Snow and ash swirled in the night, intermingled, scattering the light emitted by my surviving helmet lamp. A growing crack spiderwebbed across the left side of my visor, superseding barren rock and twisted metal in my field of vision. Red numerals flashed weakly before my right eye: not enough power remained for the self-repair system. I flexed my hand in just the right gesture, halving the energy fed into the exoskeletal motors. Instantly the suit felt heavier. It was all I could do to keep moving, to keep placing one foot ahead of the other. Pain seared through my injured leg, pain redoubled without the suit's assistance. But when the alternative was suffocation as the power reserves fell to zero and the environmental filters shut down – assuming you didn't freeze first – you learn to deal with such discomforts.
Between my foundering light and the blinding particulates, visibility was all but naught. I was used to isolation; as a child amongst the Chozo following the death of my world, there was no one my age to connect with, no one to grow up alongside. Even reentering the greater galactic society at the cusp of my adulthood, I was alone. With the Chozo as dead as my birthplace, I had no home left. Amongst humans, I was an Amazon, physically intimidating, mentally unique, socially uncomprehending the bizarre quirks of expected female behavior. Even my genes set me apart. The gift of my adopted guardians left me not quite human, and neither did I belong with any of the other races which permeated interstellar civilization. I was an object of equal parts curiosity and fear, never pity or compassion or love. I was a tool, a weapon employed by the Galactic Federation when their other toys failed them; in the eyes of all those around me, that was all I could ever be. But that kind of solitude is nothing compared to the utter soul-wrenching, claustrophobic dread of being trapped in a broken shell, your visible world reduced to three square feet of blowing snow as you struggle inexorably across a toxic frozen hellscape.
Finally I sank to my knees, my lower legs buried in snow which began to darken with the blood seeping from the shattered leg. My display flickered out of existence, the last of my reserves drained by a final desperate summons to my gunship. If it didn't find me soon, if my signal didn't get through, I estimated I had about an hour to live.
The first of twin suns crested the horizon, piercing clouds and snow and ash to illuminate the charred remnants of the dead.