature. The pigtaur must have heard her because it turned its ugly snout in her general direction and sniffed rabidly. Luckily, it wasn’t arboreal and it seemed like it lost interest quickly. 

It leaned towards the ground, using all its limbs to dig through the mud violently, its head coming down every time he discovered something worth eating. From what Yuki could see, it wasn’t picky - it would eat worms, roots, various insects, weird reptiles, and other no doubt yummy things it found in the stinking mud. The creature looked very content and it didn’t seem like it was about to leave any time soon. Which was not a good thing, because Yuki just noticed a pair of big green eyes looking at her from above.

A bigass snake was wrapped around a branch above Yuki, its skin bright green with red stripes, its triangular head watching her, slightly rocking from side to side. Sharp split tongue kept coming out to taste the air around him, detecting particles of her sweat despite the mud she smeared all over herself. “Fucking hell,” Yuki gritted her teeth. “Shoo!” she hissed at the snake and it hissed back at her, aggravated. “Sorry, sweetie.” Her voice was just a quiet whisper. “I didn’t mean to anger you. Just it would be really really awesome if you didn’t try to eat me. Or at least waited till that thing down there was gone.” She glanced at the pigtaur happily digging through mud and, to her immeasurable surprise, the snake followed her look, hissing even more. “Oh, you don’t like him either? So how about you go and eat him, hm?” The snake was big, but not really big enough to swallow the beast whole, so Yuki was astonished to see that it actually moved towards the pigtaur.

The long, brightly colored body slowly descended to a branch on her level and then below, hanging just above the creature. Triangular head turned to Yuki once more and she could swear the thing winked at her. But perhaps she was just going insane from all the stress. The snake wiggled a bit to find the right position and then [i]leaped[/i] right onto the pigtaur’s torso, wrapping itself tightly around its neck and chest. Before the creature could react, the snake’s head darted forward and back a couple of times, sharp teeth sinking deep into the flesh. In addition, the snake also used its tail. Yuki hadn’t noticed before that it was armed with several long spikes covered by slimy fluid coming from their tops.

The pigtaur had no chance to do anything. One of its hands grabbed the snake, but its grip was weak and soon it stumbled to the ground. Yuki originally didn’t have any intention to watch the creatures fight, but now she couldn’t look away, thanking every known deity in the entire universe that the snake didn’t bother trying to attack [i]her[/i]. How the hell would she fight something like that? Now she was really curious about what would happen next. Even with its jaws unhinged, there was absolutely no way the snake could swallow the creature whole. Maybe it will just wait till the carcass decomposes? But the snake wasn’t of the patient kind. Still firmly wrapped around the pigtaur, its head lunged forward, jaws opened to reveal more teeth than one would expect a snake to have. All the teeth slid into the beast’s soft stomach and then the head yanked back, tearing a huge piece of meat off. 

Yuki stared as the snake leisurely swallowed the bite and positioned itself to grab another one. She didn’t know much about snakes, but she knew they were not supposed to do [i]that[/i]. “This place is a fucking nightmare.” She climbed down the tree and snuck around the creatures, trying to get as far away from them as quickly as she could. 

So, there she was, swiftly marching through a swampy forest, her bare feet covered by the everpresent mud and dirt, wearing nothing but tiny shorts and a sports bra. What a sight to behold!

As she was leaving the forest, the ground became drier, which meant less mud, but also more stones, rocks, twigs, and various other things that were not very comfortable to step on. Yuki had to improvise, cutting several long and sturdy grass blades and trying to weave them into simple sandals. A portion of her still wet shirt had to be sacrificed to create strings to tie the things together and it still wasn’t perfect. “Better than nothing. Perhaps I should have asked the snake to give me a piece of the pigtaur. Its skin would work great.”

She walked for several hours, marching towards the black pillar of smoke on the horizon and trying to ignore rising hunger, thirst, and most importantly cold. The wet shirt wouldn’t dry in the damp air and putting it on would make her even colder, so she had to keep moving almost naked, hoping she would find something useful in the crashed ship, or at least would be able to safely make fire. She crossed the flat, rocky terrain only to end up in another swampy forest. Why did they even want to conquer this land? It was such a shithole.

The smell of burning plastic tickled her nostrils, but it meant she was getting closer to the wreck. “Besides, nothing says ‘civilization’ better than a cloud of toxic smoke.” She was extra careful, knowing that the first scouts and Phantom pilots reported several crocoes in the area, feasting on bodies from the crashed ship. Plus the dreaded mosquitoes. Yuki hoped that the ship explosion either killed the local fauna or at least scared it away and so far it seemed she was right.

The ship wasn’t in a good shape before the explosion, hell it wasn’t in a good shape even before the crash, but now it looked like a blackened pile of metal, ripped from the inside by an immense force. The blast seemed to have originated from the rear part of the vessel, maybe from a cargo hold? Yuki had no idea how the ship was designed.

She followed the huge furrow the vessel dug in the ground during the emergency landing, carefully examining everything she came across. At first, she didn’t discover anything useful, it was mostly just large pieces of plating, girders, and other unrecognizable metallic parts. But as she was nearing the wreck itself, there were more interesting things to find. First, she saw an arm - a regular human arm, the shoulder end was burnt and charred, the hand was briefly chewed on. Not very useful.

The blast clenched the giant’s body between two girders. The mosquitoes must have fed on him before he died, all the fluids had been sucked out of the body, making it look like an ancient mummy. “What the fuck are you people?” It was debatable whether they were even people. Yuki remembered that there were regular-sized humans in the pterro nest as well as these huge ones. Maybe they were some weird humanoid aliens? Clones gone wrong? Terrifying miscreations from hell? Who knew? Certainly not her. 

Yuki was tiny even for a girl, with her 5’3 the body truly looked like a giant to her. But the giant was wearing a gigantic shirt and the sun was going to set soon. The temperature was already dropping and Yuki wasn’t far from starting to chatter her teeth. Getting the body out from its position was difficult, but she was determined and ended up using a long piece of metal as a wrecking bar. Had the guy been alive, it would have killed him. But since he was already dead, she didn’t have to be extra careful. The shirt was from some primitive scratchy material, but it was thick and sturdy and big enough to cover her whole body.

She avoided the section of the hull that was still burning and headed to the front which was fortunately upwind, otherwise the thick black smoke would make it impossible to access. The corridors were already mangled by the crash and the blast didn’t help it. As the wall of fire from the explosion ran through them, it burned or melted everything inside. She could hide there for the night, but her hopes of finding anything useful, let alone some working ship systems, slowly disappeared into thin air.

One small door remained closed even after the crash, protecting whatever was behind them from the fire. Yuki was curious and even though it took a lot of her strength to push it open, she was able to sneak inside. “YES, finally some good news!” The place probably used to be a locker room for the crew. All the closets, lockers, and various boxes laid broken in a big pile in one corner, but some of them still had their original contents. Yuki cheered when she found a proper water canteen filled with clean water, some horribly smelling dirty socks, and a pair of pants that were only torn in two places. 

Several broken flashlights could be reassembled into one functional, which made the exploration way easier. And there, at the very bottom of the pile… “I can’t fucking believe it.” Yuki started crying when she found a box with a brand new pair of shoes that were just a tiny bit large for her. Two or three pairs of socks were going to fix that easily. It was a different design than the Undefeated used, but proper military boots are still proper military boots, no matter what planet you go to.

She made camp in a large container that had fallen not far from the ship. Half of the big doors remained in place, providing her with a safe place to sleep. A small fire was burning in front of it, wet shirt drying on an improvised clothesline, a skinny lizard on a stick slowly being grilled just above the flickering flames. Yuki had already boiled the water - it didn’t help with the muddy smell, but at least she shouldn’t get sick from it now. She still needed to get more of it, her new canteen combined with the torn hydration bag wouldn’t even hold an amount she should drink in a day, but for now, she was satisfied.

A notebook and a couple of pencils were other priceless treasures she found deep within the ship's wreck. Such items would probably be useless to most of the Undefeated, but Yuki had a half-secret hobby - drawing. Art was generally not considered very ‘cool’ in their society since it provided no real value. Basically, it was just a waste of time, fine when you were a child, but inappropriate for an adult. It was not forbidden or punished though, and her squadmates were more than happy when she created funny cartoon portraits to put on their suits. “How the hell is slaughtering dozens of aliens more appropriate fun than drawing a few lines with a pencil?” Lots of things were strange, but that’s just the way it worked and Yuki was not the one to step out against it. She drew in secrecy, in her spare time between the missions and endless training. Her posting on the Omega outpost after the northern front was halted was ideal - no fighting, just guard duties, training, occasional patrols. Yuki wasn’t against war and killing, but she did not seek it intentionally.

The first few pages of the notebook were filled with unknown letters and weird symbols - she left them in, carefully flipping the pages. If she ever gets back home, perhaps someone will be interested in what those people considered so important they wrote it down. If it was under different circumstances, it would be a lovely evening. Campfire crackling and sputtering, roasted lizard sizzling, the pencil tip quietly scratching on the paper. The darkness here however hid many dangers. The crocoes were not active during the night, but Yuki had no idea about the mosquitoes. Plus there could be other previously unknown monsters like the pigtaur. Yuki glanced on a page - a triangular head with large hypnotic eyes stared back at her, split tongue sticking out of the mouth. The snake looked a bit too realistic to her liking so she turned to a new page and started to draw the poor mummified giant whose shirt she stole.

The morning came almost too soon. Yuki thought she would be too worried to fall asleep, but the exhaustion won and she fell into a deep slumber. Not even a croco walking around would wake her up. Maybe if it started chewing on her leg. But no creatures appeared during the night or morning, probably due to the smelly smoke that was still coming from the ship. “How long could that keep burning?” Yuki knew that back on Earth people burned garbage like that and it was part of the reason it was a dead rock now. The Undefeated weren’t super hard on environmentalism, but they didn’t want to repeat the mistake of their forefathers. “Hmm, if it means turning this swamp into a dead ground, no loss for us,” she gritted her teeth as her brand new shoes acquired a muddy coating.

She collected her primitive weapons, stuffed her humble supplies into an improvised backpack, dressed up, and checked her direction. The Omega outpost, the closest civilization to her position, was southeast off here. 212 long miles. “What do they say, the first 150 miles is the hardest?” Fortunately, the swamp continued further north and southeast quickly turned into dry grassy land. Yuki picked a sharp peak in a mountain range on the horizon as an orientation point, sighed, and started walking.