Shadowwall vs. Mebber

The cupreous taste of blood on his tongue was the first perception Spectre recognized after he woke up. Slowly he opens his eyes. Due to a small momentary amnesia caused by a heavy blow to the head, he had no idea why the only visible things to see were deformed metal girders, inoperable monitors and the broken pipes he was lying in between. He stands up, and the wage for this action were massive pain all over his body.

Well, at least he was alive, and apparently in one piece. Although every movement was a torture, it seemed like he survived the crash even without a single bone fracture. Crash?
A few pictures were flashing through his head as his memories began to return, but he was still stunned by an enormous headache.
Cautious he sought his way trough the mess of machines towards a strange orange light which turned out to be a massive hull breach, opening the way to the outside.
He clumsy stumbled through the breach out of the wreckage, which was right now only barely recognizable as the Lockmart-Starcub emergency shuttle it was used to be.

The landscape outside of the shuttle wasn't a very pleasant one. The reddish-brown surface was hilly and cragged, and the orange sun -which could hardly manage to break through the close cloud cover- added a somehow acherontic ambiance to the whole scenery. The only thing that didn't would fit in a hellish scenario were the low temperatures- it was cold, almost below the zero-point. The air was dusty and dry, but at least breathable. Spectre was somehow surprised by this fact, since the fewest planets provides an atmosphere with enough O2 to allow humans to survive; but he didn't felt like questioning this blessing in disguise right now.
As far as he could remember, the Maelstrom was flying through a single-star system with some gas giants, so there was a good chance this rock was one of their moons, but of he did not knew this for sure.
The Maelstrom. Now that has been a real nasty old clunker, an almost antiquated Lockmart CM-88B, heavily modified to serve as a cheap combat vessel. And beside Spectre's own misfortune, the destruction of that ship wasn't very regrettable. What was he thinking to join the Maelstrom and her crew of half-mercs, half-pirtates anyway?

Well, it wasn't like he had any alternatives back then, and self-reproaches weren't useful at all.
What happened... he didn't really know. He was sleeping in his cabin as the alarm sirens started. Maybe the Maelstrom had a fatal system malfunction, or maybe some of the crewman started a mutiny.

Everything of that was possible, but Spectre didn't care- the only thing he was interested in was getting out of here alive. That was the reason he made a run for the rescue shuttle instead of investigating what was going on as he was still on the Maelstrom. He knew the ship was lost the moment the sirens started, so he ran. Someone might call such an behaviour cowardly, but on a ship like the Maelstrom, everyone has to save oneself first. And he wasn't the only one who made a run for the shuttle... Alan and Staberg had the same idea, but fortunately they shot slower. A ship about to perish is not the right place to discuss peacefully who's supposed to be on an escape shuttle and who's not.

Perhaps it was regardless anyway. Spectre's chances of survival on this abandoned rock were pretty slim, but he won't give it so soon. This was a real bad start for his career as an mercenary, crashed during his first contract, probably without any hostile influence.

He turned back to the crashed shuttle to search the survival kit stored somewhere in the wreckage. It took awhile to find it, but finally he was able to call a first-aid-kit, a low-range transmitter, a bunch of survival tools and, of course, his good ol' cal .45 side arm with two mags (one of them not fully loaded, thanks to Alan and Staberg) his own. Surprisingly the transmitter received something, a low-energy distress call, apparently from the Maelstrom herself. It seemed the ship crashed too instead of exploding in space, and maybe the onboard systems were repairable to send a message strong enough to reach someone off this dead moon.

There could be other survivors too... but that wasn't very likely. In contrary to emergency shuttles, deep space vessels weren't constructed to protect its passengers whilst a crash on a planetary surface.

The transmitter allocated the signal approximately twenty miles northwards- a though marsh. He'd better start moving if he wants to reach the Maelstrom before the nightfall... of course Spectre didn't know the night and day cycle of the planet, but it was a good motivation to move his still hurting limbs. He took the backpack with the survival kit and began his march through these dead rocks.

Damn, this was a really bad start as a merc.