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radar.
    There was no help coming, he knew. This was it.
    There was nowhere left to go but back to the cockpit section of the scout, where Gus lay dead, and wait it out.
    Any moment that three percent on the oxygen readout was going to drop to two. Then it would drop to one.
    And then?
    Landry hopped down from the boulder and began to trudge across the dirt. In a few minutes he arrived back at the first crash site, where nothing had changed. Smoke was still drifting from the wreck, the systems were all silent and dark, and Gus was lying inert, his face blue and lifeless.
    Landry stared at him, conflicted. Although he was distraught that Gus was dead, he was also fuming that he’d been dragged into this mess. He should never have agreed to it in the first place. It had been a bad idea from the start. He’d known that. So why had he taken the risk?
    Did you even care about the consequences, Landry? a voice in his head wanted to know. Or were you too busy wallowing in self pity?
    He clenched his fist.
    “This is all your fault!” he screamed at Gus, spittle coating the inside of his visor. “Screw you, Gus!”
    He turned away, hating himself for screaming at a dead man—a guy who happened to be the only one in the whole outpost who had treated him with any affection. Landry knew that he didn’t deserve any friends—not with that wall he’d built around himself—and yet Gus had tried to create a rapport between them in spite of that.
    “I’m sorry,” Landry whispered hoarsely. He glanced back at his friend, ashamed. “I’m sorry.”
    He reached out and steadied himself on the hull of the scout, wondering where the Argoni might have gotten to. Was it sitting out there, camouflaged as just another rock, watching as Landry’s sanity unraveled? Was it clutching at the antenna with hateful satisfaction, knowing that it had robbed him of his only chance to contact home?
    What good would the antenna have done me anyway? I would still have to route the power from another system—
    Landry’s heart skipped a beat as an idea struck him.
    Route the power from another system.
    Suddenly he was moving, clambering up into the cockpit to retrieve his toolkit.
    The seconds were counting down until he ran out of air.

 
    Chapter 7
    PSD 29-212: 1637 hours
    The bank of solar panels located on the hull of the scout, just behind the cockpit, was about the size of a clipboard. Not large at all , Landry thought, as he wedged his flathead screwdriver underneath its edge and attempted to pry it upward.
    It wasn’t large because it didn’t have to be.
    The Himura Seagull was equipped with a bank of lithium-air batteries on its belly, which provided power to the ship whilst in operation. However, those batteries were ruined and scattered in a hundred pieces across the landscape, having busted apart when the ship was torn in two.
    There was a second source of power, though. The small, almost insignificant group of solar receptors Landry was prying up fed a backup battery with a sole purpose: to provide the scout with power in the event of a catastrophic failure to the primary system. It was like the equivalent of the ram air turbines used in old Earth aircraft, the ones that drew power from a small propeller that deployed beneath the belly of a jumbo in an emergency.
    It was the last hope of a pilot who’d lost power to his engines mid-flight.
    And it’s my last hope, too.
    With the screwdriver poised, he forced himself to stop and take a breath. Although things were desperate, he couldn’t afford to make any mistakes.
    Is this really the best option I have? Once I rip this thing out of here, there’s no turning back.
    I could sift through the larger lithium-air batteries from the undercarriage to maybe find one that’s still holding a charge, but that will take too long. And judging by the state of the lower section of the Seagull, I’m not going to have much luck.
    What about finding another way to signal home? Build another antenna