[Blackbird] Seeking Write up
Tossing and turning, an empty bottle clutched tight, sleep blended with alcoholic unconsciousness. Whatever Connie had done to the bottle had done the trick, putting Blackbird deeply asleep where the cycle of dreams started again, this time slightly different.
The main screen was black, shorted out when the force cannons had fired their last, destroying the alien ship. The air was heavy with the smell of blood and smoke. Something was shorting over to the left and it caused the body slumped across the panel to twitch slightly as the current stimulated recently dead nervous systems. It was like coming out of a deep sleep, catching details that didn't correlate to what the expected reality would be. The red warning lights were out, having ceased blinking out their insistent and redundant warning about the attacks. A quiet voice was running over the list of systems damaged and failing, its rhythm almost like a heartbeat. There was a boot sitting in the middle of the floor and a nutrient packet half eaten on top of a workstation.
After a moment the panel she was staring at finally made sense, two insistent points blinking, life signs - Humanoid. One had to be her, only sign on the bridge and a glance around showed how true that was. The other was in engineering, two decks down in the center of the ship. The Janus had a crew of 10 plus the cross trained 60 BCD and had picked up another 17 from the remains of the other ships. Only two lights blinked and it didn't seem like there were any shorts...
Stomach churning, the last week crashed back down, all the orders and actions taken to repel the attacks on the ship. Left as the only officer it had taken little effort to make the panicked and worried people listen and override their own concerns. By force of will she'd demanded and received their co-operation and their action. As the body count rose higher and it looked more like no one would survive the regulations had gone completely out the window. Group Zeta had died preventing the aliens from getting into engineering and the STAR units. Omicron had cleansed deck 3 and the survivors were ejected into space when the hull failed. When she had found resistance, psychological terrorization had removed such and one by one the ship had gone to death. Except for her and the one other blinking light.
Slapping a stim patch on, not looking to see which one it was, Mia turned to the panels and entered her officers override. The list of destruction was appalling and it was clear the Janus was going nowhere again. The ship had been split in half following an attack two days ago, or was it three now, and luck had her on the most intact portion. Apparently there was one stasis pod left but the system was so messed up it was unclear which one it was. Seeing nothing from the engineering section and the force shields slowly failing she made her way over to the lift and pressed the button.
"Fuck. Ow" the shorting had affected it too; sparks flew from it as the door slid open. No lift was visible, only at the far bottom the black of space and a faint ripple from the force shields maintaining pressure. It was the emergency tubes, unsurprisingly, then to move about the deck levels. Carefully without looking at the faces or the wounds if possible she stripped a pair of gloves from a body for insulation. One level down, exiting, trying not to look at the bodies and pieces strewn about. How had it been that so much death had happened spread so far out? Had things really gone so far that nothing was left untouched on this ship? A body, dislodged when the next tube down was opened, fell and splattered still warm blood all over. I owed him ten dollars from last poker night. Fixating on the past and details so small they left no room to see the rest of the picture was the way to deal. Last maintence run someone had poorly connected the wires, sloppy workmanship. The ladder was lightly dusty, as dusty as anything could get in the harsh vacuum of space.
Rounding the corner was like walking into a level of hell and jolted Mia out of the safe retreat in her mind. The floor was slick and dark reddish black, only a moment to realize it was the fluid from the piled corpses leaking out. Bodies of alien and human lay all over. It was difficult to tell in some places where one left off and the other began. In horror it dawned on her that Omicron had obeyed her orders so strongly that they had not retreated when ammunition ran out. Hand to hand combat, knives and rifle butts again the claws and speed of the aliens. The walls dripped blood and ichor and even the Primium reinforced doors of the engineering room showed claw marks and burns from the fight. The only word for the smell and the scene was abattoir and then she was on her knees in the muck vomiting. Tense as the dry heaving slowed, waiting for the alien attack that never came. Impossibly it seemed the dead team had killed the aliens as completely as they had been slaughtered.
Quiet as a.. the thought skittered away, too close and painful to be completed.
It became nearly impossible to avoid stepping on or in something as she picked her way to the engineering door. Incongruously there was a single patch of clean space just before the door, surrounded by parts and slick looking puddles. Looking back momentarily, she noticed that her boot had left a neat bloody print in the space and for a moment bile rose again in her throat. Of the bodies slumped against the door, all had faceplates still blessedly covering their expressions. It made them less real, just a thing discarded rather than the cooling corpse of comrades and crewmates.
"Sorry, damn. Sorry." the muttering kept Mia focused on the here and now, instead of standing in mute shock. As damaged as the door was, moving the bodies and activating the manual override worked to open it up enough. The red lights still pulsed and a beep, insistent and startling, broke the silence. The Containment fields around the STAR units were failing and the feedback was getting close to overloading the propulsion units. 30 to 45 minutes from now it would deactivate and the propulsion would go critical, setting the chain reaction of destruction off that would reduce what was left of the Janus to slag. Somehow, the looming reaction chain didn't seem all that important, with the one green blip on the life support systems still there.
Lying just under a fallen spar, inches from having been crushed by it, was Senior Ensign Williams. Unconscious. A swift med check showed only a broken arm and signs of electrocution. The smoking and sparking wires a few feet over must have made contact, a stroke of luck disguised as an accident. With time counting down, his arm was splinted and she hoisted him into a fireman’s carry and picked her way back through the hall. His weight pulled her off balance and several times she nearly fell or dropped him. The last escape pod was on this deck, across several more areas full of death. She scanned, having activated the life detection in her suit and hoped that she wouldn't see anything else. Any further movement would likely be a remaining alien and there was no way to stop it alone. The clank of boots on the floor echoed up and down the halls as she trudged, coming back to make the hairs stand on end until Mia's tired mind could determine it was only an echo.
Sometime a few years back a member of the maintence crew has stenciled "JESÚS" lightly over one of the pods that had the most trouble but had forgotten the accent mark. Bored on the initial leg of the journey someone else had systematically added the names of the twelve apostles over the line of pods, the 13th was listed at Mary and so on. Only the pod under the title of Mary was still functional, the rest had been used or damaged.
"A fucking Hail Mary. Great fucking time for Irony."
Hail Mary, full of grace.
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.
Pod Mary was a one person pod, no safe or stable way to modify it into a two person pod. Long moments passed, Me or Williams? The thought chased its own tail around in the dark parts of the mind. She stood frozen half way between putting the unconscious man in the pod and getting in herself. Unthinking she removed a cigarette from her pack and smoked it, staring and unable to break out of the mental balancing act. It wasn't until the ensign shuddered slightly that the reality of the situation came back into focus. I've already killed the rest of them, the blood is on my hands. Why take more blood on myself?
The pod was programmable and with the stasis field it would keep Williams alive until the pod made it, presuming nothing stopped it. There was only a soft whoosh as the pod separated and shot off into deep space. Fifteen Minutes or so and the containment fields would drop. The lack of any real options made the idea of panic or worry futile. There was little to no chance of any miracles, so she slowly took herself down to the least damaged of the remaining pods. Swiftly, scavenging as best as possible she tried to jury rig it to last at least some time. With luck she'd get close enough to be picked up eventually. Without it... well then she'd die anyway. Just moments to spare and the pod seemed safe enough, all lights go and the stasis fields humming as time froze. A soft whoosh and Pod Judas was away.
--
Luck wasn't with her fully. She awoke screaming from the dream as the pod imploded in the vacuum and trapped in the mindscape in stasis her semblance died. Years worth of memories came slamming back and Blackbird, still drunk from the night before, started to remember again. The smell hung in the back of her throat and she spent the rest of the night curled on the bathroom floor sobbing and throwing up.
The main screen was black, shorted out when the force cannons had fired their last, destroying the alien ship. The air was heavy with the smell of blood and smoke. Something was shorting over to the left and it caused the body slumped across the panel to twitch slightly as the current stimulated recently dead nervous systems. It was like coming out of a deep sleep, catching details that didn't correlate to what the expected reality would be. The red warning lights were out, having ceased blinking out their insistent and redundant warning about the attacks. A quiet voice was running over the list of systems damaged and failing, its rhythm almost like a heartbeat. There was a boot sitting in the middle of the floor and a nutrient packet half eaten on top of a workstation.
After a moment the panel she was staring at finally made sense, two insistent points blinking, life signs - Humanoid. One had to be her, only sign on the bridge and a glance around showed how true that was. The other was in engineering, two decks down in the center of the ship. The Janus had a crew of 10 plus the cross trained 60 BCD and had picked up another 17 from the remains of the other ships. Only two lights blinked and it didn't seem like there were any shorts...
Stomach churning, the last week crashed back down, all the orders and actions taken to repel the attacks on the ship. Left as the only officer it had taken little effort to make the panicked and worried people listen and override their own concerns. By force of will she'd demanded and received their co-operation and their action. As the body count rose higher and it looked more like no one would survive the regulations had gone completely out the window. Group Zeta had died preventing the aliens from getting into engineering and the STAR units. Omicron had cleansed deck 3 and the survivors were ejected into space when the hull failed. When she had found resistance, psychological terrorization had removed such and one by one the ship had gone to death. Except for her and the one other blinking light.
Slapping a stim patch on, not looking to see which one it was, Mia turned to the panels and entered her officers override. The list of destruction was appalling and it was clear the Janus was going nowhere again. The ship had been split in half following an attack two days ago, or was it three now, and luck had her on the most intact portion. Apparently there was one stasis pod left but the system was so messed up it was unclear which one it was. Seeing nothing from the engineering section and the force shields slowly failing she made her way over to the lift and pressed the button.
"Fuck. Ow" the shorting had affected it too; sparks flew from it as the door slid open. No lift was visible, only at the far bottom the black of space and a faint ripple from the force shields maintaining pressure. It was the emergency tubes, unsurprisingly, then to move about the deck levels. Carefully without looking at the faces or the wounds if possible she stripped a pair of gloves from a body for insulation. One level down, exiting, trying not to look at the bodies and pieces strewn about. How had it been that so much death had happened spread so far out? Had things really gone so far that nothing was left untouched on this ship? A body, dislodged when the next tube down was opened, fell and splattered still warm blood all over. I owed him ten dollars from last poker night. Fixating on the past and details so small they left no room to see the rest of the picture was the way to deal. Last maintence run someone had poorly connected the wires, sloppy workmanship. The ladder was lightly dusty, as dusty as anything could get in the harsh vacuum of space.
Rounding the corner was like walking into a level of hell and jolted Mia out of the safe retreat in her mind. The floor was slick and dark reddish black, only a moment to realize it was the fluid from the piled corpses leaking out. Bodies of alien and human lay all over. It was difficult to tell in some places where one left off and the other began. In horror it dawned on her that Omicron had obeyed her orders so strongly that they had not retreated when ammunition ran out. Hand to hand combat, knives and rifle butts again the claws and speed of the aliens. The walls dripped blood and ichor and even the Primium reinforced doors of the engineering room showed claw marks and burns from the fight. The only word for the smell and the scene was abattoir and then she was on her knees in the muck vomiting. Tense as the dry heaving slowed, waiting for the alien attack that never came. Impossibly it seemed the dead team had killed the aliens as completely as they had been slaughtered.
Quiet as a.. the thought skittered away, too close and painful to be completed.
It became nearly impossible to avoid stepping on or in something as she picked her way to the engineering door. Incongruously there was a single patch of clean space just before the door, surrounded by parts and slick looking puddles. Looking back momentarily, she noticed that her boot had left a neat bloody print in the space and for a moment bile rose again in her throat. Of the bodies slumped against the door, all had faceplates still blessedly covering their expressions. It made them less real, just a thing discarded rather than the cooling corpse of comrades and crewmates.
"Sorry, damn. Sorry." the muttering kept Mia focused on the here and now, instead of standing in mute shock. As damaged as the door was, moving the bodies and activating the manual override worked to open it up enough. The red lights still pulsed and a beep, insistent and startling, broke the silence. The Containment fields around the STAR units were failing and the feedback was getting close to overloading the propulsion units. 30 to 45 minutes from now it would deactivate and the propulsion would go critical, setting the chain reaction of destruction off that would reduce what was left of the Janus to slag. Somehow, the looming reaction chain didn't seem all that important, with the one green blip on the life support systems still there.
Lying just under a fallen spar, inches from having been crushed by it, was Senior Ensign Williams. Unconscious. A swift med check showed only a broken arm and signs of electrocution. The smoking and sparking wires a few feet over must have made contact, a stroke of luck disguised as an accident. With time counting down, his arm was splinted and she hoisted him into a fireman’s carry and picked her way back through the hall. His weight pulled her off balance and several times she nearly fell or dropped him. The last escape pod was on this deck, across several more areas full of death. She scanned, having activated the life detection in her suit and hoped that she wouldn't see anything else. Any further movement would likely be a remaining alien and there was no way to stop it alone. The clank of boots on the floor echoed up and down the halls as she trudged, coming back to make the hairs stand on end until Mia's tired mind could determine it was only an echo.
Sometime a few years back a member of the maintence crew has stenciled "JESÚS" lightly over one of the pods that had the most trouble but had forgotten the accent mark. Bored on the initial leg of the journey someone else had systematically added the names of the twelve apostles over the line of pods, the 13th was listed at Mary and so on. Only the pod under the title of Mary was still functional, the rest had been used or damaged.
"A fucking Hail Mary. Great fucking time for Irony."
Hail Mary, full of grace.
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.
Pod Mary was a one person pod, no safe or stable way to modify it into a two person pod. Long moments passed, Me or Williams? The thought chased its own tail around in the dark parts of the mind. She stood frozen half way between putting the unconscious man in the pod and getting in herself. Unthinking she removed a cigarette from her pack and smoked it, staring and unable to break out of the mental balancing act. It wasn't until the ensign shuddered slightly that the reality of the situation came back into focus. I've already killed the rest of them, the blood is on my hands. Why take more blood on myself?
The pod was programmable and with the stasis field it would keep Williams alive until the pod made it, presuming nothing stopped it. There was only a soft whoosh as the pod separated and shot off into deep space. Fifteen Minutes or so and the containment fields would drop. The lack of any real options made the idea of panic or worry futile. There was little to no chance of any miracles, so she slowly took herself down to the least damaged of the remaining pods. Swiftly, scavenging as best as possible she tried to jury rig it to last at least some time. With luck she'd get close enough to be picked up eventually. Without it... well then she'd die anyway. Just moments to spare and the pod seemed safe enough, all lights go and the stasis fields humming as time froze. A soft whoosh and Pod Judas was away.
--
Luck wasn't with her fully. She awoke screaming from the dream as the pod imploded in the vacuum and trapped in the mindscape in stasis her semblance died. Years worth of memories came slamming back and Blackbird, still drunk from the night before, started to remember again. The smell hung in the back of her throat and she spent the rest of the night curled on the bathroom floor sobbing and throwing up.