Crashlanded Phoenix

Object C-04 "Rex"
HIM Phoenix Crash Site

I felt a trickle of cold water flow down my face, breaking me out of my well-deserved slumber. I opened my eyes and immediately had a droplet of water fall from the sky and into my eye causing me to blink a couple times. The sky turned a shade of dark grey, a big difference when compared to the blue sky from earlier. I must have slept a good few hours as the sun had already retreated behind the bright green jungle thicket. I sat up on the slightly muddy ground and turned my gaze towards my vessel. "Looks like we'll be stuck here for a while," I spoke to the inanimate object, knowing that it would never answer me.

I touched my back with my still functioning right arm and felt some more blood flowing out of my wound, now mixed with mud and water. I stood up and looked down at the spot where I slept, now marked with a red stain and the outline of my body. The cold trickle of water from the sky quickly turned into a warm shower rain which presented an opportunity for myself to wash away the unpleasant filth on my body. I took all my clothes off and stood naked in the rain, the clothes I wore would better serve me as survival tools rather than apparel in this instance. I hung all of my clothes, save for my torn and bloodied shirt, on a nearby branch and stood in a spot that didn't have many leaves overhead. The shirt served as my cleaning rag and I used it to wipe away the blood and mud all over my body with the help of rainwater. I noticed a piece of metal stuck in one of the wounds, I grabbed it firmly and pulled it out then dropped on the ground.

After the deed was done, I hung the shirt on the branch together with my other clothes and picked the back-stabbing piece of metal up. "Looks quite sharp...," I said upon initial inspection of the blood coated edge with a finger. I wanted to discard this piece of metal, but stopped after getting the idea to use it as a makeshift cutting tool as my cybernetic arm was far from fully functional and I couldn't bring myself to call it a knife.

I began to examine the area around me with a faint glimmer of hope of finding any traces of civilization, though I couldn't abandon my ship and venture out too far just yet, I didn't want to risk any unwanted guests finding my vessel. There was a surprising lack of wildlife, maybe the crash scared everything away, but even then there should be snakes, insects, spiders and similar creatures around here. I didn't hear a single sound that even closely resembled the flapping of a bird's wings or its chirping. This meant that finding food around here might be a problem and I can't count on rations inside the ship as those were surely destroyed. I used the cutting metal to gather some vines, branches and mushrooms on my way back to the crash site.

Upon returning I found everything just like it was before, a comforting yet saddening feeling. On one hand I'm here alone, on the other hand I'm here alone and separated from the Empire. My lower arms still remained numb and unresponsive, so I used an improvised vine rope to tie them to my torso to prevent them from potentially flailing around while doing physical tasks and with a few leaves and more vines I crafted some cover for my genitalia for courtesy's sake. Using the some of the biomass I gathered, I built what I can only describe as a crude water collector. "It'll rain for a while but there's nothing wrong with having more water for later," I said to myself with a smile on my face and patted myself on my synthetic shoulder.

The sun had begun to set by the time I was done with my initial survival preparations, the sky darkened and the rain kept pouring down on everything around. The background noise of water droplets landing on leaves proved to be a rather calming in this precarious situation and was the closest thing I had here to music. Despite being a calming presence and a source of hopefully clean drinking water for me, the rain brought a host of new problems with itself. First, the ground around me was quite muddy and if I wanted to prepare a sleeping spot for myself then I'd have to move underneath the jungle trees. That was not a huge problem and more of an inconvenience, but I still counted it on that list. Secondly, with the fact that most of my augmentations weren't working properly, I might not be able to hear someone approach my "camp" and I might find myself ambushed while resting and with my pants down, literally.

Thirdly, the rain has probably caused wildlife, if there was any, to hide. This meant that I'll probably have to live off of what I could forage in the jungle and so far I had no luck finding anything more than a few mushrooms. What worried me is that I have never seen these ones before so I had no idea if those were edible or inedible and I wasn't particularly willing to gamble with my health right now. This was a big problem, even with those mushrooms I wouldn't be able to sustain myself for long and malnutrition in the next couple of days seems quite inevitable in my current situation. Finding a couple berry bushes or any kind of fruit-bearing tree would be a blessing, albeit a temporary one and would only buy me some time before hunger sets in. The nutrient bar I ate earlier was enough to get me through today, but starting tomorrow I need some sort of food supply.

Lastly, I had no fire nor any firewood nor anything I could use to light a fire or see in the dark. The night vision mode in my eyes wasn't working at all and the tools contained within the hand of my cybernetic arm were as good as useless too. I wasn't worried about the cold of the night, the darkness was far more concerning to me, on top of the fact that I had no way to cook anything, not like I had any food to cook anyway. "Tonight isn't going to be a great night..." I said to myself and sighed. Rain despite being a blessing in terms of drinking water also caused all potential firewood to be wet and wet wood doesn't burn well. Though without a fire I won't attract any unwanted or unnecessary attention, so maybe it isn't that bad after all.

The water collector I constructed earlier had already filled up with fresh and refreshing jungle rainwater. I kneeled on the muddy ground, causing my right leg to be dirty once more and began to drink from it. So far I haven't noticed how thirsty I was, I was too busy with other matters to think about catching a break to hydrate myself. The water I collected tasted like the best thing I have ever drank in my life, within a blink of an eye half of the contents of the collector were drank by me. "Ahhhh" I breathed out afterwards, satisfied after quenching my thirst. I looked at the collector with a smile when it suddenly fell apart. "Oh for fucks sake!" I groaned in annoyance, because even though the construct served its purpose of collecting water, I now had to use up more materials tomorrow to build another one. My lack of foresight resulted in me forgetting to use something to reinforce it and prevent or at least delay the collapse.

Infiltrator Nr.8
Everfree Infiltrator Camp

The sun was no longer in sight, it was the only way for us to accurately measure time in this cursed and forsaken forest. I stood up and read the written order from my commanding officer, orders which sent me out to investigate the crash site. I turned my eyes towards the forest and stared into its depths as a feeling of uneasiness washed over me. I couldn't quite put my hoof on it, but I had the feeling that something, someone out there was watching us...or perhaps it's the time we spent here finally taking its toll on us.

I turned my gaze back to the camp and repressed the anxious thoughts in my head, putting them aside for sometime later. There were a few changelings huddled around the campfire, even from where I stood I could hear them chat about the small things in life that they experienced. I walked up to the campfire and sat down at a free spot to listen in to one of the stories being told.

One of my fellow soldiers finished drinking what I presume to be either boiled water or tea from his slightly dented cup and called for attention of those sitting at the campfire. "Alright lads, it's my turn to tell you all a goodnight story, so you better listen up. Around two years ago back in cadet school there was this one fresh enlist. I don't remember his name so let's call him William. You could tell he had absolutely no experience with how things worked around there compared to most of us, but at least we weren't stupid enough to antagonise our training officers back when we were fresh recruits. Most of the time it was simple insubordination or talking behind an officers back just out of earshot, until he took it too far one day. The oh so courageous William the Brave who just had to disobey orders had spat in our main instructor's face, right in the eye too and with lots of snot." A few changelings gathered around the fire cringed visibly.

"My lads and I quietly made our way back to our barrack, yet we still heard the instructor rip that cunt a new one. I thought the windows were going to shatter from all the screaming and we'd have to clean everything up with our bare hooves. Fifteen minutes later he entered the barrack, looking like ghost had just set his house on fire yet as soon as the door closed behind him he began to grin. It was the biggest shit-eating grin I have ever seen in my life, the amount of pride he felt was so strong everyone could see it. He looked at us, expecting the praise he deserved for sticking it up to the big man. All he got were scornful looks and shaking of heads. Looking back at it and at what comes after this, we should have beaten it out of him."

A few fellow infiltrators chuckled among themselves and I was already theorising as to what the newbie could have done. Seeing the public's reaction and presumably not wanting to interrupt it, the storytelling soldier filled his cup with water and drank from it as a form of taking a short break. The chatter and chuckles died down a few minutes later when he resumed his story. "He must have interpreted our reaction as "that wasn't brave enough" or "you gotta do better to prove yourself", because I swear on my life that this hiveforsaken wanker was pretty much asking for the instructor to squash him. His behaviour calmed down for several days after this incident and we thought that maybe that screaming knocked some sense into his empty head. We were seriously wrong."

"One sunny day we went out to do some firing drills, except William didn't turn up. One of my buddies at the base told us after the first drill that he got food poisoning and was exempted from training for a few days. How did he get food poisoning out of a sudden you may ask? We'll never know, perhaps he was just craftier than we initially thought." His head sank a bit and he shook it while saying the last sentence. "We thought nothing of it and returned to our barrack after the drills have concluded. We saw him in his bed, back turned to the entrance and sleeping. It wasn't until the big man himself bursted through the door with MPs in a wedge formation on him. He pointed with his hoof at the bed of Willy the Bastard. "There he is!" He said and the military police swarmed it. One of them pulled the bedsheets off, only to get himself and his buddies plus a good portion of the place covered in glitter, glue and something that stank indescribably bad. We found out after the fact that he faked his food poisoning, set up a booby trap for our main instructor and at some point managed to snatch his jeep and then drove it through the base until it was covered in mud and the tires at the brink of death. They came to us because nobody was in the jeep and he was the primary suspect after his previous escapades. Their suspicions were confirmed by the trap and him being covered in mud after they found him."

A few of us, including me, clapped after the story concluded. The storyteller stood up and bowed to all of us like a theatre actor after a great performance. I was about to get up and get on with my work when an infiltrator sitting next to me asked a question. "What do you have there?" he asked while looking at the piece of paper in my hooves. "Is Flügel sending you out into the Everfree?" he continued with a raised eyebrow.

I sighed and nodded slowly "He's sending me to check what crashed in the forest, alone," I responded to him and immediately felt the attitude around the campfire change. I looked up and saw them looking back at me, some of them looked worried while other pitied me.

"That's rough," he responded and gently patted my back with a hoof. I swallowed as the feeling of dread returned to me.

"I'll g-get going now...the sooner I-I...," I couldn't finish the sentence and stood up on shaky legs, I once more looked at my compatriots and saw them with slightly sunken heads. I turned and walked away from the campfire.

"Good luck!" one of them said after I took a few steps. "Come back in one piece!" another one said. "I'll save a few cans of beans for you!" said another. Soon I was met with a wave of encouraging comments from them, I smiled and straightened myself then moved in the direction of one of the tents in the camp with a raised head, chin and spirit. I moved the flap leading into the tent aside using my magic as I approached it and went inside.

There was a makeshift desk made out of a few small logs and some flat, long pieces of wood standing in the middle right in front of the entrance. A wider, but shorter log was behind it and probably served as a chair for the desk. At first glance it looked like it shouldn't stay together, but it looks like it does its job. On the desk itself there was a single lit candle and a big open logbook and a pen, kept maintained by the changeling sitting behind the desk who was reading a book. This was our quartermaster.

He glanced up at me from underneath his book and spoke with a heavy tone. "You already had your ration, don't think about asking for more. CO's orders." He returned to reading afterwards.

"About that....I have received orders from him," I put the paper on the desk and turned it to him. "Here you go."

He set his book aside and read the note, occasionally muttering something out loud. "Hmmhh...half of a full ration of love...mmm...gonna set us back a few days...," a minute later he stood up and walked away from the desk towards one of the opened storage crates in the back. He took something out of it and returned. "Here you go, better make it last," he scoffed at me and logged our interaction in the logbook. I took the item I got and smiled while leaving the tent.

"Half full flask of love," this might not be a weapon, but it would do. I popped the bottle open and chugged it empty. The bright pink liquid flowed down my throat and filled me with energy. I levitated the glass flask back into the tent and ran out of the camp towards the crash site with newfound courage, hope and energy.