Free Tears of Glass (The Jana Darren Saga Book 1) by Jessica Cole

the trees. Instead, she increased the flaps and cut the engine. Jana switched the thrusters into reverse and rebooted again, trying to slow them more. The trees were coming closer and closer.
    There was nothing else she could do. Ships weren’t built for this kind of thing—they no longer needed to be.
    When they hit, the whole ship jolted forward. They skidded along the treetops, snapping whole pieces off the fuselage. The little ship still had an amazing amount of speed and force. All Jana could do was try to level out. It wouldn’t do them any good.
    She saw the tree before they hit. It was massive. They collided with it head-on.
    The force threw Jana forward. Her harness nearly strangled her. She gasped for air through the pain. Her head smashed into the control panel.
    Blood trickled over her face.
    Everything went black.
    Coppery wetness trickled into her mouth, and she came to. Jana fumbled with the harness straps, hands shaking too much to unbuckle it. Her eyes watered from pain so intense that she could barely see through her kaleidoscope of her scope of vision.
    It was dark. Jana stumbled over to the compartment door, but it was unresponsive. The emergency lights were on, but there was no power to anything else. She had to know the others were okay.
    She searched for something to help prop the door open. Trying to open it without power would be equivalent to trying to turn a thousand pound steering wheel without fluid. Finding nothing to use for leverage, she turned her attention to the dirty, cracked window. Clambering on top of the control panel, she kicked the cockpit window. Each time her leg connected with the thick glass, agony flooded through her. It wasn’t doing any good.
    Breaths came with labor now; Jana was exhausted. Suddenly the ship rocked violently and she fell over, putting her hands out to stop herself from smacking her head on the metal.
    “What the—?” The ship rocked again, then rolled, and Jana was thrown into the air as the ship fell from a very high height. She screamed and landed hard on the... ceiling? The ship is upside down. Her best guess was they’d gotten stuck in that big tree and the weight of it shifting caused the branches to break and send them tumbling. It took a while for her eyes to focus. Her whole body was screaming in pain.
    Against her better judgment, she pushed herself upright, arms shaking from over-exertion. The window now had an intricate spider web of cracks running through it. Jana panted, her breathing ragged and deliberate. She put a hand to her face to brush away the bangs plastered to her forehead. When her hand came away, it was covered in thick, warm red blood.
    I’m going to faint.
    She limped her way over to the window once more. Every bit of her was screaming in pain. With shaking hands, she braced herself and tried to kick out the window, but it was no use. Even in top physical condition, it would have been impossible for her.
    Remembering the flare gun in its holster on her belt, she reached for it. Not there . Swearing under her breath she looked around to see where it had fallen, but it was so dark. Finally, she spotted it in a shadowy corner. Lifting it with shaking hands, Jana pointed it at the window and fired off one round, and then two more, until a round section of the glass blew out from the impact. A tiny blob of plasma hit her in the thigh, instantly burning through her skin and cauterizing it.
    Jana holstered the gun, dropped to her knees, and scrambled out of the cockpit. The glass raked across her skin. Taking a step back, she surveyed the damage. Even in the diminishing light, she could see the ship was totally ruined. It was belly-up, the door partially blocked by a tree trunk, the front smashed in, the wings clipped. It was a disaster.
    Wasting no time, she needed to get the door open. It was bent, and didn’t want to release. It’s no use. The door isn’t budging. She grabbed a long piece of metal and climbed to the top of the