Disclaimer: All characters and locations in this story are the intellectual property of James Cameron. I do not claim to own them, but am glad to play in his universe.
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Colonel Miles Quaritch awoke as he always did: Eyelids snapping open as though spring-loaded, every sense alert to his surroundings. But this waking was different, too. He'd woken under the open sky of Pandora before, but only during a two-week familiarization and survival training with a full platoon of his men. Likewise, he'd awakened in his personal mech a few times, but never with the mech horizontal and the canopy kicked out. He'd also apparently shit himself, which hadn't happened since before he could remember.
It looked to be about the same time of day as when he'd fought that native bitch and the traitor, Sully. She and Sully's avatar were gone, and he doubted she would've left Sully's human body in the trailer if he'd died. The natives were primitive, but not stupid. That meant Quaritch had probably been unconscious about a day. Any longer, and the animals would've gotten more curious than fearful, and he'd be something's snack.
The Colonel reached to check the power supply on his respirator, and was reminded that the bitch might be gone, but her arrows were still here. About a meter of feathered shaft protruded from his chest in two places; one just below his right pec, and one almost in the center of his chest, just below his diaphragm. It had to have missed his spine by less than a finger's breadth. This meant that another half-meter or so of each arrow also pinned him to the seat of his mech.
Grunting against the pain, he reached again, and came up with the readout. According to the gage, his respirator would continue filtering toxic cyanogens from Pandora's atmosphere for about another twenty-nine hours. He saw the remains of a used ampoule on his lap, which explained both his long period of unconsciousness and the fact that he was still alive, in spite of the neurotoxin the Na'vi used on their arrows. The fact that there was an antidote was known only to himself, a few of his officers, and some of the higher-ups in the company. It was far too expensive for general issue.
He powered up the mech, which has long since gone into standby mode, and the fighting machine automatically rolled, pushed against the ground, and stood to its full five-meter height. The Colonel gave an involuntary roar as gravity pulled his body down against the arrows. Tiny rivulets of fresh blood ran down his chest over the crust around his wounds. Pushing against the mech's foot pedals eased the pressure. As he started walking, he gave a sigh, and said to no one in particular, "This is gonna be a long damn day."
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Walking seventy klicks in a mech is nothing. Climbing the mountains had been a real bear though, whatever a "bear" was. Fortunately, controlling the mech's arms didn't require any real strength; the user simply moved his hands and arms, and the mech followed. Feedback was only used in the hands and wrists, to let the user feel when the mech's hands encountered something.
Climbing was simply a matter of holding his fingers like claws, and alternately raising and lowering each arm. Tiring and painful, but the Colonel had been through worse. He could feel his lungs filling, but resisted the urge to cough until it became unbearable.
As he crested the last rise, the Colonel grinned, revealing bloodstained teeth. He's come here on a gamble, and as his usually did, this one paid off. He had arrived at what he thought of as the scientists' forward operations base. One of the two trailers was gone, but what he needed was still here.
Without hesitation, Quaritch grabbed the ejection handle and gave it a hard yank, while simultaneously yelling, "Eject!" Tiny explosive charges severed the control harnesses around his arms and legs, and blew away what was left of the canopy's frame. A small rocket engine ignited under his seat, blasting him out of the mech and thirty meters into the air before tiny counter-rotating fans popped out from the sides of the chair to slow his descent.
His feet touched ground first, and he released his harness and stood unsteadily. "Another win for testicular fortitude," he croaked, his voice barely above a whisper. On ejection, the back of the ejection seat nearly scraped the frame of the mech's cockpit. This had sheared off the arrowheads, and allowed the Colonel to free himself, with two five-centimeter shafts protruding from his back.
With small, lurching steps, the Colonel stumbled to the trailer, palmed the airlock open, and nearly fell inside. After a few seconds, the inner door gave a beep and opened.
The Colonel's legendary luck still held. Here were the medical supplies. He had no medical training, but he's seen the medics patch holes often enough that he knew what to do. The fact that Pandoran microbes ignored humans, and Earthly microbes couldn't survive exposure to Pandora's atmosphere, greatly simplified matters. He cut off his shirt with a scalpel, then simply gave a smooth pull to the arrow in the center of his chest. He extracted it with a hiss, then used his left hand to apply a skinpatch to his back, and another to his chest. The second was trickier, since it went through a lung. He prepared one skinpatch by attaching a short straw with a flapper valve at the end to act as a shunt. He removed the second arrow and applied the prepared skinpatch to his back, and a normal patch to his chest. After a moment he began to feel a trickle of blood flow down his back with each breath, and he was able to breathe deeper.
That done, the Colonel stripped and cleaned himself as best he could, hooked himself to a nutrient IV drip, and lay down in one of the interface coffins. He reached over and keyed in a code sequence, then pulled the coffin lid over himself and relaxed.
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In a fluid-filled tank in a location known only to the Colonel and a few trusted contractors, a Na'vi body twitched and opened its golden eyes. Then it gave a feral, and very human, grin.