Disclaimer: I do not own Subnautica. Unknown Worlds does.

Thanks to A Mage's Apprentice for editing!

NOTICE: I keep the status of the next chapter regularly updated on my profile.

Chapter published 6/29/17.

Varien

Okay, first things first. He needed to take stock of what he had.

Varien slid back into his lifepod and sealed the hatch. It was much cooler inside, but still balmy and warm, dark and smokey and filled with the sound of sparks and error beeping. Actually, no. Closing the hatch was a bad idea. He climbed back up the ladder and propped it open, letting his lifepod ventilate.

He went over to the storage container at one end and looked inside. There... wasn't much. A dive suit that would help negate decompression sickness - but not entirely - two flares, two bottles of water, and two solid brown nutrient blocks. Varien put the fire extinguisher inside, put the dive suit on over his clothes, and drank one of the bottles of water. Was he supposed to ration? He didn't think so. He needed the water eventually, what did it matter if he drank it now or later? Or did he lose more water while more hydrated?

Wait, was that an actual thing? He didn't know. "PDA, does the human body lose water faster while hydrated or dehydrated?" he asked.

For a moment there was static, then... "Human biological data corrupted. Apologies for that. Situational analysis: T-plus three hours since planetfall. Lifepod hull: secure. Communications offline." Oh great, so he'd been sitting unconscious in a burning lifepod for three hours! He didn't want to imagine what sort of brain damage he'd gotten if he'd been out for so long.

"Damn it!" he shouted. "Is there any environmental data at least?"

"Uncharted ocean planet," it supplied helpfully. "Nitrogen oxygen atmosphere. Water contamination levels: high. Recommend against drinking unfiltered water."

Something in that struck him, and he stumbled backward until he was sitting on a bench. "Atmosphere," he muttered. "I didn't check the atmosphere before I went up. I could've died just like that," he realized. No, he couldn't afford to be careless like that again. He had to be more cautious. He had to know what to look for before it killed him.

But he had no idea what to look for. Then he glanced into the corner of his sight where the implants in his brain displayed some crucial elements of survival. Food, water, oxygen, and his health. Alright. "So get food and water, don't drown, and don't get yourself killed. I can handle that," he breathed.

There was a closed medical cabinet, and he couldn't open it. Probably busted. The panel that had brained him still rested in the corner, and a section of the wall was broken off, exposing sparking wires. Apparently the lifepod's life support systems were offline, which was probably terrible even if he felt mostly fine. The communications relay was, just as his PDA said, busted, its red LED light dark.

The fabricator! Was that at least working? Varien stumbled over to it and pressed the 'On' button... and the fabricator opened up, lowering its table and pointing its laser constructors at it. Inside it was a touchscreen, listing the various materials it could make. "Oh thank you, thank you," he muttered, sifting through the fabricator. He needed a good idea of what he could and could not make, so he could decide where to go from there. It was a little hard to focus with the way his lifepod bobbed up and down in the water, but he persevered.

Eventually, Varien settled on an Oxygen Tank and mask, so that he could spend more time underwater. Flippers sounded nice, but under silicone rubber the fabricator just listed 'high source of oil required'. First things first, he needed more air than just the forty-odd seconds he could hold in his lungs.

Varien stepped to the side and opened the lower hatch. Staring straight down he saw crystal blue water, and some spots of color. Hopefully nothing would kill him the instant he set foot in the water. Varien took a deep breath, pressed his nose shut with one hand, and plunged into the ocean.

Water instantly rushed into his ears and pressed at his eyes, so keeping them open was a struggle. But he did open them, and...

Wow, he thought.

It was gorgeous. Sandy rocks stretched all around him, covered in shifting rays of sunlight. Multicolored flora clung to the rocks, swaying in the currents. Veined blue fans, clusters of purple mushrooms, and so many more. Alien fish chattered and swam around him like nothing he could have ever imagined. A small blue thing with giant yellow eyes on either side, releasing carefree childlike laughter. Transparent, membranous fish that slowly rippled through the water. Blue, spotted rays with orange ears drifted among them. The rays were deceptively large, about as long as he was tall.

Then his lungs started to tighten. Varien swam out from underneath his pod and broke the surface, gasping for breath. The choppy waves threatened to send him back under, but with air in his lungs, Varien was buoyant enough to stay above them.

Alright, he thought. Alright, back in.

With one last deep breath, Varien dove back underwater and scanned the seabed for anything useful. In moments, he spotted it. A cluster of white-blue crystals about the size of his fist, sticking up from the ocean floor. He dove down towards it, feet kicking at the water, and grabbed it in both hands. A solid chunk of quartz. Would it be enough to make glass? He didn't know. His fabricator had specified a certain amount of grams, but - air!

With the crystal in his hands, Varien swam up to the surface for another breath. He made a stop in his lifepod to dump the quartz, then headed back in.

Already, his muscles were burning from opposing not just the water, but also the currents. This was going to be miserable.

In the end, it took two chunks of quartz to be able to make the piece of glass an oxygen tank needed. Getting the titanium needed proved to be much, much harder.

There was metal wreckage in the area. Plenty of it, and that was no surprise given how relatively close the Aurora was. But the metal was heavy, and even the closest, smallest piece of scrap he could find took what felt like hour of struggling underwater to pull aboard. But finally, finally, Varien got it. With himself and the piece of wreckage back in his escape pod - his muscles quivering from their abuse and his stomach growling - he had his fabricator start breaking the salvage down for usable titanium. While that was ongoing, Varien sat and pulled up his PDA, scrolling through its logs.

There was only one data entry at present. A ReadMe congratulating him on his survival, assuring him that the hard part was over. Somehow, he doubted that. He wasn't sure about how useful the vital sign monitors being broadcast directly into his brain's vision center would be, though. He could feel when he was thirsty, he could feel when he was hungry, or hurt, or needed air. Though... he could expand them for more details. He practiced a bit, and soon came to decide it would, in fact, be quite useful. The nutrient monitor could also give him knowledge of any deficiencies. His oxygen meter would presumably also let him know how much air was left in his tank, and the health readout would be useful if he ever got hurt. He was feeling much better though, in regards to his burns and head wound.

It also let him know his suit could store items in a stasis inventory, rather than him having to lug it all by hand. He was not a clever man.

The next thing on his PDA was a survival checklist, one that he'd neglected to look at until now like an idiot! Stupid, stupid, stupid. He told himself he'd stop running off before making sure he had everything, and he immediately goes out into the alien ocean before looking at his survival blueprint? He'd be lucky to live long enough to dehydrate to death at that rate!

"Administer first aid if required, not required," he read aloud, leaning against a wall. "Survey environment for threats and resources - I'll do that next swim. Take inventory of supplies, and figure out rations. Well its only me, so there we go. Construct necessary survival equipment using fabrica - okay but what is necessary? Tell me these things, dammit!" he shouted.

His PDA beeped. "Due to vast variance in possible hostile worlds, this PDA was not downloaded with a specific category of what is necessary and what is not. Each planet is different, you will simply have to use your own judgement," it droned in its robotic female voice.

"Oh, thanks," he groused. "Anyway, check lifepod for damage and repair as necessary. Plenty of damage, but I'm floating. So I'll need a repair tool once I get my oxygen tank. Broadcast distress signal, well I'll have to fix my comms relay first. Locate other survivors, construct a more permanent habitat, with that habitat builder I presume, maintain physical and psychological help - err, health until rescue arrives." He closed his PDA and stood. Alright, he had a plan. Survival equipment, repair tool. Then repair his lifepod, and use the comms relay to find other survivors on the planet. Once they met up, they'd make a habitat and wait for rescue.

Survival equipment, what did he need?

"Titanium complete!" his PDA chimed.

"Oh!" he said, jumping. Sure enough, the fabricator had broken the salvage down into four fist-sized chunks of black metal. He fed the machine the chunk of glass he'd made, two of the titanium lumps, and watched in fascination as it got to work. The blue lasers spewed their materials onto the table, assembling his equipment molecule by molecule. In little over a minute, an oxygen tank with an attached mask was ready. Varien put it on, slinging it into the specially designed spot on his dive suit's back, and fastened the mask over his mouth. A bit heavy, but he could manage.

In the corner of his vision, the oxygen counter jumped up from forty-five seconds to four thousand. An hour's supply of air, not bad.

Alright, so he needed... fins, so swimming wouldn't tire him out. And for that he needed to locate some oil source. Also, locate local threats and resources. He needed food and water. Food he wasn't sure about, but water needed bleach, so he'd just have to find a way to get salt and calcium carbonate. A welder was critical, but where was he going to find sulfate and sulfurtransferase? Or make batteries for that matter? The more he thought about it, the more insurmountable his task seemed by the second.

As if to give him even more to worry about, his PDA took that opportunity to tell him, "Detecting increased local radiation levels. Trend is consistent with ongoing degradation of the Aurora's dark matter drive core, due to damage sustained during collision. Continuing to monitor."

So... now he also needed to worry about being irradiated. What did a radiation suit need again?

Night was falling, and the giant blood red moon hung in the sky alongside its smaller, white counterpart. When Varien dragged himself back into his lifepod for what felt like the hundredth time that day, he felt he'd gotten a lot done. Sure his muscles were in agony from all the swimming, but he now sported a scanner tool, and... and, well, that was it. Figuring out how to make a battery had taken him a lot of trial and error. Eventually he found his fabricator could use the acid of the local mushrooms as a replacement for battery acid.

The copper necessary was even harder to find. The strange limestone chunks that grew off the side of the walls were odd, but they looked brittle so Varien wondered if maybe he could break one. And he could, eventually. With his oxygen tank providing him an hour of air, he had all the time in the world to punch away at a limestone chunk he'd chosen to focus on, until finally it cracked open like an egg... and deposited a chunk of lead into his gloved hands.

Well, the radiation suit did need lead, so it wasn't a complete waste.

The next piece of limestone, however, had given him a lump of copper. And with that he could make a battery to make a scanner tool. And then night fell, sleep tugged at his eyelids, and Varien knew he absolutely had to sleep, or he'd pass out in the middle of the ocean and drown.

Part of him worried. He'd been unconscious for three hours after the crash. How much else had happened? Had the other survivors regrouped? Was Silvia among them, worrying about him? Oh stars above, he hoped she was among them. He just had to -

His stomach growled and his throat tickled. With a sigh, Varien downed the second and final bottle of water the lifepod had come with and took a nibble of the nutrient block's corner. Just a little, enough to last him through the night. He'd need to find food and water soon, though. Dehydration killed quickly, but that was a problem for the next day.

Settling against the lifepod's hull, Varien's eyes shut and he was out like a light.

"Caution!" his PDA warned, dragging him from dreamless sleep. "Continued degradation of the Aurora's drive core may cause a quantum detonation." A quantum what? Varien rubbed his eyes blearily; he'd made sure to clean his gloves of lead. Quantum detonation? He wasn't an engineer, damn it. "If the drive core is breached, probability of death by exposure to radioactive crash site materials increases from six percent to thirty-seven percent."

Okay, that sounded bad. He needed that radiation suit desperately. But where was he going to get fiber mesh? He liked to think himself so smart; he was a programmer fluent in C100, after all. But all his intellect was for naught here. He wasn't a survivalist. This wasn't his field of expertise. He was going to die here. Everyone was going to die. He would be forgotten and everything he'd ever done would be destroyed and everything he might've ever done would be erased...

Once he got over that bout of despair, he stood and worked the cricks out of his back. He secured his oxygen tank and mask before plunging back into the warm water, scanner tool in hand. On a whim, he pointed it at himself and held the trigger.

Pale light showered over him from the scanner's crystalline arc, cascading and pulsing across his entire body while the scanner's menu rolled upwards to one hundred percent. "Performing self scan," his PDA told him once it was done. "Vital signs normal. Detecting trace amounts of foreign bacteria. Continuing to monitor." Foreign bacteria? Probably no big deal. After all, it was bacteria on an alien world. Diseases had enough trouble crossing the species barrier on the same planet, let alone to an alien lifeform from a different planet entirely.

Varien swam around, looking for anything that could help him. Oils, fibers, food, water. But nothing. All he saw were corals, stone, and fish swimming around him in multicolored schools.

His mind backtracked. Fish. Food and water. Fish. Food and water. He nearly smacked himself. Of course, it was obvious!

Varien swam towards the closest fish, a mostly transparent one comprised of a twig-thin body with large, pulsating sacks on either side of its body. Its one visible eye, giant in proportion to its body, looked at him, but then his hand reached out and closed around it.

"New creature discovered! Labeling... Bladderfish!" his PDA helpfully mentioned. "Alien lifeforms may have unexpected characteristics," it reminded him as he struggled to keep his grip around the fish's head. "Utilizing alien resources is a proven survival strategy. Good job!"

He winced as the fish flopped around, beating at the water with its membranes, but he brought the bladderfish to his suit. A flash of light engulfed it, placing the fish in his dive suit's storage compartment and keeping it in stasis. His suit's inventory ran on solar power, so it should be fine for a while. He swam around a little while, until by some miracle he grabbed one of those quickly moving blue fish with giant eyeballs that his computerized assistant helpfully labeled as a 'Peeper'. Privately, he was amazed he'd managed to catch the slippery devil. It must not've known he was going to hurt it until it was too late.

Then, off in the distance, Varien saw a forest.

His eyes widened as he tried to figure out just what it was he was looking at. An underwater forest of some kind of seaweed, giant stalks of the stuff growing from the depths and reaching nearly to the surface. Varien glanced 'up'; in addition to monitoring his vitals his brain implant also displayed his current depth. He was at just around five meters down. But that forest might well go down to fifty!

Kelp, could kelp help him make fiber mesh for a radiation suit? Like his PDA said, alien life could have strange characteristics he didn't know about. And if he looked closely, he saw glowing yellow nodes around some of the kelp stalks. Seeds. But they were so far down. He wasn't an expert scuba diver by any means, but he was pretty sure ascending from so far down would give him the Bends.

Well... a glance to his oxygen meter told him he still had fifty minutes of air left. He could afford to ascend slowly if he had to. Varien started swimming towards the forest of kelp. His computer made mention of how it was unusual for life to develop in such distinct biomes, but he was more focused on descending into the water and not losing his nerve at the way the ocean floor just dipped away into the depths.

Within minutes, Varien was inside the forest and he hated every second of it. Dark shadows shifted about in the distance. Roars and what sounded like sinister, high pitched laughter echoed through the water around him. He was deep too, a whole twenty meters under the surface, with the water pushing heavily on his lungs. One of the kelp vines swayed about in front of him. He debated scanning it, and decided to do so; he could never know what secrets a scan would unveil.

He took out his handheld spectroscope and held the trigger. The kelp lit up with shades of light, and in seconds a new data entry was added to his PDA. He put his scanner away, took one of the kelp's stalks in his hands, and tried to tear it.

But it refused to yield.

Varien narrowed his eyes and pulled harder, his lungs expanding against the weight of the water around him as he heaved with effort. But no matter how hard he pulled, the vine was just too tough for him to tear. Oh well. Could he at least take the seed pods? He swam a little lower and came face to face with the giant, yellow clusters. They were a lot larger than they looked from afar, glowing with a soft yellow aura. He grabbed a frond and pulled. Unlike the kelp itself, the seed cluster popped off with no effort. He put it in his suit's stasis-containment, and grabbed another pod. And another, and another. Before long he'd gathered quite a few of the seeds, hopefully enough to last a while.

Alright, time to leave -

Sinister laughter, and then a sharp pain in his left arm. Varien glanced at his arm and screamed!

There.

Was.

Something.

On.

Him.

It was about the size of his forearm, pale blue and shaped like a deflated balloon, but with spikes and prongs along its orange nozzle. It wrapped itself around his arm, and a throbbing but intense pain in his skin indicated it had stabbed him. Varien shouted, his screams muffled by the water around him. He shook his hand as hard as he could, legs kicking wildly as the creature pulsated on him, its sack filling with some green fluid drawn from within him. His dive suit tightened around him, sealing off the breach its incision had made in the fabric. His right hand found his scanner, and he swung at the creature with the tool.

But underwater, he couldn't swing as hard as he could on land. His scanner moved practically in slow motion before colliding into the bloodsucker, and it only warbled quietly. He shrieked and tried again, hitting it harder, again and again until it finally let go, unwrapping from him and swimming off into the distance. For a moment, Varien saw his blood - colored green from being so far underwater - spill out into the water, but then he had nothing on his mind but getting the hell out of there. He spun around and located the escape pod signal being transmitted onto his sight, and swam as fast as he could.

He made it back to his life pod in record time. He could've sworn it had drifted closer. Varien laid on his stomach, sobbing quietly as his suit's nano-sutures repaired its breach. Already his joints were aching; he'd definitely ascended too quickly. But he couldn't take time to rest and recover from the decompression sickness. He had to go back into the water, because that was where literally every resource in the world existed.

"I hate this planet so much," he whimpered.

"What do you mean the best weapon you can give me is a fucking knife?!"

Alright, so apparently the bladderfish could be used to make water. Kinda gross, but as far as he was concerned it was just taking the already-filtered water inside. Like how a dog's mouth was supposedly super clean, the water in these fish was drinkable. And water was water, he needed as much as he could get. But that was bladderfish. This was something else. Despite the fabricator assuring him it disposed of skeleton, fluids and organs, and rendered cooked food edible, he wasn't sure.

He stared at the cooked peeper on his fabricator's table. Its dead eye stared back at him. He wasn't going to eat this! No way! This was the body of a living animal! Not stem-cell grown meat, an actual animal that had swum around and eaten stuff. Who knew what sort of shit and piss was inside? His fabricator couldn't possibly have gotten all of it, right?

His PDA chose that moment to speak up. "While those accustomed to synthetic foods may be repulsed at the thought of eating an animal carcass, try to remember that desperate times call for desperate measures. Humans have survived this way for many millions of years. You can survive this way, too."

He wrinkled his nose distastefully, but he had to admit his computer had a point. He needed to eat, and he couldn't rely solely on nutrient blocks. They'd run out quickly. He forced himself to pick piece after piece of meat from the peeper, starting from the tail and working his way up. He had to admit, it didn't taste half bad. Kind of like... beef, oddly enough, as long as he didn't think too hard about the source. Though he had to stop a few times to pick out tiny bones, and that worried him. His fabricator said it got rid of the skeleton, right? Obviously not the whole skeleton. What else did it miss? But he had to eat, so before long Varien had picked the peeper clean of meat, leaving only its jiggling, cooked yellow eyeball on the table.

No. No way. He was not going to eat that. He wasn't that desperate, was he?

Varien backed away from the peeper, thought it over for a moment, then climbed the ladder. The hatch was still open, even though the broken wires had long ago stopped sparking. He climbed to the top of his dipping and bobbing life pod and inspected the area around him. Countless stars hung overhead, and the smoke of the distant Aurora poured into the sky. A tepid breeze ruffled his hair. Apart from the starship's colossal hull, there was nothing else around him but smooth, uninterrupted water, hanging under the light of the twin moons.

He descended back into his pod and decided that yes, yes he really was that desperate.

"Warning!"

Varien froze in his exploration of a rocky cliff face. "Warning what?" he sighed into his mask, hunger and thirst gnawing at him.

"Local radiation readings suggest a quantum detonation will occur with a probability of eight-five point five percent. Advise observing of ten kilometer safety range."

"Ten kilometer?!" he protested. "Lady, no way in HELL am I going to be able to - fine, I'll just make the radiation suit," he groused, giving his survival knife a slow-motion twirl underwater. "What's in here?" he wondered, peering into a hole carved into the rocks.

Some mushrooms, and a few growths of quartz. And a strange, round, dark brown plant. Then the plant opened four flaps to reveal a glaring, cyclopean eye, ringed with red spikes and yellow flesh. A harsh growl vibrated the water around him. Varien's eyes widened and he started to swim the other way, but it was too late.

The fish exploded out from the plant, chasing him down with a single-minded evil.

A moment later, it exploded far more literally.

He gasped, then keeled over and coughed up some blood onto the floor of his life pod. "Med kit," he wheezed, pulling himself over to the cabinet. With trembling, unfocused fingers he opened it up, overjoyed to find this time he could open it. The glorious red casing with a white cross fell out and bopped him on the head, but as long as it was within reach he was happy.

Varien's vision blurred in and out as he ripped off his dive suit and began applying the bandages to his bleeding chest, stopping now and then to dab at some horrible bodily fluid dripping from his ears. Whatever it was, it wasn't blood. The more advanced nanite treatments were next. Those just had to be sprayed into his nasal cavity, and within moments he could feel them going to work and repairing whatever terrible damage the underwater explosion had done to him.

Thank the stars for his dive suit. All the same... "Fuck this planet," he whimpered.

And he still needed to get a radiation suit! He was fairly certain where he could get fiber mesh. His scan of the 'creepvine' had revealed it might be useful for such purposes. And while he couldn't tear it, Varien was confident he could use his knife to cut pieces of it off. But he didn't want to go back there! Those little bloodsuckers made their home there!

No way he was ever going back to the kelp forest!

He couldn't believe he was actually going back to the kelp forest.

He found a stray stalk of creepvine far away from the main forest and began hacking at it with his knife, sawing back and forth across a frond. Hunger tore at him and dehydration ripped at his throat, and a glance at his HUD meters in the bottom left confirmed that, indeed, he was starving and he was dehydrated. But the dehydration circle was still two-thirds full, the hunger circle even better off. If this was how he felt with just one day's worth of famine, he could only imagine how much worse it would get.

He needed to get some bladderfish. Or maybe some bleach, but the problem of finding calcium carbonate lingered.

As he sawed, Varien kept his eyes and ears on a swivel, searching for any of that sinister, evil laughter that heralded the bloodsuckers. Off in the distance he saw what looked like some cross between bottlenose dolphins and sharks playfully biting each other in the kelp. Big and scary, but they seemed preoccupied. He was, perhaps wrongly, more worried about the bloodsuckers. Bleeders, his PDA labeled them. The mere thought that one could sneak up on him made his heart pound in his chest.

Before long, Varien cut away a few pieces of creepvine and stored them in his dive suit's storage. He swam away, beating the fins on his feet against the water, and found a piece of rounded purple coral on the seabed, bubbles rising from it. Varien sat on it, half expecting the coral to come alive and swallow him whole, or for its jagged edges to cut him up. Instead, all that happened was his oxygen tank started sucking up the bubbles, filling itself with air. Before long, he'd gone from twenty minutes of oxygen back to a full hour.

Varien glanced down at the brain coral; he definitely needed to find a way to make that thing portable. For now though, he had to get back to his pod. Ascending slowly and carefully, so as not to aggravate his decompression sickness, Varien made his way back to his wandering shelter. He already had enough lead from his adventures in hitting pieces of limestone with his scanner.

He fed the pieces of kelp to his fabricator, watching anxiously as it created, seemingly from nothing, two rolls of comfortable greenish-black fiber. The lead, he had to handle carefully. It was poisonous, after all. But he fed the components into the fabricator.

Then finally, Varien made his radiation suit.

He rubbed his eyes as the fabricator slowly pieced it together. Ugh, it felt like night already. But it was still the middle of the day! He still had so much more to do. Now that he had his radiation suit, he absolutely had to go get some food and water.

The helmet was first to be complete. Varien put it on. Next were the gloves, then the suit itself. He made sure to follow the safety regulations; he did up the zipper and checked the airtight seals. He wasn't sure about the helmet, though. He didn't like the loss of his peripheral vision. Plus, he'd disposed of his regular clothes a while ago, so while he still wore his dive suit, underneath there was nothing.

Which was bad, because 'nothing' meant a bloodsucker would get at him easily. But if it meant he wouldn't get killed by the invisible, unnoticeable danger of radiation, that was worth it.

"Emergency!" his PDA warned. "Seismic readings suggest a quantum detonation has occurred in the Aurora's dark matter drive core!" What?! Varien hopped on the ladder and started climbing. Once on top of his pod, he glanced over to the Aurora. Was it just him or was there... more smoke than normal billowing from its interior and into the stormy clouds?

" - reactor will reach a super-critical state in T-minus ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four... three..." His PDA erupted into static. When it barely choked out a 'two', Varien gasped and slid back into his pod. He closed the hatch, got into his seat and, as though it would do anything, clamped his hands over the 'ears' of his radiation helmet.

The flash was the first thing he saw. A burst of radiant light that cast odd shadows even inside his pod. The flash ended, but spots of odd colors still stuck to Varien's field of vision.

Then the shockwave arrived.

"Oof!" he grunted when his entire pod turned upside down. The noise burst his eardrums and turned his world inside-out, making his vision shimmer darkly. His pod did a few turns, then stopped and began to slowly right itself to the tune of howling wind and angered seas. Crackling filled his bloody ears, his newfound radiation suit's Geiger counter going wild.

Then it was over. He was on the floor, he'd need some patching for his ears but... he was alive. Not irradiated, cooked, or permanently deafened. The suit worked. He'd done it!

For the first time since crashing onto 4546B, Varien smiled and pumped a fist. "Fuck yeah, technology!" he cheered.

He had zero success in his hunt for food. He caught a few bladderfish, but he needed every single one of those for water, not food. That night Varien ate from a nutrient block until there was only half of it left. That still left another one and a half nutrient blocks, but even so. He needed to get better at hunting for food. Maybe he could try to make a Gravsphere? He'd played around with one of those as a child, but never gave them any serious thought after. Maybe it was just the thing he needed.

At least he had enough water. He chugged the bottles one after another. He didn't even care how they were warm and tasted slightly off. The water flowing down his throat felt like manna from heaven, like his brain was lighting up. He could practically feel his body lubricating, like before he'd been a dry piece of hay. With great satisfaction, he watched the water meter in his HUD crawl up to nearly full. He stored the last bottle of water in his life pod's storage, and pondered what to do.

He still needed a repair tool. Maybe a flashlight wouldn't hurt. Or a dive reel so he wouldn't get lost in a cave and drown. Honestly, just about everything sounded appealing, but it was so hard to figure out his priorities.

Survival. Survival first. Food and water. He'd make a Gravsphere, and see if that helped out with his hunting. After that... he didn't know. Maybe a habitat. But for that he'd need a computer chip. He'd already memorized the blueprint for that. Copper was abundant, but where was he going to get gold? Or for that matter, something to hold the circuits?

Varien glanced up at the hatch in his life pod. The darkness of night stared back at him. He hated nights on this planet. Sure it was warm in his pod, but it was hard and tough to sleep. In the seas it grew too dark to do anything - maybe he would make a flashlight - even though half the fish glowed.

At the very least, the days were significantly longer than the nights. It must've been summer, which also explained the heat.

... Silvia wasn't there to sleep by him. There was nobody to reassure him, actual reassurance, not his PDA's empty shouts of 'good job!'. Nobody to help him. He was left alone with his restless thoughts and worries, his 'could have been's and 'maybe this happened's. They tormented him, forcing wracking sobs from his chest at the thought of being forgotten, or of his fiance's lifeless body charred by the crash, or of her drowning slowly and painfully underwater, until he finally fell into hopeless nightmares.

The Gravsphere worked like a charm! Arcs of warped gravity lanced out and into the fish around the metal sphere. They squirmed and chirped as they were inexorably drawn in to the metal orb's pumping plates, easy pickings for Varien to grab and put into his dive suit's stasis, which worked even through his radiation suit. Sure, eating was a chore and a worry given that he had to take his helmet off but he needed to eat, even if it was disgusting live animals. He grabbed so many fish. Bladderfish, peepers, boomerangs, garryfish. He was going to be set for a while. Sure the Aurora was busted, riddled with even more holes and with its bridge blown open like a lid, but he was fine.

"Fuck yeah," he breathed, grinning at the lightly pumping sphere. "Technology!"

He finally, finally made a welder. It had been a literal nightmare to get. The salt deposits were hard to find, hidden as they were amidst the colorful flora. It was still odd to see chunks of salt so large he needed both hands to carry them, but whatever. He had more than enough for his fabricator, and the leftover salt he used to cure a few peepers and boomerangs for a rainy day.

Given how many dark, angry clouds gathered above him, that day might come soon.

Getting the sulfate and sulfurtransferase was pure luck. He'd swam by a rocky cliff riddled with caves, and inside he saw one of those plants that launched exploding fish. But this plant was already peeled open, with a yellowish, chalky powder inside. That, apparently, had been just what he needed to make a welding tool, on top of a battery and some titanium to hold it together.

He wasn't an engineer, but the problems of his life pod were fairly obvious. He held the wires together, carefully welding them back together one at a time. Eventually, finally, the pod hummed. Varien smiled at his success and placed the metal panel back on, welding it tightly. Once done, his lifepod's lights lit up, and the floor shook beneath his feet. The screen next to him changed from red and riddled with warnings to a soothing green.

"Hull integrity okay," he read aloud, desperate to hear any human's voice, even if it was his own. "Secondary systems online, good. Flotation devices deployed, I already knew about that. Environment is an uncharted ocean... oxygen nitrogen... high water contamination, I already know. Attempting to scan emergency frequencies. Three solar power cells charging..." He smiled. "Good!" With that, he headed back out and started to explore.

When he had about half an hour left in his oxygen tank's supply, Varien let gravity carry him down onto the ocean floor. His air was buoyant, but his tank was heavy, so he sunk. He walked along the sandy floor, eager to give his muscles somewhat of a rest after all the swimming he'd done in the past... past... had it not even been five days? It felt like a lifetime already.

While walking, he came across... a box. A storage crate! With a surprised shout, Varien leaped into the water and swam over to it. He felt around the small white box, and found an open end. Inside was a mangled piece of machinery. He couldn't quite make out all of it, but it looked like a busted blue and white tube, with a propeller in the back. Varien sunk to the ground and unhooked his scanner from his radiation suit. He held it up to the piece of metal, and his brain implant showed him the message 'Seaglide (Damaged)'.

Hmm. Seaglide? He'd heard about those, some tool used for recreation and scientific study alike in water. His fabricator couldn't make one, unless...

He held down his scanner's trigger, and light engulfed the seaglide fragment. Soon his scanner was done, and the screen showed a silhouette of what he assumed was a fully intact seaglide. Various parts of it lit up blue, and a message told him to scan the remaining functional parts.

A quick glance through the new data file on his PDA made him smile. That would come in handy! Currently he couldn't go too far from his habitat, but with a seaglide he could find other survivors with no problem!

If there's even anyone left, a cold voice in his mind whispered.

CRA-BOOM!

Light flashed in his pod, and a moment later thunder crashed over him. Varien sat in his life pod's seat, his head against the cushion, trembling quietly. His unused seaglide rested in the corner, taking up space and clattering about. He kept one wary eye on it, lest it knock him in the head like the wall panel had. Hunger twisted at his gut, and thirst tore likewise at his throat. In the corner of his eyes, his dehydration meter flashed red. He couldn't sleep well either, thanks in part to his pod's bright lights.

He'd thought he had a lot of food and water stockpiled, but that was proven wrong the moment the thunderstorm came by. This was the second day the storm raged, making going outside suicide. His storage locker was empty of anything to drink. He didn't want to dig into his nutrient blocks yet; they were the only thing on this planet he could eat that hadn't used to pee in the ocean. The dehydration was a bigger problem than the hunger. His urine was a worrying shade of brown, a color he'd never seen it be before, and unless the storm let up soon...

CRA-BOOM!

Another flash of lightning. The waves tossed his pod around like a chew toy and rain pelted the hull, running off the glass hatch on top; he needed to make a habitat constructor, pronto. He couldn't afford to risk his pod being dashed upon the rocks. But he didn't have gold, nor any mysterious third substance needed to construct the computer chip necessary. Even if Varien did have all that, he couldn't go outside in the storm for fear of being electrocuted by lightning. He wasn't even sure if that was a thing that could happen, but after he could have asphyxiated by venturing out blindly into what he didn't know was a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, he wasn't willing to chance it. To say nothing of what those wild waters might do to him. He just had to hope, dearly, that this storm let up before he had to do something reckless.

He couldn't help but sob quietly. The weight of this disaster weighed on him. He was lost, stuck on an uncharted, uninhabited planet. Everyone on the Aurora was almost certainly dead. Even if there were survivors, so many people died. He didn't know if he'd ever see home, if he'd ever sleep in a bed. If he'd ever finally wed Silvia, ever have kids. It'd be a miracle for him to even live to forty, at the moment.

He continued to weep pathetically as the storm raged around him, each crash of thunder a portent of his doomed attempts to survive.

Varien just wanted to go home. He just wanted this waking nightmare to end.

CRA-BOOM! the storm answered.

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