Free Rebel (Rebel Stars Book 0) by Edward W. Robertson

alien ship, held fast by the mat-like matter. He stopped reaching. She turned to look down the tunnel and saw that it was endless. When she turned back to Stem, he was gone.
    The drill made the most progress against the rubble. She could pierce it, weaken it, hack it apart in slabs. Its batteries were piezos and when they ran out she slung it over her back and chopped away with her pickaxe, her hatchet, and her icepick. Inch by inch, she cored her way forward.
    It ate up her oxygen much faster than predicted. Nothing to be done about that. Earlier, arms exhausted, she'd turned around to see whether the interior of the cavern held another exit and had found nothing. Her choices were to chop her way out, or be buried here.
    The first day was the worst; her condition soon transitioned into a hangover, and while she allowed herself a nip to ward off the worst of it, she saved the rest in case she needed to kill herself. After that, she sweated it out. Fought her way through dreams that were more distressing by their vividness than because of their content. With no day cycle or other people to keep up with, she slept whenever she grew too tired to go on. She kept time through the alarms on her suit warning her that her oxygen was down to 25%, 10%. The suit was programmed to switch over to backups once they dropped to single digits, but she instructed it to run each canister dry.
    She hacked, drilled, scraped, gouged, and sliced. Her life became the matter of perfecting these techniques. Each time she carved out a fat slice of ice, or reached a spot where the rubble was loose and easily cleared, a thrill pulsed in her heart. She was so defined by the work that when she hammered a pane of ice and it shattered to reveal open ground and the airless sky of eternal night, a crazed pang of disappointment sounded from her gut.
    She put her faceplate to the hole and confirmed the land beyond was empty of attackers. Methodically, she expanded the exit until she could squeeze out without snagging her suit.
    It took a moment to convince herself to step outside. A gleaming scree of ice footed the base of the cliffs. Glancing to all sides, she advanced toward the ramp. This was buried in broken ice, forcing her to pick her way upwards step by step. Several times, the loose pieces shifted beneath her and Rada sprung away, sailing through the air.
    The plateau where she'd parked the cart was a bombed-out, one-sided battlefield. Black scars marred the ice. She scanned them for radiation. Finding trace amounts, she trekked forward through the craters, hiding inside their ridges. Nearing the plain leading to the site and the Box Turtle's landing spot, she hunkered down and belly-crawled to high ground.
    Across the flat land below, the Turtle had ceased to exist as the Turtle , replaced by an irregular circle of charred and twisted metal. A quarter mile away, a new ship sat on the ice, sprawling and square. Rada stared steadily, allowing the camera in her suit a good long look.
    At a point equidistant from the two ships, a large square was cut from the ice. The dig had been unearthed. Beside it, the alien ship rested beneath the stars, a segmented tube. Removed from the cavern, it looked larger. More foreign. She shuddered.
    A few carts and machines stirred around the unearthed ship. Rada continued to take pictures, but the vehicles appeared to be automated, unmanned. Could they be from the Hive? Parson had contacted them a few days before the attack. They'd claimed it would take ten days to get out to Nereid, but maybe they'd lied. Yet who else could have known?
    Skylon. Someone had boasted too much or drunkenly let slip a key detail. Could even have been her. What was his name, the suit from Dison Concerns. Given what had unfolded, him stumbling on her at Shine now seemed impossibly coincidental.
    None of it would matter in the slightest if she couldn't find a way off this rock. She had about four days of O2 left. She backed down the slope and