Pack by Circumstance (A short story) (Part 1)

Part 1: The Gathering

Explosions rocked the ship as Tormod Ripfang dashed his way through the ship in near darkness guided only by the red glare of the emergency lights and small fires around him. The claxons were going off with a loud shrill with the comm system announcing “All hands abandon ship, repeat abandon ship. Critical damage to the reactors overload imminent. Rally points have been transmitted via encryption for all survivors, Russ protect all of us.”

Tormod grumbled, “This was supposed to be a simple warp translation into a safe system, just a patrol….what in the seven Hels is going on?” He was just earlier with his pack taking their positions within the ship for warp translation. It was standard procedure to have all packs ready and at their assigned ship duty stations in the event of an emergency. It was usually just another boring drill, then once the ship captain gave the signal they could return to their training cages to spar, indulge themselves with some food and drink or enjoy respite in a rest cycle until duty called.

This was not the case, as they was deploying and the ship came out of translation the first explosions hammered the ship hull and sent a fireball down the corridor his squad was moving through. Only Tormod survived by some trick of fate as a blast door slammed down just in front of him as the blast of plasma was starting to melt the edges of his armor and ruined his helmet. Forced to remove it as the optics was damaged beyond repair, he snarled as the announcements started to echo through the ship as the alert klaxons started to go off. Something was attacking them….

The door before him was half open, sparks flying from the panel, it appears that someone carved into it with a power fist and ripped half the door back after a power failure caused it to no longer work. He smirked, “at least someone saved me the trouble” as he raced past the door into the savior pod section. One hatch remained open as he jumped inside to find it already occupied by some of his brethren. Quickly he slams a restraint harness over him and growls “Get us out of here…” in an impatient tone. “There is nobody else behind me and the entire deck is about to go!”

An older Space Wolf with a power fist glances up at Ripfang, “Ease up lad, we’ll make it…” Then he slaps the activation rune on the panel near him. The hatch started to close with a hiss as an explosion engulfed the bay in a wave of fire that licked around the hatch as the final hiss of pressure filled the pod leaving behind an orange glow from the view port showing the entire deck was an inferno.  A loud thump and click is all they heard as the pod was in motion spinning away from the ship towards the planet below.

Tormod was able to get a glimpse of the ship as the fires raged around it as it started to go to its final death. To him it was like the old stories of Hel itself had come and claimed the ship. Suddenly the ship exploded in a bright flash, the shockwave hit the pod moments later. Alarms started to go off and runes was flashing all over the console. Ferensian profanity and prayers to Russ flew through the pod as it began to spin in a wild decent.

The Wolf Guard calls out in an urgent voice, “Pod is off course, we have damage throughout, we must have been hit by debris…” Aaron didn’t find this reassuring and fell into his usual way of dealing with stress with banter, “Really? I thought this was all normal, but again this is my first exploding ship that I have been forced to evacuate…”

 Smoke was already starting to rise from the panel as the ship was already starting to hit the atmosphere of the planet and shaking the pod like how a child of the gods would play with a toy.  Everyone was already saying prayers or growling with displeasure as the pod began to vibrate their internal organs and the gravity was starting to claim the occupants making the restraints uncomfortable. The pod began to buffer against the atmosphere and the air around the pod howled like wolves on a dark Ferensian night stalking for their souls. Then without warning the pod struck the surface of the planet.