Jack Strong and the Red Giant

Chapter 25: Survival

Vyleria slumped out of her spaceship and out onto the red sand.

She thought she was dreaming again, except she wasn't – the sharp pain in her temple made sure of that. She tried to stand up and get a look around, only to lose her balance and fall onto some rocks.

Her whole body stung with pain.

She grabbed hold of a large boulder and attempted to pull herself up. She pushed off with her left leg, then tried to move her right, but it wouldn't respond.

She looked down.

Nothing but the blood red sand.

Where her right leg used to be there was now just a short, scabby stump, the wound cauterised just above the knee.

Then the pain came, hot and fierce. She'd broken the odd bone before in racing and mountaineering accidents, but this was different. This was pure, concentrated agony. After a few seconds she passed out.

The howling storm ripped Vyleria from the drug of unconsciousness.

A hail of dust and stones raked across her face, stabbing her with a thousand knives. Her leg flared again, its white hot fires erupting like a volcano.

She reached inside her mind for her central pain nerve and switched it off.

The pain gone, her throat cried out with thirst.

She looked around for her spaceship, but all she could see was a shifting sand-filled haze, its long claws whipping at her body.

She fumbled around, shielding her eyes, desperate for a glint of silver.

All she found was a handful of dust.

More wind, more sand.

Something heavy thudded against her temple. Her eyesight wavered, blackened slightly, then came back.

Desperate now, wriggling like a worm on a hook.

Boulder. Stone. Pebble. Another boulder. Hope fading fast.

Then her bloodied fingers collided with something soft and cool and malleable. Relief flooded through her like a tidal wave as the spaceship molded round her hand, pulling her inside. After that she lost consciousness.

Vyleria awoke to the sound of a meteor storm careening through the atmosphere like a flight of flaming arrows. The ground trembled. She rubbed her eyes and looked outside. The dust storm was still raging, rapidly entombing her spaceship. If it continued like this she would be buried alive in less than an hour.

Where were Jack and Ros? The last time she saw them they were in the asteroid belt, fleeing for their lives. She had no idea what had happened after that. She didn't even know where she was. She vaguely recalled getting hit, then Jack calling out to her; that was it. Had they been killed up there or had they crash-landed here too? She scanned for their ships immediately.

She found them in moments. One spacecraft was about a hundred feet away from hers, whilst the other was several miles distant on the edge of a great sprawling desert. Had they survived the landing?

She called out to them through the ship's voice-control system.

No answer.

She tried again, hearing only static. Where were they?

Next she scanned the ships for life, fear mounting.

Nothing again. Her heart beat doubled, tripled. Jack...

She looked down at her mangled leg. Even now the bones and tissue were slowly beginning to heal and re-form, but it would be weeks before she could walk again. She closed her eyes to see if the ship's hospital still worked, desperate to speed the process along, but nothing happened. She would just have to struggle on and do the best she could. That's if it didn't get infected first...

Next she tried to get her spaceship to fly. She needn't have bothered. She couldn't even link with the ship's systems, let alone get it in the air. She was stuck.

She tried to focus on Jack. Anything to take her mind off things...

She searched the planet for hours, but there was no sign of either of them. They weren't in their spaceships and to make matters worse the dust storm and volcanoes were impeding her scans of the local area. They could be anywhere.

She wanted to go out and look for them. But she couldn't even stand up, never mind brave a hurricane force dust storm.

Worry, fear, and then finally a feeling of immense frustration gripped her.

For the first time in her life Vyleria Romen was completely helpless.