Or Die Alone - Remastered

She squeezed through the kitchen door and into the corridor beyond, heading for the bridge, Boyd waiting as instructed. Sokolov - the engineer - followed behind her, the rest of the crew exchanging words in their native language. While he couldn't understand them, their alarmed tone was easy to pick up on. After a couple of minutes, Lorza returned, her expression dire.

"Something locked onto us and knocked out our power," she began. "Probably an electromagnetic weapon of some kind. There were no other ships in the vicinity, so it must have been fired from the surface. The backup generator has restored life support and low-priority systems, but the engines and navigation are still offline. Sokolov is going to try to restart them, but we are caught in the gravity well of Hades' moon. If he cannot get them back online, then we are going to crater."

Boyd's cover wasn't quite blown just yet. There was still a chance that he could hide his true identity, maybe even make Lorza and her crew believe that the Syndicate would play their hand just to stop one rogue miner.

"I had no idea that this would happen," he insisted, wringing his hands in a display of nervousness. "I would never have imagined that they would go to such extremes to stop me from leaving. I would never have put you and your crew in danger if I had known. Please believe me."

The Polar was shrewd, and for a moment, he worried that she might have seen through his act.

"Either you know more than you are telling us, or these criminal gangs you mentioned think you are enough of a threat to down a civilian ship over."

"We need to get to the escape pods," Boyd said, ignoring her comment.

"Escape pods?" Lorza laughed derisively. "What do you think this is, a pleasure liner? We have no escape pods - this ship is twice your age."

"Well, what do we do if the engineer can't get the engines back online?"

"Then we buckle in and hope we land on something soft."

There was no escape, then. He could incapacitate the crew and go EVA in his suit - it was doubtful that anyone would be able to identify any of the bodies after the crash, and it would be assumed that he was dead. A spacewalk would be pointless if they were already caught in the moon's gravity, however. If there were no ships in range that could reach them in time, then his limited supply of oxygen wouldn't last long enough for pickup either. His escape was a bust, and surviving the crash that was coming would be next to impossible. There was more Russian shouting, and Boyd looked to Lorza as he waited for a translation.

"That was Sokolov," she explained. "He managed to get our thrusters back online, but the engines have taken irreparable damage to their electronics. We are going down."

"What's the safest location on the ship?" Boyd demanded.

"We will be hitting the ground at near terminal velocity, nowhere is safe."

"The beds have harnesses for when the gravity fails, right?"

"I guess so," she scoffed. "Why does that matter?"

She was trying so hard to hide her fear, but her tail was betraying her, the fluffy appendage whipping back and forth restlessly. He should try to reassure her. She might not survive, but he owed her at least that much.

"Lie on a bed with one mattress on top of you and one beneath, then secure the safety harnesses to keep them in place. It won't do much, but it's better than nothing."

"Why does it sound like you've done this before?" she asked, her tone accusatory.

"Just trust me - it's safer than being on the bridge, even if it only increases your chances by a few percent. One more thing - do you have any fire suppressant foam canisters or dispersal bombs?"

"Probably," she replied with a shrug. "This ship is not exactly compliant with UN regulations..."

"Good. Go find as many as you can. When we're about to hit the atmosphere, activate the suppressant. It will fill the room with expanding foam that might help dampen the impact."

"How are you so calm about this?" Lorza exclaimed, perhaps a little louder than she might have intended. "We are about to crash - we could die, and you act like this is just routine!"

"There are procedures that we can follow to minimize the danger, at least marginally," he explained. "Death is statistically likely but not certain. The density of the atmosphere and the gravity will be a factor - whether we land on a solid or a liquid surface, the aerodynamics of the ship and how much air resistance it generates will come into play. The force of the thrusters will probably be the deciding factor in this case. If your engineer was able to get them working properly, then they may slow our descent enough to raise our chances of survival by a significant margin. That is if the G-forces don't cause the pilot to lose consciousness before we hit the ground. By my estimations, our chances of survival are one in five. Favorable, by most standards."

"You are no miner," she grumbled, glaring down at him. "If you get me killed, I am going to haunt you, malish."

"My identity is the least of your worries right now."

She covered her face with her furry hands and growled into them. It could have been an expression of frustration or maybe fear - it was hard to tell with these aliens. Being shot down was a distinct possibility for UNN personnel. Everyone from pilots to janitors went through drills and training that instructed them on what to do during a crisis, and more importantly, how to remain calm in high-stress situations. It didn't do to dwell on death too much. If you died, you died. There was no way around that. The majority of crash landings were not survivable, and it would be a painless death - the ship's occupants vaporized during reentry or obliterated upon contact with the ground. Boyd welcomed pain, however. Pain meant life. Suffering was the exclusive domain of the living, and he would take it gladly over the final peace of oblivion.

"Just do as I say," he insisted, Lorza peeking at him between her fingers. "It's your best chance to live through this."

The Polar snarled in what might be disgust, then wheeled around, storming out of the room. The dramatic effect was somewhat lessened when she had to duck below the door frame, grumbling to herself as she squeezed through the narrow opening. Before long, he heard more rapid-fire conversation in Russian, the Polar likely explaining his plan to her crew.

She returned a short while later with handfuls of small, round canisters the size of softballs, tossing one to him. He plucked it out of the air, examining it. The device's metallic casing was covered in warning markings that identified it as an old model of fire suppressant grenade. Shipboard fires posed a serious threat in the enclosed environment of a spaceship, where they would rapidly consume the limited supply of oxygen along with causing the usual damage through combustion. These grenades were primed and then thrown, the idea being to fill a room with fire retardant foam that would choke out the flames as quickly as possible. If the foam was packed tightly enough, it would also absorb shocks and hold whatever was caught inside in place. It probably wasn't enough to save their lives, but it was worth a shot.

"The captain says that we will be entering the moon's atmosphere in a few minutes," Lorza announced. "Whatever you want to do, better do it soon. There is not much time."

The pilot and the captain would need to stay on the bridge to maintain thruster control until impact, and they would almost certainly die as a result. Maybe the others could be saved, but that wasn't Boyd's chief concern. The information that he carried was of the utmost importance.

He headed off into the bowels of the cramped ship, leaving Lorza behind, searching for a room that would suit his needs. His training didn't allow him to think about the fates of the crew, or even his own mortality - only the mission mattered. One of the doors opened into someone's private quarters, Boyd glancing around as he stepped inside. There were posters on the exposed bulkheads covered in Cyrillic text, pictures of someone's relatives, a nudie calendar. The cramped cabin was in disarray now, all of the owner's belongings strewn around the room thanks to the brief loss of gravity. He located the bed, then began to remove the mattress, hauling it off its metal frame and out into the corridor. Bringing it to an adjacent cabin that was in a similar state, he lay down on the bunk, pulling the mattress up on top of himself.

The beds were bolted to the deck, and they were equipped with a harness that would keep the occupant from floating away in zero-G or from thrashing around during the rigors of a superlight jump. It was usually secured around the chest, but after lengthening the straps, Boyd was able to get it around the mattress. Now securely sandwiched between the cushions, he took the fire suppressant grenade in his hand. The cabin was small enough that the device should be able to fill it with foam, helping to hold him in place so he wasn't simply dashed against the walls.

It didn't matter who saw his UNNI pressure suit now, Boyd securing the hood over his head, pulling back the tattered sleeve of his disguise so that he could access the touch panel on his forearm. He pressurized the suit, feeling it inflate around his body, circulating cool air. His readout showed that he had fifteen minutes of oxygen reserves, maybe a little more with his rebreather.

Those were all the precautions that he could take, given the circumstances.

The low rumbling that had been slowly building over the last few minutes grew louder, the ship's old chassis creaking and groaning, the cup that was still sitting atop the nearby bedside table starting to dance across its surface. Boyd gritted his teeth as the ship's thrusters engaged in a futile effort to slow their descent, the G-forces crushing him against the bed frame, even through the mattress. They had hit the atmosphere, the turbulence making the vessel rock and shake around him, the sound of straining metal and wind tearing at the hull deafening him. To his credit, the pilot kept them level, still manning the helm despite the ground that was rushing up towards him. They plummeted towards the surface, the vessel drifting into a flat spin, Boyd feeling himself beginning to black out as the inertia started to draw the blood from his brain.

He hit the activation switch on the grenade with his thumb, then dropped it, hearing it clatter to the deck. It erupted into a spreading mass of off-white foam, quickly filling the cramped space, smothering everything. He felt the cold solution pour around him through his suit, crossing his arms over his chest as he braced for impact.

CHAPTER 3: BLOWBACK

Boyd awoke to freezing cold, taking in a sharp breath of frigid air that burned his lungs. His ears were ringing, and he couldn't remember where he was or what had happened. Did he have a concussion? He tried to sit up, but the pain was too great, and he quickly collapsed back into a bed of snow.

Snow?

As his vision cleared, he saw a dark sky overhead, tiny snowflakes catching the light as they drifted through the air. His breath was freezing into puffs of sparkling ice crystals through his rebreather, a little warning icon in the corner of his visor blinking to alert him that the oxygen reserves had been depleted. Something was wrong, however. With each breath that he took, a searing pain shot through him, every twitch making his muscles ache. He felt like he had been beaten with lead pipes. He craned his neck to look down at his body, his stomach lurching as he saw the wreck of the Zemchug a couple of hundred meters away.

It was totaled. The ship had landed on its belly and ruptured like a ripe fruit, digging a crater and vaporizing all of the snow around it to reveal the naked bedrock beneath. A plume of smoke rose high into the sky above it, the surrounding area lit by crackling flames, casting dancing shadows as they painted the snowdrifts in eerie hues of orange. There were pieces of wreckage everywhere he looked - huge chunks of hull and unidentifiable machinery strewn all around him. How had he survived the crash? Had he been thrown all the way over here?

He was covered in the sticky, fire retardant foam, clumps of it clinging to his clothes. The disguise that he had been wearing was charred and mostly burned away, but the suit beneath it seemed intact, still reading positive pressure. He could feel all of his limbs, and he could move his fingers and toes - that was a good sign. He tasted blood on his tongue, but besides the undiagnosed pain that radiated through him, he seemed to be in one piece.

He tried to get up again, succeeding in rising to a sitting position, one hand clutching his ribs as he took in his surroundings. The wrecked ship was the only landmark that he could see. There was nothing around him but flat ice fields and snowdrifts extending all the way to the horizon. He remembered now - they had crashed on the moon of Hades. It must be an ice moon, then. The air seemed thin, but as long as his suit was functional, he should be alright. If the atmosphere here wasn't breathable, he would never have woken up in the first place.

He stumbled to his feet, then dropped to a knee, catching himself just before he fell. Something was seriously wrong with him.

Despite the chilling cold, he reached down to unzip his suit, already beginning to shiver as he examined his exposed chest. A massive, ugly bruise extended across his ribcage on the left side, pocked with patches of red. His lightheadedness wasn't just a result of the thin atmosphere - he must have taken some nasty hits during the crash.

If he didn't hurry, the cold would make him unable to tie his own shoelaces, let alone treat a traumatic injury in the field. He raised his left wrist, activating the flexible touch panel that was built into the sleeve, tapping at it with an unsteady finger. His suit had as much tech as the UNN's research division could cram into it, including an advanced onboard medical diagnostic system that could diagnose injuries through sensors embedded in his suit, then suggest a treatment. There was an energy cost to everything that he did, however. It was the Achilles heel of the technology. If he made use of too many functions in too short a period of time, he would drain the power cells that ran down the suit's spine, and that would eat into his life support. Until he came up with a game plan, he might need every minute of heating and oxygen filtering that he could get, so he could only use these functions in an emergency.

The suit began to read his biometrics, reporting its findings, a diagnosis scrolling past on the glowing display. Contusions, hairline fractures, blunt force trauma - he must have been tossed around like a ragdoll. It was a miracle that he had no internal bleeding.

He fumbled for the first-aid kit in one of his pockets, retrieving a little pouch about the size of a tablet computer. With a shaking hand - he wasn't sure if it was nerves or the cold - he removed the protective cap on a device roughly the size and shape of a screwdriver handle. It had a small compartment where payloads in capsule form could be inserted, Boyd searching his kit for the appropriate doses. He brought it to his chest, wincing as he pressed the device firmly against his bruised skin. With the press of a button, he activated it, Boyd stifling a grunt of pain through gritted teeth as it extended a tiny needle to pierce his skin. The concoction contained anti-inflammatories to stop the swelling, a powerful anesthetic to help him work through the pain, and a metabolic stimulant that would promote healing. His wounds would take days to heal, but he wasn't in a position to rest.

Boyd took a few burning breaths as the drugs did their work, his thoughts already becoming sharper and more focused, the distracting pain diminishing to a dull background noise. It was a stopgap measure - not something that would hold for long, but he had to keep moving. Standing still with his suit open like this, he'd probably succumb to hypothermia. What he needed right now was shelter and to assess what supplies were available to him.

He zipped up his suit and pocketed his first-aid kit, stumbling in the direction of the wreckage. While there were pieces of the ship strewn all over the area, the main hull seemed to be mostly intact. If any equipment or supplies had survived the crash, that's where they'd be.

Boyd trudged through the snow drifts, some of them deep enough to reach his knees, the heating elements in his suit barely keeping the cold at bay. Not knowing how long he'd been out or how long the suit's life support systems had been keeping him from dying of exposure, he raised his display to check his battery, seeing that its charge was dwindling. It was expending as little power as possible to keep his vitals in check, but he couldn't dig through the wreckage with stiff fingers. With a few taps, he raised the suit's temperature, the circuitry that ran throughout its lining overcharging to flood it with invigorating warmth.

The Zemchug's warped hull loomed above him as he entered its shadow, wreathed in choking smoke, lit from beneath by the flames that still burned in its spilled innards. Its structural beams had been exposed in places, the outer hull sloughing off them like skin from a carcass, giving it an eerily skeletal appearance. Ignoring the lingering ache in his muscles, he made his way deeper, ducking under dangling cables and broken pipes that were still spewing coolant onto the snow. It was dingy - hard to see more than a few feet in any direction, but he dared not expend the power to use his flashlight attachment.

He had not been very familiar with the layout of the vessel when it had been intact, and now that it was beached like a dead whale, he was even more lost. The corridor that ran down the spine of the ship was broken and twisted, the metal becoming as pliable as putty when subjected to such massive and catastrophic forces. He found what he thought to be an equipment locker, its door ajar, this section of the wall raised at a ninety-degree angle to the floor.

He climbed up, careful not to cut his hands on the jagged metal, and rummaged inside. There were personal effects here - photos of family members taped to the inside of the door that had somehow survived the heat and impact, a pair of shoes, and some holographic media chips. These had belonged to someone, someone who was now certainly dead, but he didn't have the time nor the desire to let himself start thinking in those terms. The mission above all.

Moving on, he tried to remember what the ship had looked like before the crash. The bridge would have been behind him - if it was still intact - and this was where the crew quarters and mess hall had been. Further ahead, he should find the shuttle bay and the cargo hold, which was likely where most of the useful supplies should be. That was, if they hadn't been scattered across hundreds of kilometers like the contents of a giant pinata.

Lingering around the wreck for too long was a bad idea, as Syndicate ships would certainly beat any rescuers to the scene. There had to be outposts out here - maybe bases or drilling platforms. This moon would be perfect for ice mining, even moreso if there was a liquid ocean under all the snow. Water could be drunk, turned into oxygen for life support, and even hydrogen fuel for engines. He made his way carefully along the twisted corridor, feeling his way with each step, the metal groaning under his weight.

As he made his way towards what he thought was the shuttle bay, he heard a scratching noise. He ducked to retrieve his ceramic knife, spinning around to face the source of the sound, weapon at the ready. It was coming from a cabin door - now warped and jammed halfway open by the impact. Blobs of flame-retardant foam had seeped out through the gap, the hardened substance starting to crumble away as black claws dug their way through it. A furry arm emerged, its immaculate coat now matted with foam, stained red with splotches of blood. It was Lorza - Boyd holstering his blade. Once there was enough of an opening, she called out in Russian, then switched to English when there was no reply.