ROSE

The view at the front of the shuttle pod was obscured by the flames and smoke of the overworked engine. It was running at full power now, trying to slow down their free fall towards the surface of a planet they couldn't see. 

Rose clutched the break, pulling it back as hard as she could, but it made no difference. The fuel level was dropping by the second, at a rate faster than the speed at which the pod was slowing down. They wouldn't come to a complete stop before they hit the ground, but at least they'd be going slower when they crashed.

Rose tried to calculate how hard, and at what speed, they would hit the surface, but she couldn't concentrate with Finn's screaming. He had his eyes shut tight and was useless at the moment as a co-pilot. 

Rose's neck was cramping up as it fought against the force of their speed. They were breaking too fast, but not fast enough. She wanted to yell at Finn to shut up, his screams weren't going to help slow the shuttle pod, but her jaw was clenched too tightly. And it wasn't his fault. If she  wasn't frozen in fear, she'd be screaming too.

They were still moving too fast.

Suddenly the flames outside the viewport stopped and the blasting sounds ended abruptly. They were out of gas.

"Brace for impact!" Rose yelled.

She saw the white ground below them a second before the ship hit, crashing right through the surface. The impact made a sound like that of breaking glass. Rey squealed from behind her and Finn passed out.

The white was quickly replaced by darkness as the shuttle pod slowed and came to a stop deep inside the ground.

"Ice," Rose said. "We've broken through some kind of ice."

Rey gasped and Rose turned to face her. The movement made the shuttle pod shift again and it turned onto its back, falling another couple of feet before coming to a definitive halt with a loud crunch.

"Are we under water?" Rey asked. She looked panicked and Rose felt bad for having had any part of this haphazard escape plan. Finn was still unconscious and had a cut on his forehead, which didn't look too serious but was beginning to swell. The emergency lights inside the shuttle pod began to flicker.

Rose turned back to the controls. The front of the pod was now facing up to the surface, where a hole could be seen, letting in light from above. The hole was where they'd broken through. It looked like a tiny speck now. They were too far down to ever get out.

"We can't be stuck down here until we die," Rose said, her anxiety rising. She felt disattached suddenly, as though viewing everything from outside of herself. She could hear Rey talking but didn't register the meaning of the words. She felt the escape pod dip, as though it teetered on some unseen ledge, then it plummeted again, even farther downward. Her stomach dropped. There was a sickening sound of metal on metal and a swoosh of air. The fall had made a hole in the pod and cold air came rushing in, along with the smell of burned fuel. The strong scent brought Rose back to her senses.

"The atmosphere," she managed to say. She couldn't gather the proper words but it didn't matter anyway. They couldn't repair the hole and if this planet's atmosphere was hostile to them then there was nothing they could do about it.

A deafening silence engulfed them. Even Rose's movements sounded muted as she repositioned herself to sit on the back of her seat and look down to Rey, who was now below her.

"Are we out of fuel?" Rey asked. Her voice sounded as though it was coming from beneath a blanket, unless it was Rose's ears that were not working properly. The noise of the engine and their fall through the atmosphere may have hurt her hearing, hopefully just for the short term. Her ears were ringing loudly now.

Finn was still passed out and Rose didn't want to wake him just yet. She needed a moment of peace to process and think.

They were on a planet that didn't register on any systems, which was basically invisible on scanners. Their pod was broken and out of fuel. No one knew where they were. They hadn't messaged ahead to the space station they were heading towards, so the crew there wasn't expecting them. They should have been more careful, they should have-

"Where are we?" Finn woke with a start. He stretched and remained on his back, looking around in a dreamy haze. Then suddenly he sat up, causing the pod to shift slightly. Rose grabbed the back of her seat, bracing for another plummet farther down into the depths of the frozen planet. But the pod didn't fall any further, instead it seemed to be wedged permanently into the spot it had settled into.

"It's so cold," Finn said. He began to look worried. Rose could see the recollection on his face, he was remembering what had happened.

"We crashed." He looked up and his eyes went wide. "We survived."

The shuttle went quiet again, as no one seemed to want to state the obvious, that they'd survived but were trapped.

It seemed to be getting colder by the second. Rey must have felt it too because she said "there's been a breach in the hall plating." She sounded groggy, likely from the aftereffects of the tranquilizer. Rose still felt bad about that. Finn shouldn't have used a tranquilizer.

"At least we know the atmosphere is compatible with our respiratory systems," Rose said, wanting to impart some good news. She took a long, slow breath. The pressure and the oxygen seemed fine, which made her wonder if there were other inhabitants on this planet, considering the ideal oxygen conditions.

"We need to send out a distress signal," Rey continued. Finn exchanged a glance with Rose. They were sitting up front and both knew the shuttle had no power or fuel. Rose hugged her arms around herself to warm up. She was wearing her basic crew overalls and boots. Finn had a jacket on, but it was just a light one, and poor Rey only had a thin, black shirt and pants. The shirt had a First Order logo on the upper arm. She seemed to notice Rose looking at it and frowned.

"So what happened while we were gone?" Rose asked, wanting to distract herself and Finn from the obvious, that they had no options and would freeze to death. "How did everything change so fast in such a short time?"

Rey repositioned herself so she was sitting on the back of her seat and looked up at them. She followed Rose's example and hugged her knees to her chest.

"I'm not quite sure," she said. "The Space Pirates and some others came to join us, to join the First order and the Resistance. By that point we were working together by default. We had no choice, we have a common enemy that doesn't care which side we're on. General Leia got everyone working together and Hux..." Rey hesitated. "The force sensitive boy, Temiri, he's..." She paused again.

Rose and Finn exchanged another glance, but they didn't interrupt. They were in for a long story.