The Spoils of the Dead

Shara quickly glanced around the rest of the hangar. While it looked deserted, and Valkyr hadn't chimed her in to any other movement, Shara's military training wouldn't let her lose control of her immediate tactical situation.

Shara's armor whirred, the servos allowing her to carry the nearly 500 pounds of ballistic plates and mechanisms within easily. While it was obviously worse for wear after the destruction of her ship, and the subsequent escape pod debacle, it still functioned near flawlessly. Shara quickly ran through her suit's diagnostics after her combat, and checked her magazine wells on her twin-railed rifle. Slotting in a new, charged battery, and dropping out and replacing the railspike magazine took her, on average, 15 seconds. Less than that if she used the suit's assistance. However, not feeling under any immediate threat, she took the time to do it herself, saving the suit's assistance first or a time when it may actually save her life. Finally, after checking her air supply, she set off into the hangar, it's sleek, flat metal floor clanging under her boots. She walked up to the now disarmed gladiator, as it lay sparking on the floor. It still attempted to move, but it's power core seemingly couldn't supply enough energy to allow it to function with it's current limb assortment. Which was not many. With it's right arm sheared off, now laying on the floor, and it's left in a state of non-functionality, it was a sad sight. Giving it a quick glance, Shara could see where the power conduits led to, and while it lay dying on the floor, she unclipped her pistol from her holster.

She aimed at the power conduits, and fired. Sparks shot out from the cabling, as she watched where the round had landed catch fire. The gladiator had been defeated, and the coliseum had a new champion.

A very, very stuck champion.

Shit.

Shara glanced around the hangar, looking to see some sort of hull, some sort of way out. She didn't see any, but now that she wasn't deftly focusing on her fight, she began to notice other things. Of probably the most note was the bodies strewn around the hangar. While they had certainly been dead a very long time before Shara had gotten here, the dry, desiccating atmosphere of the planet had drawn all the moisture from them, leaving them as dry as an Ivokan mummy. Shara imagined that they would crumble if she so much as touched them, not that she wanted to. She felt it was disrespectful to move them from their final rest unless it was absolutely necessary.

Continuing to pace through the cavernous hangar, she began to let her mind wander. She hadn't ran into anything besides the light mech and the skeletons, which weren't really moving, at least yet. Shara considered the threat of her imminent death by skeletons to be at most, minimal. Not that she imagined they would hold much threat in their current state, even without her armor on.

After about an hour of walking through the devoid of life hangar, Shara returned to the airlock. She hadn't found a way off the desolate planet in the hangar, but that didn't mean she was stranded.

"System, please present me with options suitable for removing my person from this planet and getting me back to civilization."

[This system has found three basic options for returning to an inhabited planet. Two of these options may be reusable, while one is a certain, however single-use, way to return to civilization.]

"Please, present them."

[Option one. Instant teleportation, which will place you back into any place you can think of, related to a planetary body or structure of your choice. This is the most certain option to return.]

That must be the single use option, Shara thought. While it was certainly tempting to just go and reappear on a planet she was familiar with, all of the planets she was familiar with would have her listed as either or a dead woman, or worse, a deserter.

[The next option is to have the system deploy a Makoni Empire shuttle.]

While certainly interesting, this solution had some thorns as well. Without the ability to procure a transmitter, her craft might be shot down as a hostile spy. Maybe she could tune the transmitter in the craft, but without it being clear as to what she could do, this option might be put on the back burner.

[The third option is to initiate a new function of the system. The system's new function, a "salvage system" would allow you to visually see what items in your field of view that might have some value as salvage. To accomplish this goal, the items will be filtered by your vision in different shades of red. Specially requested items will be highlighted in orange in your view. Would the host like to make a decision?]

Shara quickly pondered her options. The salvage system was the most risky, considering she didn't have another escape route at the moment, and it was entirely possible that what she was able to salvage wouldn't be spaceworthy, or that there wasn't anything to salvage. Risky, risky.

"I'll take the last option."

[Please, sit down.]

Slowly complying in her combat armor, Shara sat down. Almost immediately after she had plopped down, Shara's vision went dark. After a few minutes, her vision slowly began to filter back in.

Throughout her brief intermission of sight, Shara had time to contemplate what her life would have been like if she hadn't been on the Deviance, her previous ship, during the brief skirmish with a much larger vessel. It had attacked out of the black, and her vessel had not had time to react before it was disabled. She wondered how many of her friends and crew mates had died. Such was war.

As her view came back, she noticed that some of the nearby crates were tinged slightly crimson, as if someone had been going at them with a cutting torch for a couple of seconds and the metal was just beginning to get hot. Other things she noticed were a brighter, cherry color. The hangar, it seemed, was a veritable treasure trove of salvage. However, out of the very corner of her eye, she could see it. A slight, orange tinge.

Finally, a ticket off this rock.