Chapter 59: Corpses

Everything became a mess. The troop carrier started to spin and turn as the pilots failed to regain control of the vehicle. Khan and the other recruits weren't wearing seat belts, so they began to smash on the various surfaces of the plane during the fall.

The other recruits panicked and tried to grab anything that resembled a handhold, but Khan was calmer than his companions. That wasn't his first crisis, so he knew that letting his emotions take control of his mind wouldn't help.

Khan flew and slammed on the other kids and insides of the carrier until he managed to grab one of the seats. His veins bulged as he forced himself to wrap the seat belts around him in a desperate attempt to reduce the damage from the imminent crash.

Then, the troop carrier hit the ground, and everything went dark. Khan had sparse moments of awareness filled with pain and a buzzing noise that didn't make him understand where he was, but his vision slowly gained some clarity.

A familiar scene unfolded in his eyes. Khan saw fuming debris and metal slabs mixed among the thick vegetation. Some of them were on fire, but the plants on Istrone seemed too resilient to burn.

Some of the other recruits were absent. The carrier was on its side, and its doors had disappeared. The same went for three kids, and one of them was from his team.

The recruits inside the carrier weren't in good condition either. They didn't manage to fasten their seat belts, so they had suffered many injuries during the crash before amassing on the broken side that touched the ground.

Khan didn't manage to understand the nature of their injuries from his position, but his survival instincts didn't allow him to prioritize their well-being. He had clearly ended in an unforeseen situation, and the only ones who could know more about the whole situation were in the front of the troop carrier.

'I must talk with the pilots!' Khan immediately concluded in his mind and lowered his head to remove the seat belt.

Khan's expression froze when he saw that a sharp slab had pierced his left shoulder. The cut was deep, and a lot of blood flowed out of it. The injury appeared relatively serious, but he managed to see the positive side in that situation.

'My legs are fine at least,' Khan sighed before wearing a determined expression and tinkering with the seat belt to remove it.

The seat belt unlocked, and Khan gave voice to a grunt when he grabbed the edge of the broken door to avoid falling on the other side of the carrier.

Only his right hand worked properly, so Khan had to wrestle with the various unstable footholds inside the vehicle to get out of it. His new position didn't improve his point of view. The vegetation was too thick to see past ten meters in every direction.

'Deal with the injury first,' Khan ordered to himself as dizziness tried to take control of his mind.

He was bleeding too much, but the global army had managed to give a few lessons that could help him during anatomy. Khan knew that he had to cauterize the injury, and his eyes grew cold when he set his gaze on a fuming metal slab right under the vehicle.

Khan grunted again when he jumped off the carrier, and a tinge of hesitation appeared in his mind when he sensed the heat radiated by the piece of metal.

'I have gone through the Second Impact,' Khan reminded himself. 'How bad can this be?'

The upper part of his uniform only had a few holes, but Khan ripped it apart to create a thick cover for his right hand. Then, he took another piece of fabric and folded it a few times before putting it in his mouth.

His teeth bit hard on the piece of uniform before he took the sharp metal out of his shoulder. Pain filled his mind, and dense patches of black blood came out of the injury, but he quickly moved to the next phase to preserve his momentum.

Khan threw the bloody shard away and crouched to grab the scorching metal slab. The protection didn't manage to block all the heat, but it was enough to make his hand endure it until the procedure ended.

Khan took a few deep breaths and applied everything he had learnt during his mental training to separate his mind from his emotions. The scorching slab released sizzling noises when it touched his shoulder, and a massive wave of pain tried to tear down his determination, but Khan only pushed the metal with more intensity.

Khan counted the seconds in his mind and threw away the metal slab once he reached three. His knees immediately hit the ground at that point, and his eyes closed to help him enter the meditative state.

The adrenaline released during the fall seemed to give Khan more control over his mana. A similar crisis had given birth to his desperation and determination in the end. It was as if his body had returned home and could finally show its true power.

Mana flowed out of his nape and converged toward his left shoulder. The injury had been losing too much blood, so Khan wasn't sure that a simple cauterization could solve everything. He had to rely on the miraculous energy that flowed inside his body to fix what he could.

Waves of mana attacked the injured spots and filled them with power. The intensity of the pain slowly decreased, and Khan even began to feel better. The dizziness vanished, and his left hand started to shake whenever he tried to move it.

Khan remained inside his meditative state until he became able to close his hand into a fist. It would take a while to obtain a full recovery, especially without meds, but that was enough for now.

'The pilots now,' Khan ordered to himself before standing and moving toward the front of the carrier.

The scene that unfolded in his eyes would make most recruits puke. The tip of the carrier had completely caved in. Its metal had created a series of spikes that had pierced the two pilots. Blood covered their corpses, and confused expressions filled their faces.

Khan sighed before wearing a cold expression. He kicked the shards of glass that were still in one piece and slipped inside the pilot cabin to remove the seat belts from the two corpses. Then, he dragged the dead bodies out of the vehicle and made sure not to leave anything important behind.

Of course, his definition of important was relative. Khan was still incompetent when it came to tech. The vehicle probably had a communicator or something similar that could reach the Global Army, but he didn't even know what it looked like.

Khan recalled about his phone after glancing at the destroyed console of the pilot cabin. His device was still in his pocket, and it seemed to have survived the impact. Yet, most of the menus were dark. It seemed to be completely offline.

'This can't be part of the missions, right?' Khan wondered. 'These corpses are real, just like my injuries. Testing our ability to survive a plane crash is way too much.'

Dark thoughts filled Khan's mind as he approached the two dead soldiers. He could only think the obvious since he was on Istrone, but that wasn't the time to make a point of his situation yet.

The soldiers didn't have much on them. Their phones had broken during the crash, and the same went for anything that could resemble a radio. Khan even inspected their shoulders to get an idea of their power, but neither of them had stars there.

'We are fucked,' Khan cursed in his mind before mustering his strength and moving back inside the vehicle.

Climbing was annoying due to the condition of his left arm, so he entered the pilot cabin again and kicked open the door that separated it from the central part of the vehicle.

The four injured recruits were still unconscious, and Khan didn't hesitate to grab them to drag them outside of the vehicle. Most of them had amassed on the side of the carrier, so he uncovered the central part by pulling them away.

A large puddle of blood unfolded in Khan's vision when he grabbed the last recruit lying on the ground where the carrier's door was supposed to be. Other slimy materials filled that red pool and led to under the vehicle.

Khan dragged the recruit outside of the carrier and returned inside it to inspect that spot, but his eyes immediately closed when he crouched to see what it hid. He had found one of the lost kids.

'Where are the other two?' Khan wondered while inspecting the area, but his search didn't produce any result.

The carrier had slid on the terrain for a few hundreds of meters. Yet, the vegetation on Istrone had already started to fill the long hole created during the crash.

Khan could barely see that path anymore. The trees around the destroyed area had stretched to fill the hole, and the mana flowing through the terrain was giving birth to other plants every second. It was a mystical scene that he didn't manage to appreciate due to the severity of his situation.

Khan didn't dare to go too far during his exploration. He wouldn't risk getting lost to find the two missing recruits. He only committed the direction of the broken path to memory before returning to the other kids.

Thoughts inevitably surged at that point. Khan had retained a small brim of hope before. He wanted to believe that everything was part of the test, but the corpse of the recruit under the carrier had shattered that belief.

That situation was outside of the Global Army's control. It was an unforeseen crisis, something that Lieutenant Dyester and his platoon had faced forty years ago.

Martha's face appeared in Khan's mind. He was worried about her, but he forced those emotions to vanish. Feelings wouldn't help him survive. The time to grieve or shout in joy would come after he got out of that situation.