---[ POV: Flynn ]---

Flynn was only able to fall asleep early in the morning and woke up sometime before noon.

One of the rare rays of sunlight that was able to reach the bottom of the ravine had somehow found its way through the caved-in ceiling of the corvette to shine right on his face.

Flynn simply opened his eyes but remained immobile on the bed for a long moment. There was no traces or sound of a rescue team nearby.

A tear formed in the corner of his organic green eye before silently rolling down his cheek.

The young man laid on his back in utter silence for a long time, trying to control his breathing and his emotions before he finally decided to get up.

"Make a plan and face it, right?"

He was resolved yesterday, there was no reason not to be today. He would not bring shame upon his father's memory nor the ISF that had nurtured him by wallowing in self-pity and cursing fate. The past was immutable but the future wasn't. Well, if he ignored the entire deterministic school of philosophy, mathematics, and physics, that is.

Flynn’s goal had simply changed from one to another and the fact that he was stranded alone was a detail. In fact, given everything that was laying around in the corvette, he could probably be considered fairly lucky amongst fellow stranded people.

He mentally took note of tasks that had to be accomplished from now on, then got to work right away as the list kept growing and he realized he had weeks, if not months, of work ahead of him.

First of all, as he had planned yesterday, he wished to collect enough symbiotic muscle to ease the handling of the power-hammer to a point where it would be trivial to use it with one hand.

There was certainly enough of the black nanite goo scattered all over the place to do so but since it was a low viscosity fluid when not activated — despite what one would expect from a nanomachine goo — it would not be easy to gather it. Or rather, it would not be quick. He got a container and the appropriate tools and got to work.

Symbiotic muscle was a dark metallic goo composed of specialized nanomachines designed to cover the body of a soldier or heavy worker to enhance the structural solidity of ]their body and multiply their strength and toughness. Military-grade symbiotic muscles were also designed to act as an interface between the soldiers and their armor. Most combatants of the ISF had at least some beneath their combat suits.

Since Flynn became a pilot five years ago, he had not used it much but he remembered finding it damn useful when he was still a regular infantry sergeant.

The sun had been past its zenith for almost two hours when he decided he had finally recovered a satisfactory amount.

The scraps collected here and there had formed a unified mass that occasionally writhed and pulsed in its container with a dim and muted purple light. This was a sign that the nanites were communicating properly and working as intended.

Flynn removed his armor and the work overalls covered in dried blood he was still wearing beneath, then found one of the skintight spaceship outfits laying around and put it on. This simple but flexible two-piece outfit was made of high-quality fabric and designed for comfort and durability while space traveling. It was the perfect underlayer before he got the symbiotic muscles on. Before putting anything on, however, he washed the grime of the last days from his body with a towel he found in the small washroom of the corvette. The shower was not operational for the moment but a couple of water bottles and sanitizer soap were enough.

Once he was ready, the young man approached the container of black goo and dipped his hand in it. It took the nanites a couple of seconds to analyze his DNA and recognize the strap-in command. This command was launched if any member of the ISF simply put some exposed skin in a large enough coherent symbiotic muscle mass.

As the protocol started and this mass of nanites recognized him as their new owner, the goo started to cling to the skin of his hand and propagate upward. Soon enough, the container was emptied and a writhing mass of nanites covered his entire body in undulating waves and flowing ripples before fixing itself in the appropriate forms and proportions to emulate the appearance of sleek and well-toned muscles. The only uncovered part was his head. On average, the goo had added 2 centimeters of muscles all over his body. This might not seem like much but it was more than enough for his purposes given their extreme potency.

With the symbiotic muscles, he was probably five or six times stronger than a normal man. However, symbiotic muscles displayed their full potential only when coupled with the structural support of a tactical armor or a worker exoskeleton. After all, they had been designed and optimized for such uses.

Once he donned his armor, he would probably be as strong as at least 10 heavily trained men. He would be able to lift up to half a dozen tons if he really wanted to. He wouldn't be as devastating as a real assault Regulator, but it would be more than enough for his purposes.

So, of course, Flynn proceeded to put on the armor and had it synchronize with the symbiotic muscles. Since the power core of the armor he was currently using was not in top condition, he had to disable some functions of the armor to allow the symbiotic muscle interface system to work properly. Flynn was not too worried about it, however, since he would get his new core in the evening and could do without the advanced functionality of the armor for the moment.

Now that he was confident in his ability to defend himself against pretty much everything lower than the shrieker in the food chain, it was time for some reconnaissance.

Flynn gathered the equipment he deemed useful and fixed it to the magnetic anchor points on his armor or at the belt.

He knew that such armor was normally equipped with subspace storage but he could not activate this feature for now so the basic anchors would have to do.

Subspace storage was probably one of the greediest systems in terms of energy. Although the Unified Stellar Empire had somewhat trivialized it through mass distribution for military and space travel uses, dimensional technologies were still an incredible feat of science that required complex machinery and an inconceivable amount of power to work properly. The only reason these armors had one was that the Stygian Predator was the most recent armor model issued by the ISF to its special forces. Only the most elite of teams were equipped with it.

A single suit of these armors probably cost a lot more to produce than this whole corvette.

Once Flynn was ready, he took off for reconnaissance. He first wanted to explore the canyon before trying to get out. He had JAX scan the geomagnetic field of the planet and determine the cardinal directions based on the south magnetic pole it could detect through the armor sensors. Once this basic bearing was set up, he started to walk toward the east.

Since the bottom of the gorge sloped down a bit in this direction, Flynn guessed that a river or stream had probably run through here in the past and carved the crevasse. It made sense to follow the path east since it would probably lead to some water source or, at least, more open spaces than this claustrophobic canyon.

As the young man walked away, he looked up and saw a destroyed ledge above and piles of rubble down in the ravine. It was probably where the corvette had crashed before falling down the gorge.

The ravine was about 40 meters wide and 70 meters high. This height was the reason why Flynn favored following the slope east rather than trying to climb up. Of course, with his enhanced armor and his equipment, getting up there would not be that difficult and even if he fell down, he would probably not die. However, that would still be a pain without the armor's full capacities and there was an easier path available.

Flynn walked for about two hours before realizing he had no idea just how long the days were on this world. He had the information pulled up from the data JAX had been passively pilling up in his neural stack for the last two days. Apparently, a full solar rotation lasted a little more than 24 standard Earth hours; 24 hours and 18 minutes to be exact. Once again, he was astonished by the striking resemblance with Earth.

According to JAX, he had five hours of daylight left. Flynn did not care much about daylight since his cyber-eye implant would allow him to see in the dark with only a slight drop in his visibility but he still wanted to avoid roaming at night because on most planets that harbored life, it was a favored time for predators to get out of their lair and hunt.

The young man hadn't crossed paths with any life forms other than the shrieker and some small crustacean-looking bug that occasionally fled beneath a rock at his approach, but he had no doubt there were more in these parts: A huge predator like the shrieker had not fed itself on tiny rock crabs to get that big.

Flynn continued for another hour and a half and was about to turn back when the light bouncing on the cliff walls ahead caught his attention. It was a warm orange light that painted the gorge ablaze.

The young man pressed on, jumping from stone to stone until he finally got ahead of the final curve and saw the world open up in front of him.

The gorge ended up on a large ledge that scarred the face of a huge mountain cliff. The cliff extended on both sides toward north and south, disrupted some distance away by the irregularity of the mountain range.

In front of him was laid a large forested valley with some rocky hills on the other side, many kilometers away. The vast sky was in flame because of the setting sun, giving a shadowy but majestic air to the forest and dyeing the rivers he could spy here and there in tones of red, black, and purple.

As Flynn noted that the sun seemed to set in the east on this planet, he also spotted flights of what looked like avian creatures racing across the sky above the vale. They were too far away to picture in detail but what would appear as an indistinct black dot for a normal human was magnified by his eye implant to the point where he could make out the approximate size and color of those creatures.

They indeed looked like birds covered in brown and red feathers or soft scales. They were just bigger than ducks.

So there is indeed abundant water and life here? Maybe my life on this world will not be so bad after all.

Flynn never had the chance to see real nature with his own eyes except for a couple of weeks of survival training back in BCTT. Planets or space habitats with functioning biospheres were reserved for the citizens of the Empire and the fabulously rich and powerful.

Most non-citizens lived on barren worlds dedicated to production or in industrial space stations. After leaving the factory world where he was born, he had only ever known the interior of the spaceships where he was deployed as an ISF officer or the scorched battlefields and blasted landscapes at the edge of the Empire.

At 24, he was only a couple of weeks away from receiving his citizenship after 10 years of loyal services in the ISF since years of service started to count from the moment one enrolled for BCTT and Flynn had got in at 14, the minimum age required. Was fate mocking him with this improbable ordeal when he was just about to attain his lifelong goal?

To his surprise, he felt elated for the first time since this whole nightmare began.

With the fabricator at his disposal, he could probably scrape together every necessity required for comfortable living conditions. Not optimal, but comfortable.

If he redirected the energy from the main power core of the corvette, he would also have more than enough energy to satisfy any and all of his needs for well over a lifetime. The amount of power required to fuel a hyperspace drive was unimaginable, even for a small exploration-class corvette.

Retirement here or on a tightly packed life habitat of the Empire, he wondered just which one seemed more attractive? No matter the answer, he definitely deserved some rest.

Flynn sat down on a rock to savor the moment and closed his eyes, letting himself bask in the sunset for almost twenty minutes. The sound of the winds and the chirping of the faraway birds was relaxing.

He finally got back up, reinvigorated. It was about time he headed back. He had not accomplished much today but simply finding this place and getting more information on his situation had alleviated the weight on his shoulders.

The fear of the unknown was slowly fading away and his desire to live and conquer was taking the reins. He would build a place for himself here with his own two hands and either wait for someone to find him or live happily for what time he had remaining.

It would not be said that a proud representative of the Empire was defeated by a simple and primitive alien world. The ISF had more pride than that. Or was it him?

With some regret, Flynn turned his back to the magnificent sunset and started the trek back to the ship.

It had been almost completely dark in the gorge for almost an hour when he arrived at his destination, even though he knew there was probably a couple of minutes of sunlight left to enjoy for anyone outside this dark abyss.

The crash site seemed undisturbed and his detectors had not picked up on anything so he got inside the corvette.

The new power core for his armor was ready and waiting for him in the exit tray of the fabricator. Flynn took it but it was obviously not charged so he plugged it on the corvette power core to juice it up. It took about ten minutes, but soon enough the exposed crystal cells of the power core started to emit a bright golden light. Those ultra-compact energy cores were designed to power the armor for up to a month or two in a hostile alien combat environment so it would probably last him for almost a year if he was not embroiled in life-threatening combat on a daily basis.

Flynn scanned the core thoroughly with the help of JAX to make sure it had no fabrication flaw and was stable. Much to his surprise, he could not detect any energy leak or manufacturing defect. It had worked on the first try.

Since everything seemed safe, Flynn removed the old power core from his armor and slid the new one in the open slot. After some parts of the armor got back in place with a clicking sound to protect and cover the core, the young man could feel his movement getting perceptibly less stiff and multiple lines of information got displayed on his HUD regarding the armor and its numerous systems.

Since there was no need to hold back anymore and he had all the power in the world at his disposition, Flynn decided he should fire up all systems for a test run.

First, he activated the ‘ambient comfort’ functionality. He could feel the somewhat stuffy interior of the armor immediately getting fresher. The sweat that had collected on his body got absorbed by the symbiotic muscle and recycled by the integrated life support of the armor.

When he turned on the ‘direct dermal feedback’ system, thousands of sensors on the armor propagated touching sensation through the nanites muscles and directly to his skin as if he was not wearing anything. The only sensory retention was for painful or unpleasant stimuli.

Flynn then used JAX to interface with the armor AI and had them register the power-hammer as an official weapon of the suit combat load.

This opened some new functionalities, one of which was to gravitationally bond the hammer with the palm of his hand on command. This helped to prevent getting disarmed and could also be used to call back the weapon in one's hand from afar; upon activation of the discriminatory gravitational field, the hammer would 'fall’ toward its owner's hand.

Similarly, it was possible to create an anti-gravity field around the armor to reduce its weight and allow for incredibly long and high jumps, or smoother in-flight mobility.

The list of functionalities continued on and on. Flynn took the time to read all of their descriptions before turning them on.

At some point, while going through the list, he got to the communication system of the armor. Since it was a short-range system mainly used for tactical operations, he had kept it turned off until now to save on energy. He had no one with whom to communicate anyway.

However, when he turned it on he was surprised to automatically pick up an incoming signal.

He looked at the flashing alert on his HUD for a moment before gathering his wits and opening the channel. The codes that appeared on his HUD seemed congruent with the beacon used by the Empire and requested for an emergency extraction but he did not recognize this particular signature.

There was also a vocal recording included.

When he listened to it, the only thing he could hear was static and crackling noises. There did not seem to be any human recorded lines in this message. That was until he picked up on a feeble and heavily distorted female voice.

"... please... need help. Requesting... ... ... premature... sequence... please send help..."