AN: Sorry this took so long! Again, huge thanks to Coincidencless for beta reading


The transmission had led him to what he assumed was the right pod, with a bold number 3 painted onto the side. Although the SOS was only made around half an hour ago, his hope of meeting someone else quickly disappeared at the sight of the hole ripped into the side. Peering in closer, his eyes widened. He'd found the two crew members, in two pieces. Something had sliced them almost perfectly in half, with inhuman precision. No creature could do anything like this, nor any person he'd ever met. However, there was something lying next to the bodies which his PDA read as scannable, so Kaisa closed his eyes and swam closer, holding down the trigger and praying that it managed to read the fragment. A short blip informed him of his success, and Kaisa turned to return home and see what the fragment had added. But a blue glow from within the lifepod caught his eye, prompting him to look back into the ripped hole.

There sat an abandoned PDA, presumably left there before the occupants got chopped in half. Curiosity and a sort of obligation lead him back inside and his own PDA informed him that a data dump could be made from a nearby device. He accepted. Two new items flashed up on his screen: A log for the crew, and a data bundle for a basic compass, both of which Kaisa planned to review back at his lifepod.

During his swim back, the shock from seeing the corpses was only just starting to set in. What kind of creature could do that? If they could think, why would they do such a thing to a group of harmless people? Were they human? Were they looking for him?

Kaisa shook his head, trying to dismiss the thoughts. They were only going to weight him down, and that was the last thing he needed right now.

Back in the safety of the lifepod, he took the time to look over everything he'd gathered on his journey. Although he'd managed to gather a few useful materials, along with the compass blueprints, the trip had left a bad taste in his mouth. He may have not known those people, but nobody deserves that kind of death.

Whilst he was scanning through the data logs given to him by the PDA, mostly on the surrounding landscape, a small warning flashed up on the edge of his vision, alternating between a picture of an apple and a meter showing 30%.

Shit. Kaisa had completely forgotten about his need for food, focused as he was on getting resources. Speaking of which, what could he eat? Sure, this planet had plenty of fish, but none of the plants he'd scanned had been listed as 'edible', nor did he have a fire to cook said fish.

Switching the PDA menu to the blueprints, Kaisa flicked through them searching for some sort of tool to cook with, when he came to a section listed as "cooking". Opening it up revealed a list of the edible wildlife in the area, as well as the options to either cure or cook them.

Well, in that case, problem solved. All he needed now was a fish.

Hosting himself down through the hatch, Kaisa took a quick look around him and immediately made a beeline for the nearest peeper. However, they turned out to be surprisingly agile, slipping straight out of his hands and leaping out of the water to land a half-meter away. This repeated itself several times until he eventually gave up, hunger pangs starting to gnaw away at his stomach. Looking downwards, he noticed a small sphere on the floor and after scanning it and seeing what it was, he managed a faint smile.

One freshly fabricated grav-trap later and Kaisa had managed to secure himself a good haul of around three peepers and a rather uncreatively named boomerang. He pulled himself into the lifepod and immediately busied himself with attempting to fit a still flopping peeper into the fabricator hatch.

He eventually managed and after confirming his option to cook the fish, took it upon himself to watch the little fabrication lasers flick to and fro, building up layer upon layer of meat and eye jelly in a matter up seconds until a fully cooked peeper sat on the fabrication platform in from of him.

He didn't have any cutlery, so Kaisa promptly pulled off a piece of the fin and took a tentative bite out of it. It was slightly salty, and a bit too rich for his liking, but it was good, and the fabricator had kept true to its word and removed the skeleton. At least it was fresh, immediately placing it above the various dehydrated "foods" sold on the Aurora.

Being as hungry as he was, Kaisa finished the peeper in mere minutes after confirming the eye was almost tasteless and throwing away the beak. He'd always been a fan of the traditional seafood taken from Earth, so this wasn't exactly a massive leap. Still, it was just a bit unnerving having that dead fish eye just staring at him as it got pulled apart.

His food at a healthy 103% and the other two peepers polished off, Kaisa turned his attention to water. His fabricator stated that he could use something called a bladderfish to filter out some water, but there was no way in hell he was drinking something that had been squeezed through a dead fish. Alternatively, bits of the giant coral tubes could be used with salt to make bleach which, in turn, could purify the water.

Kaisa chose this path, grabbing his knife from the locker and pulling the hatch open. But just before he could dive in, the PDA said in its usual flat voice, "Warning. Local radiation readings suggest the Aurora's drive core has reached critical state. Quantum detonation will occur within two hours."

Kaisa had ignored the first two warnings he'd gotten of this nature, mostly because one came through whilst he was lying on the floor, and the other when he was at lifepod 3. However, this warning seemed more severe, giving a clear period of time and the result. He didn't know what most of the techno-babble meant; he was an electronics engineer, not a quantum drive mechanic. What he did recognise was one of the last words, known to Alterra employees across the galaxy.

Detonation.


Xelicic was still unable to fully process what he had seen. Although it had crossed his mind when evacuating the biome, he'd pushed it to the back of his head and tried to ignore it. After all, it could have...

It might have...

He didn't know what he was hoping for, but he was hoping for something. Anything. Anything but this.

Melatisma stared at him through sad, dilated pupils. "But what can we do now?"

"The best we can do is leave it behind. I think we've got far more pressing matters to deal with right now," Xelicic said, pointing at the crashed, burning husk of a space-swimmer with a blade.

She shook a tentacle in affirmation. "Right."


Okay… so what next. Kaisa had food and water sorted, as well as a two hour window before he'd have to get as far away from the Aurora as possible. Pulling up his PDA, he flicked to the survival checklist in his data bank, scanning through until he came to what should be the next part of the list.

He'd only had a good look at it after he'd gotten back from lifepod 3, so the order he'd done things was a bit sporadic. From what he could tell, he should 'survey the environment for threats and resources'. Although he'd partially done this already, he did need to find more of those fragments to reacquire those blueprints. But first, he'd need more oxygen, and a high capacity tank would definitely help.

To make it, he'd need two sheets of glass and 200 grams of silver, as well as around another 50 grams of titanium. Rifling through the lifepod storage, Kaisa was surprised to not only find the four pieces of quartz he needed for the glass but a fist-sized piece of titanium he'd found after breaking open one of the crumbly limestone outcrops that measured to be around the amount he needed.

Pulling the hatch open once again, Kaisa set out in search of silver. It was meant to be found in sandstone, but they had turned out to be few and far between, and it was taking him a lot longer than expected.

Most outcrops weak enough for him to break yielded nothing but lead and gold, which although useful, wasn't what he was looking for. This wasn't helped by the lack of oxygen, because as alluring as the sandstone outcrops at the bottom of the kelp forest were, he didn't want to take that risk.

After around half an hour of searching and a close call with an adventurous stalker, Kaisa had traded in his oxygen tank for a new one, able to hold around an hour's worth of air. Now to find those fragments.


Before leaving the lifepod, Kaisa quickly went over the things he needed to bring for his trip. It was his first time going outside for a prolonged amount of time in the two days he'd been there, and he wasn't planning on dying on his first try.

Food (two cured peepers), flashlight, knife, disinfected water and a spare battery. Hopefully, that'd be all he would need. After all, it was just a small excursion to get a few blueprints. Perhaps he was being overly cautious?

Well, it's better safe than sorry, Kaisa reasoned as he slipped into the water. Diving to the sea floor, he decided to go and check the wreckage down by the far side of the 'safe shallows', as his PDA called it. Among the wreckage, he not only found two fragments needed for a beacon, but a piece of wreckage as well. According to his PDA, it could be deconstructed into 400 grams of titanium, making it a far more efficient way of getting titanium than hitting rocks.

Swimming away from the wreckage revealed another beneath a drop. This one was more of the same, as well as another piece for the 'seaglide' that he found back at lifepod 3, bringing his count up to one piece remaining. And in the distance was another. Following the trail of broken metal and taking the occasional break to eat a peeper, Kaisa paid no heed to the direction in which it was taking him until he noticed how murky the water was. Feeling disorientated, he surfaced to check how close he was to the Aurora.

It

Was

Right

There

The metal carcass loomed around twenty meters in front of him. Kaisa frantically pulled out his PDA and checked the on-board clock for the estimated time of detonation.

Twenty minutes. If he left now, he should be able to get away from the blast before the drive core vaporised him. Plunging back under, a tremor from the Aurora shook the water and murk into frenzy, but Kaisa didn't have time to waste waiting for the water to settle. He started in the direction of the life pod, but was quickly stopped by a wall of metal in front of him.

His blood turned cold. Resurfacing, he quickly realised that the tremor must've set him off in the wrong direction, and he was now touching the shell of plasteel that made up the Aurora's hull.

Dipping back under, he found that the water had settled enough to see normally again, so there was no way he'd lose his sense of direction this time. However, as he was turning around to leave, something caught his eye that the murk had been hiding. Something purple.

In a rare moment of silence following the sound of metal breaking within the Aurora, he could hear a faint mix of clicks and grating sounds.

Kaisa spun round to face the purple, which quickly made itself out to be two creatures, although he wasn't able to make out many details.

Then one of them disappeared.

Scrambling back through the water in panic, Kaisa watched the other one vanish from his sight as well.

Only to appear dead in front of him.

He and the creature locked eyes, his wide with fear and it's staring at him curiously. It released a loud grating sound, moved one of the scythes on its arms upwards, and Kaisa screamed.


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