PORT: EMERGENCY LANDING

[returnjourney]

PORT: EMERGENCY LANDING

June 25th, 2022 – July 4th, 2022
Something's gone wrong.

On June 25th, the Navarch makes an announcement — not over the CommLinks, but the ship's PA system. It might surprise you to find the ship has a PA system, but her tone is brisk, businesslike.

She announces that the Peregrine is making an emergency landing, on the nearby planet of Pugreo. And in under half an hour, the ship lands heavily — crashes, it might be more accurate to say — in the middle of an abandoned amusement park. Or, well, at least a closed amusement park.

The full OOC write-up for the event is here. If you have any questions about the event, please ask here.

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1. Crash Landing

Even if you miss the announcement, you won't miss the alarms. They blare down the halls, lights flickering as the ship reroutes power to its forward shields, bracing for too-quick entry into the atmosphere. The message is clear: find somewhere to hunker down and ready yourself as well as you can for impact.

The ship hits the ground at 8:07 A.M., Peregrine standard time, hard enough to disrupt its built-in gravity and tear through a small shed like paper. The crash indiscriminately bounces wardens and inmates off the floor, along with anything else not nailed down. Anyone in the open-air areas — or, worse, near a hull breach — will find themselves thrown overboard. The rest of you, well, hopefully you find yourself with nothing more serious than some cuts or bruises.

Passengers will exit the ship to find it's already evening on the planet of Pugreo, but the locals who come to investigate are friendly and attentive. A few of them make casual mention of an upcoming holiday and the Peregrine's fortuitous timing, but fail to elaborate on specifics.

2. Lookout & Repair

All passengers are asked to secure resources and guard the Peregrine, though those with the means to assist in other ways won't be refused. Wardens especially are expected to keep close tabs on inmates; circumstances make it much harder to tell who is or isn't sneaking around.

There are members of the maintenance crew around, investigating the hull breach and organizing bots. While most of them are too busy for conversation, you might be able to catch one of them here.

The amusement park is quiet, almost desolate without a crowd coming and going, and it's recommended everyone travel in pairs. While the locals have been polite and the park mercifully closed in anticipation of the holidays, the Peregrine staff didn't have time to research Pugreo. And without humans as a steady deterrent, there are wild animals to consider.

3. The Purge

A day or so after the Peregrine crashes, the Deathbed Blossoms bloom — and the Purge officially begins. The aggression of the locals is sudden, but calculated; the ones who show up in the night, to loot the Peregrine and strip it for parts, are well-practiced and familiar with violence. There is little discrimination in their targets.

Not all of the locals participate in the violence, however — or at least not willingly, under the influence of the Deathbed Blossom's pollen. A few people take refuge in the tunnels or use them to flee the city; some seek out the forest-dwellings, reputedly high enough in the trees that the worst of the pollen doesn't reach them.

The pollen will wear off after a while, so long as you aren't constantly exposed to it. It isn't the worst idea to wrestle the badly affected back aboard the ship or even into solitary, whether they're a warden or inmate. The ship's shields keep out the worst of the pollen...so long as no one contaminates the area some other way.

4. Escape

Finally, the ship is space-worthy and ready for takeoff. It isn't back up to 100% after possible sabotage, but the maintenance crew can at least guarantee it's safe.

This time, Archimedes sends a brief ping to everyone's CommLinks. It's time to get back aboard as quickly as possible, lest you be left behind. And after the mimics, the last thing the Peregrine needs are more stowaways, so you'll want to lose any pursuers — and quickly.

Comments

[nineteenfortyfive]

"The point of the Purge doesn't matter when everyone's out of their bloody minds. I'm not playing this horrible game."

She declares to the trained killer, soaked in blood.

Claire takes a step back. As if that will help her any.

[rank1]

"Why not? It's been sick."

He wipes the blade off on the front of his jeans, still advancing. Gotta keep your tools in shape, right?

[nineteenfortyfive]

Sick indeed.

"What about our friends from the ship? We can't let them come to harm."

She tries to stay rooted, but there's another small footstep back. He's fucking with her. For as rough and tumble he may be, this has to be below him. Low hanging fruit.

"Let's go, Travis."

[rank1]

"Yeah," he agrees, and there's a little twitch to his expression, brows waggling. Grin wide. "Let's go."

He takes two long strides to close the distance between them faster, machete pointed up.

[nineteenfortyfive]

Claire certainly doesn't like that. She looks like a deer in headlights when the voice at the back of her head finally speaks up loud enough to be heard.

She spins on her heel to run back the way she came, but it's obvious who is the faster of the two.

[rank1]

Travis breaks out into a run after her, and he's practically breathing down her neck before he swings, aiming to bury the blade in her back.

"Strawberry on the shortcake!" he yells, as he does so.

[nineteenfortyfive]

The blade makes contact with Claire, who screams as she falls to the ground. Screams so loud she's aware of her own ears ringing. Every brush with death has been different, be it by the sea or sickness or something else. This feels like something on another level. It's not just a brush with death. It's a collision.

She screams for help as she tries to crawl with the arm not pinned under her body, but the blade means she's not going anywhere. Her nerves won't cooperate. Probably cut or she's already in shock. It's over, she knows it, but maybe she can at least draw someone's attention. Make Travis run or at least fucking feel like he should.

She knew this would happen.

[rank1]

Travis comes to a violent halt with her, catching himself with a waved arm and an awkward extra step. He laughs, off the cuff, but the calm settles over him again quickly. He drops down to crouch with her.

"Wow, that went fast," he says, and he pulls the machete out with a sickening wet noise. "I never liked killing women, but sometimes that's just how the game goes. No hard feelings, right? You were in the wrong place at the wrong time."

[nineteenfortyfive]

Screaming wipes out her voice, so when the blade comes out, she's silent as her head drops to the ground. Her strength is leaving her as quickly as her blood is, quickly pooling.

Unfocused eyes try to land on Travis, and she tries to lift her head so she can properly spit at him, but the power just simply isn't there. So, the pink-and-white glob just sort of flies from her mouth in a hiss, expression pinched before her lids droop as consciousness floods out of her.

[rank1]

Travis steps back, even if she didn't stand a chance of hitting him. Lessons learned from the past, maybe. His grin flickers.

"Claire," he says, a little harder. "The world's a shitty place. Sometimes you don't get any more choice in how you leave it than how you came into it, right?"

He lets the machete hang at his side for a second, a rivulet of blood sliding down the side to pool and then drip, drip, drip. He looks down at her body, the little trembles of an interrupted nervous system, and when his gaze settles on the exposed back of her neck his grin has faded entirely, leaving his mouth with an ugly neutrality. He thinks about how her body will lay here in the dirt until it is a putrid mess, just like the others, and how animals will feast on them and then birds will pick at the bones and then insects will tear away the microscopic remains. Right back to the earth, yeah? As nature intended.

Maybe her clothes will remain. And oh, shit. Microplastics. The micro plastics, too. Bizarre how you can't just stand over someone you've killed and think about the whole body being taken apart without remembering there's microplastic pollution in like, 80% of people's blood, the same ones you can find on the very tip of Everest and at the deepest parts of the oceans, the parts where the fish don't have eyes and shit because no light reaches there. But there are micro plastics. Where they are, people were. How fucking influential they are. They can go everywhere, but they can't totally go back to the earth.

That thought, amongst all others, is sobering.

"Hey, I'm sorry," he says, and crouches down at her side. Lays a hand on her back, over the wound. Nothing's going to fix this shit but he can at least give her what he didn't give the others. He closes his eyes for a beat and mumbles something –– how twisted it is to fight someone whose back is turned –– and then he gets up again and shucks off his jacket. He hangs it on a knob in a tree. He takes the machete and starts cutting up the ground.

It takes an hour, but he digs enough of a grave that he can drag her into it by her ankles and bury her in it. By time he's finished piling the dirt on top of her, he realizes he didn't go deep enough, and her nose is sticking out. Tendrils of hair. The point of a shoulder where her body is a little twisted. Oops.

He's fucking beat, though, and the dirt clings to the blood soaked into his clothes, and he smells like rot. Is he supposed to dig her out again and dig deeper? Fuck, that'll take hours. Doesn't he have shit to do?

"We're not going to see each other again," he informs her, or at least the tip of her toes. "I'm definitely going to Hell. You? Who can say. It's not up to me. But I hope wherever you go, you're at peace."

And then Travis wanders down the path. Where he's going, he doesn't know.