The atmosphere in the interior of the Thunderhawk was subdued. The two rows of 12-15 year olds were quailing under the bare gaze of a truly pissed Space Marine. While there had been over a hundred applicants, only these eight had made the qualifier levels and were being brought back to the fleet.
Calnar was trying to maintain his character, which shouldn't be that hard for him, since he didn't have a mouth anymore. Still, he struggled to keep the apprehension out of his eyes as the transport shuddered again. To his finely tuned senses, the Thunderhawk's machine spirit was annoyed at not having had it's daily maintenance for several weeks, and was ready to lash out at it's passengers. Calnar looked at his nearby fellow passengers. The boy across from him was of the younger age slot, approximately 13 Terran years old. He had obviously been from down-Hive from where Calnar had lived, as showed by the ganger symbol on his left cheek, as well as how he sat, watching for any threats and staying away from the people next to him. To Calnar's left, was a seemingly normal teen, while to his right was a nervous Admin toadspawn.
If Calnar had had lips, he would have snarled, but he settled for a burst of static from his vocoder. This seemed to startle the spawn, who quickly resumed cowering. How the wimp had gotten into this situation, only the Emperor knew.
Calnar flinched as a metallic screech echoed through the hold, knowing it was a bolt in the wing shearing. The Marine at the head of the aisle twitched at the sound, but didn't otherwise respond or acknowledge it. Calnar shifted in his feet, feeling uneasy.
Calnar blinked as something dripped onto his face, wondering how he had gotten here. He realized that he was lying on his back, over two seats and something... soft under his feet. Another small impact on his forehead, and he shifted in his spot. He then flinched, again, as something hit his eye. He sat up, and rubbed liquid out of his eye.
Then scrambled back as the interior of the transport came into focus. One body was where his feet had been, A hull section had bent off from the wall and gone through the aspirant's gut.
The rest of the passengers were in various states of... well, they wouldn't be doing much soon. The Space Marine wasn't in sight, although the hole where he had been was a good indication that he had fallen out of the vehicle. Calnar crawled over and around the wreckage, headed towards where the cockpit had once been, be fore he heard ragged breathing. Looking around, his augmetic eye spotted the thermal haze of the breath, fogging as cold air rushed into the interior of the armored tube. Reaching the survivor, after a short time of making sure nothing dangerous was there (old habits die hard), he found the ganger holding the stump of his leg, with enough pressure to have slowed the bleeding. Calnar looked at the pitiful sight as the boy started whimpering, before looking to his left, and carefully pulling a flare out of a survival crate. The noise of the movement alerted the ganger, who looked at Calnar, seeing the flare in his hands, and nodding stoically.
The scream lasted for a good while, before Calnar pulled the flare away.
"We'll have to stay here. I haven't seen anything useful outside, and it looks like darkness is falling." The metallic buzz in Calnar's voice seemed to waken the boy, who looked up at the older boy.
"I saw some sort of weapon crate when we loaded, hopefully it can be of some use. It was near the back, with a red paint job, and the silhouette of some kind of pistol." With the ganger left at a rent to keep a lookout, Calnar dug through the wreckage to find anything of use.
Three days. It took three days for them to be found. On the first, the day after the crash, Calnar found a bolt pistol designed for "normal human's" use, and used it to kill two snake/dog things, before cooking and eating them with the one engine that somewhat worked. The ganger found several pieces of salvage, that Calnar used to make further repairs to the engine and voxcaster on the old bird.
The second day had a full pack of the snake dogs arrive, and Calnar, with his small understanding of marksmanship, managed to down the biggest one on accident, causing the rest to scatter, then fight amongst themselves, while the ganger boy cooked and boiled meat and water, as well as securing his own weapon, a standard Guard issue lasgun, and started picking the creatures off.
By the third day, the engine's machine spirit was waning, and about to give out. Calnar shook his head over it, before offlining it gently. He turned, and took at their shelter, with it's gaps between armor plates and rents in the thinner hull pieces, it had saved their lives several times from large fauna. He cocked his head as he heard the ganger yell in surprise, then heard the hiss-crack of the lasgun. Calnar ran around the Thunderhawk shelter, and nearly fell on his face. Thirteen, about, the things were moving quickly, humanoids were rushing about, spiked armor glinting as they moved towards the Thunderhawk. Two smoking corpses were immediately apparent, signalling that the ganger had used his weapon to lethal effect. Calnar sighted onto one of the rapidly moving figures, and fired.
And missed, so he shot twice more. One of them hit, blowing chunks of armor and meat across a wide swath of grass. At least two of the unknowns leveled their own weapons at the boys, and let loose their own volley of presumably lethal projectiles. Calnar ducked as sinister whizzing noises soared between branches, with at least one shot hitting a rock behind him with the sound of broken glass.