Cooper awakened wearily to an all-consuming cold. A temperature so extreme it crept inside her body with icy fingers, wrapping around her bones and nerves with a numbing grip. Forcing her into a suicidal slumber as the hypothermia comforted her with a deceitful warmth. She slipped in and out of consciousness as a voice struggled to shake her from her final sleep.
"Lieutenant! Lieutenant snap out of it! You're going to die here!" The voice screamed from a million miles away. Every time she opened her eyes, all she saw was her breath emanating in a cloud of steam before darkness took her again. As she slept, the dream was always the same.
She was ascending past the heavens to the familiar black canvas of space littered with the white of distant stars. She was breathing in relief at a chance to escape the hell that was Tokyo. But a star shot towards her in the blink of an eye and in that instant her vision was swamped with warnings and klaxons firing away as her vessel descended uncontrollably back down to Earth. The next few minutes appeared as disjointed flashes as she struggled to regain control of her clipped wings.
One moment she was wrestling the titanic weight of her chariot above an entire continent and before she could process her situation, she was a thousand feet above the ground staring at dark trees littering the snow-covered ground. It was a direct contrast, a photo negative of her salvation. Before she knew it she could identify individual branches among the hundreds of trees she passed. Feeling them crushed under her ship like a roadkill massacre until the white collided with her.
She opened her eyes again as a small explosion emanated from behind her, the force of the blast shaking her bruised and battered body as something collided with her. Whatever it was landed on her back and the weight pressed down with enough pressure that her ribs couldn't expand to breathe. She coughed back into the present, looking around in shock and complete confusion.
She was lying face down on the cold metal beside her pilot's chair. As she rolled the weight off her back with a weak grunt and her vision started to clear, she saw that it was her co-pilot Ford. At least the unmarred half of him she recognized: one side of his face was burned down to the sinew and bone, his flight suit scorched and torn by the explosion.
She cried out in fright, scuttling back against her flight console as she stared in horror at the co-pilot's corpse. All the while coughing up phlegm and struggling for breath as a headache pounded away behind her eyes with nauseous power.
"Lieutenant, can you hear me?" The voice spoke again, she recognized it but couldn't place it's owner in her memory as she looked around to ascertain its origin.
"Yes. Yes I can hear you." She gasped, staring into the flames that lit the back of the flight deck. She looked at them as she would in any other situation; a hazard. But she could not have known that the heat it generated was the only reason she was still alive.
"Lieutenant, listen to me very carefully. Your ship has crashed and you're in imminent danger. You're high in the mountains of Siberia. The headache and breathing difficulties are an early symptom of altitude sickness. It's imperative you listen to my instructions and get to a lower altitude. Unless you'd prefer to lie here and die that is?"
Cooper listened intently but her eyes still darted wearily to seek the source of the voice until she realized it was coming from her flight console. She raised herself onto unsteady legs like a new-born foal and leaned on the console staring at the speaker dusted lightly with snow.
"You're memory is affected by the concussion from the crash; you're lucky to be alive. I'm Edwards, you're ship's assistant AI. I'll explain more later, but right now you need to prepare. You've got a long journey ahead of you and there's not much time." The voice spoke slowly so she could soak in each word despite her near delirious state.
"What do I need to do?" She asked in between more heaving coughs.
"You need to extinguish that fire first to access supplies. There's an emergency survival kit in what remains of the crew quarters. After that gather up as much food, water and clothing as you can then return here. I'll have finalized my transfer into a datapad for transportation by then."
"Okay." She saw a portable fire extinguisher underneath the console and wrenched it out of its housing before turning to face the fire blocking her access to the remains of the ship.
"Wait!" Edwards called. "Once that fire has gone the temperature in here will drop drastically." He paused for a moment. "Just be sure to move quickly acquiring your supplies and don't forget to come back for me. You'll never make off this mountain alive without me."
She didn't reply or turn to acknowledge his words. Cooper merely just glanced at the now comforting flames for a moment, soaking in their heat as she prepared herself. Part of her didn't believe it could get any colder as uncontrollable shivers reverberated through her whole body. She delayed the moment for as long as she could before she began extinguishing the flames. As the tool gained ground in the battle against the fire, Cooper felt the cold further intensify. The billowing smoke attacking her strained, bloodshot eyes. Coughing loudly again, she crossed into the smoke-ridden barrier and through the door still not entirely aware of how dangerous her crisis was.
The shivering she experienced before turned into a vicious tremor that ran through her body as she raced through the frozen, lifeless corridors. Thankfully Edwards was able to operate the ship's loudspeaker systems though his voice was distorted and cut out occasionally.
"This part of the ship is running on an auxiliary power generator but it won't last long. Lucky for us the reactor was simply ripped from the ship and is safe from detonating. This entire mountain would be swept clean if it did."
"Thanks Edwards, that's really comforting." Cooper replied. She finally found the survival kit, lodged behind a hardened glass barrier, criss-crossed with red and white paint. On the outside it merely looked like a large backpack but inside were all the utilities she would need to survive most hostile environments with an atmosphere close to Earth's. If she'd crashed on any other planetoid absent of an atmosphere hospitable to human life, she would have been better off dying in the crash. The kit contained a self-inflating tent along with a portable heating unit, a loop of composite rope with the tensile strength of chains as well as two high pressure oxygen tanks and a handful of signal flares. Last but not least there was a pistol for personal defense, it didn't make Cooper feel any better and part of her contemplated leaving it behind.
"Make sure and use the oxygen regularly but don't overdo it. It'll help keep your symptoms at bay and maintain your functionality long enough to escape this altitude." Edwards pointed out as she hefted the heavy pack out of its housing.
"Terrific." She coughed again before taking the mask attached to the tank and sucked in a lungful of oxygen. It was almost too much and she had to steady herself against the nausea for a moment. "I think I'd rather take the reactor going off than dying out there in the cold."
She stared down the corridor to the first true sight of what awaited her outside. Fifty meters from where she stood the corridor disappeared into the Siberian tundra; it was if a giant had broken her ship in two. The other half was just simply gone as a howling wind whistled inside the ship. Past the breach she could see the massive tear in the forest, caused by the ship ploughing through an army of trees older than living memory leaving a debris-laden path to salvation.
