She had to pull herself out of the wreckage, dragging herself through the jagged, sparking crawlspaces that were all the crash had left of her ship. Cold, sensible metal crumpled into an unsolvable puzzle, a way home she would never be able to map again.

At least, once she sprawled herself on the grey shimmer of alien lichen and could look at herself as more than a puzzle piece barely worked free of the broken whole, her body proved not to be unsolvable. Her right tibia was fractured, but her suit’s systems were still online, its needles primed and internal reservoirs still topped up with painkillers, antitoxins, stimulants, everything necessary to keep its wearer upright and walking long after their own internal systems should have failed. Its slight, reactive exoskeleton stiffened automatically around the limb, minimizing how much weight she would have to put on what little pain remained.

But not even the most advanced suit could answer the question of where the hell she should wear it to now. It could fill her visor with helpful analyses, local terrain (smooth and mild for as far as the radar could ping in every direction except north, where it sloped up towards violently volcanic-looking peaks), atmospheric composition (taking off her helmet would kill her in minutes, but with lethargy and hallucinations, at least, not choking and frothing), and distance from the nearest interstellar communications relay (untenable), but only she could steady her drugged, aching body to its feet and try to make actual logistical sense of where she had landed her ship for the last time.

The horizon swam with the same dusty, iridescent grey as the lichen where she’d left such a clear imprint of her body. No irregular, promising shapes disrupted the roll of the hills between her and it – no sign of any intelligent structure built in defiance of the bleak landscape, any shelter or hope that the immediate vicinity might be populated by something capable of pity.

Which meant she would have to go looking for it. Pity, shelter, something her suit could process into digestible nutrients once its limited supply ran dry, and water. The latter had to be her best bet for finding anything resembling people, too. Which meant the terrain analysis would serve as her guide, down those gentle slopes to where water seemed most likely to flow.

She set off at a limp, her right leg numb as a stump below the knee, but braced and armoured well enough to bear her weight. If she couldn’t find anything resembling food or filter-compatible water or people…

Well, at least hallucinations and lethargy would be far from the worst way to go.