Chapter Text
I have been in orbit with Copper 9 for about three days now trying to find any remaining signs of life. The more I investigate, the more I lose the hope that humanity is still alive. I change the orbital path of my ship each time I complete a rotation around the planet. However, the ship is beginning to run low on power due to nobody building batteries for the past month. It's been like this for about a year now, nobody running the ship other than me. I had cut the electricity from the primary engines to save power about 2 weeks ago, and it's going to last me another three weeks before I run out of power. I can’t wait too long before I have to land on Copper 9 anyway to find resources, if there are any left.
The initial scans of Copper 9 from when I first arrived three days ago were… bad. The core had undoubtedly and completely collapsed like some of the other planets JcJenson had colonized, the reason is never stated oddly enough. When I had approached the planet, things were already visibly weird, like strangely shaped cracks in the planet that were halfway hidden by the dark side of the planet. Common sense tugged at me to turn around leave, yet my desperate need for resources and human contact overrode that feeling. It would be better to take my chances and go down and scavenge to stay alive with resources than to just die in space without ever setting foot on a planet.
The first two days were rough, there were no signs of anything living other than a small, circular patch of forest with about a four mile radius. There was a frozen lake in the center with a large, half submerged factory-like building that slightly, yet briefly interfered with the sensors once when passing over while I wasn’t fully paying attention. I had also planned for when I would inevitably go down to scavenge and salvage what resources I could find by studying how rendezvous worked and the functions of landing process with the pods.
I was just about to go to sleep on another failed day when my surface sensors picked up something… odd. I stumble over to investigate and I see that it shows a massive object that seems to be moving. Then I see much smaller, much faster moving objects around it, about three of them. I can’t tell what they are but the large object vaguely resembles a robotic dinosaur. I look through my JcJenson Drone Guidebook frantically and see a section labeled “The Sentinel”. Which is a Velociraptor-like drone that is designed to exterminate defective worker drones and other non-described things. But they should be nowhere near that large, only about 6ft tall at most. And what are the flying objects? I wonder for a time until I come to the conclusion that the small objects must be people, or something made by people. “I’d be damned” I said to myself with shock and relief
I begin to start the landing process, something I have never done before nor seen anybody do before. All I have is the thousand page long Pilots Manual to guide me through the steps as well as my research on how to run the landing pods functions. “Alright, here goes nothing. Let's try not to die.” I say with sarcastic enthusiasm as I gather about a week of food and water, a water filter for when the water would eventually run out, a lighter, a knife for hunting and defense if necessary, and my landing suit with a spare oxygen tank that lasts about 6 hours on top of the 6 hours worth of oxygen already in the suit. I then ran a scan of the planet's atmosphere and conditions. I wait a few moments as it registers before it says.
Copper 9: Earth-sized Terrestrial Planet. Status: Colonized.
Scan Results:
Air: Completely Unbreathable! Composed of Asbestos, Ammonia, CO2, and more.
Gravity: 9.503 m/s squared.
Temperature: -53 degrees Celsius (-63.4 degrees Fahrenheit).
Note: the snow like particles are toxic silicates, DO NOT TOUCH WITHOUT PROTECTION!
WARNING: Extreme Toxic Silicate Storm’s present on world, be aware of shelter areas.
“Well, fuck. That is not ideal at all.” I say in response to the results. Afterwards, I begin the landing process and detach the landing craft from the ship. I fire up the boosters for a few seconds to leave orbit and begin my descent into the atmosphere.
Initially, the ride is rough but I gain full control of the ship’s direction of travel and angle it right to line the heat shield up to protect the pod relatively quickly. I begin to direct the ship into the atmosphere. As I begin to enter the atmosphere the inside of the ship begins heating up significantly due to the massive amount of friction with the air molecules. I conclude that the outside must be around 1,600 degrees Celsius due to the similarities to earth's atmosphere based on old scientific notes out of boredom and curiosity.
Then the pod's power cuts briefly for unknown reasons and I begin to lose control. “Oh shit!” I say out of reaction to the ship beginning to tilt out of the way of the heat shield. Out of pure luck though, the pod fully enters the atmosphere and the ship begins to cool. When I look at the structural integrity, I see that half the ship is on fire. “DAMN IT” I say as I fire the engines to align myself in a safe emergency landing position but I am unable to get the right position before a fuel leak warning pops up on the screen.
WARNING: Fuselage leak at engine number 3, SHUT OFF ALL ENGINES IMMEDIATELY!
I quickly shut off the engines to prevent further damage and deploy the landing parachutes to slow the ship down as much as possible for a controlled crash. It works for a time as I am able to slow down considerably until the fire consumes and destroys the parachutes. I then brace myself for impact and close my eyes and finally say “Well… this will be a rough landing. If I am to die here, so be it.” As the ship counts down the ETA until impact, I prepare for a lot of tossing and turning and an unfortunate yet decently high chance of death. “6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Impact imminent” As soon as it finishes, I feel a rough jolt as I nearly fly out of my seat. Fortunately, the seatbelt catches me though but the rest of the ship tosses and turns. Then, with a large thud as a large object hits the back of my head, I black out.