Something picked her up and sent her hurtling against a boulder. White light flared all around her, followed by a wave of intense heat. She rolled onto her front, gloved fingers digging into the half-frozen soil . . . and felt darkness steal over her.

When Megan finally regained consciousness, she saw that the sun had moved a considerable distance further across the sky.

She stared around in a daze for some moments, then struggled to push herself upright. Something in her shoulder hurt like hell, particularly if she tried turning her head to the right.

Checking the inbuilt interface on her cold-weather gear, she found that its built-in heating circuits had kicked in automatically. It was the only reason she was still alive.

Megan struggled to her feet by leaning against the boulder next to her, before taking a look around. Her breath rasped loudly inside her breather mask. A trail of dark smoke rose into the sky from a mass of tangled wreckage that was no longer recognizable as the jump-car.

Damn it, she thought.

She searched around until she found the rifle shed taken from the vehicle, then found her rucksack lying nearby and strapped it back on.

Her first thought was to put as much distance between herself and the wreck as possible, in case someone was already on their way to check for survivors. That meant getting as far away from the crash site as she could manage, regardless of the multitude of aches and pains afflicting her.

By the time Megan reached the crest of a hill, just ten minutes later, she was utterly exhausted. She tried to access the Tabernacle, but was unsurprised to find she couldnt, having already been warned that the Freehold jammed anything more advanced than analogue radio within range of their hideouts.

Glancing around the slopes below the hill, there was nothing to be seen but desolate terrain, stretching out to the horizon. She knew her circumstances were hopeless: lost in an utterly inhospitable environment and surrounded on all sides by fanatical and murderous Freeholders. But she had to keep moving, or give up any hope of staying alive.

Eventually she started to make her way down the other side, looking east along the length of a valley, in the same direction she had been flying before getting shot down. It was somewhere in that direction that Sifras dropship had landed.

The walking got a little easier after another half-hour, but for all she knew it might take days to reach the dropship assuming it was even still there, by the time she reached its landing point.

A small voice in her head urged her to give up. Sifra surely wouldnt have landed in the middle of nowhere; hed have aimed for one of the Freeholds main mountain bases, which meant Bash was by now almost certainly under the guard of God knew how many murderous lunatics adorned with neck tattoos.