(no subject)
Newton, a short story:
The controls glowed dimly against the broken glass making up the forward window of the small fighter craft. A sea of error indicators, silenced in the vacuum of the breached vessel, attempted to make their protests known to the pilot with their fading illumination. Considering the blank rectangle crafted of a few inches of duct tape, the pilot reminded himself of his goal.
He had to make it home. There were no paths left open to him. A coward has no place in a battlefield, and so he ran. He turned away with his fears, punched in a course for Earth, and now tried to hold the small vessel together amongst the challenges of one engine failing and the other leaking pieces into the vast expanse of space behind it. He had no other choices now, home was his only destination.
A plume of partially consumed fuel trailed behind the ship as if taunting him with a trail from what he fled. He ignored its presence, but could not completely remove from himself the knowledge of what it meant. The last remains of the human fleets clashed with their enemies behind him, fuel was leaking from the remaining engine, and he wanted nothing more than to convince what remained of a ship around his pained body to get home to Earth to see the faces of a family one last time.
His joints complained of the cold, skin having frozen in a few places. The mask and suit were never designed for hours of exposure to vacuum. It felt like his very life and passion was being drawn out through the seams of the hastily donned garment. He refused to know the truth, and held to the dream of the glittering blue ball keyed into the navigational computer.
Clashing against the collection of red and yellow lights of assorted ship components not responding or failing, a single blue lamp indicated time to shift from positive acceleration to negative. His journey was almost complete, with some assistance from the gravity of a couple moons the ship would soon be safely docking with an orbital station. He could not delay or ignore what he already knew.
He carefully keyed the short sequence to instruct the ship to begin the complicated dance of a safe arrival, overriding a few errors and warnings. He did not read any of them, and turned his attention back to the piece of duct tape. He could see that the faint green glow had become a flashing red. He had only an hour of air remaining, half an hour’s journey to make. Removing the tape, he recognized only minutes of fuel.
The controls glowed dimly against the broken glass making up the forward window of the small fighter craft. A sea of error indicators, silenced in the vacuum of the breached vessel, attempted to make their protests known to the pilot with their fading illumination. Considering the blank rectangle crafted of a few inches of duct tape, the pilot reminded himself of his goal.
He had to make it home. There were no paths left open to him. A coward has no place in a battlefield, and so he ran. He turned away with his fears, punched in a course for Earth, and now tried to hold the small vessel together amongst the challenges of one engine failing and the other leaking pieces into the vast expanse of space behind it. He had no other choices now, home was his only destination.
A plume of partially consumed fuel trailed behind the ship as if taunting him with a trail from what he fled. He ignored its presence, but could not completely remove from himself the knowledge of what it meant. The last remains of the human fleets clashed with their enemies behind him, fuel was leaking from the remaining engine, and he wanted nothing more than to convince what remained of a ship around his pained body to get home to Earth to see the faces of a family one last time.
His joints complained of the cold, skin having frozen in a few places. The mask and suit were never designed for hours of exposure to vacuum. It felt like his very life and passion was being drawn out through the seams of the hastily donned garment. He refused to know the truth, and held to the dream of the glittering blue ball keyed into the navigational computer.
Clashing against the collection of red and yellow lights of assorted ship components not responding or failing, a single blue lamp indicated time to shift from positive acceleration to negative. His journey was almost complete, with some assistance from the gravity of a couple moons the ship would soon be safely docking with an orbital station. He could not delay or ignore what he already knew.
He carefully keyed the short sequence to instruct the ship to begin the complicated dance of a safe arrival, overriding a few errors and warnings. He did not read any of them, and turned his attention back to the piece of duct tape. He could see that the faint green glow had become a flashing red. He had only an hour of air remaining, half an hour’s journey to make. Removing the tape, he recognized only minutes of fuel.