Of all the ways Douglas had expected to wake up, sealed inside his own Titan's cockpit on an alien world fell somewhere below "in bed with a hot person", but above "in an IMC torture chamber with a knife in his chest". Of course, he hadn't known that he was in VEGA's cockpit, and a distressing amount of flailing had to occur before Douglas finally added up one and one. Settling back into his seat, he issued the Titan's startup sequence; "Initiate startup sequence, authcode Victor-Echo-Gamma-Alpha-Eight-One-Three-Six."
VEGA thrummed to life, the remaining charge in his battery activating the Monarch's primary fusion reactor. While the startup sequence took a while, Douglas wasn't too worried. It gave VEGA a chance to doublecheck systems, and it gave him a second to bootstrap a plan of action. A simple one, really.
Figure out where we are, set a distress signal, survive until somebody picks us up, get back to the Monaco.
Douglas waited until he could feel VEGA's chassis trickling into his awareness - a second body surrounding his first one - and began pushing the Titan upright before his datacore even onlined. The environment around him was difficult to make out, black and nearly featureless except for the stars dotting the sky. Taking a second to mentally recall the exact command sequence, Douglas flicked on night vision; the world became a much more distinguishable shade of green as VEGA himself finally woke up.
"Good evening, Pilot. This is not the Monaco's hangar bay."
Douglas couldn't hold back a snort. "You're telling me."
Douglas woke up as plasma fire scored VEGA's hull and his Titan responded with his own ballistic weaponry in kind.
They'd been wandering for a few hours at this point. Once VEGA was online Douglas had the Monarch perform a fast and dirty stellar survey to determine their location. The answer he got both surprised and confused him; technically, they were currently on one of the Core Worlds. Exactly which one VEGA wasn't entirely aware of, but the most confusing thing was that there was a distinct lack of communications of any type. Sure, the Titan was able to pick out faint comms signals, but nowhere near the level that should be expected of a fully developed Core World.
Deciding it was best not to chance it, the duo agreed not to activate any distress signals, deciding instead to perform basic recon, homing in on the one faint radio signal they were able to pick up. The Pilot had ended up falling asleep, taking a fast nap as the opportunity presented itself; and when he woke up his Titan was yelling at him about hostile extraterrestrials damaging him.
He quickly tried to figure out who or what was causing all the trouble, but all he caught were tiny flashed of some small thing with a pointy tip running away before he disappeared in a green explosion courtesy of VEGA's 40mm Cannon and the night vision filter still applied to his viewscreen. VEGA took a few more seconds to scan the environment, before announcing "The threat has passed."
Images popped onto his screen. These were a little clearer to make out. A few of the tiny ones, and what looked like some imposing thing that Douglas could clearly tell wasn't human, even though he couldn't make out the exact details. "I spotted these life forms approaching me at 500 metres and moved to intercept. When I beamed first contact protocols at them they treated that as a hostile act and began firing immediately. I apologize; I have endangered you."
Douglas waved a hand. "You couldn't have known, VEGA. You did the right thing. At least now we know that apparently they really don't like having radio signals beamed at them. Or something. How far are we to the nearby radio source?" He got VEGA back on course, piloting the Titan off in the direction the compass told him he needed to go.
VEGA was silent for half a minute. That actually unnerved Douglas; usually the Titan was much faster to respond than that. "We should arrive in approximately 20 minutes. I am beginning to resolve details about the radio traffic. I do not have a complete picture just yet, but things don't look good."
Douglas took a second to check the 40mm's ammo readout as displayed on the viewscreen HUD; two shots. He pulled the 40mm's ammo box off the mounting forks, stowing it and drawing another one to replace the empty. Something told him he was going to want a fresh magazine for what came next. "Keep me updated."
The two pressed onwards, unaware of what they would soon find.
