\storynamehere\ Ch-2 Part-1 (First Steps)

The whirr of the stock motor started up as the telescopic sensor pod receded back into the ship.

"Distress signal sent?"

"Well…"MORI mumbled as he ran the simplified telemetry equations for a third time. "I can't be sure exactly where we are. The calculations for finding out just where we are in the universe are too much for me to process without exponentially increasing the amount of energy the processor uses. I'm doing simplified calculations for trying to get a general area of the galaxy we are in, but I just can't be 100% sure until I do the more advanced calculations. Anyways, I've sent out a distress frequency ping from the craft to where I believe Homefleet is near"

"And how much energy would it take for you to process these advanced equations"

"With your current caloric intake… I calculate your body could maintain itself with no visible affect to your vital functions for… approximately 2 seconds. Anything over 6 seconds, and the effects could be permanent" Riza's prosthetics, MORI included, ran off of her own glucose; to put it simply, he ran on sugar.

"Wow… starving to death in 6 seconds… how much power do you need?!"

"These calculations are very complex, but it is also due to the fact that your body just doesn't have that much power right now. I would suggest we find something for you to eat sometime soon"

"I'm not hungry" she protested as her stomach hypocritically growled.

"Really?" MORI was just teasing with her now.

"Well…" Riza grumbled something that MORI couldn't make out.

"What was that?"

"There isn't any food"

"Wait, what?" MORI was surprised, living in Riza's head meant usually knowing things that she knew. "What do you mean 'there's no food'?"

"I took it out of the ship and stowed it in my quarters on the Atlark right after you went off to talk to the SHIPNET AI. Unfortunately I was never able to eat anything because I was so tired from my previous shift I fell asleep instantly."

"Well…" MORI sighed as well as a brain implant can sigh, "great. We have no food. No idea where we are…"

A small light flashed on the dashboard.

"@#$%"Riza cursed.

"…and now our ship has no power"

Fortunately the light was only a warning; the ship was still running on reserves. The only problem was the reserves were down to five minutes, and being in a solar-powered craft on the dark side of a solarsynchronous planet meant they had no way of charging it's powercells.

"Manual control", Riza ordered MORI, "I'll glide us down"
MORI rerouted control from the autopilot to the control wheel. The craft lurched as it was gripped by the Jetstream, but started to settle down as it inevitably fell to lower, more benevolent currents.

***

After roughly ten minutes (only five minutes of which the synchship had power) of gut-wrenching negative G force from their rapid descent from the upper atmosphere to normal altitudes, Riza could start making out the shape of cumuli-nimbus cloud formations; they were near the ground. She could feel butter-flies in her stomach from the rapid fall, but considering she was an insectivore, this was nothing new.
"I'm tightening the restraints just in case" MORI warned her. She didn't argue.

Riza's hearts started pounding in her chest in anticipation; she was about to break through the clouds.

She counted in her head.

3…

2…

1…

Fwoosh!! DIRT?!?!

"Coric-" Riza cursed and pulled up. Those weren't clouds, they were a fog layer! She had seen the ground only 50 ft. above it. Though she had pulled up as soon as possible, there was no way she was going to make it over that hill in front of her.

Thud!

Umpf!

The wind was knocked out of her lungs as the craft skidded to a stop on the soft dirt of the hill. All in all, the landing was much less than Riza had originally anticipated. The hill had slowed their decent quite nicely.

"Restraints off."

The metal arms that came out of her chair to hold her lessened their pressure on her body, but didn't retract into the chair as they should have.

"MORI?"

"Not me"

"Connect" Riza placed her hand over the ship's console, and her body went limp as her mind linked with her craft.

"Augh!" Pain seared through her body as she felt her ship's pain surge through her.

"No…"

It was a bird with broken wings. A free spirit who had been bound by the mortal world. She disconnected. A tear fell from her large, bioluminescent eye, and landed on the screen console. She could not stand to see her ship like this. No Katabatan would want to see their synchship in such a state…

She walked to the aft storage locker and took out her pistol. She knew that if she were in such a position, any of her loved ones would do the same for her. She walked up to the front of the craft, and aimed the pistol at the synch-console. A spaceship that would never more feel soft breeze of solar winds on its back, never again listen to the songs of slipspace as it darted freely to its heart's content through the cosmos.

Flash!

She didn't even hear the bang, but she saw the flash. Even through her closed eyes, she could see the smoking gun, and the traitorous red hand that held it.

It was now free. It would forever roam the heavens as it pleased, drift through nebulas and commit-tails that Riza couldn't even imagine, experience the universe through senses that Riza would never even knew existed. It would never again be bound.

Gulp.

Riza swallowed hard. She… she…

How had it come to this?

How…

"Riza" MORI interrupted her thoughts with a very gentle, peaceful stream of consciousness, "We have to go"

Riza turned to exit her craft. She needed to get away from it. The hatch-lock doors stood open; they had automatically disengaged when the ship had crashed. Her eyes scanned over the landscape, and she beheld a strange rock formation near the base of the hill she had landed on; it was a town, perhaps of the species whose craft she had nearly crashed into in the Jetstream. Even though there was no way in Corc'tel she was going to enjoy being surrounded by aliens, especially if those aliens might have been responsible for the Atlark's crash, Riza knew there was no way she was going to last long in a dead ship, with no food or water.

Riza looked down at the dirt below her craft from her vantage point a foot above the ground on the metal platform jutting from the back hatch of her craft. There was dirt all around. Her small, prehensile toes squirmed as she tried to wrestle them from their grip on the metal. It had been a long time since she had been planet-side. An even longer time since she had touched dirt with her own skin.

She closed her eyes. Took a deep breath. And took a step forward…

Now her journey to find who was behind the crash of the Atlark would begin.