THIS IS POPIGAI COMMAND! ASTEROID STRIKE IMMINENT, GENERAL QUARTERS, GENERAL QUARTERS, SET CONDITIONS 1 THROUGHOUT THE FACILITY. ALL PRISONERS RETURN TO THEIR CELLS IMMEDIATELY AND PERSONNEL REPORT TO ASSIGNED BUNKERS. I SAY AGAIN, ASTEROID STRIKE IMMINENT
Leaning back from the intercom, Warden Roscoe wipes a line of nervous sweat from his brow. The paltry detection arrays his lunar prison was equipped with were barely adequate for monitoring the movement of her many sister moons, let alone asteroids hiding behind their mother gas giant.
Grimacing, Roscoe pulls himself out of his chair and walks to the tac hologram, glaring at the inbound asteroid with contempt. He glances around the command room, double-checking that everyone else has already gone for their bunkers before screaming out in frustration,
“If you're watching, God, you're a fucking asshole! I haven't had one quiet week on this shithole for the last 10 years, and now I have a god damned asteroid on a collision course! Fuck you. Fuck you.”
With a snarl of rage, Roscoe turns away from the hologram and walks quickly to an elevator, violently swiping his override card to take him to his own personal safe room. As it lurches into motion and quickly accelerates, he reaches inside his jacket and pulls out a small bound leather case. Opening it, he grasps the skin-syringe and loads it with several doses before pressing it into the side of his neck, sighing in relief as waves of calm overwhelm his rage.
As soon as the elevator door opens Roscoe stumbles through and collapses onto his bed, determined to spend this crisis in a stoned stupor like so many others.....
“Fuck thisth.”
Meanwhile, aboard the research vessel Aniara, aka asteroid 4043921, dozens of warning sirens reverberate through the ship's frame informing the long-dead and frozen crew of life support failures, hull breaches, and impending ballistic impact. However, the sirens go unheard by the ship's experimental subjects, protected from the deadly vacuum by stasis pods stowed deep inside the center of the ship. The atmospheric entry and subsequent super-heating also goes unnoticed, but when the Aniara slams into the moon's surface and punches through to the vast cavern system several of the slumbering stasis pods are cracked open, the occupants slowly stirring to wakefulness.....
Cold. Stiff. Your brain slowly struggles into wakefulness, trying to reconnect with limbs forgotten for what seems like decades. With what seems like supreme effort you're able to move a claw, and then another, and then your entire arm returns slowly to your control. Taking a short break from the strenuous waking process you focus on the noises around you – there are small animals walking through the wreckage, and you can hear them fighting over something, probably food. Food. FOOD! Your stomach angrily contracts at the mere thought and suddenly the only thing you can think of is filling your gut. With renewed vigor, you work the life into your remaining limbs and force open the stasis pod with new-found strength.
You step away from the ruined pod and languorously stretch, your fine matte-gray scales barely reflecting any light. Extending all six limbs one-by-one you slowly unravel your long bony tail from your body and it whips around behind you, the blackened blade scything cleanly through the legs of an overturned metal table. You stretch your forelimbs, interlacing long bony fingers and popping the joints with satisfying clicks. A stabbing pain from your stomach halts your preen, and you grumble quietly as you glance about.
One of the small raccoon-like furred creatures is rummaging through the mess toward you, no doubt wondering if you're some new meal. You're quite happy to prove it wrong, striking with lightning-quickness and slaying it before it can cry out. Biting into it's flank, you curl your lips in distaste - the scavenger tastes foul, and the meat is thin and stringy. You eat it regardless, devouring the entire corpse in moments.
Belly full, you take a moment to take in your not-so-immediate surroundings. Dozens upon dozens of the stasis pods are scattered across the floor and there are at least a half-dozen of the scavenger mammals around the area. Shelves and tables have been thrown around every which way, and there are innumerable small objects strewn all over the floor of the cargo bay.
The reek of burning plastic suddenly hits you like a brick wall, assaulting your nostrils and badly irritating your airways. You break into a violent sneezing fit and your tail spasms behind you, sending your empty pod crashing to its side. The noise startles the scavengers, and you quickly find yourself alone in the cargo bay. Mentally shrugging, you explore around the room for a few minutes until a tired-sounding feminine voice comes crackling over the intercom,
“Oh good, I was starting to think that nothing had survived. Listen, this place is about to be swarming with armed people who will kill both of us if we're found, but we can escape. You can talk on the intercom, its by the door. I'm locked in the bridge and I can't do anything, and I need you to get some supplies. I'm Oestrina, by the way.”
Oestrina makes a strong case – from the inside of the cargo bay and the evidence of fires it appears as though some kind of large impact happened recently, though you have no recollection of it. Or of anything before you woke up in the pod, now that you consider it.
“There's a little something in engineering I need you to grab, its about the size of a softball and it weighs around 30kg. Its locked inside the safebox and tractored in grav-stasis, but I can disable the protection once you get there. There's also a box of grenades in tractor that you might want to grab, I think those might be one of the few weapons you can use. If you have any questions, there are intercoms pretty much everywhere.”
