Jaina sobbed, the tears streaming down her face mingling with the sweat on her cheeks.
"Let me out!" she cried, beating her fists on the transparasteel hatch. "Cappie, please!"
She was exhausted, sweat dripping from her forehead, her palms bloody from attacking the unyielding canopy.
When the NRDA had approved the X-J3 x-wings, one of the leading factors had been the pressure seal around the cockpit/canopy joint, rendering it completely airtight, an important factor in space, but death in her present situation.
No amount of her desperate banging was going to change that.
Her commlink was gone, probably still resting on her night table, beside her lightsaber. Her energy was rapidly waning, along with the breathable air.
The power shunt was still operational, but that wasn't what kept her from getting the life-support system online.
Cappie, or whatever Yuuzhan Vong personality he was now, had disabled the central computer.
All her fighter was now was an impenetrable vacuum.
A perfectly encased tomb.
Dark spots danced in her vision as she sat back in her seat, feeling utterly defeated.
The air felt so stiff, so heavy, she wondered if maybe she'd already run out of oxygen.
She had tried to reach out to Jacen, to Luke, to anybody.
In the end, it was just like everything else she'd tried.
Useless.
She sobbed again, clutching her knees to her chest. She swiped away the tears, but the blur remained, turning the randomly-blinking lights on the control panel into the flickering candles of the Liberation Day Memorial.
She closed her eyes and rested her forehead on her drawn up knees, knowing it was almost over.
Only a few minutes of hypoxia-induced unconsciousness, and she'd have irreparable brain damage.
Over.
Without a single goodbye.
She waited for the calm certainty of it to wash over, but the peace she had almost expected was as elusive as the Force.
It really was over this time. There would be no more chances.
It was almost funny the way it was so different from what she'd always imagined.
No blaring alarms or frantic scrambling to her fighter. No split-second profound understandings. No last rush of adrenaline, no final blaze of glory.
Jaina Solo was going to die quietly and alone.
All because she'd been so stupid.
She could see Jacen, picture the tears streaming down his face as he held Keil; her mother, grieving quietly as she knelt beside the memorial and placed a lit candle into the water once more; her father, trying to maintain his outward stoic composure, even as he wept openly; her aunt, eyes hard as she quieted the infant in her arms. Her uncle as he tried to find the reason in her death. Kyp, eyes full of hopelessness as he walked down a dark street.
"I'm sorry." She whispered in the quiet air.
Only the silence echoed around her as her vision faded to black.