Stranded Among Imbeciles

- Location: Close to the Edge of the Thanos System

Loki was transporting cargo from Thanos III all the way across the galaxy to the Atreides system where he would drop off the cargo at the edge of the system, receive his payment, and go. The cargo itself was quite possibly the most valuable thing he had ever had within his possession, including his ship. Contained within his cargo hold was a thick grey goop that would seem unremarkable until examined under high magnification. In reality the grey goop was a batch of self-replicating nanites. The nanites were considerably slower at building than the previous generation but being able to build more of themselves easily made up for that.

It was 4 minutes until Loki would be able to initiate an FTL window, 4 minutes until he was far enough away from a gravity well that the FTL window would stabilize, when alarms began to flash in the cockpit.

"WARNING: PIRATES DETECTED,” alerted the shipboard A.I.

Loki quickly flicked a switch to bring his shields up as the cockpit’s windows closed, indicating the ship was entering battle mode. “Damnit”, he thought, “should’ve put weapons on this boat back at the station. But no, I was too greedy.” At the current moment the ship was completely unarmed as Loki had removed them to get the maximum cargo space to transport his rather valuable goods. It would appear that raising the shields were a good idea as these pirates were not even attempting to negotiate as a blue light flashed when a railgun round impacted the ships shields.

“Eve, what is the shield at?” he asked the A.I.

“Shields are holding at 81%,” the ship flashed again as it was impacted by another blast from the railgun, “make that 67%, we will not make it to the edge of the system before the shields fail, at that time making entering slipspace will tear the ship apart.”

“Damn,” he repeated, “what about making an in-system window?”

“If we make an in-system window, it will not stabilize and we only have a 32% chance of survival.”

“And chances of survival otherwise?” he asked.

“10%,” the A.I responded.

It did not require much thinking to come to a conclusion as he ordered the ship to make a jump. He felt a vibration as the FTL drives ripped a hole in space, something that he was told looked rather similar to the Aurora back on Earth. His ship passed through the hole and he felt a great deal of pain before he passed out.

{------X------S.U.I------X------}

- Location: Unknown

Loki awoke when he heard the telltale tearing noise of his ship exiting slipspace. Sitting up in hischair he was greeted with a wonderfully painful headache and the smell of rotten eggs. The headache indicated that he had hit his head and the sulfuric scent indicated that the FTL drives had failed.

“Wonderful,” he muttered then raised hus voice to speak to the ship’s A.I, “Eve, what is the damage?”

“FTL drives have failed, engines are offline, shields at 10%, and structural integrity is at 90%.”

“Even better,” he replied sarcastically, sinking back into his seat, “what are the chances of repairing the engines before life support fails?”

“It should be possible to get the engines repaired many weeks before life support fails; however, you will fall out of orbit and hit the surface of the planet below far before this happens.”

He instantly bolted up straight at this new information and soon assumed an annoyed expression at the A.I. “And you didn’t think to tell me this sooner?”

“No,” the A.I replied, “it was not a portion of the damage.”

“Friggin’ A.I,” he muttered and then raised his voice to a normal tone, “okay, what happens if our orbit degrades to that point?”

“Assuming you spend the time before atmospheric entry repairing the shield,” Eve paused, and if it wasn’t for the fact that she was an A.I, Loki would have thought she was doing it for dramatic effect instead of merely calculating odds, “then you have a 98% chance of survival.”

“Wow,” he said, actually impressed, “that’s better than usual. Well then, better get to work. What tools do we have onboard to repair the shields?”

“Only one sir, and you’re not going to like it.”

{------X------S.U.I------X------}

- Location: Orbit Above an Unknown Planet

She was right of course, he most definitely did not like it. He was now out 40K credits for breaking containment on his cargo. The only tool they had on board had of course been the nanites stored in the cargo hold. The nanites were currently busy cannibalizing their former containment and converting into parts to repair the shields.

Upon reaching 3 minutes until he would enter the atmosphere, Loki buckled up into his seat in the cockpit, powering down non-essential systems and using the spare power for the shields, bringing it up to 76%, hopefully enough to survive his soon to occur crash landing.

“Please note that knew calculations have been made regarding the probability of either of us surviving the crash and the odds have been lowered to 92% for you and have remained at 98.7% for me.”

“Thanks Eve,” he replied sarcastically,” I really needed to hear that.”

“You are welcome Loki,” the A.I said without the slightest trace that she had heard his sarcasm.

Soon the cockpit was enveloped in a reddish glow as flames began to appear on the outside, contrasting with the blue glow as the shields were activated from the heat. Sadly, even grade A shielding technology could not protect an individual against the intense heat of atmospheric entry and the cabin soon began to grow swelteringly hot. Soon the heat faded though and the ground below began to grow green as they broke through the cloud layer. As they were nearing the ground Loki looked over to a nearby mountain and thought, “Hey isn’t that a castle,” and then the world went black.

{------X------S.U.I------X------}

- Location: Unknown Planet

Loki slowly reentered the land of the conscious with a groan. All over his body were aches and more aches, the space between filled with sharp pains. Loki opened his eyes and was given yet another pain as he managed to open his eyes to a point in the sky near to where the sun was. He winced and closed his eyes, once again he attempted to open them and was given significantly more success as he had realized looking at a bright celestial object was not a good idea. Loki’s eyes eventually adjusted to the new influx of light and he was able to survey his surroundings. It appeared that he had crashed in a forest of some type, the trees around bearing remarkable similarities to those back on Earth. He quickly realized that the nigh indestructible glass of his cockpit had somehow been broken by a tree limb upon his crash. He had also had his breathing mask separated from his face at some point. “Damn,” he thought, looking at the atmospheric readings with a great deal of relief and joy, “it’s a good thing this planet has a breathable atmosphere otherwise I would be long dead.”

“Eve,” he spoke in a rather hoarse voice, “you alive?”

“I am most definitely intact,” spoke the construct, causing a sigh of relief to escape Loki’s lips, “though as to whether I am alive or not is something that-“

“Okay,” Loki interrupted with a tone of annoyance in his voice, “I get it. What is the status of the ship?”

“The ship is nigh obliterated,” Eve replied, getting another groan from Loki as he removed his chair’s straps and stood up, “though there are a few systems online including main power, kitchen equipment, my main processors, and heat and humidity control.”

The conversation went on for a great deal regarding how badly damaged each system was, yielding the fact that many of them were completely unrepairable. Loki did a scan of his environment and found the atmosphere to be remarkably close to Earth-normal though with a lower amount of carbon dioxide and a slightly higher amount of argon. Scans of the local flora and fauna revealed that the native inhabitants were carbon based, something that was not at all surprising, and that the genetic structure of the plant life was incredibly close to that of Earth, so close in fact that you could create this stuff with mere artificial selection back on Earth given a few decades. This was most definitely good news as it meant there was a high likelihood of him finding some edible food. Edible food was going to be a big priority given the current state of his ship, a quick look over indicating that he was going to be stuck here for quite a large period of time.

His FTL drive was currently missing its casing and most of its internal components, something that was common when they malfunctioned as most things tended not to survive contact with a hole in reality. His main engine was currently out of fuel, his ship using the nice safe Uranium-235 instead of anti-matter, something he was grateful for as synthesizing anti-matter on an unknown planet would not be a fun activity. The rest of his ship had basic elements like iron and silicon that would be fairly easy to replenish so he wasn’t too worried upon those fronts.

After getting out of his seat, Loki had made his way to the back of his ship, about 45 meters back. At the back was a small opaque tube, Loki typed in a code upon the keypad beside the tube and caused it to open up. Contained inside the tube was an armored environmental suit along with a practical arsenal of weapons, ranging from a small stun pistol all the way up to a plasma launcher. Loki decided to go for a reasonable array of weapons, a hunting knife, a stun pistol, and a laser rifle. After sealing up his suit and strapping his weapons to his thighs and back, Loki ordered Eve to have the nanites begin making repairs to the hull of the ship first, and then begin looking for resources to repair the rest.

Soon after his preparations were made, Loki climbed out through the hole in his cockpit and took his first proper view at the damage of his ship. The 50 meter long ship had been broken in two near the center, the walkway between the portions still intact but the walls ripped apart as the halves of the ship sat at two different angles. The main thrusters in back were still mostly attached but the once sharp features had turned into a melted slag. The rest of the ship was equally damaged, whether by melting from reentry or the previous ship battle, or by damage upon impact. In addition there were parts, like the communication dish, that were missing entirely, ripped off by the winds as the ship was travelling at intense speeds towards the surface. Loki adopted a look of concern as he wondered if the nanites would ever be able to fix the ship but then he saw a large hole in the hull be covered in a gray goo and then disappear entirely. With a look of satisfaction, Loki looked away and began to make a journey to find himself some food.