Upon a Salvage Shore

Escape

Carter looked through one of the portholes in the side of his life pod to see how bad the damage to the transport was. He frowned, his spirits sinking. Though he had expected the ship to be in bad shape he had not expected to see the large debris field around her. Chunks of hull floated free like small fish around a whale in some deep ocean of ancient Earth. As he looked he noted that not all of the debris had come from the transport. Using the scope built into his helmet he picked out the remains of a number of fighter craft, both from the CP and the jZav'Etch. By his reckoning, there were no less than thirty enemy fighters mixed with the shattered remains of his own people's ships. He was no expert, but to him it looked as if the cats had taken almost as bad a beating as the CP forces had.

Static crackled in his headset, drawing his attention to the communications screen on the bulkhead. The pod was drifting clear of the debris and radiation making it possible for a signal to get through to him. He flicked a switch on the screen, extending the pod's antenna.

"Life po... *crackle* ...80, do *static* ...ead?" came a garbled voice through his headset.

Carter tweaked the gain on his antenna and feathered the receiver to a tighter beam, homing in on the broadcast point.

"Li *static* od 280, *crackle* you read?" came the voice again.

Carter refined his settings.

"Life pod 280, do you read?" this time the voice came through much clearer.

"This is life pod 280," Carter said a little breathlessly. "I read you. Signal is weak and intermittent. Over."

"Carter?" the voice asked, sounding surprised. "Is that you?"

"This is Carter," he confirmed. "Who's this?"

"Carter!" shouted the voice, clearly pleased to hear Liam was alive. "Holy s**t! Man, we thought you'd bought it back there."

"I made it out," Liam said, grinning. "Who's this?"

"It's George, man," came the voice again, the signal growing weaker. "We just picked up your signal when your pod cleared the debris."

"George!" Liam shouted into his mic. "Listen to me. Your signal is getting weaker. Record this. My pod is damaged. I have no atmosphere. Stellar telemetry indicates there's an M class planet close enough for me to reach it. I'm going there. Got that?"

No reply.

"George?" Liam shouted into his mic. "George? Anyone? Respond! Oh holy s**t! Respond! Please respond!"

He listened for minutes, but there was no reply. The pod had drifted too far from his friends for its little transceiver to pick up anything. Sergeant Liam Carter was alone again. He sat back, his energy flagging, and shook his head. After a short time he came to grips with his situation. He had been trained to survive and Carter was naturally tough-minded. His friends had heard him and the course of the ship was known. It might take some time, but eventually a rescue ship would come for him. It might be a month or it might be several years, but the CP would send a ship to pick him up. He just had to stay alive long enough.

A day after he launched the damaged life pod, Carter came into orbit around a blue, green and white globe. The pod's sensors would survey the surface for a few orbits and select the area most likely to support human life. It would then descend through the atmosphere and glide to the spot it picked out. A parachute would deploy and the pod would land. After that, it was all up to Carter.

Liam watched as the little pod went through its first orbit. He used his helmet scope to examine the planet, intending to gather as much information as he could. The pod circled in closer on the second pass and even closer on the third. The world looked so similar to Earth it was amazing. The continents were very different and the seas seemed to churn more violently, but the forests and planes looked home-like. Liam's mind was eased.

A warning light came on to tell him it was time to get into his acceleration couch. He pressed himself back into the padded frame on the bulkhead and drew the restraints over his bulky armor. The pod registered its only occupant was as secure as possible and began its descent.

Liam had chosen the couch across from one of the portholes so he might get a better idea of what to expect when he landed. The pod's flight over the sea showed him only open skies flecked with clouds, but when the parachute deployed and everything slowed down, Liam got a pretty good look at a very large island. It was covered in forest with a mountainous region on its eastern coast and what might be planes or marshes along a large river valley. It reminded him somewhat of England where he had been stationed the last time he had rotated to Earth. He remembered cool days and rainy nights and fields where sheep and cattle grazed. It had been a beautiful country. Perhaps this would not be so bad after all.

His pleasant musings were interrupted by the sight of a swathe of shattered trees that ran across a large portion of a forest. It looked as though something had crashed there. Something larger than a life pod.

"f**k!" Liam barked. "Goddamnittohell! f*****g pod picked this place to land me? s**t!"

It was possible that the crashed vessel was one of the fighters that had defended the transports. Liam mentally crossed his fingers, hoping such was the case. Murphy's Law indicated, though, that this was absolutely, positively a jZav'Etch ship. And if Murphy, the eternal optimist, had any sway in the matter, the pilots would have survived.

As best he could, Liam marked the location on the pod's nav computer. It would account for drift and wind currents and give him a pretty good idea where the fighter was. Among Liam's first tasks would be finding the fighter and determining if there were hostiles around. If he were very lucky, the ship would prove to be a CP fighter and the pilot would not only be alive but a tall busty blonde or a leggy redhead. If he were very unlucky the jZav'Etch pilots would not only be alive but angry and starving. The cats did not play nice with humans.