Chapter 1

JAKE

Bulkheads exploded all around me and I was flung against the console as my tiny ship was hit by weapons fire. Weapons fire? From who!?

A ship had approached rapidly and opened fire before I could even guess at who they were or why they were so set on blowing my tiny shuttle into space dust.

Alarms rang loudly in my ears and blood ran down my face, dripping in front of my eyes as I desperately worked to get the shuttle under control again. Most systems were down but I still had propulsion. A split second decision led me to slam the shuttle into full sub-light speed. I knew my ship was not going to hold together much longer but if I could just get back to that planet I had passed earlier in the day I might get out of this alive!

Perhaps now would be a good time to introduce myself. My name is Jake. Jake Anderson to be more precise. I am 23 years old and I have my very own shuttle and use it to spend my time exploring the galaxy, or at least whatever parts of the galaxy I can get to in the Bow, the name of my small ship. I loved this life, or at least I did up until 10 minutes ago when things took ... a turn.

I could have been a banker, financial analyst, teacher, starship engineer, anything I wanted really. But I wanted to explore the galaxy, on my own. Adventure, that is what I wanted. Look where that got me.

So here I was, my propulsion system now showing signs of failure along with damn near every other system. I just needed to keep her together long enough to "land". As long as I could get down without dying I didn't much care what kind of landing I had.

My ears were now ringing from the explosions and alarms going off all around me, I had no idea where the other ship was. I was just focused on getting down alive.

The planet in front of me was gorgeous. Vast oceans and lush green continents. All I had time to care about at the moment was that it had an atmosphere I could breathe and solid ground to land on.

As I descended into the atmosphere I was working the controls constantly trying to keep the ship under control. I just needed a few more seconds. My hands flew across the panel and I managed to, for the time being, keep a good rate of descent. Then everything went black.

ALIE

Alie had just finished relaxing – fishing – along the banks of the Spring river when she heard a dull whining sound and then an explosion that thudded in her chest. She looked up in horror and saw a small craft, obviously out of control, tumbling and spinning as it plummeted towards the ground. Alie tracked it carefully with her eyes, trying to judge where it would land until finally she heard a dull thud in the distance and a cloud of what appeared to be dust rose, somewhere near Barrier lake.

Gathering her fishing pole, nets, and catch of the day (which she had thankfully already gutted) she jogged back to her camp.

Alie was intensely curious about the ship she had seen crash so near her home but she was also nervous bordering on terrified. What if she found someone alive? What if it was a man? Mother had told her about men. Alie had been told by her mother when she was young that men beat and raped women, that they were cruel and heartless.

She decided then and there, if she found a man alive in the crash, she would leave him to die so he could never hurt her. She had survived this long on her own, Alie had no intention of nursing a man back to health just so he could be cruel to her, hurt her.

Despite this, Alie desperately hoped there was someone alive in the crash, maybe a woman or girl who could be her friend! She had not seen another person in over 9 years.

The young woman gathered up some supplies, food and water along with a few basic medical devices she still had. They had regenerative fuel cells and she took excellent care of them, knowing that they would not last forever and there was no way to replace them. She also brought her hunting knife, the one her mother had given her, and her favourite weapon which mother had made for her before she passed. A beautiful longbow.

She left her camp with a small pack on her back, her knife tucked in her belt, and the bow over her shoulder as she began hiking towards Barrier Lake. She had good paths to the lake as she frequented it often and had been living in the area almost her entire life.

Alie knew the route well and despite its significant distance from her home she reached the lake in only an hour.

What she saw when she arrived overwhelmed her with emotion, both relief and sadness simultaneously. There was debris scattered across the lake and steam rising from where the main body of the ship had sunk into the depths.

Alie paced along the shore for some time before coming to the conclusion that there was no possible way anyone could have survived such an impact. She had also briefly looked for anything worthwhile in the wreckage that had washed up on the shore of the lake but nothing seemed useful. With a few searching glances back at the site of the wreck, she departed the lake and made her way back to her home.

Alie spent the rest of the night lost in thought, sitting around the fire. For the entire evening she felt enveloped by an overpowering sadness and loneliness. She had been alone for so long and there were days she could not understand why she continued living when it was obvious to her that she would always be alone.

After hours of contemplative silence, the young woman glanced up at the sky and realized it was now completely dark and that she had spent far too long thinking. She had not even had her evening meal. She was hungry but also too tired to bother making anything. Alie rose from her seat and walked slowly into her shelter. She had a nice bed which, many years ago, had been salvaged from the ship she had crashed in.

Alie collapsed into her soft bed and in only moments fell off into a deep slumber.

JAKE

Ringing.

Why was there ringing?

The incessant sound filled my head, which pounded fiercely with pain.

I shook my head and hesitantly opened my eyes to see that I was inside a small escape pod. How? I thought that system had failed along with most of the rest of the damn systems. I rapidly decided not to concern myself with how I survived the crash, I was just glad I did. I did not remember the final moments but either way I was safely on the ground.

I recalled from my training that the Bow's escape pod is a small capsule that, conveniently, encloses a pilot's seat and blasts him out of the cockpit if the ship is doomed. It then uses on-board thrusters to land softly. It is snug and uncomfortable but it obviously did its job. My current situation is thankfully one that the designers had taken into consideration.

Light flooded into the small pod. It appeared to be near dawn. With the base of my hand I hit the mechanical release on the hatch for the pod and very slowly, very gingerly stepped out. I hurt everywhere. It hurt to breathe but on a very cursory examination I decided my ribs, like much of the rest of my body, were bruised but not broken. I think even my hair hurt.

I looked around me, taking in my surroundings. I had landed in a small clearing in a lush forest of tall conifers.

"Son of a bitch." I finally muttered to myself as I took stock of my situation.

My vision was cast skyward in a furious glare as if I could actually communicate how pissed off I was with the ship that had shot down my beloved Bow and stranded me here on this damn planet.

I stumbled toward the base of the escape pod and after bashing it several times with my fist I was able to open the storage compartment. Thankfully designers of these capsules knew that getting the pilot out of the doomed ship safely did little if there were no supplies on board to keep the pilot alive for some time afterward. I pulled out a case full of medical supplies, a large pack full of survival gear, and a very large case filled to the brim with survival rations and bottled water. The rations and the water would last a single person about a month but thankfully there were some basic weapons and a water purifier stashed in with the survival gear.