Fall:
“Private First Class Dante Norton, 3rd Battalion “Dust raiders” second platoon Charlie squad”. The sentence that just kept playing in his mind for some reason. It was almost like a dream. Everything blurry and the muffled sound of chaos all around. Almost like he wasn’t there. Then it hit him. It all cleared out. It was no dream. It was a nightmare.
"Mayday mayday mayday! This is dropship Siera-5 ! I lost my left engine and hydraulics barely holding! We are going down at grid square Juliet-Tango 4-… Norton looks around. The dropship is violently shaking as the pilot struggles to keep it from freefall. The sound of metal grinding can only be muffled by the noise of the right engine failing. The cabin was filled with smoke and metallic dust and some panels on its walls and sealing were blown open revealing failing hydraulics and sparking wires. The rear left wall had some holes and a small fire going on it.
The whistling sound that the dropship made as it fell closer and closer to the earth only grew louder and thinner. The pilot turns around from his seat and screams through the cockpits glass window. " Everyone hang on!". Norton clutches his M4RA rifle with both his hands tightly as he braces for his imminent death! He closes his eyes shut, fear and adrenalin flooding his system when suddenly-…
Norton opens his eyes. He tries to adjust his eyes as the impact shook him to the core. He is in pain but he cannot get a feel of his injuries as his whole body hurts. It was a sensation he was not going to forget any time soon. It was as if every nerve in his body fired telling him that he should be dead. Yet he was here. He could not see well as his vision was still blurred from the shock but his hearing was mostly ok, other than a faint ringing. The cabin echoed with the occasional sparks from the dropships electronics and what was left of its damaged hydraulics. The engines had died, and for a moment he thought he did too. However he could not hear any of it. All he could hear was dead silence. And that horrified him more than what had just happened to him.
As his shock wears out, his eyes begin to focus again slowly. He sees something big in front of him. His breath stops for a split second as he realises he is staring at the inner wall of the dropship that had inverted itself inwards. He feels something touching his right hand. But when he turns he realises in horror that it was the now severed arm of the marine that was sitting next to him. Only now it was barely attached to his corpse. Though it can’t exactly be considered a corpse as it had been crushed by the wall where the seat was and the inverted outer wall. The being next to him was nothing but flesh, blood and crashed bone and even the thought of its sight sent shivers down his spine. Well, he thought. At least his spine is intact. The only thing left that could confirm its former identity was that arm. And it had a medic patch on it. Norton looks to his left and sees his fellow squadmates lying motionless in their seats, in awkward positions. He stops for a moment to listen, hopping to detect signs of life. A cry of pain, a grunt or even a gasp. Nothing. Dead. Silence.
Norton sits up and raises his hands grabbing the bars that kept him in place on his seat. He tries to pry them open with his hands but as he expected they won’t budge. He then turns to his left. The marine next to him is leaning forward, thick droplets of blood and saliva dripping from his mouth in somewhat long intervals. He puts his hand to the marines chest and feels shattered bones poking his fingers as he pulls him back on his sit. It is one of the 2 combat engineers in his squad. Luckily for him he happened to sit right next to him. Had he not he would have been stuck on his seat indefinitely, probably dying from starvation and thirst or be shot by whoever shot the dropship down. Norton reaches for the marines belt and after some feeling around he pulls what he was hopping to find. A blowtorch. At this point the feeling of pain all over his body started to fade, becoming more localized in his chest and back. He lights the blowtorch and sighs. It is working. He pulls himself as far back from the bars that keep him in place and begins cutting. In a few minutes the bars are cut and he is freed from his seat.
Norton falls on his knees as he is unable to maintain his balance. That is when he realises the kind of shock he is in. His knees gave out. He realises that some of the burned metal had gotten on his sleeve. He pats it off. He struggles but eventually manages to lift himself from the floor. He takes a few steps into the cabin. He begins to check each and every marine he can get to. None have pulse. And even if they could still be saved he has nor the training nor the supplies to save them. He doesn’t know if their seats too are stuck shut so to add to that he would not have the time or the fuel to cut them all out in time. He keeps telling himself there is nothing more he can do. He begins to gather their info tags. Those he could reach at least. He stuffs them all in one of his pouches.
Norton reaches for one of the doors in the dropship. It is a little open and a dull, grey light can be seen through it. He puts his hands in the gap and lightly pulls outwards. Yep, the bolts broke. Just need to pry it open. He then pulls with all his strength. The door slides open more easily than he expected. The grey light blinds him for a moment as his eyes adjust to it. He feels the cold wind as tiny rain droplets fall on his face. He looks up. It is cloudy. Almost ready to rain. That is the climate on LV-624. A jungle planet filled with dense vegetation and frequent rains and storms. He steps out of the dropship. He can now smell the grass and the soil, along with some smoke and burning jet fuel. He takes a few steps then stops. He looks around him. He is alone.
Norton checked every single one of em. He is stocked on medical supplies. He was not injured in the crash, miraculously. Except a bunch of bruises his body was intact and no bones were broken. Or so the scanner said. He took it from the other medic. Though he doesn’t quite know how to use it, he needs it more than the medic. The image of the arm returns to his mind. He shakes his head trying to ignore it. He has more important things to worry about. He is completely alone in the middle of the jungle. He was able to salvage a decent amount of MREs from his fallen squadmates. No working radios however. His earpiece was intact but there was no signal around as the boosters on the dropship where destroyed. No intact radio packs either. Norton pulls out a map. He heard the pilot shout in the radio about their approximate location before they crashed. “Whiskey outpost”, he reads. Around 20 clicks NE. He will need to be at least 1 click away to even hope his earpiece will transmit. Not through this dense jungle. He looks at his watch. 1000 hour he reads. He needs to start walking. He has a long way home.