The sound of sparks flying could be heard all around Delly. The warning siren sputtered into silence.
“Ah!”
She was in agony. She slowly opened her eyes to see that she was somehow still alive. She rubbed her left hand across her spacesuit. Her chest was burning. Unlike the WaftMar, her seat and harness remained firmly connected to the floor. She glanced over to her right hand. Ono had crushed it.
Delly turned away in horror. The more she looked at it, the worse it pained her. The oxygen in her suit was still working as she tried to unfasten her harness. She did so and took caution while removing her left arm first. She repeated the process with her right, doing her best to avoid looking at it.
She gripped her right forearm and looked at her hand once more. She took a deep breath—just trying to cope with the pain as best she could. She turned ever so slightly and leaned with her left shoulder first—falling forward into the Yellow Rover’s controls. Delly muscled her way to her feet, grunting as a means of suppressing the pain.
She stumbled a bit as she used the navigational interface to balance herself. She got control of her breathing before looking out through the shattered windshield. For the first time, she saw the darkened landscape of this alien world. She was in some kind of a desert. She swallowed.
“Where am I?”
More sparks flew behind her as she flinched. She turned around. The mission control was still intact for the most part, although there were still quite a few panels that had been dislodged from their moldings. She placed her left hand on the co-pilot’s seat headrest and began moving towards the rear.
Her legs were noticeably wobbly, but she powered ahead regardless. Delly reached the captain’s perch in hopes that it would help her remain upright. She grimaced and sucked it up. She resumed her approach to the command post—when her legs finally gave out. Delly moaned. Weakly. She was unable to move a muscle. She was exhausted, in shock, severely injured and most likely losing a ton of blood. She was the last surviving person of her eighteen-member crew.
She noticed a sliver of light entering the mission control ahead of her as she closed her eyes for the final time.
THE END