Cervia's Log - 9 Achiel, 1 AoC

Lost and alone

C
rashed. I have crashed. I am on an unknown planet. My ship is gone - having sunk below the thrashing waves of a hostile sea. Although I'm alive and I seem to be in good physical condition, I fear my situation is dire. My location is... undetermined. I was scanning the Vitor Quadrant when I came upon an uncharted planet. Before I could even consult Central Command for additional orders, my spatial thrusters blew out violently, sending me into an almost immediate tailspin directly toward the uncharted world. In fact, the parallel nature of the explosions makes me suspect sabotage. But even if that hunch is correct, there is no time at the present to ponder who may have done such an act - or why.   With almost no navigational capabilities, my descent to the planet's surface was not ideal. I spied a visual course, attempting a water landing in a huge sea separating massive, tree-covered continents. I had hoped to come in at such an obtuse angle that it would rob my vessel of most of its forward momentum. The desperate hope was that I could nearly skim my way into a nearby shore. That hope proved to be unfounded.   The water was not calm and an odd, shearing wind kept trying to drive me into the ocean far before I could reach landfall on the beach at the far edge of my vision. A rogue wave caught the nose of my skimmer and the next thing I knew, I was spinning violently, end-over-end, over the surface of the water. When I finally regained my bearings, I was still atop the sea - but barely. The wings were nowhere to be seen. Engines were ripped from the aft manifold. And the nose was split in half and taking on water fast - very, very fast.   Within seconds, the cockpit was filling with saltwater. To make matters worse, my flight suit had been torn badly against the edges of my own navigational instruments. My helmet had, thankfully, done its job wonderfully. But in doing so, it had nearly cracked in two, leaving my head perfectly in tact, but the helmet useless. The remains of my flight suit were swiftly becoming waterlogged and I feared it would only serve as an anchor dragging me to a watery death.   I don't know how long it took - but I know it was shockingly quick. In minutes (seconds?) the undertow of my remaining ship was pulling me downward and I had no desire to follow it. So I removed my shattered helmet and tattered suit and managed to exit the cockpit mere seconds before it was sucked to the ocean floor.   The resulting swim to dry land was psychological torture. The landmass before me had seemed so near when I was viewing it from a thousand meters aloft. And by the time that my skimmer utterly failed me, I thought that I had ended up fairly near the shore. But once I was alone in this foreign sea, it felt like I swam. And swam. And swam far more than I ever thought possible. Hours, it must have been.   And that endless swim was constantly sprinkled with the intermittent panic of feeling things brush against my legs in the water below me. Big things. Scaly things. Were they real?? I have no idea. It may have just been exhaustion frying my brain. But knowing this possibility did nothing to ease the mental burden of that endless swim.   When I reached the shore, every instinct told me to move on. To find proper shelter. But my legs could not carry me any further and my arms hung as barbells on my side. It was still daytime, but the light was waning. My only piece of good news was that I could not see any sign of civilization in either direction up or down the coast. Given my vulnerable position and the uncertain nature of this uncharted world, I was actually happy to feel that I might be able to regain my strength in solitude.   Just past the beach, the dense rain forest featured trees - the size of which, I've never seen in my life - that offered plenty of shelter. Epic root systems with nooks that would easily conceal a small team of troops. And that's where I sit now. No doubt, about to pass out from shear exhaustion.   I was able to salvage absolutely nothing from my ship. Even my waterlogged flight suit is now on the ocean floor. I'm sitting here in a rapidly-darkening forest, nestled into the roots of a gigantic tree that smells of moss and rotting insects, and I have absolutely no means to send any communication whatsoever to Central Command. My skimmer automatically sent SOS alerts to the mother fleet, but I never heard any acknowledgment during my violent spiral to this planet's surface. And even if they come, I have no idea right now how they'd even find me.   I have no food. No water. No shoes (there's no way I could swim that far in my flight boots). I'm wearing nothing but the standard undergarment that serves as a scant buffer between your body and your flight suit.   I am epically fucked.

Commentary:
Cervia is believed to have crashed off the coast of present-day Tumia . Given that she had almost nothing in her possession when she swam to shore, it's assumed that these early entries were actually recorded some time later.

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