It happened fast; too fast for Tom to react.

Voices came over the comms, something about a solar flare. Shouldn’t have been a concern. Then the channel lit up again, calling out an EMP, no time to get out of the way.  There was barely enough time for him to eject the power pack from his EVA suit. All at once, silence fell over the comms, all the systems shut down, and he found himself alone, surrounded by the dark, boundless expanse that is deep space.

‘Don’t panic’, he thought to himself, ‘that will cause an increase in heart rate, which will use more oxygen.’ He took a quick stock of his situation, tried cycling the main power switches a few times, and sat back in his seat. He looked out the cockpit towards the looming shadow that was the Hathaway, barely visible against the black background of space. The ship was lit from behind by a nearby star, causing the near edge of the saucer to be ignited in a halo of silver light.

He undid the harness that held him to the seat, and opened the access panel to his left to see if he could get his fighter up and running again. The power conduits all looked like they were in good shape, no visible damage and nothing was on fire, which was a good sign. He reinstalled the power call into his EVA suit, and tried to power up the display screen, which lit up after a second, and he let out a reckless sigh of relief. He looked at the power level, 47%. Not bad, but certainly less than he had hoped for, it would give him between 11 and 12 hours of oxygen once the air in the cockpit got too thin.  He knew for now, the best thing to do was be as still as possible, and breathe as shallow as possible to stretch the oxygen as far as possible. He leaned back into his seat, kept one eye on the Hathaway, and settled in for the long wait…