The aircraft tore through terrain as finely as a chisel through wood. It ruptured the earth in an avalanche of dirt and rock, beating deafeningly against the sides of the vessel. Adrenaline shot through her body, heart in her throat. She was pressing buttons with a frantic focus whilst alarms blared all around her. The words “critical engine damage” flashed in big red letters across a cracked screen, her forward view obscured by debris and a great, billowing cloud of black smoke haemorrhaging from the engine.
Gradually the jet lost its momentum. It slowed until at last it could not contend with the solid earth. She braced for impact as it came to a violent stop, body jolting against the wheel. A sharp pain shot up her side, but she barely felt it in the moment, and fell back into her seat with a shudder, lying limp in a cloud of dust and smoke. Her chest heaved with each heavy breath, sweat pouring down the sides of her face, fogging her helmet's shield. She waited. She didn’t trust that it was over. Any moment now she would hear Alliance fighters landing nearby, and they would search the wreckage and find her and it would all be over. But nobody came. They had not followed her.
In the wreckage, she unclipped her belts and slowly sat up, forcing open the jet roof with a hard thump with her forearm. The airlock gave way with a hiss and opened outwards, exposing her to the atmosphere. It hurt to lift herself out of her seat, one hand flying to her ribs. They felt bruised, possibly broken, but that wouldn’t matter if she couldn’t figure out where she was, or what she was going to do next. With any luck, she had crash landed on a inhabited planet and she could find help, but if she was alone here, she wasn’t sure she had any hope of surviving without sending out an SOS, and she felt for certain that the Alliance would be the ones to pick her up then.
As she slid down the crumpled side of the aircraft, she caught sight of a bright light through the smoke and moved her hand to her pistol in its holster. She couldn’t see who it was, but it was coming towards her, and as she continued to observe them, more lights began to appear. Small, circular lights. The kind people wore on the tops of their heads. Then she heard it. A garbled, robotic noise that she couldn’t make sense of, but knew exactly what it was.
She limped around the back of the crashed vessel and slumped against its side for cover. If they found her, she wasn’t sure she would win. Not when all she had was a pistol with only a few sparing clips left over.
But damn it, she was going to try!