It focused on me, then fired.

A flash on my wing; an explosion.

I’d been hit.

Beeps screamed at me from my console. Lights flashed. My control sphere suddenly didn’t seem to do anything, going slack as I tried to maneuver.

The cockpit rocked, and the world rotated as my ship started spiraling out of control.

“Spin!” I somehow heard Jorgen’s shout over the chaos of the beeping.

“Eject, Spin! You’re going down!”

Eject.

You weren’t supposed to be able to think during moments like these. It was all supposed to happen in a flash. And yet, that second seemed frozen to me.

My hand, hovering as it reached for the eject lever between my legs.

The world a spinning blur. My wing, gone. My ship on fire, my acclivity ring unresponsive.

A moment frozen between life and death.

And Hurl, in the back of my head. Brave to the end. Not cowards. A pact.

I would not eject. I could steer this ship down! I was NO COWARD! I was not afraid to die.

And what will it do to them. something else within me asked, if you do? What would it do to my flight to lose me? What would it do to Cobb, to my mother?

Screaming, I grabbed the eject lever and yanked hard. My canopy exploded off, and my seat blasted out into the sky.

• • •

I woke to silence.

And… wind, brushing against my face. My seat lay on the dusty ground and I faced the sky. The parachute flapped behind me; I could hear the wind playing with it.

I had blacked out.

I lay there, staring upward. Red streaks in the distance. Explosions. Blossoms of orange light. Just faint pops, from this far down.

I shifted to the side. What was left of my Poco burned in the near distance, destroyed.

My future, my life, burned away with it. I lay there until the battle ended, the Krell retreating. Jorgen did a flyby to check if I was all right, and I waved to him to allay his worry.

By the time a rescue transport came for me—lowering silently on its acclivity ring—I had unbuckled. My radio and my canteen had survived the ejection attached to my seat; I had used one to call in and drank from the other. A medic had me sit on a seat in the transport, then inspected me while a member of the Survey Corps walked out and looked over the wreckage of my Poco.

The salvage woman eventually walked back, holding a clipboard.

“Well?” I asked softly.

“In-seat GravCaps kept you from smashing your own spine,” the medic said. “You seem to have only minimal whiplash, unless there’s a pain you’re not telling me about.”

“I didn’t mean me.” I looked at the salvage woman, then over at my Poco.

“The acclivity ring is destroyed,” she said. “Not much to salvage.”

That was what I’d been afraid of. I strapped into the transport’s seat, then looked out the window as it took off. I watched the burning light of my Poco’s fire fade, then vanish.