Instinct

Alone

His eyes met mine as I rounded the corner to the escape pods. The first thing I noticed was satisfaction reflected in their amber hues, as if he waited for me, for this moment. Triumph creased the corners of his mouth as he reached for the button that would seal my fate aboard the ship, a ship doomed by the ravages of a war that had nothing to do with us.

He promised revenge so long ago that I'd almost forgotten the reason for his hatred, though he obviously hadn't. Did what he perceived as betrayal warrant the death penalty?

As the boosters hissed to life, disengaging the pod from the ship, he made a show of removing his wedding band. I guess he took the "Till death do us part" portion of our vows seriously. My estranged husband abandoned me. He left me to die. Alone.

But I was not alone. Having cried my eyes dry, I searched every accessible area of the ship on my way to the bridge – morbidly curious to where our Captain had chosen as our gravesite – I came across a dozen others in the medical wing. All had sustained severe injuries in the cascade of unprovoked attacks that crippled our vessel, and been left behind when the Captain announced we were to abandon ship. They were sedated, so would feel nothing when the end finally came.

Part of me wanted the oblivion too.

I sat by the medical supply cupboard, a syringe filled with a cocktail of drugs poised millimetres from a vein, but the fighter in me wouldn't let me push the needle into my arm. The same voice that urged me to end the years of abuse at my husband's hand would not give him the satisfaction of letting him have what he wanted. Mum said to me on her deathbed that I am free to choose a life to live, and until such time that fate declares, it is not a life I wish to lose.

The guidance system showed our destination as the nearest star with a red, flashing warning stating "Alter Course". With the main engine damaged, that wasn't going to happen and pointed at the reason for the Captain's decision to abandon the ship. At our present speed that left me with a little over forty-eight hours until contact. Not long in the grand scheme of things, yet too much time drifting around stars that are not our own to dwell on what could have been and things I would do differently. Despite a complete lack of religion, I prayed to whatever god would listen to make the end swift and painless.

The following day – I say day, but in the endless void of space there is no distinction of light and dark, it's one endless stream of distant stars and planets whizzing by – the ship passed too close to an asteroid belt orbiting a large planet. Several of the colossal boulders scraped the hull, ripping gouges out of the already damaged carcass. One hit so hard, it rocked the ship, knocking me off my feet. The bridge fell into absolute darkness. I lay still, waiting for the emergency lighting to come back on. After a few minutes, it dawned on me that I couldn't feel the floor beneath my back. It took several more before I realised the silence was due to the absence of the backup generator's constant hum.

Logic seeped through the fog of incoherent thought, acknowledging that no generator meant no power, no power meant no gravity, no gravity meant I was floating. I knew I wasn't dead – at least not yet – my  head ached too much from the impact with the floor when we hit the debris for me to be dead.

I swam until my fingers brushed something solid and used it to pull myself blindly around – wall, ceiling, floor, I couldn't tell, but I found a seat and strapped myself in. It was then the vibrations started, so gentle that at first I mistook it for pins and needles associated with the return of blood to my fingertips and hands as I loosened my grip on the armrests. Sounds became apparent: soft tings and dings of small debris bouncing off the ship; creaks and groans of metal under pressure.

Gravity returned, and with it the sensation of the ship falling, spiralling and tumbling end over end, drawn by whatever planet's gravitational pull had snatched it from the void of space.

Whistling echoed through the empty corridors and grew in volume as the ship fell through the planet's atmosphere, becoming a siren of impending death. I held my breath, waiting.