Chapter 2

Jack briefly wakes up from the crash and discovers some interesting things about the strange planet they've landed on.

Chapter 2

 

Unknown planet, Unknown system, Time 2000z, 2 November 2270 C.E.

 

I awoke to find myself staring at a white light. It was bright, and hurt to look at, so I squinted my eyes until they adjusted. I felt a cool breeze brush against my skin. I began wondering if I was dead, but quickly shunted the idea from my mind. I tried to sit up but a searing pain shot through my right shoulder. I grasped at it with my left arm and lay back down. My uniform shirt had been removed and I felt a blood soaked bandage on my shoulder. It didn’t feel like the shape it should have been.

“Just stay put for a while, sir. The pain will subside shortly,” I heard a young male voice to my right, I recognized his voice as the corpsman who had given me my physical before deploying on the Armstrong. His name eluded me.

I looked over in his direction and saw him tending another man on the ground. I looked past the two of them and saw more men and women lying on the ground, and some on cots. Some of them with intravenous racks over them keeping them sedated, easing their pain, or transfusing blood. There had to have been at least twenty to thirty wounded in this, well, as far as I could see it was an open field. I turned my head to the left and expected to see more open plains, but instead was greeted with the horrid sight of the crashed AFS Neil Armstrong, plumes of black smoke billowed above.

It all started to come back now. I remembered the wormhole, the loss of power, and the desperate attempt to prevent a crash. Then, I was hit by the railing, which must have broken my shoulder. I quickly deduced that somebody must have then carried me off the ship to this field after I passed out. With all these makeshift cots set up for the other wounded, several hours must have passed for this temporary camp to be set up and all the wounded rescued from the ship. I started wondering how many had made it unscathed, how many were lost, and if the people on the lifeboats suffered a similar fate. But I quickly abandoned those thoughts for more important matters.

“How long have I been out?” I asked.

“Oh, about three hours,” the corpsman said. He strode over to my cot and knelt at my side. While his voice was familiar I didn't recognize him, but on a ship with a thousand crewmembers it was hard to put a name to every face. “We had to keep you sedated while we prepared this ‘infirmary.’ You’ve suffered a compound fracture to your collarbone, the upper half of your humerus is shattered, and your shoulder blade has a minor crack. You’ve lost a lot of blood, so you may feel a little weak.”

It was then that I noticed the two IV’s stuck into my left arm. One hooked to a drip bag and the other just a needle.

“We have stopped the bleeding, but have not had a chance to set any of your bones. Triage says we have patients with more life threatening injuries to attend to at the moment. Normally we would keep you sedated until we’ve finished fixing you up, but the skipper wanted to talk to you. I’ve got you on a mild analgesic for the time being, and I’ll put you back on the sedative when you’ve finished chatting. Just try to relax.”

The corpsman gently pat my good shoulder, stood up, and walked away. He paused shortly to say something to the Captain standing nearby, who sauntered over to my side.

“How’s my XO doing?” he asked.

“A little hazy, sir. It’ll be a struggle, but I think I’ll pull through,” I winked and smiled at the Captain.

“Good to know you’re feeling well enough for a joke,” he chuckled. “I saw you take that blow from the railing and feared you would have some head trauma. Carried you off the ship myself. I needed you for your humor and sarcasm; it’s the only thing that keeps the atmosphere light on the bridge. We’ll need that now more than ever, Jack.”

“Well, I should hope you chose me as your XO for more than just humor and sarcasm, sir.”

“Perhaps,” was all Maxwell said before his smile disappeared, “As you may well know already, we are in a very dire situation. Nobody knows where we are, this planet is not on any navigational chart we have. Much of our stores were damage or destroyed. We only have food enough to last us five days, even with our diminished crew. We lost ninety-five men and women in the crash, and thirty-eight more are wounded. Over sixty are unaccounted for, so we assume they made it off on the lifeboats. We know nothing of the flora and wildlife to determine if it is safe to eat, in fact we haven’t seen any wildlife. No animals, no bugs, nothing. We were lucky the atmosphere here is breathable. We tested it before we left the ship. It’s considerably more oxygen-rich than Earth, so that might contribute to any light-headedness you’re feeling.

“I’ve sent several scouting parties out to discern more about the terrain, and maybe find some wildlife, intelligent life, or even civilization out there as well as search for any crashed lifeboats. As far as I can tell, this place is just one big, flat, plain of orange dirt and blue shrubs. The scouting parties have orders to return by dusk, which shouldn’t be too long. With any luck, one of them will have found something. We need to find civilization before we run out of food. The Armstrong is destroyed; there is no salvaging it except for spare parts, so there is no leaving this planet unless we find other means. Sustenance seems to be our main ‘time’ constraint. Perhaps there are beings living here that have space flight technologies that we can befriend.”

“How are the scout parties getting around?” I asked. “Were any recon jeeps able to be salvaged from the wreckage?”

“Yes, we were able to get six undamaged Spectre jeeps from the wreckage. Four more were salvaged as well as one of the Jotunn tanks, which our mechanics are working to repair. A few of the Phoenix and Valkyrie helos are still in the hangar, but we don’t have the manpower right now to even consider getting those back online at this point. The rest of the vehicles we found are FUBAR. All six Spectres are out with scout groups and we also have another four groups out on foot.”

“Are we fortified here?” I asked.

“Foster, as far as our scout reports are concerned, there’s no life around here for about twenty kilometers. We won’t need much more than a few perimeter patrols. Are you really expecting trouble?”

“You told me before to expect anything, but I guess you’re right, sir. I just can’t shake the feeling that this place isn’t as quiet as it seems to be. I don’t know. Call me paranoid.”

“You’re paranoid. We’ll be fine tonight, just relax.”

I sighed and looked back at the sky to see the position of the sun to get a judgment on the time of day. I was surprised when I saw two suns, a binary star system, one blue, one yellow. It must have been just before night. The large blue star was just above the horizon. The yellow star, half the size of the other, was about ten degrees above the blue one.

“Any idea how long a day is here?” I was full of questions.

“I don’t know yet, but Leonard might have figured it out by now. He and a few others have been working on all that physics stuff about this planet since the crash. I could send him over here if you want to talk to him.”

“Please do. The more I know about this place the better. I have a lot of unanswered questions.”

“I’m sure you do. I’ll go see if I can find him,” Captain Maxwell said before he left my side.

While I waited for Leonard, The corpsman came back with a new sedative bag.

“I’m gonna put you back on the sedative for now until we can work on your shoulder,” he said as he replaced my painkiller with the sedative. “It should kick in after about five minutes.”

“Hold on a sec,” I stopped him. “I need to talk to the Engineer. Max is sending him over. Can you hold off on the sedative for a while?”

“Sure. I’ll put it on an hour timer for ya. Can’t wait too much longer, Captain gave me orders to patch you up as soon as we stabilized our near fatal casualties. I’ll put you back on the analgesic until the sedative kicks in too. We’ll have you all patched up and in a cast within the next few hours.”

The corpsman reattached the analgesic IV to the second needle in my arm and gave me another pat on the shoulder before he left.

When Leonard arrived later, I learned much from him. Lieutenant Commander Duncan Leonard was the Engineering department head, or "Eng," on the Armstrong as well as an avid astrophysicist by hobby, a very intelligent man. When he wasn’t maintaining the operations of sea and space vessels, he was studying the stars and planets of the galaxy. He worked on the construction of the very first Gravity Well prototype, so it was only natural that he was stationed on the Neil Armstrong as head of engineering.

Leonard had apparently figured out that a day here lasted over two days on earth, or approximately fifty-three hours. Daylight lasted about twenty-nine hours while night was only twenty-four. The blue sun rose first while the yellow sun followed two and a quarter hours behind. Due to the straight path the suns traveled across the sky, Leonard concluded the world we were on must rotate on a perfectly vertical axis, thus making the only deviation in the amount of daylight due to the distance between the suns. And since there were two orbits to take into account, the planet around the stars, and the stars around each other, the fluctuation in the amount of daylight was very irregular. This meant the determination of seasonal lengths was nearly impossible at this point, and that was also assuming that the difference in daylight hours was enough to cause different seasons.

All this Leonard figured out simply by studying the movement of the stars. Calculated approximate figures from objects millions of kilometers away by observation. His acumen for celestial physics awed me. Since he had no more ship to maintain, he could spend most of his time discovering more about this planet and star system. Perhaps after a few “days” here, he would be able to figure out the length of a year, and how long it would take for the suns to orbit each other.

“This is all very fascinating. I’m very interested to hear more,” I slurred, “but I think the sedative is starting to kick in.”

“Yes, of course,” Leonard said. “You need rest, and I need to get back to my work anyways. I have some equipment still on the"“

  His words fell on deaf ears as I passed out mid sentence. I would have to see him again when my shoulder was patched up anyways.