Outsider

[Laowai]

Continued from above……….


The Titan broke through the atmosphere and began its decent down to the planets surface. Now firmly under the control of the ships onboard flight computer it had leveled itself out and slowed so that the effects of the atmospheric entry were little more than a few scorch marks here and there and a lot less shield batteries and a few less nanobots.

Laowai raised the visor on his helmet and wiped the smoke residue from the inside of the canopy in front of him. “Computer, locate a clear area to land and put her down” he spoke out loud. There as a beep of acknowledgment in his earpieces and he saw his scanners begin to lay out a 3d rendered scan of the terrain below him, a small flat space at the foot of some hills was suddenly targeted on the screen and the computers voice chirped in his ear “Location found, please secure cockpit for computer aided landing”.

Laowai smiled at that last part - he had always thought that this was added to the computers’ message by a Corsair programmer with a sense of humour - the computers flight control computer landed a vessel within the stress parameters of the vessel, which was fine except that it didn’t take into account the stress parameters of the pilot. Many a corsair pilot had prematurely removed their helmets and seating harnesses during a computer aided landing and then suffered a nasty knock to the head or severe whiplash when their ships hit the ground.
Laowai left his helmet and harness on.
Now much closer to the ground he could see the local terrain more clearly, tall trees nearby stretched off into the distance into a vast forest, the area the ship had chosen to land was at the foot of a rocky grass covered hill. The outside temperature read at -17 degrees, and the local time appeared to be early morning just after dawn… chilly out, but nothing he couldn’t weather. The atmosphere was thin, there was oxygen, but not much, he wouldn’t be running any marathons.

The ship began to maneuver sideways in preparation for its final short decent to land.
Suddenly, the blinking lights on the flight control computer vanished and the ship lurched violently to one side. Laowai cursed, the computer had shut off again - in mid thrust - he grappled with the now free flying control stick and tried to ignite the starboard thrusters to counter the extreme list the Titan was now in.
Too late, the vessel rolled to one side and plummeted to the ground. She flipped over and Laowai was jerked out of his seat as the cockpit was suddenly upside down, his harness prevented him from flying head first into the canopy. The ship hit the ground with a crash, coming to rest upside down and on its side, resting on its right hand side fin, tail fin, and its nose. Laowai looked up, above him; he could see the ground a few meters away.

Computer aided landing…. Laowai grumbled to himself. He reached up under his chair and triggered the canopy opening control, the clear bubble above him slowly moving away and letting the chilly outside air into the cockpit.
Now the hard part.
He disconnected his helmet from the ships' oxygen supply then gripped the side of his chair firmly with one hand and unsnapped his harness with the other, suddenly free, his body dropped but he caught himself with his other arm and slowly slipped himself out of the remaining harness, then, when he was hanging the right way up, he unclipped the remaining restraint and dropped the last few feet to the ground, his feet landing on the canopy and sliding until he hit firm earth.

Moving away from the ship he surveyed the damage. His Titan was more or less intact but upside down. This was bad, there was no way to lift off with the ship laying as it was, he would have to flip it somehow – but weighing in at several tonnes flipping a Titan would not be easy.
Ben hissed through his teeth and shook his head; looking around he surveyed his surroundings. The great forest he had seen on his descent loomed off in the distance; he retrieved his hand held scanner from his belt pack and scanned the forest for signs of life. There was very little, and from the information he now looked at nor was there likely to be, the trees all sported needle like leaves which were specialized for living in a low oxygen atmosphere. Laowai knew from experience that these types of leaves contained almost no nutrition, which meant no large scale wildlife.
That could be a problem, for while he had food to last a while in the emergency supplies on the Titan, he would need to eat eventually if he was stuck here.
The sky above him was overcast; he would first need to make some kind of shelter. He had no idea how long the days lasted here and he needed to make use of the light while he had it, he knew this place would get cold at night and didn’t want to be caught in it or any weather that might blow up. He set off to find some wood and materials he could use for covering.

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He spent his first night on Tangier brooding by a fire outside the shelter he had built around the upside down bulk of his Titan – Tomorrow; he would begin work on flipping it over, if he could. He fell asleep, the light of the fire casting eerie shadows on his face.

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He paced the distance from forest for the second time, returning to the Titan he circled it again, his frustration growing. He could see no way of flipping it over. His initial plan had been to fell a tree, using its weight to right the ship, but there was nothing of suitable weight anywhere nearby and there nothing he could use to fasten a tree to the vessel. He cursed, his last hope would be to try and get a signal out, hoping that a corsair vessel picked it up, and not a Hessian one. He was about to enter his shelter and climb up into the cockpit to try and activate the comm system when a beeping from his belt interrupted him.

It was his scanner, on its screen two green dots had appeared at the periphery of the scanners' range, their direction indicated they were somewhere on the hill overlooking his crash site. Green dots indicated human life signs. He drew his blaster and crouching behind the upturned spinal fin of his ship he peered up onto the hill, but saw nothing. The dots on his scanner hadn’t moved; they were there, and they were probably watching him.
From somewhere on the hill he heard a distant voice call “Are you Corsair?”

Laowai considered his response, and then called back “Who is asking?”
There was a pause, the voice called again “We are asking”.
Laowai’s scanner beeped again, two more green dots had appeared on his scanner, only this time they were in the direction of the forest behind him, he was surrounded.
He considered his options, he did not know who it was that was out there, but he knew there had only been two Hessian vessels on his tail when he had dived into the atmosphere, and his scanners had not detected any others. He was confident that if he could get close to his unknown stalkers he could defeat them, but they were staying well out of his blaster range, let alone his knife – and if they had blaster rifles, they could pick him off at any time if he broke cover.

The voice echoed down the hill again. “If you are carrying a scanner, which if you are a Corsair you no doubt are, you can see we have you surrounded, so I ask again, Are you a Corsair?” Laowai decided to take a chance, under his Titan he had scant cover from blaster fire, and he did not want to show himself, quickly he took off his Corsair flight jacket, the cold instantly chilling im as he did so, and he tossed it out beyond the cover of the ship.
He waited, they would see his jacket and know where he was from, and he tensed close to the hull of the Titan, expecting blaster shots. But the voice called out again “Look up on the hill”. Ben peered round the fin again, standing up on the hill; some distance away was man clearly wearing a Corsair combat tunic and jacket. His hands were held out, showing he was not holding a weapon; a gesture of faith Laowai thought to himself. “You are Corsairs?” he called out. The man on the hill called back “Indeed we are"

Ben stood and stepped out from behind his cover. As he did so, another, smaller person appeared beside the figure on the hill, turning his head he saw two figures emerge from the forest behind them. He could see he had been right about the danger of his position, for one person in each pair carried a blaster rifle.

The two figures on the hill were closer, and they walked down towards him. Ben holstered his blaster and held his hands up and open before him, his own gesture of goodwill to show he held no weapon. As the pair drew closer he could see that they were in fact an older looking man and a younger boy who couldn’t be a day over fifteen, it was the boy that was carrying the rifle. Both wore attire that would identify them as Corsairs, though the younger one’s clothing, while in corsair style was obviously cruder and lacked the leather and metal trappings which adorned the older mans'.
The stopped at the foot of the hill around ten meters away. The older man spoke again. “I am Ernesto Crusellas, who might you be pilot”?
Laowai lowered his hands, keeping them away from his holster. “My name is Ben Laowai” he replied.
The man scratched his beard and said “Laowai? Strange name for a Corsair isn’t it? You have the look of a Kusari about you”

Ben heard a noise behind him and knew that the two others from the forest were much closer; he stayed alert, though he did not see any immediate threat in the poise of the man and boy in front of him. “My mother was Kusari” Ben answered, “Though my father was a Corsair, he flew in the Huerta raid on Malta”
The one calling himself Ernesto Crusellas raised his eyebrows, “The Huerta raid? Yes I know it; you say your father flew in that raid?”
Laowai nodded, “He flew and died in that raid.”

Crusellas continued to study him carefully, but Laowai had his own questions; “And this is a funny place to find a Corsair isn’t it? I heard that the attempt to colonise this planet was a failure?”
“That is what I think is widely believed” said the other man, “though obviously not an entire failure.”

Laowai decided to break the stalemate. “I am Corsair pilot Ben Laowai, attached to the fighter wing of Leon, I was attacked by Hessian fighters on my patrol here and obviously…” he gestured at his upturned fighter, “… the outcome of that was not what I had hoped for, if you are corsairs, then you are bound to aid me”
The older man screwed up his mouth as if thinking, then, finally he approached closer and held out his hand “You crashed your Titan, though it’s a Titan no less, and you have the knowledge to invoke our traditional code, I will trust you are who you say you are”
Laowai took the man's hand and shook it firmly. “Follow me” Crusellas said, “You spent the night out here in the cold last night, our settlement is only a few kilometers from here, tonight you may stay with us, and tomorrow we will see to your fighter.”

Laowai nodded in appreciation, the two other men from the forest had now joined them and he greeted them, they too wore the same crudely fashioned corsair styled garb that the younger boy wore
Ernesto Crusellas slapped him on the back, “So” he said, “Your father flew in the Huerta raid? We still had working transmitters when that raid took place, it was all over the local news” He smiled, “You invoked our traditional code, it seems that your father taught you well in our customs, pity he didn’t teach you to land just as well”. Crusellas laughed and they moved off, Laowai couldn’t help but chuckle himself.


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