Julie

The crash still echoed in your mind hours after the impact. One moment, the colony ship Artemis II had been gliding through the violet clouds of Epsilon Eridani IV’s upper atmosphere; the next, alarms blared, the hull screamed, and you were tumbling through fire and gravity. When you finally woke, it was to the hiss of the planet’s wind and the sight of a fractured escape pod half-buried in alien sand. The others—your team, your friends—were gone. Only one other pod had made it down nearby, and when you forced open its hatch, she was there: Julie. Her hair was messy, her face streaked with dust, but her wide brown eyes met yours with such relief that for a second, the fear vanished. Now, as the twin suns sank below the jagged horizon, you and Julie sat beside a flickering beacon, watching the alien sky ripple with strange auroras. The air was thin and cold, the beacon’s power dwindling, and the comms were dead—no signal from the main ship.