Quiet. What woke her was the quiet. Images flashed through her mind in a flurry almost too fast to make out: the squad’s battle through the doomed carrier, their escape to the shuttle, and, last, their rotor-like tumble from the sky. The echoes of engines and gunfire roared through her mind, thundering through her ears. After all that, it felt as if the quiet of the shuttle was the deadest of silences.<br/><br/>Slowly, Dawn opened her eyes. At first, she couldn't quite place what was wrong; she could see the other side of the shuttle quite clearly, seats still filled with motionless passengers. Suddenly, she understood why her body was so numb, why she could see her legs dangling in front of her. With a grimace, she unstrapped herself from her seat, lowering herself as gently as she could to the floor.<br/><br/>As the numbness began to fade into pins and needles, she began to realise that she hurt almost everywhere. At least she was small; she could only imagine what some of the larger passengers had gone through during the descent.<i>Move, Dawn,</i>she told herself. They had just crash landed on an alien world; they didn’t even know if the Greys had pursued them. The shuttle wouldn’t be safe forever.<br/><br/>With some effort, she slipped out of her armour. Her tight-fitting thinsuit would give her enough mobility in the shuttle to avoid stumbling over anyone, and the lower weight relieved some of the pain in her body. She could put the armour back on when they were ready to move out; hopefully some of the pain would recede by then.<br/><br/>Dawn made her way over to each unconscious marine one by one, giving them a gentle shake and a slight smile if they opened their eyes. Not all of them moved.<i>You can’t let it bother you,</i>she thought, but her heavy heart could be seen in her grey eyes. She stopped only to give Edmund a solemn nod as she passed him.<br/><br/>If anyone needed to be alive - although she wished with all her heart that everyone had made it - it was the overeager medic, Morimoto. They had more injured than she knew what to do with, and Dawn didn’t even know if<i>she</i>was alright. Still, she was alive -for now - and that had to count for something.<br/><br/>She just had to keep it that way.<div class="messageTextEndMarker"> </div>