A short story I wrote during slow periods at work. I haven't edited or changed anything, so don't expect nobel-prize winning writing here, it's basically a first draft.
Hunted
I'm not sure how long it was before I came to. Could have been hours, could have been days - at that point I'd lost all ability to mark the passage of time having been out in space for so long. Being unconscious didn't help either.
I thought back, trying to to recall the events leading up to the crash. What had gone wrong? It was a simple survey mission; Habitable planet, abundant life, large seas and oceans. Of course! Indigenous sentience! I'd been shot down!
'Think!' I told myself. Where had I set down? I tried to get up to survey my surroundings. When I leaned on my left arm, it collapsed under me and there was a blinding pain. Right, I should take a look at myself. Ok, calm down, think. What works and what have I broken? Clearly my left arm was shattered. I'd be able to at least set it if my medkit was still around here. I was pretty bruised up and I'd burned my right leg somehow, but I was alive. My vision suddenly went all green and I panicked. Was this some effect of the atmosphere? Some pollen from the plants? I wiped my good hand over my eyes and looked up.
I'd panicked for nothing. Part of the wreckage was above me and coolant or something was leaking out onto me. I shifted and looked at my hand, wondering where to wipe the coolant. The colour was off though, what was wrong with it? After staring at the gunk on my hand for a few moments I realised the problem with the colour - there was blood through it. I must still be bleeding from a head wound of some kind. Gently I probed my face and scalp, trying to find the wound. Eventually I found it - what felt like a large cut across the front half of the top of my head, I must have hit it on a control board during the crash.
I realised then that I was in shock. Which in itself gave me another piece of information: I couldn't have been out for very long - Certianly less than a day, probably a few hours.
'First things first' I thought to myself. 'Find the medkit, get yourself patched up then take stock of your inventory and survey the surroundings so you can work out where in the universe you are' I could feel the emergency survival training taking over.
Achingly and without using my shattered arm, I managed to drag myself to my feet. In reward I was hit with a severe wave of dizziness and almost fell back over. Were it not for the wreckage I was using to support myself, I would have. Determined to find the medkit though, I pushed through it and shakily took a few steps toward the bulk of my ship, a few meters away. I could see a large tear in the side of the hull I'd be able to get in through without much trouble but at this rate it seemed a lot further than it was.
I wasn't going to make it. Not without some kind of support. I needed a crutch of some kind until I could get the medkit. Looking around, I didn't see a lot. I seemed to have crashed in an open plain of some kind. No large trees, just smallish shrubs and reddish dirt as far as I could see in all directions. That was one piece of good news at least, I seemed to have crashed in a relatively remote area and I'd be able to see natives and other threats coming in all directions with plenty of warning.
Shuffling another few steps, my foot caught on something and I went over. Fortunately, I landed on my good arm but the jolt was enough to paralyze me with pain for a few minutes. I couldn't take much more of this without medical attention. When I'd recovered enough I looked down to see what I'd tripped on and saw a white protrusion from the ground. I crawled over to take a closer look and was hit with a surge of hope. It was a bone! Possibly a rib from what would have been a fairly large animal when it was alive. I prayed it wasn't too deeply buried and that I could dig or pull it out with my one good arm.
Desperately, I sat up and positioned myself to get what leverage I could then pulled as hard as I was able with what strength I had in my good arm. Surprisingly, the dirt wasn't as tightly packed as it looked and the bone shifted upwards almost 70 degrees. Not expecting such a great result, I lost my grip and rolled backward onto my back. Another jolt of pain met me on the ground but it was worth it, I'd almost pulled in out completely in a single go!
Getting back into position, I inspected my handiwork on the bone. It was most of the way out, so I tried standing and pulling on it but it was caught where it was, I was going to have to dig it out by hand. I began working at it straight away, scraping away as much of the dirt as I could with a single hand. As I was doing so, I was amazed at just how much life there was on this planet. In a hole no bigger than 50 centimeters wide by 30 deep, I had encountered no less than 4 species.
A minute or two more of frantic scraping and the bone fell onto its side, free at last from the dirt and ready to be my crutch. Painfully, I managed to ease myself up and clumsily slip the end of the bone under my arm. It wasn't at all comfortable, but at least I had some mobile support to stop me falling over again. I only had to go another 2 or 3 metres to reach the ship anyway.
Eventually, with a great deal of effort I managed to get to the tear in the hull and poked my head inside. In case I hadn't already been able to tell, the thing was a wreck and wasn't flying again. Control panels were shattered and strewn across the cabin, storage compartments had lost their coverings, spilling their contents everwhere. I moved in the direction of the medical bay - which was really just an isolated corner with medical supplies, praying it wasn't in as sorry a condition as the main cabin was. Fortunately it wasn't - The bay was designed to survive violent patients during a battle so most of the equipment bays were still intact and closed, it didn't take long to find the medkit I needed.
Setting my arm, I used various dermal and sub-dermal regenerators to heal most of the bruising, the burn on my leg and seal the cut on my head, then administered various painkillers, simulants and suppliments to keep me going. Stiffly, I returned to the main cabin and began sorting through the wreckage to see what I could make use of in this desolate place. Unfortunately, being a survey ship most of the loose components were diagnostic and sensor control panels. I did manage to find most of the survival kit however, a knife, pistol and a heap of food so I didn't need to worry about starving to death out here.
I came to a deadly realisation at that point: I was alone. I had no ship, limited supplies and almost no tools and I was stranded on an alien planet with little hope of rescue.What was I going to do? I couldn't live the rest of my life here, in isolation with nobody but myself and to top it all, night was falling.I decided to take the best look around the area that I could in the diminishing light before doing what I could to get some rest. At least I could still use my ship as a shelter. The surrounding area didn't have a lot to offer, a few more bones like the one I had used as a crutch poking out here and there, dirt, a few small shrubs, dirt. Coming around the bow, I noticed lights in the distance, a city perhaps? That could be useful if I could slip in and get any further supplies I needed or was it a search party, coming to hunt me down? I tried to observe them for a while to judge if they were moving toward me not but there didn't seem to be any change. Either it was just a city, or they were coming from quite a distance away. At that moment, several lights broke off from either side of the main grouping - Scouts?
I could feel panic overcoming me again. Alone. Hunted. Cut off. For all I knew, there was an army on the way to capture and or kill me.
'RUN!' my instincts screamed.
'No' I thought, I should stick with my shelter and the bulk of my supplies.
'GET OUT OF THERE!' instinct insisted. It was so forceful that I found myself stuffing supplies into a bag and strapping the knife and pistol to my belt before I knew what I was doing.
Scrambling back out of the ship, I ran blindly in the opposite direction to the lights. In such a desperate flight, I stumbled and tripped on most of the shrubs, branches, rocks and bones littered about the landscape, but I didn't care, I was moving away from that pursuit force. I would evade and I would survive this.
I don't know for how long I ran but eventually, scraped, panting and exhausted I spotted a darkened building not too far from where I was. I figured I could take refuge in it at least for a while before the hunters came looking. I tried to appproach as quietly as I could, keeping to shadows and avoiding the windows and eventually managed to press myself up against one of the sides.
I immediately had second thoughts about trying to hide out here, as it suddenly appeared to be a waystation of some kind. Transport lanes ran past the building with offshoots leading onto the grounds. On that side of the building there were numerous mechanisms of some kind and the front of the building was mostly transperent. I took this to be the 'front' of the building and decided against trying to enter that way. At the rear of the building I found what seemed to be a service entry of some kind. I tried opening it, but it appeared locked. The lock was fairly primitive, but even so, several attempts to get it open with my knife were unsuccessfull and I had to simply shoot it open.
It was much darker inside than it was outside, I leaned against a wall just inside the door to rest for a few moments and allow my eyes to adjust. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I was able to make out many boxes stacked around the room I was in - evidently some kind of storage area. There was a panel on the wall just next to the door and a little over my head, with a little experimentation I was able to activate it and brought the lights up, there didn't seem to be an adjustable setting on it however and I had to close the door over to avoid drawing attention to what was probably meant to be a darkened building.
I took another few moments to survey the room. Shelving, boxes and another door toward the front of the building, seeing as there weren't any sounds I could hear, I decided to take a look through some of the boxes. They seemed to be full of supplies from the best of my ability to tell. Mostly brightly coloured packets of varying substances - Sickly sweet smelling items that stuck to my fingers, brittle chips of what may have been vegetable matter and brightly coloured fluids. I wished I'd remembered to bring a hand scanner so I could decide if any of this was edible. Rummaging through some other boxes, I found an item of particular interest - mostly due to my complete inability to decide what it could be used for. It was a small packet of individually wrapped cloth tubes, at first I thought they may be some kind of covering or bandage, but they weren't hollow and had a length of cord at one end. I decided I would come back to them later and investigate as a possible item of interest - who knew what secrets such items held?
Another box revealed small light emitting diode devices that gave off small amounts of light - Enough to see by if I turned the light off, and certianly not enough to be noticed very quickly if I went into the transperent front of the building. I decided to do it and gather as much info about this species as I could. I tested the device to make sure it was working and took a spare in case the first stopped working, I then sealed the back door as best I could and turned the light back off. Activating the torch, I found it gave quite a low level of light off - a bit less than expected and it took my eyes a minute or two to adjust in the dimness. I moved over to the other door and tried it I reasoned there would be little use in sealing an internal door of this kind and I was right. The door creaked and scraped as I pushed it open but I was finally in the room I saw from the front of the building. A low hum from a series of clear-fronted units along one wall drew me over in that direction, they seemed to be filled with the coloured liquids I encountered in the storage room. I tried tugging on one of the handles and most of the front wall swung open, hitting me with a blast of cold air - Refridgeration units! The fluids were coloured very strangely and a few bottles were coloured the same as my ships coolant. Without a better knowledge of this races' language, I thought it best to leave the bottles alone for now.
At that point a low, mechanical rumbling filled the air, growing steadily louder and I realised I'd been here quite a while, they must have found me! I dove behind the first thing I could find, some kind of barrier sealing off a small section of the room and huddled in a terrified heap on the floor, back against the wall. The sound grew louder and louder until the building itself began to shake. Lights grew outside until I could see quite clearly. I decided if I was about to be killed, I would at least see it coming. I peeked over the top of the barrier and looked outside. I was shocked to find it wasn't a searching army at all, but what appeared to be a freighter travelling past at high speed along the transport lane. The thing was monstrous! It went on and on, the whole time emitting the same mechanical roar that shook the very building I was hiding in. After a few moments, I became more accustomed to the noise of the thing and I'd clearly not been spotted so I came out from behind the barrier and observed it passing by for a moment or two more from the shadows before it passed. As it began to fade into the darkness I came out a little further to watch as the noise faded and the rear lights began to dwindle. What a monster of a vehicle it had been, the noise was terrifying and it was clearly not a military vehicle. If it was anything to go by, I'd probably be woken by a maurading search party long before they reached me. With that in mind, I decided to get as much rest as possible before setting out again.
Retrieving my pack, I fashioned a meal out of emergency rations and collapsed in a heap where I'd first taken cover from the noise of the transport. It had felt barely a few moments before I was awoken by another mechanical rumbling, initially I dismissed it as the noice of another transport approaching - I must be on some kind of trade route - but then I realised this noise was different. It was less of a low rumble as the transport was, but was higher pitched and came in rapid bursts, not at all the solid buildup of noise that the transport had been. It sounded almost like if someone had begun the start up procedures of some kind of machine, but then rapidly turned on and off some kind of stealth generator, blanking it's noise out for a fraction of a second before letting another fraction of a seconds worth of noise through.
I remembered the only reason I was shot down is that these people used a primitive projectile weapon that took me by surprise - nobody had used those in well over a thousand years. These people didn't seem to be advanced enough for stealth technology, perhaps an early prototype?
Fighting to keep control of the panic rising within me, I took my weapon and crept around to the front of the building to take a look outside. I scanned as far out and wide as the buildings cover allowed and found.. Nothing. No lights, no unusual shadows, nothing.
I realised whatever it was may be approaching from the rear of the building and returned to the storage room. I cracked the back door open and took the best look around I could. Nothing. Again! Fighting fresh surges of panic and the urge to run blindly again, I opened the door a little more as I wasn't getting anywhere near as good a view as I did from the front and took a better look. Still nothing! and the sound was only growing louder and louder, where was it?!
By this point, a wind was being driven about the building and I realised that I wasn't seeing anything on the horizons because what I was looking for wasn't on the horizon - it was in the air! I jerked back into the building and slammed the door. If I stayed inside, it wouldn't be able to see me and it would leave thinking nothing was here.
I ducked back to what was arguably my bed for the night and lay down, listening to the noise of the aircraft moving about outside. Eventually it began to fade into the distance and I relaxed a little. it had worked. I was probably going to be safe for the night.
Again, I was woken by mechanical rumblings approaching the building. What was it this time? These sounded similar to the transport, however it was lower pitched, there also seemed to be a lot more of them approaching. Among them, I could hear the approach of the aircraft I'd heard earlier. They had found me, they had to have! All out panic gripped me and I grabbed my weapon and decided if I wasn't going down without a fight. I peeked out over the divider and saw rows upon rows of lights pointed on the building, I tried to sneak out to the back room but I must have been seen because a voice - seemingly enhanced by some kind of device rang out over the area, almost as loud as the machines approach, rang out over the area in their language. It was harsh sounding, demanding in its tone, but I was completely unable to understand a word of it. Why hadn't I bought that damn scanner along with me, it could at least give me a start!
I cracked the back door open and peeked out from the shadows. It was a dangerous gambit I lost however, as there was a small exlosion from the mirroring bank of lights and a chunk of the wall next to me exploded. I slammed the door shut again and could hear yelling coming from that side of the building again and once more, the enhanced voice boomed over the area. I wasn't going to survive this. There were too many of them. I decided to go down with as many of these savages as possible. I began to gather my resolve for my final fight when a sound like a canister of air being expended all in one go came from the front of the building. A smashing and crashing sound indicated they had launched something through the front of the building so I decided to check what it was. Given the effect of the device at the rear of the building I figured it wouldn't be a weapon as it would have gone off already.
I was wrong.
When I snuck back into the front of the building, there was a hissing noise and much of the room was already full of some kind of smoke. It wasn't any regular smoke however, as it straight away began to burn my eyes, lungs, nose and throat. It got harder and harder to breathe so blinded, choking and completely lost, I stumbled toward the front of the building and fell through the window there hoping they would realise I was helpless.
I awoke to find I had been dragged some distance from the building and surrounded. Ugly creatures they were, all dressed the same in green and brown patched garments, they all carried long, roughly cylindrical devices in both hands and waved them in my direction, seemingly discussing my fate. I reasoned the devices were weapons of some kind and I'd been shot at at the back door.
The aliens themselves were tall. Very tall. Had I been standing, I doubt I'd have come to their waists. Bipedal, they all had short, coarse looking hair over their scalps, protruding noses, small eyes and only 5 fingers. There also appeared to be folicles over their faces, but these were all shaved to the skin.
One the others kept deferring to - his hair was greyish instead of the mostly dark hair of the others - approached me and spoke at length at me. I simply stared at him, not comprehending what he was saying. I noticed thee eyes of this one - whites, then a colored ring, then the black centre of a pupil. So unlike the large, totally black orbs of my race, even their skin tone was a kind of faint pinkish instead of the dull grey of my kind.
It continued to wave its arms, gesturing at it's companions and repeating a single word 'Human', must be the name of their race I figured. It seemed to give up and motioned to one next too it. The last thing I ever saw was the end of it's weapon slamming down toward my face.