Free Lifeline by Kevin J. Anderson

a crazy angle. McLaris squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, only to see the saw-toothed wall of rock hurtling toward them.
    “Stephanie, look out—!”
    A ripping explosion tore out the belly of the Miranda. The shuttle pitched. McLaris thought he could see stars, then the lunar surface, through a gash in the floor. Ragged metal strips dangled like knives as their air vented out into the vacuum in a cloud of white frost crystals.
    The Miranda crashed, nose first, half burying itself into the lunar surface. Explosive pain popped inside of McLaris.
    The cockpit wall folded up and struck him.
    Fighting a red haze, McLaris clawed back to consciousness. Part of him wanted to remain in the floating warmth, in the dark, but another part insisted on returning to life.
    He squinted, focused enough to see flecks of blood spattered on the inside of his faceplate. He was hurt. McLaris faced the knowledge coolly, at a distance from himself.
    He forced his vision beyond the faceplate, into the distorted wreckage of the shuttle. His eyes began to assess distance and perspective again.
    He recognized with a sick detachment the torn remains of Stephanie Garland in the pilot’s seat. Frozen, iron-hard tatters of flesh and powder-dry blood hung from the ragged ends of the control panel. Half the cockpit yawned open to space.
    McLaris realized that he was now sitting in hard vacuum. He had no idea how long he had been unconscious. He wondered how long the air in his suit would last.
    Pain rose up inside his head, and his eyes refused to focus again. Something peaceful called him to come back into sleep … back into a blissful coma, away from all pain and worry.
    McLaris fought against it. Jessie! He had to find Jessie. But movement was much more difficult than opening his eyes. He clenched his hand, feeling the fingers move, touching the fabric on the inside of the glove. He breathed, but it felt as if he had inhaled needles that tore at his lungs with each gasp.
    He needed to turn only a little to see Jessie behind him. With each slight motion of his head, the nauseating shadows filled his mind again. He was going to faint soon …. for a long time. He didn’t know if he would ever wake up. But McLaris couldn’t fall into unconsciousness again … not without seeing Jessie one last time.
    He wrenched his head too quickly. Blackness reared, but he did get a chance to locate her, strapped into the passenger seat.
    Then he saw the jagged crack down the center of her faceplate.
    Darkness filled his head again. He had to save her. He refused to consider that he might be too late, that the decompression and loss of air would be almost instantaneous. His ears began to ring loudly. He couldn’t think, couldn’t concentrate. The only thing he could feel was horror—and then a baffled, nightmarish thought: why couldn’t he see her face? The space suit looked hauntingly empty, vacant, as if her body had vanished entirely.
    But then he faded into the off-kilter sea of blackness again.
    McLaris woke when they moved him. He blinked back a nightmare of a dwarf sitting on his back, stabbing into his spine over and over again with a sharp little dagger. Jessie … Jessie … Jessie!
    His eyes focused again, rolling up to reveal a suited man hauling him from the wreckage of the Miranda. He couldn’t see the man’s face or his expression; his polarized faceplate was turned into harsh shadow. But McLaris stared at the name patch on his suit, glowing orange.
    CLANCY.
    He memorized the name, as if it was something sacred and important. Clancy. He couldn’t understand why Clancy was wearing the suit of an Orbitech 2 construction engineer—weren’t they supposed to be at L-4?
    McLaris tried to call for his daughter, but only a hoarse sound came from his throat—like the sound of air escaping from a cracked faceplate.
    Clancy could not understand him, but seemed to recognize that McLaris had returned to consciousness. His words came clearly