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Jenna had just enough time to fling her arms around her head in a weak attempt at self-protection before the landslide hit her. She distantly heard a cry over the roar of the approaching wall of mud and rocks.
'Urgh.' Jenna groaned as she tried to push herself up and look around. She'd been carried miles away from the mountain they'd been on, she could make it out in the distance. Mud and debris covered the landscape of the flood plain she'd been carried down to. 'Argh.' Jenna yelped at the pain that bloomed across her left forearm as she put weight on it. She tucked her arm to her chest and pushed up onto her knees only to scream with pain at the lightning bolt of sheer agony that erupted through her left leg at the motion.
Her hip and knee were wrecked. She rolled onto her right side and panted for breath, trying to pull the threads of herself back together as blackness lurked at the edges of her vision.
There were no bones poking through the leg of her trousers, just some superficial scrapes and wounds, but something was badly wrong with her leg and Jenna didn't know how she was going to make it back. They'd teleported into the mountains for the rendez-vous because of signal interference concentrated around the flatlands. Maybe if Avon were here he'd be able to find a way to punch through the static to contact Liberator, but Jenna was alone. If Gan was here Jenna trusted the strong, gentle man to carry her to safety as painlessly as he could manage. But Jenna had been on her own when the landslide had struck.
Jenna cast her eyes around, maybe she could use a branch as a walking stick, splint her bad arm and see how far she could hobble. Maybe she'd get into easy sighting distance and the others could find her. Blake would look for her, she'd do her best to make the search easy.
Cally kept her breathing steady as she loped through the mud towards the area she'd last glimpsed Jenna's distinctive maroon jumpsuit. If she strained, she could just about sense Blake and Vila's anxious minds. They'd been higher up the hill, off to the side from the mountain-face that had shed tonnes of mud and detritus. Cally had been near enough them to just hear their panicked shouts of warning in time to sprint for shelter. They had probably saved her life, but Jenna hadn't been so lucky.
Her breath was coming hard, the cold air hurting her chest with its intensity as it pulled into her hungry lungs, but Cally kept moving as rapidly as she could do without endangering herself. She narrowed her eyes, was that movement?
Jenna's world had narrowed to pain and exhaustion as she hobbled forwards, falling into a rhythm of plant stick, step and drag her gammy leg forward, using her stick to support her weight. Her heart was thumping with effort, getting louder and louder in her ears with the labour of moving her useless carcass forward.
'Jenna!' The thumping suddenly burst into a shout and Jenna lifted her head and stopped in amazement.
'Cally?' Her voice was embarrassingly wobbly and she had to focus on not falling over as Cally slammed into her and embraced her roughly.
'You're alive!' The usually articulate alien told her and Jenna laughed.
'Just about! My leg's wrecked and I'm pretty sure this arm is broken.'
Cally's narrow face pinched in concern as she stepped back to examine Jenna swiftly. Then she apparently made a decision and bent before Jenna. 'What?'
Cally grabbed Jenna's good leg and shoved into her like she was hefting a sack of grains. Jenna yelped in shock as she came to settle across Cally's shoulder.
Jenna's stomach lurched at both the pain and the sudden change of orientation and she squeezed her eyes shut, letting Cally just haul her like so much rubbish. She couldn't really complain about being rescued, no matter how uncomfortable.
She opened her eyes a crack and managed a wry grin as she clapped eyes on Cally's bum. At least the view was nice!