Crackling flame and the smell of smoke; for a moment Leicho thought she was at her mother’s hearth on a winter morning. Time to milk the sheep.
No, the smoke smelled wrong. And her head hurt. Everything hurt. Leicho felt gritty rubble under her hands, and remembered. The transport had crashed.
Terror dragged her up through the fog of unconsciousness, and she sat up as quickly as she dared, everything spinning around her. They had crashed. On a seed world. This was surely the HWA’s ultimate nightmare, for a prison transport to crash on a seed world.
Her surroundings settled into a landscape of twisted metal, scattered fires against a night sky. It had been midday aboard the ship, which wasn’t helping her disorientation. The wrecked transport seemed somehow both larger and smaller than it
