Author - Alabath Schmidt
Untitled.
She barely managed to fly the pod a mile before she was crushed into her chair by the force of the explosion. While she had remembered to buckle in, the force of it pushed her to the very edge of unconsciousness; she recalled a time a few months prior, when she had reviewed the specs of the escape pods. “What’s this,” she had spat, “A Quafe can? N.T. can afford to spend a few thousand more on reinforced walls.”
Debris from the station collided with the pod, leaving Alabath’s ears ringing for what she guessed would be hours. Screens flashed red, and she bet- if her ears were working- she would hear alarms. After a few minutes of squinting intently at the big capital lettered words on the monitors, she deduced that the hull was severely damaged. It took nothing less than an expert to piece that together from the words “HULL SEVERELY DAMAGED” on the screen.
She realized the changes she had made saved her life, and it was a near occurrence; had she been a little less meticulous about putting her signature of approval blueprints, that explosion surely would have done the pod in. Thinking about her own mortality was impossible to avoid while the pod flew through space faster than a frigate with a microwarpdrive. Oh, she had been a week away from becoming a capsuleer. If she wasn’t paralyzed by fear, she could have screamed in frustration.
Instead, she simply sat as she thought about her situation. She had told Charles that the research station was trouble long before they had been assigned. She had told him the place was sketchy, and that they had no business in nullsec. “It’ll just be until we’re done with the last part of our capsuleer training, doll. Besides, you’re getting top billing as the head of R&D. We can take it for a few months,” he claimed. She placed her hand on the side of her throbbing skull. Yeah, right. All the money in the universe did them no good while they were stranded in nullsec, unable to spend it on anything other than the company store. She had given in, though, unwilling to start another fight over something they ultimately had no control over.
After five minutes, it dawned on her that self-pity would get her nowhere. She unbuckled, then addressed those screens that demanded her attention. A sigh of relief escaped her lips at the discovery that none of the essential life support systems had been affected; an impassioned curse tore through her mouth when she saw the navigation systems had been damaged beyond functioning. Without the necessary repair equipment, there was little she could do. She couldn’t determine her coordinates, if a rescue and recovery crew was sent out in a timely manner. She wasn’t dead in the pod, but her long term outlook was grim.
The communications system had suffered minor damage. She could send communications, but she could not receive. Her stomach dropped, and she wondered how wise switching on the microphone would be. She had made sure Charles was the first to escape, as per her responsibilities as head of their department. If she tried, she might be in range of other pods for a few minutes. Should she try to let him know she was alive, or should she avoid giving him false hope? When she was caught in the inertia of the explosion with no nav systems, she figured there was little chance of her survival.
Little was more than none. She flipped on the communications system. “Hello?”
Silence. She didn’t know what she expected when the receiver was nonfunctional. “Well.” She paused, finding it hard to speak. She pushed through the weight in her chest. “If you’re hearing this, I’m hoping you’re Charles. If not, I hope you’ll pass this message along.”
“I got caught in the blast. My pod was damaged. The life support systems are fine, but my nav is, uh. Occupying an early grave.” She prodded and pressed the screen, checking out the status of other systems. “I should be able to last a month before there’s any serious trouble.”
“It’s a little sad this had to happen a week before we got our capsuleer implants, eh?” She chuckled, which sounded a little less amused than she had hoped. “When we get back to the academy, we’ll have to get that done as soon as possible. No waiting patiently for appointments, we’ll barge in and wave our fists and demand to be handled now.” For her own sake, she raised a mock-angry fist.
“I’m going to be bored waiting for you, you know.” She plopped onto the singular seat of the pod and shifted about to make herself comfortable. “The engineers always forget to include proper entertainment in pods. I suppose I have only myself to blame for that – I did look at those damn plans and approve them.” Alabath had seriously considered adding a gaming system at the time, though. She cursed herself for being responsible and saving money rather than picking the fun option.
She continued checking the pod information on the screens. “Oh, I see. These pods have Quafe stocked. You’re going to have yourself a fuckin’ party in your pod, you piece of shit. I hate you.”
“Not- I don’t hate you, you know that. Goodness. I hope those aren’t the last words you hear.” Water threatened to flood her eyes. She rubbed it away with mild annoyance. “I love you. I do. I know it was smothering at times, and I know you had much more of me than you could stand, but I need to say it for myself, as much as I need to say it for you.” Agitated fingers tugged at her hair. “And I’m not going to say I’m sorry for kissing you and hugging you and needing you. I’m not sorry. I’m not sorry, even when it made you distance yourself. Even when it made you cold.”
“I hope, while I’m gone, you’ll remember how much I fucking loved you. I hope it’ll keep you warm and happy for the rest of your immortal capsuleer life. And don’t you become a martyr and refuse to become a capsuleer on my account. The second you return to civilization, you get that operation done. Do it for you. Do it because you deserve to live forever.”
Her words caught in her throat, and as she coughed, water streamed down her cheeks. “And when you’re immortal, come look for me. Don’t forget me when you’re a god.”
She was mute for a few minutes. The words that rushed out had left her empty. There was no unwarranted optimism. She couldn’t muster her wit into cracking a joke. Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking; it forced her to stop playing with the screens. The acidic taste of bile rose in her throat. “I’m not ready to die, Charles,” she whispered. She had nothing else she could offer the quiet pod, so with a flick of her finger, she turned off the coms.
Alabath stared at the ceiling. A sudden exhaustion overtook her.
She surrendered to it.
The days might have passed. To her, one was unidentifiable from the other. She would go to sleep when she was tired and wake up when she wasn’t. The time on the screen was meaningless in the monotony, and it was hard to sustain terror and despair when the hours clicked by as slowly as they did when her circumstances weren’t so dire. When she caught herself counting wall tiles, she resolved to keep herself busy. The proximity of her death was no reason to be lazy!
She checked the status of the systems, she cleaned, she organized, and she stretched. She got out her datapad and played music to pass the time. After eight days, she turned on the coms to scream at the top of her lungs, and she would only stop when she lost her voice. She vomited into the proper receptacle. She made a giant tower of Quafe cans, one that dwarfed her own height of six foot seven. The tiny bathroom offered a pair of scissors to further assist her descent into maddening boredom. When she found them, she cut her curly red hair until it was jaw length. She decided she looked better with short hair. She cut the sleeves off of the R&D director’s uniform. She made little dolls with the scraps of cloth and hair. When she took time to survey her work, she concluded she had been more productive during her stay in the pod than she had been during her entire life.
Alabath was a social creature. The solitude took a larger toll on her deteriorating mental state than the fear, and she was perfectly aware of it. When she didn’t scream into the coms, she would talk to them. She would fancy that there could be someone out there who could hear her, and that was good enough for her. It helped her breathe a little easier, at times. Other times, it exacerbated the loneliness. She wondered out loud whether the Amarr were right that there was a god who was angry with the Gallente. “I’m sure I’m just having a mental crisis, though,” she assured the nonresponsive coms. “I’m not going to become religious just because I’m in a prolonged life or death situation.” She had smiled wryly; this was exactly the type of situation people had religious revelations in.
She would beg the quiet for an answer. “I could live the entire month the pod can sustain me and still die because no one can find me. That doesn’t seem right to me. I can sit here, entertain myself for that whole time, keep myself from going crazy, and still die anyway. I can’t know either way. I could be sitting here, wasting my time, delaying the inevitable. You can tell me if I’m going to die. I can keep a secret. Hell, there’s no one around for me to tell!” The quiet offered her no comfort when she pleaded, though, and she was forced to move on with no closure.
The first day of the second week, she found hope. The pod jolted, in the way they did when inertia changed faster than the pod systems could adjust, and her heart beat painfully hard in her chest. That was the trademark of a tractor beam; she had been saved. She put away the Quafe cans, threw away the cloth dolls, and tidied up the pod. She knew Charles would find her as fast as possible. He was, if nothing else, efficient. In the little time she had left, she stood in front of the bathroom mirror to pretty up her new ‘do. The least she could do for her rescuers was to make herself presentable!
She stood at the doors as they opened, ready to return to her old life.
She had not expected the stun weapon. Her body convulsed beyond her control. Unconsciousness overtook her.
Author
Topic: YC 116 Writing Contest - 2nd Place - Prose (Read 1006 times)