'Now there's no holding back,
I'm making to attack.
My blood is singing with your voice,
I want to pour it out...'
–Howl, Florence and the Machine
"...kzzz...come in, Comm...kzzz...come in...Comman...der...come in...kzzzzzz..."
He blinks, wondering who the hell turned off the damn lights.
"Commander...kzzz...Commander..."
He can tell he's someplace small, somewhere enclosed, and he can feel the dig of a G.L.E.E. regulation harness across his shoulders. He's lightheaded, the burn of blood fresh in his face, and then it's like the entire world shifts as he realises he's upside-down.
"Commander Up?"
"Uh, yeah?" He calls out. "That's me."
"Commander! It's...kzzz...Specs! What is...kzzz...location?"
"Upside-down, someplace small. Oh, and it's dark."
He suddenly gets some feeling back into his hands and reaches out to touch the warm sheet metal of the place he's trapped in. He feels down towards his feet, which are strapped in by some kind of cuffs, and then up above his head to find a lever.
"Any...kzzz...where you are...kzzz...planet?"
He pulls the lever and then he's blinded by bright sunlight as a hatch opens right in front of his face. He blinks.
"Uh, Specs?" He swallows. "The planet? Definitely not Earth."
Three moons are shining in the bright purple sky and the sun is so close he can nearly feel the heat of it with his moustache–
He has no moustache.
"NOOO!"
"Commander? Commander!"
"My moustache! It's gone, Specs! It's gone."
He looks down into the pod he's in and sees nothing apart from the voice pad the transmission's coming through and the lever that opened the hatch.
He'll never be respected, never command properly again, if he's lost his moustache. Taz will never forgive him.
Taz.
"Oh, holy dead God, Specs! Is Taz there with ya?" He hurts his head he's trying to remember so much so quickly. "We...we were on a mission, for General McGrath. He wanted us to rendezvous with some Rangers on Hogir Nine."
"Affirmative, Command...kzzz...you two were sent out on a shuttle to Hogir Nine...kzzz...sent us an emergency recording...kzzz...shuttle was going down...kzzz...had to implement emergency procedures...kzzz...two pods launched before...kzzz...destroyed."
He remembers.
He remembers sitting at the control panel of the shuttle, listening to Taz in the kitchen in the compartment along getting their G.L.E.E. reg. dinners heat-blasted. He remembers seeing a blinking blue light on the scanner that meant another Galactic ship was in the vicinity and closing. He remembers laser-fire, Taz striding in with her zapper at her hip and growling about some stoopid cabrón wanting to start some shit with two war heroes, and then sending out the transmission for all of their unit to receive. He remembers pushing Taz down the corridor as the fires started, telling her to just get in the damn pod already an' stop fussin' as he took the one opposite. He remembers her smirk, cuffing herself into the harness of the emergency craft as he did the same, and then the hatches shutting. He remembers the feeling of space, his breath loud in his ears, and then hard ground. Then nothing.
His heart thuds out a wild rhythm.
"Specs? Is Taz there with you?" Up asks again.
"Negative," comes the dreaded answer, and he manages to bite back the noise that wants to escape him in an unmanly whine.
Taz could be dead. Her pod might not have launched at all. She could have been injured on impact. Her zapper might've accidentally pew'd during landing and killed her.
"Oh, dead God..."
He looks up at the moons and the purple sky, which is steadily getting darker. He can obviously breathe the atmosphere, but he doesn't have any supplies and he doesn't know where Taz landed, if she did at all.
He uncuffs his ankles.
It doesn't matter if he doesn't know a goddamn thing, because if there's even the slightest chance that she's out there then he'll go to the ends of this strange new earth to find her.
"You spoken to her, Specs?"
He sounds better now, surer, more determined.
"Negative, Comm...kzzz...beacon's off-line."
He braces himself against the hatch as he unbuckles his harness and slips down in the pod. He crawls out awkwardly, before tearing the voice pad out of the pod, the rest of the emergency transmitting equipment coming with it. It's battery reads 70:53:29.
The ground beneath his black combat boots is white, almost sandy, and it sticks like mud but leaves no prints behind. It's useful in the tactical sense, but bad when it comes to finding Taz. If he needs to track her, he's not going to be able to.
Up glances around. To his right, nothing but a stretch of white mud, but to his left are tall dark rocks, black against the sand and sky. He makes for the towering rocks, hoping to climb them and get a better view.
The stones are pockmarked, worn down by more than water, and he easily climbs them. Up trails his way along them, until he reaches the highest peak. The transmitter reads 70:00:35 when he's at his highest, and the static that's been crackling through is dimmed to practically nothing.
"Specs?" He pants.
"Yes, sir?" It comes through loud and clear, no interruptions.
"I've found a good signal." He glances around. "No sign of Taz, though."
Way past the rocky outcroppings he can see some kind of tree-line, but everywhere else is just white mud-sand. And then he spots it, a black crater just on the outskirts of the weird yellowy forest.
"TAZ?"
There's no answer as he slips and skids his way down the rocks towards the crash-site. Black sand sticks to his boots, leaving his imprints in white, and he can't see any other footprints around the twisted hunk of smouldering metal that once contained Taz. Even her zapper's in bits, and he knows there's nothing to salvage.
"Comm...kzzz..." The static's back in full-force.
He swallows. "Yeah?"
"We've...kzzz...your pod's beacon...kzzz...somewhere in Sector Eight...kzzz...rescue mission...kzzz...been launched."
"Gotcha."
Up reluctantly peers inside the broken pod.
Don't let me see, Taz. Dear dead God, don't let her be in there.
She isn't. There's nothing but sparking wires and burnt metal, the cuffs of the harness melted to the side of the pod.
"Okay. No Taz is a good thing."
He tells himself this a couple of times, though he has no idea how she can still be alive. But she is, because if he hasn't found her body then that means there's still hope.
"Specs? Come in, soldier."
"Here, sir."
"I've found her pod. I'm gonna check out the forest. How long 'til the rescue team arrives?"
"Uhh...kzzz...sir."
"How long?"
"Days, sir...kzzz...four days, approximately."
"Space balls," Up mutters.
"Yes, sir...kzzz...whole loada space balls."
"Get off the line, Krayonder."
"Sorry."
He scratches where the scar across his eye splits his eyebrow.
So he's just gotta find Taz, and then survive four days, approximately, on an alien world. Water first, shelter second, food third, and looking for Taz through all of it. He can do it.
He eyes the tall and twisted yellow trees. "Okay, Specs. I'm goin' in. I'll let ya know when I find her."
There is no 'if'.
Not that she'll admit it out loud and only under extreme duress, maybe in the form of a screwdriver forcing its way through her skull, but she's lost.
Her bare feet are sore, the cool strange mud only helping a little, and her shoulders are cramping from some kind of injury she got out of the crash. Her spine feels crooked, but she's a tough son of a bitch and she spits at the thought of resting.
She's been looking for Up for hours after she managed to pull the emergency release in her pod and kick herself out before it exploded into a thousand charred pieces. The sandy mud had been more forgiving than she'd thought it might've when she hit it back-first, and she'd managed to get away from the wreck without leaving any tracks behind.
But her boots had both ripped clean in two tearing her way out of the sheet metal of the pod, and she'd had to throw them away in the cracks of the rocks she'd climbed to get a better layout of the land. She hadn't been able to see Up's pod, and considering the friendly (or something a bit more sinister) fire rained down on them back in space, she'd thought open ground was out of the question and went straight for the cover of the yellow forest.
Now she's tracking through it, trying to sense where Up is or if there are any inhabitants on this strange new world. She knows if he's looking for her and he's nearby, that he'll know she's going for somewhere sheltered to regroup. She just hopes he is nearby, that he survived his pod crash at all.
"He's a tough sonofabitch." She tells herself. "He can take care of himself."
The roots of the trees are dug deep into the mud and every now and then she trips over one, cursing it in Spanish before carrying on deeper into the woods.
The one thing she does have in her favour is her switchblade, which is resting comfortably in her pocket and waiting for its first task. She wonders if the trees have water inside them like cacti, because their bark looks more like skin and when she brushes against them they feel cool instead of rough.
She tests her theory, palming her knife as she gouges deep into the bark of the closest tree, and waits. Nothing happens. But when she presses the blade in again with the heel of her hand pints of sweet-smelling water spill out.
She licks at a little drop on the side of her hand, testing its taste, and decides that it's as safe as can possibly be.
On closer inspection, she'd guess that the trees suck the water out of the mud around them, because the sand that covers their roots is dry as a bone. It's a useful thing to know in this place, and she already feels better about her back and bare feet as she sets off again after a gulp from the tree.
She walks for another ten minutes before she sees something promising.
Half-hidden behind a few wide yellow water trees is a cave. It's not like the black stone from earlier that stood out like a sore thumb in the bright surroundings, but sand-coloured, more white than anything. The only reason she even noticed it is because of the tree on top, the tallest she's seen yet, protecting the cave like a rabbit hole with its twisting roots and branches covering the stone and sucking up the water from the sandy rock.
She breaks for the cover just as the sun dies and clouds roll in, bringing more water and something entirely different.
At first, Taz thinks it's the ship come to finish her and Up off, but the repeating noise is more of a boom than a pew, and when she glances out from between the twisting yellow roots she sees hailstones the size of basketballs thundering from the sky.
Her gut twists in worry for Up, but there's not much she can do under the icy fire without getting herself killed.
She glances back into the cave, the dim moonlight breaking through the clouds letting her see that the rock shelter she's in ends after two or three metres. It's small, but she can stand up in it, lie down in it, and she's positive that both her and Up can fit when he gets to her.
There is no 'if'.
The first thing he sees is the cloud covering the sky, and the second is an ice-ball hurtling straight towards his head. Up ducks behind the closest tree to avoid it, and it whizzes by so close he can practically feel the hunk of frozen water's chill on his face.
It bounces off of the tree behind him, like a rock from a slingshot, and comes at him again just as fast. The ice-balls keep on coming, and soon he's sprinting through the mud trying to avoid the ricocheting balls of death like he's trapped under the glass of an old-fashioned pinball machine, like the one his daddy used to have in the back room.
He trips, sprawls into the mud and slides a few feet before picking himself back up again, slipping and sliding as he gets his footing back, avoiding the giant hailstones as they bounce back and forth around him.
Up's tired, getting weaker by the second, and it's only the thought of Taz, injured, needing his help, that keeps him going through the sand and mud and onwards.
He's making his way through the dark forest, his way barely lit by the three moons' light breaking through the cloud cover, when he hears it. It's a whizzing noise that has his body tensing and the hairs on his neck rising, before the huge ice-ball of death hits him square in the back of the head.
Everything goes black as he falls, the momentum of the hit driving him through the mud and towards somewhere he can't quite tell. The last thing he knows is warmth.
Taz can't believe their luck.
She's staring down at the muddy Up like she's never seen him before, because how many people can say that their hopes have been delivered right to their makeshift cave doorstep?
It's got to be pure luck that drove him across the dry sand and through the vines towards her. Pure luck, only because God died so long ago and his future plans must have petered out by now.
Bubbles appear through the mud on his face, and she swoops into action, scraping off the mud blocking his nose and mouth. She carefully clears his eyes once she knows he's breathing.
"Up?" She shakes him by the shoulders. "Up? Can joo hear me?"
He can't, she realises, once she's screamed it at him right into his ear. He can't stand loud noises. He's out cold.
She doesn't want the mud to dry on his skin, but she doesn't want to go outside where the hailstones are still falling to wash him off in the little bit of rain that's also beginning to come down. So, instead, she pulls her tank over her head, taking care to remember her injured shoulders, and reaches up to slit a few roots from the tree above with her switchblade, catching the downpour in her shirt.
She wrings it out over his face, washing away the sand and mud, and then wipes down the rest of him, apart from where the mud has camouflaged his dark uniform. It'll probably turn out to be an asset.
Once he's clean, checked for obvious injuries, and lying comfortably on his side at the end of the cave, she washes her feet and then rinses her clothes out.
When Up comes to, the first thing he senses is some sort of sweet smell that's all over him and everywhere. Then he blinks, half-opening his eyes in a blurry haze to see a silhouette somewhere in front of him.
He's about to speak when his vision sharpens into focus and he sees her – Taz. He's so relieved he nearly completely misses the most important thing about her at that moment. Nearly.
He can only mouth his surprise.
She's topless, completely, and she's turned so he can see everything as she parts some vines at the mouth of the cave they seem to be in. She's dripping wet, glistening, and Up glances down to see a single drop of water hanging from the very tip of one of her perky nipples.
His mouth goes dry and his pants tighten as all his blood rushes south.
He's seen Taz in various states of nakedness before, but they've all been times when she's had an injury in the heat of battle or they were cleaning up after some messy fight and were just too damn tired to care about what the other thought as they stripped. But now, dripping wet, and after Bug World, where he'd realised just how much he likes Taz?
Well, it's a completely different situation, and his mouth wants to travel up that smooth stretch of skin along her spine. He wants her.
"Ah, good. Joo're awake."
The sound of her voice knocks him out of his spiralling thoughts. "Huh?"
He can see her smirk as she tugs on a wet vest that does nothing to hide her breasts or the fact that her nipples are still very, very hard.
Oh, dead God, he wants her.
"How're joo feeling?" Taz asks, crouching in front of him.
He realises he has a pounding headache, but he can't find the words to tell her. Instead, he makes sure she doesn't catch his eyes on her tits, or on her ass as she turns around to look outside of the cave again.
"I'm peachy," he grits out. "Just peachy."