Losing Hope: Part One

Posted on Wed Jun 25th, 2025 @ 4:17am by Civilian Killian Jones

963 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Character Backstories
Location: Unknown Planet
Timeline: After the crash

ON:

Killian opened his eyes and blinked a few times before he noticed it was the sky he'd been looking at. It was bright. Not even two feet to the right of his head was a giant piece of burning metal from the ship and the heat coming off it was intense. To the left of him was the escape pod that had one of its doors swinging open and there were still people strapped inside, some still alive and moving, others not. Somehow the straps of his harness in the pod had come loose on impact and he had been flung out of it and onto the ground. They were in a clearing, trees were about a hundred yards to the right, and smoke was rising into the sky a fair distance away to their left.

Panic started to take a hold on him and he said bolt upright, looking all around him to find where his wife and son were. "Evelyn!" he called out as he managed to scramble to his feet. Blood started trickling down from a wound above his left eye and by the feel of it a tooth had also been knocked out, causing that horrible metallic taste in his mouth that he was all too familiar with. Cuts were all over his arms and hands and were bleeding. Killian could feel his heart rate starting to climb higher and higher and he fought to get it under control by taking long deep breaths and closing his eyes, and he knew straight away an anxiety attack was coming on.

After a number of minutes and struggling to get his breathing back to normal, Killian called out again, "Evelyn! Oliver!" to no avail. Where were they that they couldn't answer? He half ran over to the tilted over pod and looked inside: three people in there that looked either unconscious or were dead, he couldn't tell, but they weren't his wife and son. Where had they gone? Killian shook one of them to see if they came around, "Hey, are you alive?". The Lieutenant looked to be either from Medical or Science and she just responded with a groan, and Killian could see bluish bruising peering out from beneath her collar so his guess was it was severe whiplash and possibly a concussion she'd suffered, "Hey, look at me." He made her focus on him properly before continuing and working on getting her free, "I need you to focus on me and what I'm saying. I'm getting you out of here and I need you to work with me, okay?" He held her face in his hands and made direct eye contact, "What's your name, Ensign? I'm 1st Lieutenant Killian Jones, I'm one of the Marines but I'm out of uniform. I was with my family when we went down" He let her go and stepped back a distance

The Ensign shook her head to focus and then looked back at him, her voice shaky, "Lieutenant Ari Garland, and I'm one of the science officers on board." She hit the ground with a thud and began to cry, never having dreamed she would ever be in a situation like this: a million miles away from home and crash landed on some planet. "What do we do now?" Ari was the first to admit she was scared.

Killian took a deep breath and tried to get his thoughts in order before answering her in his best authoritative voice, "What you're going to do is get yourself together before anything else and then I want you to see if there are any other survivors, okay? Get them out of any of the pods around here and into a common area." He pointed to a location about ten meters away to his right. "I need to find my wife and son." His voice was getting more and more desperate the more he spoke. Ari nodded quickly out of fear and then set off to do what she was tasked with.

Trying his commbadge, "This is 1st Lieutenant Killian Archer Jones, Marine Executive Officer of the USS Phoenix. If anyone can hear me, please respond. We've crashed in some remote part of the planet and need immediate assistance. I repeat: we've crashed and need immediate assistance." Nothing but silence returned his call. "Dammit!" Killian swore out loud "Now what?!" He interlocked his fingers behind the back of his neck and started to walk away in frustration, noticing someone laying on the ground a short distance away and not moving. Could it be? Maybe? Every fiber of his being braced for the worst.

Killian raced over to the body on the ground and he stopped dead in his tracks. "No, no, no, please no!" he could feel the tears running down his face and mixing with the blood and sweat. "Please God no, no, no, no, no.." It was Evelyn. He knelt to the ground and pulled her into his arms, stroking her hair and removing the dirt from near her mouth and eyes with his thumb. Lifting her up and putting his ear to her chest, he felt the faint beat of her heart. She was still alive, but only just. "Oh my.. Evie, baby.. Can you hear me?" Killian gently shook his wife and kept stroking her hair to try and make her respond.

Her eyes flickered open and she looked at him directly, “Where’s Ollie?” Her voice was weak but desperate and urgent. Killian shook his head, “I haven’t found him yet but I’m still looking.” He propped her up against a fallen log, noticing how her hand had automatically gone to clutch her stomach where her white shirt had been soaked red from a massive wound.

TBC...

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