The stars were mere blurs of light, constantly spinning around and around and—

Instinct broke in, the trained reflexes of simulators and drills that overrode the blurred sensation of awakening.  One hand moved in [i]this[/i] direction despite the sharp pain, while the other arm moved [i]that[/i] way, and the spinning slowed, then stopped.  Stephenie sucked in another breath and held it for a while, just listening to the hiss and click of her spacesuit systems.

[i]I’m alive.[/i]

Her only view of the engagement had been little more than a graser crew would normally get, but since their only task in combat was to manually fire the weapon in the event that battle damage cut them off from central control, and they had needed to fire far more than she had ever practiced…

The explosion should have turned her into chunky salsa, and being blown out through the ship’s grav drive wedge would have only mixed the whole gun crew into an indescribable paste, but other than a brutal bruise on her left arm, she was still in fair shape, so the ship’s power had died before the explosion.  The skinsuit had some red lights on the heads-up when she gave a sharp nod to bring it down on the inside of her helmet visor, nothing too serious.  She toggled the open suit frequency and listened for the warbling sound of other suit beacons, but the only thing she could hear was her own beating heart.

Her eyes flickered to the HUD display again, to the yellow light next to COMM and the red light on BEACON.  Without communication, it did not matter which side won the ongoing battle.  A rescue shuttle of either side would not be able to pick her skinsuit out of the scattered wreckage, and she would drift until something critical broke down in her suit.  Or herself.

“Any vessel, this is Ensign Stephenie Greenhaven of the Grayson Navy requesting assistance.  My beacon is broken, so you’ll have to home in on this signal.  Please respond.”

Her voice on the damaged comm was still clear, but since she was unable to pick up [i]any[/i] transmissions, even the interstellar hiss of static, most likely the antenna had been sheared off in the explosion, and the only way she could talk to anybody would be if they were only a meter or so away.  It was still worth a try, so she set the message to repeat endlessly, listening to it in the background as she tried her best to focus her thoughts.

An hour later, she turned the volume down.

Watching with the bare eye for starships in the vastness of space was futile, unless the ship passed close enough for the shimmer of the drive fields to be visible.  On the vast scale that battles tended to, the probability dropped considerably.  After another hour…

Three hours later, she had taken just watching the distant stars.  The system primary was far enough away that she did not have to polarize the visor at all, so the bright starlight stood out in sharp pinpoints.  At some time during the last few hours, she had even managed to pick out the closest primary star, a brighter spot that still cast a large enough hyper shadow to prevent her wounded warship from slipping away before being destroyed.  There were millions of other humans on the worlds around that star, most of whom probably never even knew there was a battle, let alone that one of the survivors was looking back at them.

After five hours, she closed her eyes.  The intrinsic velocities of starship combat would have flung her suit and the few pieces of wreckage she could still see far out of rescue range.  The suit would quietly go about its job of protecting her from the endless vacuum and cold until it ran out of power in a few weeks, but by then…

There was enough power for the damaged RCS to make a small adjustment to her delta-v, but without knowing where a rescue ship might be, the only thing that would gain her would be to make her position [i]completely[/i] lost instead of only hopelessly lost.

At twelve hours, she had turned down the comm volume so far that her repeating voice was a bare whisper.

At fourteen hours, she turned off the volume and just listened to the silent stars.

At eighteen hours, something touched her on the shoulder.