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The spin continued, accelerating. She flipped switches, trying her second option, then her third. She scanned frantically, finally locating the issue. The thrusters on the starboard side were firing, but the port thrusters were dead.
She disengaged the right thrusters, which had the effect of stopping the acceleration of the spin.
But she was in space, and the damage was done. Frantically, she tried every maneuver she could think of, including firing in reverse, but unfortunately, the port reverse thrusters worked as well as the right-sided ones, so this only made everything worse.
She brought up a scan of her trajectory; she was way, way off course and headed even further off course. She issued a mayday call, and moments later every emergency light on her screen started to flash.
Impending impact.
Staring out the front viewport, she saw a very large object whiz by on several occasions. She cut the left thrusters and tried to right her spin, but the vehicle wasn’t responding; whatever had gone wrong must have been a mechanical failure that she’d overlooked.
She tried the reverse thrusters again, and the spin slowed somewhat. Encouraged, she fought to regain control of the craft.
And she did.
Right before the huge asteroid seemed to rise up from beneath her, and the craft, still spinning wildly, glided onto its rough surface and bounced a few times before coming to a rest.
But not before a huge amount of awful scraping and popping. Quaia closed her eyes. A hull breach was absolutely the end; space was as unforgiving a place to crash as you could possibly get.
Well. There was one thing to smile about, and so she did: Farange would be screwed, because this was a high-value shipment, and he was way backdated on his rent at the station.
Quaia even managed to smile. Crack, crack, crack. She let herself think about Torian as the lights went out and the ship turned upside down, very slowly, so that Quaia could see and had time to think about the fact that she was tipping over and into a dark crater, where she wouldn’t even be able to watch the stars.
And, annoyingly, where she was trapped until her death, because the craft had somehow landed without breaking apart.
CHAPTER 17
She rigged the electronics to control the temperature for a few hours, but out there, it was a long shot. Keeping the temperature under control was taking all the energy the ship had remaining. She sent a final mayday, using her own voice, sounding almost cheerful. Because at this point, all she had left was gallows humor.
“This is Quaia Sangsen, and I’m face-planted on an asteroid with a disabled ship in quadrant six, exact coordinates to follow… so yeah. Come and get me if you’re out there. As a sweetener, I have some expensive shit on my vessel.”
“Whatever,” she sighed, turning off the comms. She had a battery-operated headlamp that should last as long as the heat. No one would probably hear her signal in time to rescue her, but at least she wouldn’t be in the total darkness.
She climbed back into the cargo hold, which had held up surprisingly well. She started digging into the containers. Maybe she’d find something to get her out of this fix, and maybe she wouldn’t. She was mostly hoping she’d find something, at least, to entertain her for the next few hours that she had left in this life.
And that was how she found herself stoically facing death, sitting on a tipped-over cargo container, eating some really, really expensive food that had been imported all the way from Earth. She nibbled it blissfully, because it was pretty nice munching on Farange’s profits with zero chance of repercussions.
The heat began to falter in less time than she’d expected. She stuffed some packaging into her short-term survival suit, which she suspected was probably expired and faulty, and settled in for the inevitable.
At least she would just freeze to death. For a space death, that wasn’t the worst way to go. Most people in her situation ran out of oxygen first.
Her eyelids felt heavy. She considered the idea of setting up a beacon for someone to find the ship after she expired, but it seemed sort of pointless, and not worth the immense effort. No one really cared about her. After all that hoopla with the Ripening, she hadn’t even been sent a single match.
Not that she would have cared or tried to mate with anyone, just that it would have been nice to know she was a good match for someone.
She was starting to get loopy. Maybe the oxygen was compromised. Death seemed less inviting as it approached. Being forgotten seemed suddenly ominous. She reached for the comms and sent a final message.
“Captain Torian, if you’re out there…” Her mind swam with dreamlike thoughts, her eyelids falling over her eyes and difficult to keep open.
That was the last thing she said.
CHAPTER 18
The lights were very bright after death. And it was noisy, with a lot of banging and alarms. And cold.
It took Quaia some time to realize, as she emerged from a hazy fog, that she hadn’t actually died. It occurred to her as a tingling warmth crept up from her toes and into her legs. She could actually feel her blood getting warmer, circulating to her limbs, spreading the heat.
Her consciousness came back instantly; her eyes were open and there was a bright light above her. Voices surrounded her, speaking a strange language. A face, with a light beaming from its forehead, came into view above her, and someone touched her cheek and shone another light into her eyes. More speaking.
