Mary Sue was only five years old when the Dragonians descended from the sky like a passing eclipse. Ten years have passed since then and she has been living on the rock they left behind.

The day had started like any other, with a sunrise. Light crept through the broken glass, streaking across Mary’s eyes. She squinted and flipped over, pulling the burlap sheet up over her head. Focused light-spots slid down the opposite wall as she lay there, tired from yesterday’s work.

Huffing, she sat up, her frayed and frizzy hair sticking uncomfortably to her dry skin, scorched dark by the oppressive sun. She stared at her barren house; four sandstone walls, a door in one, a window in the other three, and a metal ceiling with a hatch, a ladder leading up to it. Her legs fell over her bed, the old wood splitting, and her calloused feet hit the dusty floor, her toenails cracked and yellow.

She strapped on a pair of worn-out sandals and stood, her aching joints creaking under her small weight. Even at five feet tall, she still weighed about fifteen pounds less then she should have. She pulled on a robe, similar to the Bedouin people of Earth, grabbed her nearly empty bottle from her side table, and gripped her parasol from beside the door, small holes peppering its cloth. The door creaked open and she stepped out into the already near-unbearable sunlight.

She unfurled her parasol and breathed in the breeze as she was engulfed in her little pocket of shade. The sand crunched under her feet, the cooling west wind spiralling up her body beneath her robe as she looked around.

More sandstone buildings made up her village of survivors, surrounded by a wall taller then all the other structures. Most had holes in the walls or ceilings, more were cracked almost all over, but all were in some stage of disrepair in other ways. Half had collapsed during The Invasion.

She stopped in front of the building next to her house. It had been hit with a missile and she hadn’t gotten around to filling in the back corner. Inside was an old table she had found under some rubble and behind it was a chair she had built. In the middle was a tough rubber mat she could cut into without much issue, a box full of tools she couldn’t name on one end, and a crate of random bits and bobs she had scrounged up on the other.

She stepped in through the doorless threshold, placed her closed parasol in the corner, sat down; her bottle going on the floor next to her. She plopped her crossed arms on the table and lay her head down. All around her were piles of incomplete projects shoved against the walls, but one sat on the table in front of her.

She narrowed her tired eyes at the water pump for the central well. It had spewed it’s brains all over the pumphouse about two weeks ago and she hadn’t been able to finish it yet. But I’m almost done, I think.

She sat up, pulled her chair forward, cracked her neck, and pulled some tools out of the box. Her head lilted to one side and her mind went foggy.

“Mary.” Her head snapped straight on her neck and her mind cleared.

“Oh, hello, Mr. Something One. Did you need something?” He was a burly man with graying hair, green eyes, and a patchy beard.

“No,” he replied. “I was just wondering if the pump was done. My water’s a little low.” He held up a near-empty bottle.

“Of course, Mr. Something One. I just got it done. Could you help me carry it over?” She stood up and grabbed it.

“I can do it if you need me too,” Mr. Something One said as he too grabbed it.

“Oh, thank you very much.” She sat back down as Mr. Something One hoisted it onto his shoulder.

“Is there anything you need?” he asked.

“No,” Mary said, looking at her twitching fingers in her lap. “Everyone getting water again will be enough.”

Mr. Something One sighed. “Then you’re going to be first in line.”

“Please, I appreciate the thought but-”

“Don’t argue with me, young lady. Grab your bottle and follow me.”

“Yessir!” She fumbled out of her chair, knocking over her bottle and herself. She followed closely behind him, shaded by her parasol and staring at her feet. As they made their way through town, people came out of their houses to join the march, and others spread the word.

By the time they made it to the central well, everybody was lined up with their bottles, some more empty then others. Mary and Mr. Something One got the pump hooked up and started filling bottles.

Faces lit up as the water flowed from the metal nozzle, Mary’s smile growing with each person. The scorching sunlight trailed across the barren landscape as the day marched on.

“I don’t know how you do it, Mary,” Mr. Something One said, “but you keep this town alive. Thank you.”

“Yeah, sure.” She fiddled with her hem. “It’s no big deal.”

“How could you say that? If not for you, none of us would be here right now.”

Her lips tightened. “I’m sorry to go, but I have to work on the ship.”

“Okay,” he said. “See you tomorrow then.”

She trudged through the dust outside, the setting sun reflecting off the metal hull that sat atop her house. It had the shape of a half-sphere; a windshield on one side, thrusters out the other, and little wings coming out of the underside that didn’t look like they would do much. On said wings and on top of the dome sat guns that could pivot in whatever direction they needed. Ten years ago, these unmanned drones engulfed the planet in darkness and fire.

She gripped her mother’s hand as they ran down the street to the bomb shelter. Three jets flew over them, nearly ripping the air from her lungs, a drone close behind them. It’s guns were ablaze as bullets fell like rain upon the jets. Two were hit, caught fire, and crashed, one of them exploding.

“Get down, Mary!” her mother yelled. A drone with a nozzle out it’s bottom crossed their path, coating the road with Napalm. Their path was blocked. “This way!”

They turned down an alley and an explosion went off above them. She looked up. Three drones had struck each other chasing a helicopter and fell, their momentum carrying them out of her view. They turned a corner just a drone came between the buildings, directly toward them.

Her ears hurt so much they rang, and her vision was splotchy, dark spots coming in and out with her blinks. Her mother completely enclosed her, trembling. The ringing began to fade. Crunching and stomping. Boots? Her vision cleared and her eyes widened.

All around her stood soldiers. All but one had weapons she didn’t recognize. The one she did know was a rocket launcher, held my Mr. Something One, though she wouldn’t know that until much later.

“Drone down,” Mr. Something One said as he reloaded. “Civilian well being?”

“Shaken, but alive,” said one soldier. “We need to get them out of here, but the safe zone’s been closed off by the enemy.”

“Negative, Sir,” said another. “Just got intel that they’ve targeted the shelters.”

“How many?”

“All of them. They surrounded them in fire and sent bombardments of explosive drones. No survivors.”

A drone swooped over them and turned around to come back. Mr. Something One raised his rocket launcher and fired. The projectile went through the glass on the front that looked like an eye and exploded. The fiery ball of metal tumbled toward them down the street at several hundred miles an hour.

“Take cover!” They ran for behind a building, the downed drone leveling everything in it’s path, half the squad included. Dust mixed with smoke and flooded the surrounding area as they ran. Mr. Something One led the way through the maze of burning roads and collapsed buildings, his rocket launcher at the ready.

Above them was a firestorm. Vessels of both sides getting shot with every manner of weapon she knew of and leaving pillars of smoke as they fell from the sky. Numerous times, drones sprayed bullets or other things down streets, Mr. Something One shooting them down whenever he got the chance. But even using his rockets sparingly, his supply was dwindling.

They ran down an alley, a drone on their tail. Mr. Something One quickly looked down the intersecting street. “Go!”

He fired his last rocket as Mary and her mother ran past him. Mary looked down the street and screamed. A drone sped toward them in the intersection. Mary’s mother saw it too and pushed her back into the alley as it’s guns began to spin. The rocket hit it’s mark as the first bullets flew. Mary was behind the building; her mother was not.

Her eyes opened. “That same dream again.” It was still the middle of the night, but she got out of bed, the cold sand on the ground cooling her hot feet. She grabbed a bag of junk from one corner of her room and went up the ladder that sat against the wall. She opened th hatch and tossed the bag through before coming up herself.

Her back popped as she stood and stretched, the sleepiness leaving her aching muscles. She flicked a switch to turn on the lights, put the bag on a cart with a box of tools, and drug it behind her through the iron corridors to the final part of the project. The Jump Chamber.

Now most people believe faster then light travel to be impossible. Technically, they’re correct, however, there is a way to bypass that limit. By slamming two particles together hard enough, the Jump Drive tears a hole in space that a ship can fall through. The bigger the Drive, the bigger the ship it can transport, and with the right technology, one can control where the other side is.

But the downside is, since no material in the universe is entirely indestructible, rather explosive. The amount of force put into the particles to open the wormhole also goes into the Jump Drive itself, usually leading to an explosion and it needing repair or replacement.

Mary dumped the bag of junk out onto the floor and read the first page of her cutting torch’s instruction manual.

— How To Turn On Plasma Cutter —

She pulled the welding mask over her face and ignited the gas. Her irises constricted and she cut into a large piece of sheet metal. She didn’t know what she was doing, or why, but her hands moved on their own. The torch turned off and the metal she cut out was hammered into a parabolic shape before being bolted somewhere in the Jump Drive.

Four more followed quickly, but halfway through the last one, her mind cleared. She held the hammer in her hand and didn’t know what to do with it. Her teeth clenched and her grip tightened. She inhaled and threw the hammer across the room, sliding down a wall until she sat on the floor, her face buried in her knees, pressed against her chest.

“Damn it,” she whimpered as her tears soaked through her clothes and onto her legs. For the past five years, she had been building this ship from the ground up, periodically gaining the knowledge necessary to do it. But after a while, the knowledge would fade from her mind, taking with it everything she tried to learn in the intervening lengths of time.

She looked up into the ceiling, tears streaming down her face, her eyes bloodshot, and her chest heaving. Why? she wondered, not for the first time. Her fingers squeezed around her clothes and she pressed her face into her knees, crying her self to sleep.