by Ava D. Dohn
* * *
The 14 did not manage a gentle landing. It slammed into the agate and ice asteroid with enough force to rip away a wing and crush a large portion of the superstructure.
Terey was just coming to her senses, not knowing how long she had been unconscious. Examining the cockpit controls was difficult in the darkness. Only a few panel lights worked and they were dim at best. What she did see was not encouraging. Life support systems were down. The air was cooling quickly and what little fresh oxygen remained was coming from her torn flight suit. She leaned her head back to think.
As she sat there, quietly listening to the sounds a machine makes while its cools after hard use, another more disquieting noise could be heard. Sure enough, her compartment was leaking its life-sustaining air. Just how fast it was happening, she could not tell. With her suit damaged, the visor in the flight helmet was fogging up. ‘No need keeping it on anyway’. Terey reached for the button on the left side of her helmet that opened the visor. Nothing happened. Curious… She glanced over and groaned in dismay.
Terey’s left arm had not moved. Looking closely, the woman could see in the dim light that it was crushed between the hull and some sort of jumbled machinery. There wasn’t any pain though and, as she thought about it, Terey realized there was no sensation at all. In fact, there was no feeling on the entire left side of her body from the neck down.
Fear gripped the woman. Not a morbid fear, but the fear that comes when a person loses control of a situation. Had that sharp pain in her lower back been the cause? Was it something that happened during the crash? Terey reached across to her left and, with her right hand, opened her visor. Then she proceeded to examine herself for injuries.
Pulling the glove off with her teeth, Terey managed to get her hand free to search for cuts and broken bones. As she slid her hand across her flight suit, she felt something warm and sticky. Lifting her hand to her face, she saw that it was smeared with blood. It took little time for her to find the cause of the bleeding.
Opening the upper flap of the suit, Terey slid her hand in under her shirt. She let go a resigned sigh. Some jagged, dagger-like shard had pierced the back of the seat and plunged through Terey’s chest. Its sharp point protruded about an inch out of her body, exiting just left of her heart. There was no question in her mind it was a mortal wound.
The sense of hopelessness and dismay was short-lived. Terey’s blood loss was rapid and unconsciousness quickly approaching. Just before her world drifted into blackness, she noticed a brilliant, golden light. The slow rotation of the asteroid had brought the star system’s sun into view.
As it gradually rose above the broken cliffs, to Terey’s oxygen-starved brain the distant ball appeared like the sunrise over the hills near the home of her birth. A smile broke across the woman’s face as she reached out to touch the elusive dream. “Thank you...” She called out in a whisper, speaking to someone only she could see.
Terey’s hand slid down the fighter’s canopy, leaving a trail of crimson on the glass. Before dropping, lifeless, into her lap, it hit against the button activating the distress signal.