First run at a short story I've had in my head a while now, was inspired to attempt to write it late, late last night by a pretty exciting game I've had my eyes on (check out http://www.infinity-universe.com/). The concept is very rough, but it broke the block I had on my other little project, at least.
Dashboard Horizon
The scoop went. Then he was fucked.
It hit him in the gut so hard he almost pissed himself in the cockpit. Fucked. I’m fucked. He fought through the sickness, hammering away at the key pad running the check routine for the fourth time before making a dash to the head to vomit. Forgetting to pull out the targeting ‘trodes before standing, it jerked back his head as the wires pulled tight.
In the zero.g, he twisted to get a firm grip on the guide rail before yanking the wire away from the dash sockets and propelling himself down the A frame conduit that led to the rec-pod. The meter-long pair of twisted cables chased after him like the blazing twin-tail of a comet.
The hasty launch left him off target, and the bounce off the butted inner wall only furthered his nausea. Seconds to spare, he dove into the head, flipped the suck and spray switch, and threw up. In that flickering blue neon and the numbing haze of entering shock, he could almost see his dreams of planet-side flush away, hand in hand with detergent and breakfast. Head in hands, he cried.
****
Canon damage to the exterior hull - one of the hold-tanks ripped through, freezing a thousand cubic meters of tined root vegetables. Coms ruined by a direct hit. The EMP-trap fried enough primary circuits for him to not fully trust the back-ups. The assault trashed most of his auxiliary solar power cells; cracked, presumably, even behind the protective shield. An old ship, and the scav-pirates crippled most of her. But he did the worst. You always check twice. ...That sickening feeling again... You always check twice.
After the eerie black sink of the EMP crash, in the thudding of the lightspeed rail-slugs hitting the ext-shell and the strobed glare of emergency lights dazzling across his retina, he typed it. The prime-memory dead, the back-up still kicking in, guidance was on full manual. He typed it, pressed a button, and sealed his fate.
He stared down at the ticker and bit through his lip. 26 seconds. Power at 43 per cent. He cut the thrusters and guided the shield on directional. They had to think he was helpless and drifting, he needed them to take their time. Each blow cut in to the hard electric shell, the force pushing the ship’s dead weight in to debris that clattered off the exposed flank of his vessel. 6 seconds, 34 per cent. The spin was too much, he missed with the manual shield, and the last few shots ripped in to the hull before th – she jumped.
****
The pop in to real space, and this wasn’t the tradeway. It wasn’t even close. Power at 6 per cent. The fear started to creep up behind him. An anxious hour, hung dead in space, and the reserves had fired up the nav. He was nowhere. The map didn’t register yet so it was likely uncharted. He cursed himself for sticking to a trade-cruise mapset at the last service. As it triangulated on the far-stars, he ran a sector scan for fuel. Not a chance he can jump without the scoop or a solar range star. Flipping the solar panels got nothing but red lights, but he expected it after the firefight. The report flashed up.
Two hundred and eighty five hours at sub light. Comet. He lucked out.
He’d need to scoop ions off the flare, a few hours should do, before safe-hoping it back to civilised space. That almost made it sound easy. He scheduled some tasks on the com, dropped a couple of pills, stuck the drip-tube down his throat, and slept the first two-seventy, Velcro’d to a wall.
Waking to a beep, he was rested, but echoes of ugly dreams followed him from slumber and he took a stim to focus. Run a full sys-op diagnostic, shower, shake off the ache, pull a couple VR sim-runs on the comet scoop. Get fresh. The sys-op-D didn’t work, and neither did the shower. He instead finished reading a piss poor novel on his tablet about a family of teraformers and put on loud music he had on archive.
The sim-runs scared the shit out of him. Balancing the thrust at near max sublight as the torrent of dust scoured away at the scoop before being funnelled though the turbine. Getting the drag just so to avoid the whole apparatus being ripped off and leaving the converter exposed. But it excited him too. That trailblazing thrill of the undiscovered galaxy, on the very precipice of abyss, woke within him those virgin moments of first taking to the stars.
He died three times out of seven. Better odds than he could have hoped for. It might have been the stim, but he couldn’t wait, either way.
Of course, he never got the chance to test. The scoop didn’t respond, remaining folded neatly inside the lower cargo chassis despite his attempts, and he was fucked.
****
Three months later, and he hadn’t touched the com in a week. He stared blankly at the gorgeous vista in front of him. It had become more beautiful, strangely, with every passing day. He stayed up staring until exhaustion. The pastiche of perfect stars, the shocking streak of gaseous red millennia away off in the dashboard horizon. And the comet, cutting a paralleled vector that had been lined up for the scoop approach. Don’t think about that.
54 yea---don’t even think it! He was becoming increasingly aware of his side arm, out of view, mag’d to underside of the dash. Don’t think.
The first month was better. He had things to do. He rewrote some of the scoop routines, and even toyed with the kernel, where he felt confident to do so. He pulled up panelling ship-wide, fixing fried wires or burnt circuits. When he ran out of spares, he swapped some out from non-essential functions, or the EMP scrambled primaries. Sometimes, he just guessed.
He even suited up. Something he hadn’t done since he was a younger man as part of his training. They had made him jump ship-to-ship, airlock-to-airlock, no thrust-pack, about half a k. A kind of initialisation. Hazing. The idea is it was impossible; you jump and miss, and they let you spiral off in to the blackness before picking you up later in a buggy. Then they laugh because you shit yourself in your suit, strip you, and make you clean it on netvid before you get your clothes back.
Somehow, it didn’t scare him now. Even when the system showed most of the external lights were faulty. He pulled himself along the flickering, shadowed, belly of his ship with the clamps, and didn’t even secure the wire. Not scared, but eager to be free of the cigar tin he’d spent half his working life in. Now more than ever, he wanted to be planet-side, or just to fly.
The view of the scoop hatch was not new to him. He’d sent out a cam-bot a number of times. He had brought a laser saw and a seal-purchase crowbar, not, particularly, with a clear purpose, but more as something to do.
Cutting down the hatch line was taxing, but he couldn’t guess at how long it had taken. He clawed it open and starred at the offending scoop, folded away immaculately. Immobile. It wouldn’t budge without the gear unlocking, and he could see now that it was fused. Fucked. So he went back inside tried the console once more, and then went back to the rec-pod to forget.
That was the second month. Four twisted weeks of mental self-flagellation. Don’t think, damn it! Serials and films and music and books. For a few days he lived on the VR, a sim-run on planetary decent. It was unbearable. So he drank and dropped pills until the uppers were gone. Oddly, he didn’t often feel like sleeping. When the alcohol and food were gone, he was left with filtered piss and root veg cans from hold. Maddeningly, that would keep him alive for years, if he wished it.
He finally succumbed and ran the calc. 54 years away from even the furthest trade route. Sleep-pills to keep him under a couple months, max. It was death.
****
Back in the cockpit, only three months in, he watched himself pull the gun gently from under the dash and place the barrel in his mouth. It was cold and heavy on his jaw, grinding into his lower front teeth as he angled it upwards. His gaze drifted from the perfect beauty of space to the ugly reflection of himself on the curved clear plastic. Wild, greying hair, a long shaggy beard. He tried to judge the expression on the man’s face, the thoughts behind those eyes, and struggled. “Space; thankless, heartless companion,” he heard the man weep, and then: “Don’t think!”
