[Initiating emergency sequence. Prepare for atmospheric entry.]
"Ughhh..."
Hibernation was supposed to be ended gradually over a long period, yet my heart, suddenly forced into motion, beat sluggishly.
Once things around me stabilized, the tension finally ebbed away, and the blood returning to my brain brought on a pounding headache.
"What the hell was that?"
I had heard until I was sick of it that alien life did not exist.
But that pitch-black monstrosity had nothing in common with any creature I had ever seen.
Its sharp claws gleamed with a chill that suggested they could butcher a human whole, like a Scyther’s, and the thought of those jaws splitting open to either side sent shivers down my spine.
"...It was probably some fucking new mechanoid model."
I roughly shook my head, casting off the dizziness and lingering fragments of fear.
If it could have followed me all the way into space, I was already as good as dead, so there was no point dwelling on it.
The immediate problem was that I had been thrown onto an unidentified planet.
"The supplies inside are... nothing special."
The minor problem was that the pod I was aboard was, quite literally, for emergencies.
Aside from a little first aid medicine and preserved food, there was no equipment worth mentioning.
Union law required public drop pods to be stocked with at least personal weapons and multipurpose tools. I clicked my tongue.
"This trip is ruined too."
Grrrrrrrrr
The vibration and deafening roar of tearing through the atmosphere shook the inside of the pod.
Would people who could not even be bothered to stock survival supplies in a drop pod really have a functional emergency-landing system?
I clasped my hands and prayed fervently.
"Cassandra, Phoebe, and while I’m at it, Lord Randy..."
Life was one enormous story, and those who spun that story were called storytellers.
They were worshipped as gods in some planetary systems, but in truth, they were nothing more than some nerd’s original-character game.
An ancient person’s amusement—Wouldn’t this be fun?—had been scattered on a cosmic scale and become a concept of its own.
"Ugh, ngh..."
Despite my earnest prayers, the drop pod continued to shake violently.
The onboard monitor said atmospheric entry had already ended, yet the craft refused to stabilize.
Whoooooosh
Flames burst from the thrusters beneath the pod as it began its retroburn.
The kinetic energy from its plunge through space was expelled in the opposite direction, and its falling speed gradually began to decrease.
"Hot, hot, hot, hot!"
The problem was that apparently the underside of the cockpit had not been heat-shielded, because blistering heat was searing my ass.
Heat fierce enough to counter the weight of an enormous hunk of metal surged into the cabin.
The thin synthetic-fabric pants I had worn into the hibernation pod could not possibly protect me from that kind of temperature.
"Urgh..."
Perhaps the ventilation system was broken too, because smoke from the thrusters came pouring inside.
Black exhaust filled the pod as though someone had set off a smoke grenade, and lungs that had only just awakened from hibernation constricted painfully.
Pshhhhhhh
"Cough! Cough!"
Still, perhaps they had a bare minimum of conscience, because the landing itself succeeded.
When I covered my nose and mouth with my hand, the back of it turned black. My whole body was probably the same.
Clang!
I kicked the pod’s entrance, which would not open perhaps because it had been dented during landing, and with a metallic screech, the outside came into view.
Even though I had escaped in a hurry, if this was a planet programmed into the pod, its terraforming should already be complete.
"Haaah..."
Sunlight I had not felt in ages, grassland ruthlessly torn up by my landing, chirping birds, and lush trees.
The thing called nature—something one could never experience in an urban world without considerable power—came crashing down on me without mercy.
"At least I survived..."
The impact of landing had surely wrecked every internal AI and mechanical system.
I practically crawled out of the pod and flopped down onto the grass.
The prickling sensation against my back felt incredibly unfamiliar, yet surprisingly not unpleasant.
"What do I do now?"
Right now, I was a crashlanded traveler.
A penniless man with nothing but the clothes on his back, aside from a few first-aid supplies and roughly a week’s worth of preserved food.
I was pretty fucking screwed.
"Judging by its level of development, it’s at least below a midworld."
In an urban world, nature existed only inside biodomes. A less-developed midworld might have countryside like this, but...
What if it was a steamworld or a medieval world? No, it might even be an animal world...
All I had to go on was the clue that the planet had been terraformed, which made this a real headache.
.
"For now, let’s move."
What could I do even if this was a deserted island? I cautiously got to my feet.
Fortunately, I had crashed during the day, so shouldn’t I at least find a roof if I wanted to make it safely through tonight?
There could be wild animals nearby, crazed mechanoids, or even lost Geneline insects.
Trickle, trickle
"The sound of water..."
I had not had time to inspect the terrain below while falling, but fortunately, it was grassland rich in both water and trees.
If that beat-up old pod had landed in mountainous terrain? That would have been a true disaster.
"Pwah!"
As I washed myself in the river, black water streamed away.
The refreshing feeling of soot being washed away lasted only a moment before I began to feel my body temperature dropping.
"Brr."
There was grass everywhere, so starting a fire itself was not difficult.
I had not been thrown here completely naked, but I was in no position to guarantee I would survive even until tomorrow.
As I warmed myself, I tried to plan what came next.
"Did I just become a space refugee?"
I let out a deep sigh.
I had heard that the farther out one went from the galactic core, the more castaways there were due to one mishap or another.
If I was within the Union’s sphere of influence, I could verify my identity and receive appropriate aid. But if this was a pre-steamworld planet, even that was a distant hope.
I would be lucky if they recovered my corpse intact.
Look, look
There did not seem to be any dangerous wild animals nearby.
Then again, if I could spot one easily enough, I would not be able to beat it anyway, so it did not matter.
At the very least, I needed shelter if I did not want to be torn apart by a squirrel driven mad by a psychic drone.
"...This is suspicious."
After searching for a while, I found the remains of a building not far from the pod.
"Red... wood?"
It was cracked and riddled with holes here and there, but it was enough to hide inside.
It was suspicious that there happened to be enough walls left standing to enclose all four sides if I narrowed the space a little, but I was in no position to be picky right now.
"Phew."
I dismantled part of the walls and used the materials to fill the holes and put up a roof.
Once I lit a campfire inside, it was almost quaint.
After eating one of my few preserved meals, the tension of such a spectacular day finally drained away, and sleep came over me.
Until yesterday, I had spent years lying in a hibernation pod, a pinnacle of technology, and now suddenly this was my bed. What an outrageous curveball.
"Zzz..."
-----
The average frontier world experience today.
Spend the first night near building ruins.
Let’s not touch the ancient danger.
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