A shudder and an alarm jerked Kyrsta out of her sleep. She head darted around, confused for the first few seconds of her rude awakening. The sound of what sounded like heavy rain or vehement hail fell upon her ears, slamming the side of the ship as unbolted items slid around the floors and tables. At last her mind clicked, rushing her stumbling out of her small cot and out the door into the small windowless cockpit behind. She frantically sat herself down on the Extrenze’s velvety black pilot’s seat as her fingers danced over the keyboard to try to see what was wrong. The red warning light lit her face as it blinked in time with its loud buzz. Worry shone in her eyes as they darted from one screen to the next as she worked to figure out the problem.
Once more a violent shudder coursed through the small ship, causing the lights to flicker before coming back on. The quake jammed her side into the cushy armrest; pain blossoming through her as she began to put the pieces together. Their small fleet must have been ambushed, though by whom she could not guess or see. Judging by the lack of stability the ship seemed to have lost a key element to it, and only when her elbow brushed the control stick and finding it unlocked from its position, she knew.
The Extrenze had come unhooked. The main ship, the Jaing, must have been destroyed, and the hail, which was abating rapidly, was the shrapnel from the explosion. The little ambulance ship, once an independent vessel, had been ‘hooked’ always to a larger ship to be controlled from that source, leaving her reliant on the ship, usually a capital vessel, that she had been connected to. This had been done when her father died, though she knew not why. The cockpit windows had been tainted, too – no, wait, they were made with a kind of transparasteel that tainted itself on command – so that she could not see out. As well, all of the controls had been locked so she could not resist whatever the larger ship told her. It was a risky symbiosis, and she could see no reason behind it, but that was how her father had wanted it; and her father was an important enough man in the Mandalorian army to have his last wishes stuck to, at least for a decade after his passing.
Fortunately, the little ship had been programmed to revert back to its original programming if the main ship’s signal failed, allowing her to control it manually. However, because of the restraints put on her, as she was usually in the vehicle, she was not experienced in flight, and there was no one to comm in the to help her. It was quite an obstacle, but she had to block that out for now. One thing at a time, Krysta.
She remembered where the control was to clear up the viewport so she could see to fly, and quickly activated it, suddenly revealing her to a fast array of ships and vessels, lit with strings of red and green light as the forces shot at each other, all against the backdrop of a bright star. Fortunately the viewport blocked a lot of the brilliance, or she would have been temporarily blinded by the luminosity. What she saw through the port made her heart sink. It appeared as if a large Sith fleet had come across their tiny caravan, and was even now tearing it to shreds. Fortunately, at the moment she was too small to notice, though who knew how long that would last? And if they decided to capture her, it would only be worse. She had to escape.
She could not fly out of this mess – though the screens on the ship told her where she was, she could never outmaneuver the Sith fighters, even if she was fast enough to begin to run. She had to hyperspace out of here. She was relieved to find that behind her, to her left, was a blank spot in the battle, like the edge of a cloud. She turned the vessel that way as she brought to memory the coordinates for the first stop in a series of microjumps she would have to pull off to escape unfollowed. The couldn’t punch in anything random, she might end up in the heart of a star, and she didn’t have time to search up someplace, she fighters were beginning to fire on her, so she brought up the coordinates of the junk moon Andera. The moon used to have a station where she and her father would train her and show her around. The station was destroyed now, but the coordinates had burned in her memory. She frantically entered the series of numbers and was relieved to find that it did not take long for the ship to pick out a route – there seemed to be few anomalies in the way.
She felt almost giddy with fear and relief as the light flashed on the dashboard that she could begin. She immediately snatched the lever and yanked it towards her, the world beginning to turn to swirling lines as she fell back into her chair.
Wearied from the onslaught of adrenaline, she leaned against the control board. Her eyes traveled over the now activated and lit systems, a swirl of colors she had not seen in years – since her father died. Suddenly, she felt horror grip her spine and a chill finger its way up her back as she looked down at the coordinates.
She had accidentally mixed up a figure. She was going to the wrong place.
No, worse. She was going to nowhere. She was lost.
-------
It wasn’t a long flight, but it seemed like forever to her. She had felt panic fill her heart several times, though she had to force herself not to worry. She had gotten no sleep, slowing her thought control for those 37 hours.
What was she going to do? What if she popped up near or in a star, what if she ended up in enemy territory, or a black hole? What if it was a weird magnetic field or something that blocked her from any communication? She couldn’t just jump right back; the ship was too small for such liberal use of hyperspace. She would have to get some more of that fuel; the stuff she was running on now was years old, not having been refilled since its last hypderjump. It hadn’t needed to; it always was nestled safely in the belly of some cruiser. She had nothing to refill the ship, and no suit with which to do it in any way. That meant, basically, that if she didn’t stop near a livable planet, she was stuck. For good. Left to starve.
She pushed the thought out of her mind – something hard to do with her sleep-deprived mind, and forced herself to stay steady as the counter clicked down the seconds until she was to pull the lever to pull herself out of the swirling dimension.
Her heart pounded within her as it grew closer to zero, towards wherever fate had tossed her. A cold, clammy sweat trickled down the side of her face as the last five seconds ticked off so very slowly…
Now.
She squeezed her eyes shut as she shoved the lever back into its former position, snapping the stars back to points of light. She peeled open her eyes once more and almost wept upon viewing a particularly beautiful planet not far away. She made her way for it, as joy welled in her heart, though she knew the planet might not be occupied, or be occupied by primitives or savages that could not at all help her. It would give her a chance to communicate if she just landed.
Good, scans showed that the planet was inhabitable.
She grew excited as she made her way towards the giant sphere, half bathed in light from a nearby star. It appeared that she was approaching the planet from one of its poles, as evidenced by the angle of light and the whiteness that blanketed a rough circle, from what she could see, of the ball. Well, that would be fine. She remembered her father saying the Extrenze’s communications array was hardy.
As she made her way down, she at last noticed a red warning light beeping on the dashboard.
Low on fuel. It appeared the modest light had been blinking for some time, but she had not noticed. She felt her stomach rise into her throat as she checked the fuel herself. It was practically empty. Her breathing sped up as she realized that safety may yet be out of her grasp – it looked like she might not have enough to make it to the planet.
Desperate, she began making for the closest point of the planet, so that even if the engine did give out, it would not take long for the ship to still close in on the world, one of the fortunate advantages of the friction-less void. It would make landing hazardous, but she had to risk it.
Hr palms lined with sweat as she grasped the throttle for dear life. She could have choked that lever to death had it been a throat, it was so tense. At least, she made up her mind that she had to somehow calm herself and prepare for landing on the cold north of the world. She rushed back to her small quarters and donned her armor, sans the helmet, and dashed back to her seat. The armor had a thermoregulator that would keep her warm in the cold, and would help protect her against any wild beast that might call the white blanket their home.
She didn’t know why she was rushing, there was not much she could do except try to conserve fuel, and she could not control that manually. She supposed that if she was to die, she wanted to see it happening. She didn’t want to miss it.
Krysta found that morbid.
She was making it she could feel the friction of the atmosphere on her vessel as the ship grew red hot upon entry. She darted down, pumping the flaps of the ship to try and slow herself down like she’d seen her father do. She must not have been doing it right, as she felt a giant shudder, signaling that one of the flaps had flown off. She began to steadily turn to her right despite what she tried, it must have been one of the main ones. Though still panicked, she began to calm as she saw the speedometer rush closer to zero – closer to safer numbers for a landing. A crash landing.
A crash landing…! Yes… it would have to be, she didn’t know how to land!
The fuel gave out.
One thing on top of another… what was she going to do?
Terror was the only thing she felt, yet she had to keep her head, she had to she had to…
Darkness.
-------
Confusion was the first thing she felt when her eyes flickered open. Where was she?
It was cold, and she could feel her abdomen being crushed beneath the pilot’s chair and the dash, which had been smashed into her, pinning her like a clamp. There was a dull pain in her head.
At last she remembered, and she looked around. It appeared she had crashed pretty badly, but fortunately it had not been head-on, or else she would have been crushed on impact. It was a miracle she was so little hurt. However, the Extrenze looked irreparable, which broke her heart. She had such fond memories of the little ship. However, she couldn’t make herself cry, she had to get out of here.
It took a lot of doing, but she managed to squirm out of her position, only to find her right leg broken and her armor’s thermoregulator broken from the crash. She shivered.
Despite her predicament, she felt unexplainably calm and focused about the whole thing. She gently limped into the parts of the ship she could get to and pulled out some blankets for herself. There were only two that she could reach, but it would be better than nothing.
She could not stay in the ship, by now – however long she’d been here – the vehicle would be as cold on the inside as it was outside. She would have to make her way out and around the ship and try to set up a camp near the engine, in hopes that it was still warm. If not, she could always make a hole in the snow the hide up in, she’d heard of people doing that to help keep warm in cold climates.
The medical equipment of the ship was mostly gone, though she was able to use a piece of her blanket and some shrapnel to make a crude splint for her leg. As she moved around, she found that her abdomen and sides hurt greatly, and at intervals she would spit up blood. There was nothing to do about it, though, she would have to somehow stay alive long enough to set up communications. It was agonizing to make her way out of the vessel, though which a hole had fortunately been cut during the crash.
The pain nearly knocked her out by the time she reached the engine, which was, to her dismay, no longer warm. But she was already here, and here she would have to stay until she could get help. She collapsed into the snow underneath an overhang of the mutilated ship. She was too tired to make a hole for the moment, and cocooned herself in the blankets before falling fast asleep.
((You may make up any superficial wounds you want, after all, she doesn't have a mirror with which to see herself))
Once more a violent shudder coursed through the small ship, causing the lights to flicker before coming back on. The quake jammed her side into the cushy armrest; pain blossoming through her as she began to put the pieces together. Their small fleet must have been ambushed, though by whom she could not guess or see. Judging by the lack of stability the ship seemed to have lost a key element to it, and only when her elbow brushed the control stick and finding it unlocked from its position, she knew.
The Extrenze had come unhooked. The main ship, the Jaing, must have been destroyed, and the hail, which was abating rapidly, was the shrapnel from the explosion. The little ambulance ship, once an independent vessel, had been ‘hooked’ always to a larger ship to be controlled from that source, leaving her reliant on the ship, usually a capital vessel, that she had been connected to. This had been done when her father died, though she knew not why. The cockpit windows had been tainted, too – no, wait, they were made with a kind of transparasteel that tainted itself on command – so that she could not see out. As well, all of the controls had been locked so she could not resist whatever the larger ship told her. It was a risky symbiosis, and she could see no reason behind it, but that was how her father had wanted it; and her father was an important enough man in the Mandalorian army to have his last wishes stuck to, at least for a decade after his passing.
Fortunately, the little ship had been programmed to revert back to its original programming if the main ship’s signal failed, allowing her to control it manually. However, because of the restraints put on her, as she was usually in the vehicle, she was not experienced in flight, and there was no one to comm in the to help her. It was quite an obstacle, but she had to block that out for now. One thing at a time, Krysta.
She remembered where the control was to clear up the viewport so she could see to fly, and quickly activated it, suddenly revealing her to a fast array of ships and vessels, lit with strings of red and green light as the forces shot at each other, all against the backdrop of a bright star. Fortunately the viewport blocked a lot of the brilliance, or she would have been temporarily blinded by the luminosity. What she saw through the port made her heart sink. It appeared as if a large Sith fleet had come across their tiny caravan, and was even now tearing it to shreds. Fortunately, at the moment she was too small to notice, though who knew how long that would last? And if they decided to capture her, it would only be worse. She had to escape.
She could not fly out of this mess – though the screens on the ship told her where she was, she could never outmaneuver the Sith fighters, even if she was fast enough to begin to run. She had to hyperspace out of here. She was relieved to find that behind her, to her left, was a blank spot in the battle, like the edge of a cloud. She turned the vessel that way as she brought to memory the coordinates for the first stop in a series of microjumps she would have to pull off to escape unfollowed. The couldn’t punch in anything random, she might end up in the heart of a star, and she didn’t have time to search up someplace, she fighters were beginning to fire on her, so she brought up the coordinates of the junk moon Andera. The moon used to have a station where she and her father would train her and show her around. The station was destroyed now, but the coordinates had burned in her memory. She frantically entered the series of numbers and was relieved to find that it did not take long for the ship to pick out a route – there seemed to be few anomalies in the way.
She felt almost giddy with fear and relief as the light flashed on the dashboard that she could begin. She immediately snatched the lever and yanked it towards her, the world beginning to turn to swirling lines as she fell back into her chair.
Wearied from the onslaught of adrenaline, she leaned against the control board. Her eyes traveled over the now activated and lit systems, a swirl of colors she had not seen in years – since her father died. Suddenly, she felt horror grip her spine and a chill finger its way up her back as she looked down at the coordinates.
She had accidentally mixed up a figure. She was going to the wrong place.
No, worse. She was going to nowhere. She was lost.
-------
It wasn’t a long flight, but it seemed like forever to her. She had felt panic fill her heart several times, though she had to force herself not to worry. She had gotten no sleep, slowing her thought control for those 37 hours.
What was she going to do? What if she popped up near or in a star, what if she ended up in enemy territory, or a black hole? What if it was a weird magnetic field or something that blocked her from any communication? She couldn’t just jump right back; the ship was too small for such liberal use of hyperspace. She would have to get some more of that fuel; the stuff she was running on now was years old, not having been refilled since its last hypderjump. It hadn’t needed to; it always was nestled safely in the belly of some cruiser. She had nothing to refill the ship, and no suit with which to do it in any way. That meant, basically, that if she didn’t stop near a livable planet, she was stuck. For good. Left to starve.
She pushed the thought out of her mind – something hard to do with her sleep-deprived mind, and forced herself to stay steady as the counter clicked down the seconds until she was to pull the lever to pull herself out of the swirling dimension.
Her heart pounded within her as it grew closer to zero, towards wherever fate had tossed her. A cold, clammy sweat trickled down the side of her face as the last five seconds ticked off so very slowly…
Now.
She squeezed her eyes shut as she shoved the lever back into its former position, snapping the stars back to points of light. She peeled open her eyes once more and almost wept upon viewing a particularly beautiful planet not far away. She made her way for it, as joy welled in her heart, though she knew the planet might not be occupied, or be occupied by primitives or savages that could not at all help her. It would give her a chance to communicate if she just landed.
Good, scans showed that the planet was inhabitable.
She grew excited as she made her way towards the giant sphere, half bathed in light from a nearby star. It appeared that she was approaching the planet from one of its poles, as evidenced by the angle of light and the whiteness that blanketed a rough circle, from what she could see, of the ball. Well, that would be fine. She remembered her father saying the Extrenze’s communications array was hardy.
As she made her way down, she at last noticed a red warning light beeping on the dashboard.
Low on fuel. It appeared the modest light had been blinking for some time, but she had not noticed. She felt her stomach rise into her throat as she checked the fuel herself. It was practically empty. Her breathing sped up as she realized that safety may yet be out of her grasp – it looked like she might not have enough to make it to the planet.
Desperate, she began making for the closest point of the planet, so that even if the engine did give out, it would not take long for the ship to still close in on the world, one of the fortunate advantages of the friction-less void. It would make landing hazardous, but she had to risk it.
Hr palms lined with sweat as she grasped the throttle for dear life. She could have choked that lever to death had it been a throat, it was so tense. At least, she made up her mind that she had to somehow calm herself and prepare for landing on the cold north of the world. She rushed back to her small quarters and donned her armor, sans the helmet, and dashed back to her seat. The armor had a thermoregulator that would keep her warm in the cold, and would help protect her against any wild beast that might call the white blanket their home.
She didn’t know why she was rushing, there was not much she could do except try to conserve fuel, and she could not control that manually. She supposed that if she was to die, she wanted to see it happening. She didn’t want to miss it.
Krysta found that morbid.
She was making it she could feel the friction of the atmosphere on her vessel as the ship grew red hot upon entry. She darted down, pumping the flaps of the ship to try and slow herself down like she’d seen her father do. She must not have been doing it right, as she felt a giant shudder, signaling that one of the flaps had flown off. She began to steadily turn to her right despite what she tried, it must have been one of the main ones. Though still panicked, she began to calm as she saw the speedometer rush closer to zero – closer to safer numbers for a landing. A crash landing.
A crash landing…! Yes… it would have to be, she didn’t know how to land!
The fuel gave out.
One thing on top of another… what was she going to do?
Terror was the only thing she felt, yet she had to keep her head, she had to she had to…
Darkness.
-------
Confusion was the first thing she felt when her eyes flickered open. Where was she?
It was cold, and she could feel her abdomen being crushed beneath the pilot’s chair and the dash, which had been smashed into her, pinning her like a clamp. There was a dull pain in her head.
At last she remembered, and she looked around. It appeared she had crashed pretty badly, but fortunately it had not been head-on, or else she would have been crushed on impact. It was a miracle she was so little hurt. However, the Extrenze looked irreparable, which broke her heart. She had such fond memories of the little ship. However, she couldn’t make herself cry, she had to get out of here.
It took a lot of doing, but she managed to squirm out of her position, only to find her right leg broken and her armor’s thermoregulator broken from the crash. She shivered.
Despite her predicament, she felt unexplainably calm and focused about the whole thing. She gently limped into the parts of the ship she could get to and pulled out some blankets for herself. There were only two that she could reach, but it would be better than nothing.
She could not stay in the ship, by now – however long she’d been here – the vehicle would be as cold on the inside as it was outside. She would have to make her way out and around the ship and try to set up a camp near the engine, in hopes that it was still warm. If not, she could always make a hole in the snow the hide up in, she’d heard of people doing that to help keep warm in cold climates.
The medical equipment of the ship was mostly gone, though she was able to use a piece of her blanket and some shrapnel to make a crude splint for her leg. As she moved around, she found that her abdomen and sides hurt greatly, and at intervals she would spit up blood. There was nothing to do about it, though, she would have to somehow stay alive long enough to set up communications. It was agonizing to make her way out of the vessel, though which a hole had fortunately been cut during the crash.
The pain nearly knocked her out by the time she reached the engine, which was, to her dismay, no longer warm. But she was already here, and here she would have to stay until she could get help. She collapsed into the snow underneath an overhang of the mutilated ship. She was too tired to make a hole for the moment, and cocooned herself in the blankets before falling fast asleep.
((You may make up any superficial wounds you want, after all, she doesn't have a mirror with which to see herself))
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