The Thick Smoke

Plisken pushed through the thick smoke that blanketed the engine room of the crashed Starbug. Sven was safely out of the way, though it was perhaps not wise to leave a battle-hardened, weaponised robot to discover this new found time around a host of blue aggressive aliens that had been deprived of any meaningful technology for quite sometime.
But Plisken pushed on, little point in worrying about things like that.
“Is anyone there?” his hoarse voice called out over a low hum that echoed in the deeper areas of the spherical room.
There was a groan, a low moan of pain as a person was trapped, pinned by a large metal beam that had fallen from the roof. Plisken dashed over, as quickly as he could within the restrictions of his age, and ducked down to get a better view of the trapped.
The smoke was thicker but Plisken could get close enough to make out the slim features of a pale woman framed with black hair. She was a stranger, to him at least, and she still wore the smart blue uniform of the science department.
The beam that held her down was heavy but light enough to move to the side, the heavy metal slamming on the metal floor. The woman, luckily, wasn’t badly hurt and only a small gash on her forehead bled out a trickle of red blood.
The hum was becoming dangerously loud now, though Plisken’s lack of mechanical knowledge didn’t help diagnose the problem. Slinging the woman over his shoulder, he dragged her, with some effort, to a safe distance from the crashed Starbug, which was now billowing smoke into the town.
“Ugh,” the woman groaned as she came to, “Where -?”
“Dr. Velera, I presume?” Plisken said as she helped Arien sit up.
“How did you -?”
Plisken waved a finger at his chest. First Arien looked at the black fabric of Plisken’s jacket but then she slowly looked down towards her own, smoke stained blue blazer to see the white name-tag.
“Plisken,” the old man said, offering his metal hand out to her.
She gladly took it, shaking it firmly.
“Cybernetics?” he asked as the hands parted, “Military grade?”
“Yeah,” she stuttered, not quite sure if she had adjusted to her surroundings yet, “How did you know?”
Plisken wiggled the fingers of his read metal arm, the exposed metal already battered and scarred, “Had a little bit of experience.”
“Oh, I see. All your life?” she said, unsure if she was to start a conversation or not.
“Long time ago,” Plisken said, looking at the red fist he curled, “There was a lot of snow…” he said, trailing off. “Anyway!” he said, forcing an unwilling energy into his limbs, “Sven will probably be around, I suspect you two will have to get acquainted soon enough.”
“Sven-?” Arien began but she interrupted by something quite unexpected.
Unexpected things happen, like you’d expected, when you least expect them. This usually catches you off guard. And so this did too, catching everyone in the nearby vicinity with their figurative trousers down.
The rear end of the Starbug, entrenched in a muddy ditch, burst into fiery flames, sending large chunks of burning green metal into sheds and huts. As if by the stroke of some great luck, or a sympathetic writer’s pen, no-one was seriously injured. The blue Haruk narrowly missed being impaled by a piece of 3 million year old, poor quality metal.
“Damn!” Plisken growled finally, as the fires settled down into a not all too unpleasant crackle.
“Where there still people inside?” Arien asked, jumping to her feet, blood still trickling from her forehead.
“I don’t think so,” Plisken said, a doubt hanging on his words, “I didn’t see anyone else while I was inside…”
“Are you sure?”
Plisken was silent.
“Well?”
“I’m cut off, again,” Plisken sighed, jumping down into the even larger trench that had no been created.
“What do you mean?” Arien asked, “Don’t you live here?”
“Ha!” Plisken let out a loud hollow laugh as he kicked over some debris.
“Comrade!” cried the robotic voice of Sven, his hulking form running through the town, “Are you injured?” <OOC – Sven’s post can take place between Plisken leaving and now, if you wish>
“No, no, we are fine,” Plisken said, busying himself with picking through the wreckage that had been thrown from the shell of the ship.
The conversation was drowned out from Plisken’s ears as he focused his mind on finding what he was looking for. In other words, he was ignoring Sven’s and Arien’s introductions to each other.
“Ah ha!” he cried happily as he picked up the jar from the ground, dusting some mud and dirt from the surface.
“Are you telling me that glass jar survived that explosion?” Arien asked, unimpressed my this miracle that had been preformed by the universe.
“Yup,” said Plisken, tucking the jar under his arm.
“That seems rather…”
“Lazy?” Sven chipped in.
“What?” Plisken asked, “No! Listen, are you able to send signals?”
“What kind of signals?”
“Distress signals.”
“What kind of distress signals?”
“What?”
“Short range, long range, time range, hard range, holographic, visual, oral, written –“
“Any, signal that could reach the Azure Small One up there?”
“Unfortunately not, Comrade.”
Plisken sighed and ran a hand through his wild grey hair. “Track the other sections of the Starbugs?”
“Negatory, interference is too high.”
“Damn, damn it!” Plisken cried, kicking over some sheet metal in annoyance.
A crowd of Haruk had gathered around the edge of the crater, some daring to investigate the still burning ruins of the Stargbug.
“So, you need something more powerful than Sven to send a signal?” asked Arien.
“Yes, something that was built to send signals through space, or at least has some of the components to do it. We might be able to botch together something with Sven’s existing emitters but I don’t know.”
Arien laughed, “You wouldn’t have happened to have crashed the Drive Room into the planet, would you?”
Plisken’s eyes turned wide and a smile grew across his face.
Arien’s quickly faded. “You didn’t?”
“I’m detecting a strong resemblance to the Drive Room navicom through the interference,” Sven said as information flashed through his processors, “Nothing solid but likely. Several clicks away.”
“But that will take days to walk,” Arien warned, “And this does not seem like the most welcoming place.”
“Sven,” Plisken said, turning to the robot, “How fast can you run and how much weight can you carry?”
<OOC – So, the plan is to ride Sven to the crash sight of the Drive Room. But danger is waiting for us there.>
<Tag Arien and Sven>