“Adrian’s oxygen was on empty as her XR-9 Starship, EON, was destroyed; rocketing her miles from the onslaught that had brought devastation to her home world, and the crew of ‘EON’. Now the weightless behemoth, twisting and writhing around its headless form, began making its way effortlessly toward her.
Shallow moments passed as she let her Solo-Co. RayGun, “Mina”, charge. She watched the planets that she had sworn to protect over a century ago, drift below her. Space was a strange place, she thought, as her mind drifted back to the river in Yuma, AZ where she would float face down watching pebbles go by- imagining them as planets and stars. Only in Yuma the sun warmed her naked back; here, no star warmed her slowly freezing body and the safety that she had felt in the river was all but gone as the creature moved closer, and time wasted away.
Adrian felt ‘Mina’ finish charging, and took one last shallow breath. One chance, she would mumble to herself, if she had warranted the breath to do so. One chance to save the selfish and shallow lives of humanity that she had witnessed in the final days of the war.
The creature grew ever closer, reaching its tendrils out towards her, hoping to catch her in the naked moments of her hesitation; but there, in its hesitation Adrian saw the opening she had been looking for. Her heart in her throat and body tense, she stared down its only opening, strait at its heart and squeezed the trigger.”