He cried out in pain. Not just the physical pain of his injuries, but the emotional pain and anguish he was feeling. Everything he had planned so meticulously could not have happened more perfectly. Except for the one thing he never saw coming. The one person he never saw coming.

Now he lay, on the deck of the small shuttlecraft, his leg bleeding slightly from the area in his thigh where the knife still protruded. His breathing was heavy, he felt the sweat beading on his forehead.

Grasping the hilt of the knife with both hands, crying out in agony as the pain seared through his leg, he took a deep breath, trying to steady himself and prepare for what was to come.

With one hard yank, he extracted the knife from his leg. He screamed. Blood began gushing out and he quickly covered the wound with one hand, pressing as hard as he could. His free hand reached up to the empty pilots chair, where his bag was resting. He flailed around until he was able to grasp the handle of the bag and pull it down to the floor, the contents spilling out all over the deck. He found the small medical regenerator and slowly taking his hand away from the wound, began waving the device over his leg. It did its work, and within a minute his wound had sealed. It wasn’t as precise as proper medical attention, but for now it would have to do.

Clawing his way up off the ground, he slid himself into the pilots chair, bringing the shuttle back online fully and scanning the area. The emergency protocol he had used to escape his peril was designed to take him to an untraceable location, so that not even he would know the destination, should that information be taken from him by less than pleasant means.

Checking his position, he slammed the console with his fist. For now, he was safe. He was also stranded for the moment. The emergency protocol had burned out the drives in the shuttle, and he wouldn’t be able to repair them from where he was currently located.

Bringing up the entire sensor array, he began scanning. There had to be somewhere he could go from here. Then, out of the corner of his eye, a blip on one of the sensor readouts caught his eye. Swiveling in his seat to get a better look at that screen, a smile crept across his face.

“Well look what we have here,” He mused to himself. He set his navigation coordinates to this new beacon of hope. Time had a way of opening doors and closing them, creating new opportunities. This was one of those opportunities he would not ignore.

A smile crept on his face. Maybe his plan could be completed after all. Only time would tell.

-GM SEMAJ