Authors note: And here we go (finally) with true original content. Remember, this is an alternate storyline for HoTS so don't be expecting something that happened there to occur here as well. As usual: Enjoy and lemme know what ya think :)
Chapter 2
Crash
BEEP BEEP BEEP. The reminder tones trigger as the dropship neared time to drop out of warp. Kerrigan and Raynor released from their most recent kiss with a sigh. "Duty calls." Raynor said as he settled back into the navigator's seat and Kerrigan pulled up her control monitors. "Dropping warp in 5…4…3…2…1…Drop" Raynor toned, as the ship warp engines died down and they returned to normal space.
The ship began blaring warnings almost as soon as they dropped out of warp. What they saw in front of them was something out of a nightmare. A humongous Leviathan stood a few kilometers away from the Hyperion as hordes of Mutalisks and Corrupters swarmed around a lone Terran battleship. Fire was coming through holes in the armor of the great ship and only half of the weapons were still firing. Raynor's communication screen suddenly came to life as they were hailed by the Hyperion, revealing a fuzzy picture with broken sound.
"Commander!" Matt's scrambled voice came over the communications channel, "We were attacked while our warpdrive was recharging and it just came back online a few minutes ago. We waited as long as we could for you to show up but there's only so much damage we can take. There's no way you'd be able to dock with us through this swarm so we're transferring new warp coordinates. Meet us there and we'll dock then." Matt's image faded from the screen and was replaced with a new set of coordinates just before the great battleship disappeared into warp and away from the swarm.
Without their main target the organic fliers turned their attention to the lone dropship, their screams of rage almost palpable even through the airless void. "Time to go, Sarah." Raynor said as he punched the coordinates into the computer once more. Kerrigan began to warm up the warp engines again but it became apparent the horde would make it to them before they were fully recovered.
"Brace yourself Jim. We're going into evasive maneuvers." Kerrigan said as she took the dropship into a nosedive, followed quickly by the swarm. Glaive wurms began sliding past the ship as they launched from max range but it was only a matter of time before they got within range to launch with more accuracy. Kerrigan jimmied controls, took the ship through spirals, and dodged through gaps in the enemies, trying to stay ahead of the damage until the warp engines were ready to go. The ship began to shudder from impacts as glaive wurms began to burrow into the hull of the ship, doing as much damage as possible before they expired.
Raynor hit a switch that triggered safety straps to extend from the chairs and wrap around both he and Kerrigan, holding them in place as the rocking became more and more violent. Kerrigan continued her dizzying maneuvers of the ship but the sheer amount of enemy fire made dodging it all impossible, multiple hits causing serious damage to their hull. Sparks began to fly out from severed wires and computer screens, equipment stopped working and even one of the engines got knocked out, sending them into a spiral through space. Kerrigan fought to correct their course just as the nav console beeped, signaling that the warp engine was finally ready to go. Kerrigan hit the trigger on the engines and space began to expand as the ship sought to enter warp but before the jump was completed the ship was sent into a spin as a Corrupter landed a shot directly into the navigation control. The dropship disappeared into warp space but with a smoking hull and almost no power remaining.
Raynor and Kerrigan looked at each other and smiled, the only light in the cockpit the sparks from the broken equipment. The ship suddenly shuddered and dropped out of warp, one of the sensors, one of the few remaining systems working, spouting a proximity warning. They hadn't made it to their assigned coordinates. Instead they were a few thousand kilometers above a planet and trapped in its gravity field, falling fast. Kerrigan dived for the controls as Raynor braced himself in his chair, trying to keep from tumbling about as the ship spun through the planet's upper atmosphere.
Kerrigan scanned her eyes across the console, looking for what had power and what didn't. One engine was totally fried and the other was severely weakened. Push it too hard and it might just fail completely. That left maneuvering thrusters of which only the ones on the front of the ship were still working. "Shit…" she let out a curse as the ship continued its crash course without any real way to control it. Kerrigan hit on an idea, she didn't need to stop the descent, simply slow it. She powered up the maneuvering thrusters and spent a few sweaty minutes attempting to control their spin. After serious amounts of micromanagement of the thrusters she managed to get the craft's crazy spin into a more manageable state, leaving them in a powerless dive straight towards the planet's surface. She triggered the one remaining engine and used maneuvering thrusters to balance out the unequal amounts of thrust the single engine provided to bring the nose up out of a straight dive and into a glide. Still too fast…she used all forward thrusters that she had left to attempt to slow their speed but it simply wasn't enough. With another curse she slammed the engine to full reverse and the ship bucked and stalled, dropping speed rapidly.
With a stutter and a cough the final engine died and they were left in free fall with only a few hundred meters left above ground and heading towards what appeared to be snowdrifts. The sensors dinged a few times but Kerrigan's concentration on the thrusters was so intense she didn't notice them at all. As the ship reached 10 meters above ground level even the maneuvering thrusters cut out, leaving the ship uncontrollable and it hit the ground hard, the heavily damaged craft melting through the snow as it slowly ground to a halt in the middle of a bare snowfield, the two occupants sitting strapped into their chairs and not moving.
Raynor coughed as he slowly regained consciousness. A falling piece of equipment, a monitor of some sort, had connected with his head and knocked him out. He decided it was probably the cold that had finally awoken him. Wait…cold? This is a spaceship it shouldn't be able to get cold that easily. He did a quick damage assessment and concluded that besides the obvious that the ship was trashed, it appeared to be leaking its atmosphere, and therefore letting the outside conditions in, dropping the temp of the interior. He sat up and released the safety straps around his chest, reaching over to grab a console to pull himself up out of the chair and accidentally triggered the sensors, the trusty machine still working amid all the other damage and chaos. The screen powered up and bathed the interior of the cockpit in a soft, blue light, revealing Kerrigan collapsed over the forward console.
"Sarah!" Raynor carefully stepped across the debris until he reached her, relieved to discover that she was still alive and breathing, just woozy. As he helped her sit up she moaned and grabbed her head, presumably where something hard had struck her like it had Raynor. "You ok, darling?"
Sarah nodded, and immediately regretted it as the pounding inside her head doubled. "I will be anyways. What happened?" Raynor looked out the front windows and could almost watch as ice built up over the glass pane. Wherever they had ended up, it was astonishingly cold. He reached over and pulled up the sensor data, trying to locate their position but without full functionality all the sensors could reveal were conditions immediately outside the ship.
"Wherever the hell we ended up, it sure isn't friendly. It's -70 degrees outside with a killer windchill." Raynor backed up the sensors logs to see what it had caught during their descent. "It appears that there's a Terran settlement on the other side of this mountain, about 30 kilometers away. Its colder than a corpse outside and it'll turn you into one without much thought but a suit should be able to make it. If we're going out, we're gonna need protection." Raynor walked back into the cargohold and moved some debris around until he revealed his CMC-400 suit. "Good boy," he said as he had it run a diagnostic that reported minimal damage. He then continued searching until he found what he was looking for: a small SCV suit used for repairs to the ship during flights in space and turned towards Kerrigan.
She looked at the suit with a look of disgust on her face. "You can't be serious. You want me to wear that thing?" SCV suits were far from glamorous. Workhorses of the Terran army they were designed to get the job done, not look pretty doing it. The usual SCV was almost 12 feet tall, but this one had been designed for in-flight repairs rather than industrial work and as such was only 7 feet tall and the tools on its arms were designed specifically for ship repair. The suit's one saving grace: it was designed to work in the vacuum of space. Once sealed inside a person could survive the cold of space and if they could survive that they could survive the cold on a planet.
"It's either this or we both try to fit in mine. As cozy as that would be, I don't think we'd survive that way for very long." Raynor chuckled. With a disgusted noise Kerrigan released the safety straps and made her way back to the suit to begin its power up sequence, climbing inside and running a diagnostic. Raynor made his own way into his suit and after a few minutes both of them were suited up and ready to go. Unfortunately for Kerrigan, the suit was not designed to hold a weapon and as such she had to store her rifle on the back of the suit instead of in her hands, leaving her defenseless. Raynor picked up his rifle from among the littered debris and cleared the muzzle of any possible obstructions before checking to see how much ammo he had left.
Raynor lowered the visor of his suit to seal out the cold and turned to Kerrigan. "Ready, Sarah?" he asked over the radio and she nodded. Raynor moved towards the buckled door and reared back in the suit, kicking the door down in one go. The door flew off it's hinges and they were assaulted by high winds that brought cold into the interior of the remains of the ship, ice and snow drifting in and filling it up. Before long this entire wreck is going to be covered. Raynor thought as he stepped outside the craft and saw the trail the vehicle hot from reentry had left in the snow already being quickly retaken by the cold winds. He pulled up his suit's navigation system and linked it with the ship's sensors long enough to get the location of the nearest settlement. Raynor hefted his rifle to his shoulders and motioned for Kerrigan to follow him outside. Now for the hard part…Raynor thought as the two of them headed out into the snow.
