Sarin

Lost in Space.
-By Sarin, Wraith Raider Scout.

This is the story of me, Sarin the Wraith Raider. An insight in some of the events, that shaped me into the person I am today.
My life began on the Icy Planet of Chill, I was the first born in a litter of five,
three of us survived the first year in the den, two males and a female.
I had a close to carefree childhood, we were a small litter and never missed anything.
The first couple of years went by playing with my brothers and sisters, and the other younglings of the collony. And as i grew old enough, my father and older brothers taught me how to become an effective hunter. Combining stealth, cunning and speed.
This was a great sport, for a long period I hunted all day. I killed everything that moved, and wasn´t a Wraith Raider. Soon there was nothing on this planet that I couldn´t bring down, and it started to become routine.
I began to pay more attention, to the occational SLA recruit ships that dropped by on a regular basis. They had these huge soldiers called Stormers and Shaktars, and by the way they were equiped I concluded that they must be facing some decant pray.
I collected some info material about the various traning programs, they especialy recomended the scout package. I decided to join, and the following year as I reached the age of 10.
I hugged my proud parents goodbye, as I signed in at the recruit ship.

I went to Menu for Opperative training, and after the initial 8 months I teamed up with som other fresh opperatives and formed the group "MAS or Mort-All-Stars" two Humans, a Frother ,an Ebon, a Brain Waister & me.

We took the usual approch, easy Blue BPN´s at the begining then a little harder as our skills progressed.
At a point we must have been over-confident, we went for a Black one and it sure was suicidal.
Under circumstances that i am not allowed to talk about, half the group ended up hospitalized.
The rest of us decided to make some quick easy money while they were gone and signed in for an off world expedition/retrival BPN.
This should have been a easy non-problematic 3 day trip, but it turned out to be my worst nightmare.

We started off Mort, me, Angus the frother, Peter the human plus the small foldships crew of two humans and an Ebon folder.
We were supposed to fold out the first day, find a lost drone that have been scanning the planet for minerals on the second and then fold back on the third.

We folded, but unfortunaly we folded into a heavy meteor shower and the ship was battered by thousands of small rocks and sand particles, which totally shredded the outer hull and some of the vital systems were pierced. The crew rapidly steered the ship out of the danger zone, we could see various fluids escaping from the ship, some crystalizing on exit ,some wobbling like oil drops in water..
We decided to abandon the mission and head home, the nervous crew sat a course towards Mort which at this speed was months away, but we had to wait for the Ebon to restore her own and her suits flux before she was able to fold us back.

We slowly drifted away from the planet, while the crew was checking the systems. It was getting colder and they were starting to look a little concerned.
The sheilds around the reactor had been torn off, and the fluids we had seen escaping were from the heating and cooling systems of the ship.
It seemed that within the next 12 hours we would either be fryed by the overheating reactor core, or frozen to aproximatly -50c.
With no discusion the Ebon pushed the button, and the reactor left the spacecraft.
There was a second of darkness while the backup batterys turned on the light, all other systems went dead silent.
The Ebon left the bridge without a word, when she passed me she looked deeply into my eyes. At that instance I understood what was about to unfold.
I wouldn´t let my worst enemy relive the next 10 hours of my life, lets just say that it was quite emotional.
And now the only sounds on the vessel was my breath and heart beat.

We were only supposed to be out here a for a couple of days so we hadn´t really packed any supplies and when they where gone, hunger struck.
I had known that I would probably be put in this situation, sooner or later.
I tried to make the supplies last as long as possible but now they were gone and I was hungry.

I decided to start with the crew, I had only known them for a couple of hours and hadn´t developed any personal feelings towards them.
The humans seemed the most natural and I must admit, they did taste a little like chicken.
It was a bit harder with the Ebon, I felt a little scared not knowing exactly that this Ebb thing was, and the look in her eyes still haunted me. But after the first couple of bites she slipped down easyer and helped me battle my hunger for a almost a week.

Now only my teammates were left, I sat for hours staring out the window in the hopes of seeing a glimpse of civilisation.
But I only saw distant stars in the darkness, again i had to make a choice.
Well I probably had made this choice already, cause I had never really liked Angus and I had no second thougths whatsoever, while my teeth were impaling his frozen clan tatoo.
He tasted quite synthetic, something I hadn´t tasted before but it wasn´t that bad and I ate the rest of his left underarm. My thoungue was becomming numb.
Suddenly I thought I heard someone walking on the spaceship, I closed my eyes to sharpen my senses, but as I did that it felt like the ship was starting to shrink around me.
I opened my eyes again and the ship was inflating and deflating in a pulse, synchronized to my heart rate which were starting to rise.
Childrens laughter was suddently all around me, I could hear footsteps and mumbling like there were hundreds of people aboard.
In the corners of my eyes I could see their shadows moving, but in front of me everything was close to normal, well except for the now rapidly pulsating spaceship.

I closed my eyes again, immediatly I felt the ship shrinking. This time faster, it tried to crush me ...for what I´d done to it´s crew. Eyes open the ship was still pulsating.
I looked at the Frother who was smiling at me, his crystallized eyes wide open all of his injector ampuls empty, apparently he didn´t freeze to death.
The trip went on for hours but it felt like days, I didn´t know I lost track of time while trying to keep a grip on reality.

This was a nerve wrecking experience, the next couple of days were a mental battle to remain sane and focused.
I was alone, totally alone. I would never get used to this feeling, this absence of company.
For the first time since I signed in at Menu, I missed the den, I missed running carelessly over the endless snowfields of Chill, with my brothers and sisters .....why did I ever leave ?

I stared for hours through the window, still nothing but distant stars in the darkness.
They seemed to be stationary, wasn´t the ship moving ? Would I be stuck here forever,
alone in space ?

I sealed off most of the spaceship manually to concentrate the remaining airsupplies to the bridge, where I was currently living. They had not yet reached critical low levels, but Peters wasn´t the most fit of the team, I had just half a week or so left of his poor skinny body.
And clearly the Frother was pumped full of something, that I wouldent expose myself to exept in extreme needs.
The batterys were starting to die, rescue must come soon....

Then on the 67´th day as I was sleeping, a loud “Klank” and a shiver of the spaceship woke me up.
I jumped up and ran to the observation window, my mind wasn´t playing tricks on me this time.
Something had attached to the top of the ship, it was a SLA ship.
I yelled out some rubbish in joy, and ran to the airlock. Two men in spacesuits were already in it, weapons drawn. They looked quite surprised when they saw me, the doors sprung open and they rushed in and pinned me to the floor. I was laughing frantically of joy which didn´t exactly calm them, but I didn´t care. This time there was no doubt, living things were touching me yet again.

I was put into custody, while an investigation was going on. Due to the long period of uncontrolled deep freezing, sadly neither of the crew or team could be retrieved.
After a week of numorous Honesty sessions, it was determined that I was talking the truth.
I was released into psychological treatment. This treatment that I rather would be free of going into details with, took two weeks. I was then sent on recreation on Orienta, where i had daily meetings with a cunsulting psychologist.
Since I had to pay for this “recreation” myself, and I didn´t really feel that sick, I decided to spend some time at the local Dojo´s to sharpen off my Nin-Jitsu skills.
I had been close to inactive for the last three months, so I could sure need some exercise.

I contacted the remains of my old team, we had been written off as dead two months earlier.
They had found replacements, but I was welcome to join them if I wanted.
I decided not to and find another team, one that I wouldn´t have a hard time looking in the eyes.