When Riders Crosleigh

Chapter One - Beached

Ernie jerked awake. He reached up but his hands didn't touch his face but instead something else. He blinked away the sleep in his eyes and found he couldn't see. Why can't I see? He spasmed about. Rapid heartbeat thudded in his ears. He breathed in deep and let it out. Remember you're still in your flight suit. The hissing sound all around him was the oxygen canister. You're still in the seat. You're still in the seat. The seat was still in the ship. The eight-point harness had done its job and kept him in place.

He wiped the sand off his helmet's visor. That helped but not by much. The sun had set. The night sky lay above while a sand covered horizon stretched out in every direction except behind him. A canyon of rock rose up. Higher up, was the edge of the ravine where he had come to stop and ultimately fell not to his death.

Ernie didn't turn on his helmet torch. He reached down between his legs and found the crash ax. He jiggled the harness's release, but it still refused to budge. He sawed his way out of the restraints. He hoisted himself up and out of the cockpit. Much to his surprise, the seat didn't eject for comic relief.

"Alrighty, tell me how bad it is." He said to the buggers.

Ernie looked about but the familiar wireframe of his eye HUD didn't appear.

Seriously, this is not the time. He thought.

The eye HUD remained as silent as the world around him.

"How much oxygen do I have left?" he said.

"Two hours." A monotone male voice nearly made him jump out of his skin. It belonged to his flight suit's emergency survival system. A system he rarely used since his buggers would've handled it for him.

My buggers aren't working. At all. Something must be interfering with their signal. Ernie thought. He shook his helmet about to free itself from the rest of the sand.

"Give me an atmosphere reading." He said.

"Inconclusive."

"Seriously?" Ernie reeled that back in and sighed. "Fine. Can I breathe it or not?"

"Unknown. Suit's atmosphere sensors are off-line."

Ernie nodded. "Fine. We'll just take inventory while I try not suffocating. Two hours. Plenty of time for a plan." He walked around the fighter. Her landing on the desert floor had left a ditch a dozen meters long. The rocky remains of the ledge had impacted all around the fighter. Her undercarriage was probably beat to shit but at least the landing gear hadn't been extended. Oddly enough, there's no sign of the Necromancer Cloak and or animal life. Which didn't leave him with a good feeling so far since there should be some sort of animal life here but it's nothing but a desert.

What killed everything? Ernie dusted off the manual temperature gauge on his suit's right arm and found it was pleasant ninety degrees Fahrenheit. In the morning it'll probably be in the triple digits. Let's hope the cargo bay is still intact.

Erwin pulled out the ignition keys and wrapped them around his wrist. The second thing on his list was finding and opening the emergency first aid kit. He carefully read the instructions about the toxic atmosphere and found the green telltales on the outside of the kit an encouragement but kept his helmet on anyway. Besides the miles worth of gauze, oodles of pain meds there was a torch inside with shielded batteries and a flare gun.

He attached the torch to his other wrist. Flare gun went into one of his suit pockets. He broke open the back-up atmosphere glow stick.

Green was good. Red was toxic. Anything in between was something he hadn't had the pleasure of seeing. The neon orange it returned with didn't leave him with a happy feeling.