---[ POV: Flynn ]---

When Lieutenant Flynn emerged from his torpor, a red haze saturated all of his senses, as plausible as it might sound.

Blunt pain all over his body and severe disorientation complemented it all.

At first, the young man’s ears refused to take in anything else than a buzzing and ringing sound he knew wasn’t really there. Thankfully, it slowly faded away to be replaced by a feeble and distorted emergency alarm and the occasional complaint of bent metal or the spark explosion of some exposed cables or energy cells.

Flynn tried to open his mouth to speak but could not find the breath to do so. A sharp pain irradiated from his chest and as he opened his eyes crusted with dried blood, he could see that he was impaled in his seat by a long steel pipe right below the ribcage.

The pipe seemed to be part of the security lap bar of the co-pilot seat that activated only in case of emergency. It had been ripped off upon ground impact and ricocheted in the cockpit until it found its home in the young man’s guts. It had been bent by the crash and was now shaped like an 'L' to the point where the lieutenant’s face could almost touch its raised part.

Flynn groaned. Now that he was regaining consciousness, the pain was gaining in intensity. He regretted dearly not having a pain inhibitor program downloaded on his stack like most imperial soldiers had. He had one before raising to the rank of lieutenant but had since replaced it with leadership skills enhancement programs and tons of mechanical and technical knowledge about spaceships repair and operation. A pilot had no real need for pain inhibition after all; if things went bad enough for the pilot of a spaceship to need pain inhibition, chances were he would be dead soon after.

How the hell did I end up in that mess?

His memories were still blurred but flashes of the events preceding the crash popped into his mind. The order of the recollections was a little random and confusing at first, but after some time he was able to order the scenes enough to get a pretty good idea of what had transpired.

He vaguely remembered his flight off from the Starfall.

All of the fighters and combat corvettes on the battlecruiser had taken off at the same time to intercept the enemy’s own fighters. Flynn had used this window to fly his cargo in the direction opposite the battle.

He had witnessed, with a mix of awe and horror, the Starfall redirect all the power from its shields and other defense systems toward its cannons in order to blow up half the Mind Eater armada by firing everything they possibly could at the opposition with a complete disregard for defensive maneuvers.

Despite the diversion, Flynn’s corvette had been detected and a group of enemy fighters had initiated a pursuit. The ISF ship was engaged by the squadron of Mind Eaters interceptors and Flynn had to pull out all the tricks from his pilot arsenal to get the scouting corvette out of there in one piece. The young man was a fairly competent pilot so, against all odds, he was able to evade the Mind Eaters with his simple scouting vessel and reach a point where it was possible to initiate a hyperspace jump.

Not everything can go well forever; the corvette had been hit by an ion torpedo a fraction of a second before the jump procedure was completed and the hyper-drive engine, as well as the non-FTL thrusters, were damaged. Unfortunately, it was too late to cancel the jump. The dimensions had folded in a strange and unstable way. The corvette was kicked out of hyperspace mere seconds after initiating the jump.

Flynn and his crew had reappeared in real space in an unknown sector of the galaxy after wildly deviating from their planned itinerary.

Worst of all, they had reintegrated real space in the gravitational well of a planet with their main thrusters blown to pieces during the jump transition.

The chances of reintegrating real space even remotely close to a star system after a random jump was infinitesimal. The chances for it to be directly in the vicinity of a celestial body were virtually null. But It happened somehow. With the corvette trapped in the clutch of gravity and inexorably dragged toward the planet below, Flynn had no choice but to initiate procedures for an emergency landing.

The rest was still hazy, but judging by his current state, it went as poorly as it could.

"Status..."

It took the young lieutenant a lot of effort to utter this simple word.

The robotic and mechanical voice of JAX, his neural stack basic AI, started to speak. JAX was a nickname for 'J-Armament AI model X'. Flynn found its mechanical tone profoundly annoying and disturbing so he almost always kept its voice function turned off but he needed every help he could get right now.

"Your corvette crashed on an uncharted planet 5:12:37 hours ago. The ship is in critical condition. Structural damages estimated at 45% according to the last contact with the ship AI but the connection has been severed. A more in-depth look at the corvette's log is required for exact details. Remaining life support autonomy estimated: 7 hours."

As the AI started to speak, a summary of what it explained and supplementary information about Flynn’s health condition started to appear In the corner of the young man’s field of vision. Holographic HUD was a standard feature of any optical implant in the ISF.

As a former pilot and the officer in charge of hangar 12 and its fighter squadrons, Flynn was geared with a cyber-eye - a bionic ocular implant - that replaced his left eye. Because of the nature of his previous occupation as a pilot, it could even be said that his artificial left eye was leagues above the standard-issued augments distributed amongst the rank and file. Good vision and fast reflexes were the premium qualities of a good pilot so the soldiers that trained to become one were geared accordingly by the ISF.

What he saw displayed on the HUD did not please him. It was worrying.

"Your condition is stable but precarious, Lieutenant. Your lymphites have stabilized all vitals and stopped both internal and external hemorrhages, but the blood loss is estimated at 27%, near critical. Your lymphites system needs more biomass to complete the healing process and properly expel foreign bodies. Medical attention required."

Lymphites were the name of an ecosystem of nanomachines, or nanites, designed to operate within the blood and lymphatic system of a human host. It monitored the host's bodily functions, enhanced some of them, or outright created new ones. Amongst their many roles, the prevalent ones were the prevention of infections, poisoning, and diseases as well as a tremendously increased healing factor.

The nanomachines solution was the very first augmentation inoculated to every ISF personnel as they helped to go through other invasive surgery and prevent the rejection of foreign implants later down the line.

Basic lymphites remained active in their host for life but some more potent variants had to be inoculated at set intervals. For example, combat-grade lymphites were administered to soldiers once a year, and medical-grade lymphites were inoculated only for the purpose of specific treatment and remained active for a mere 24 to 48 hours.

For the moment Flynn’s lymphites had stabilized his condition, but they needed more biomass to work with. Not being skewered on twenty inches of steel would also probably help.

Picking up on the young man’s neural signal and the context of the current situation, JAX immediately highlighted the shape of a box situated beneath the co-pilot seat through the help of Flynn’s optical implant.

Even though only a small corner of the box was visible to the naked eye, its contours were extrapolated by the AI and entirely displayed in yellow with a hovering label identifying it as a first aid kit. If Flynn’s memory served right, this box should contain enough biogel to heal him completely.

Flynn’s tried to move and grunted in pain again. The pipe that was lodged in his abdomen prevented him from moving much. Flynn tried to rip it off knowing that even if it hurts like hell, the nanites coursing through his blood would keep him alive for some time afterward. However, Flynn was not able to dislodge the pipe. It seemed firmly stuck in the seat behind him, skewering him to it like a shish kebab.

Since Lieutenant Flynn was performing maintenance on his ship before the attack on the Starfall, he was wearing his work overall and his tool belt. The order from Commander Regus was so pressing that he had not changed into the usual pilot suit before boarding the Hermes-III corvette.

The young man looked at his tool belt to see if his laser cutter was still there and was relieved to see it was. With some difficulty and awkwardness because of the pain, he grabbed it and activated it. This produced a short, red laser ray that could cut or melt through most alloys used by the ISF to build their spaceships.

He used the cutter to cut the pipe sticking out of his lower body about 10 cm from the skin. The remaining L-shaped piece of metal junk fell to the ground between his feet.

Flynn turned off the laser cutter and dropped it on the ground beside him, having neither the strength nor the willpower to sheath it back in his belt.

After taking the deepest breath he could and steeling his resolve, he jolted forward so that the pipe stuck in the seat would remain in place and exit his body from behind.

An acute pain coursed through the young soldier’s entire abdomen, and he could swear he was getting impaled again rather than freeing himself from the metal junk.

A disgusting wet suction sound could be heard as his back slowly got unstuck from the pilot seat and blood started to gush from the wounds, front and back. Despite the agony, Flynn continued in his efforts as he knew that if he stopped now he probably would not have the force nor the courage to try again.

The young man screamed at the top of his lungs, but the cry was somewhat diminished by an uncontrollable spasm that made him gurgle and cough blood. With a final 'plop', he freed his flesh from the pipe and his body was thrown forward on the control board before limply sliding to the floor between the pilot and co-pilot seats.

Flynn fell face down on the ground and felt the wet and warm sensation of a puddle of blood forming beneath him. The HUD elements displaying his blood loss and blood pressure started to indicate catastrophic numbers and the situation got dire by the seconds. Multiple alerts started to appear, pressing him to take action or go into shock and die on the spot.

He wished he could have just closed his eyes to rest for a moment, but he also knew that doing so would sign his death.

He looked up through his red-tinged vision and saw the medical kit the AI had outlined just in front of his face. With difficulty, he pulled it toward him while lying face down on the floor as he was now almost unable to move. He opened the box and emptied its content on the ground. It was not hard to find the injector and a dozen ampules of biogel.

"Please, administer three doses of general-purpose Medic-Health biogel for optimal tissue regeneration."

The mechanical, toneless, and monotonous voice of the AI somehow reassured Flynn even though it had always irked him before. Having someone - or rather, something - calm and levelheaded to accompany and guide him was reassuring.

Flynn tried to load the first biogel ampule in the injector, but his fingers were now covered in fresh blood, making everything he manipulated slippery.

The ampule slipped on the ground. The young man swore between his teeth but tried again. This time it worked. Without even thinking, he applied the injector against his arm and pressed the trigger. The content of the ampule was almost instantly injected into his body. He was starting to lose consciousness again, so he hurried up to load the second ampule and injected it.

His vision turned black before he could use the third one.