New Traveller
The story so far…
Raif emerged groggy from cold sleep, his befuddled mind unable to pinpoint what, if anything, was wrong. Then it came to him he could feel the warmth of a celestial body not the cold recovery couch he expected to awaken on. Then he realised that he could smell odours of living , odours that tantalised his senses and sent his nerves alight with the joy of life. It was at this point that Raif’s fear kicked in he was not on board a ship he was awakening from cold sleep on a planet.
Lucien Darkstrider came to instantly his keen faculties ignoring the cold sleep fugue. He realised at once that something was not right and thrust the hatch from his cryo tube open and breathed in the planetary air. The warm brown earthy scent and the pine odour was forgotten as the warmth of a sun caressed his torso. Gradually his eyes blinked out the sleep and he stared at an unspoiled wilderness. As he turned his head slowly he realised that the meadow land was now marred by the huge gouge of a crash landed ship.
Velcher groaned, he was sure every one of his bones had been broken. He had been awoken from cold sleep by the emergency systems and informed that the ship was about to crash. Luckily the cryo tube injected him with a muscle relaxant just as the ship crashed through the atmosphere. As it hit the ground Velcher blacked out coming round just as the rescue droid heaved his casket on to the ground. As Velcher took stock of his aches and pains he realised that he had no serious injuries.
Slowly the three stepped naked from their tubes and looked at each other. Waking up from cryo sleep was not a new experience for them, crashes were hazards that they had failed to avoid before what alarmed them most was the fact that they could not remember boarding a space craft let alone allowing themselves to enter the highly dangerous, often lethal, cryo tubes they now found themselves emerging from. Each man had this same thought and it dawned on them that would need to ascertain what had happened and where they were before they could make any plans.
They introduced themselves and proceeded to search the ship wreckage. They found their gear and some supplies and a working computer terminal they also managed to get some of the ships scanners to work and armed with a little local information set off to find civilization.
Civilization was to find them when they came across a patrol from an Imperial Navy outpost and it was only then that they realised that they had crashed on an interdicted planet …
