Chapter 6 #5
In a few minutes I have pants and a blanket, as well as a fried pastry. Things are going kind of well right now.
I sit on the pillow they brought so I can be comfortable enough to answer the fun interrogation questions Officer Greenthorn has for me.
“How did you get on board?”
“I walked on board. I just didn’t get off. It’s not my fault you didn’t have people counting to ensure everyone who went in came out.”
“We did not assume someone would try to hitch a ride.”
“Well, now you know what happens when you assume. You make a lot of mistakes.”
My interrogator smirks slightly. “You are in trouble,” she says. “You may not have any nefarious intent. It might have seemed like a fun prank, but this mission has a great many critical roles to play.”
“You opened the whole thing up to the public. You let anybody show up. There was less security for this ship than there is in a candy store. Again, not on me. You should be thanking me for showing that someone much worse could be on board, maybe sabotaging things. All I ever did was mop the floors sometimes. At this point, I’m basically doing you all a favor. ”
“I appreciate the reframe, but the fact remains you are an unauthorized passenger on this vessel, and we are mere months away from landing on a planet that needs to be settled. Your presence here could have very well caused serious issues.”
“I’m not here to hurt anyone. I’m just here for a good time. I wanted to be part of all of this. I didn’t want to hurt anyone.”
“You were discovered by Thor Falkbeck,” she says. “Just today, he claims to have realized who you were, and the fact you are not on the ship’s manifest.”
I realize Thor has changed the story to protect his interests. He doesn’t want them to know he spent days banging the stowaway. I don’t know why he’s being cagey about that. It’s not as if he knew right away I wasn’t supposed to be on board. Maybe he feels that way. Maybe he told them that.
“Yes,” I say. “He’s the real sleuth. Saw me today, sprung me right away.”
She nods and makes some notes.
“What is your previous work experience?”
“I spent a couple years herding goats in the far lands,” I say.
“And?”
“And I spent a couple years herding goats in the far lands.”
“No schooling?”
“My parents died and I didn’t feel like it.”
She makes a note. “We don’t have many goats on board, Miss Weltheim. We might be able to use you in maintenance again once you have served your time in the brig.”
“Really?”
“It’s a waste of resources to keep someone locked up,” she says. “That said, the captain is eager for you to serve time by way of understanding that you have committed a crime.”
Red Alert!
Red lights start to flash and the ship shudders. The officer packs her little tablet up and gets the hell out of the brig fast. I stay where I am because the floor is rolling around like waves and though my people have always been seafarers, I have no sea legs.
I grip the metal bench as the ship shudders. A holographic projection appears on the wall. I remember them talking about this; it’s so that everyone can respond appropriately without being specifically told what to do. Also, if you see a bit of the ship break off, don’t go over there.
The holographic line of the ship is showing multiple impacts across the hull in a pattern that can’t be natural or random.
We are under attack. More juddering ensues as the ship responds, various shields and weapons assuming new locations.
Hatches on the hull are opening, and gun nozzles are extending. We’re going to fight back.
“We are taking fire from a Vikar warship,” the captain announces. “All hands to battle stations!”
“Get fucked,” I mutter to myself. I’m glad he’s taking fire. It’s just unfortunate that I am also under attack at the same time.
There are more impacts, and there’s more shuddering. The door of my cell bangs around a bit every time the ship lurches one way or another. I could probably escape now, but where would I go? I am in the frying pan and everywhere else is fire.
“All hands!” The captain calls for aid. Not sure what all hands are going to do, but judging by the fact that a large part of the ship is now flashing red, I have a feeling they are down quite a number.
This is terrifying, but it’s one of those things that is too big and too scary for a human mind to really come to grips with. Our brains are made for responding to middle-sized scary things. Natural disasters are probably the biggest things we contend with naturally.
I am stuck in this ship, clinging to this cell, and something outside is trying to tear it, and me, apart.
You don’t really have a sense of speed in ships.
You’re traveling at an incredible pace, but it doesn’t seem like anything is really happening.
That’s the typical experience. The one I am having now is very unusual.
Everything gets very loud, very frenetic.
We are shaken around like marbles in a glass jar and there is a roaring sound that intensifies to a point I am sure it will deafen me, and then we are falling.
It’s funny, to suddenly be very certain that you are going down, after days of not feeling any particular direction at all. We are falling as fast as any collection of people and things can fall.
Mayday Mayday Mayday
I can’t do anything to help, but to be fair, neither can anybody else. When something the size of a spaceship is headed toward the ground, that’s beyond most anyone’s control.
They are obviously wrestling with thrusters and controls to try to stabilize the ship and avoid the ground, but gravity is relentless and the planet insists that we touch it.
Brace for impact!
Three seconds later, impact happens.
It’s not as bad as it could be. We’re not instantly turned into a thin smear across the surface of the alien world. Instead we bump and tumble and come apart in a variety of pieces. As the hull fractures, I see sky and land and the mess hall spray its contents all over a marsh.
All the bits and pieces of insulation wrap around me as they come flinging out of the walls, and cushion me in part. Everything is taking the load and strain of the terrible thing happening. Everything, somehow, except me.
I’m not sure how I am still alive. I assume I won’t be for much longer.
The part of the ship I am curled up in starts to rush through dense undergrowth, which slows the progress of the wreckage until finally we come to a rest.
I am alive.
I’m not even injured.
That’s amazing. I don’t know what the odds of that are, but they have to be practically zero.
“I’m alive!”
The thrill of existence washes through me. I can’t believe it. Adrenaline and excitement are pumping through me as I realize the hands of the gods themselves must have been wrapped around me in order for me to survive.
I clamber out of the broken brig and I stand atop my particular wreckage and I look out at…
An absolute sea of death and destruction. Bits of ship and bits of crew indiscriminately spread across alien terrain. It almost doesn’t look real.
Above me, the sky is roiling with fiery clouds. Something to do with our crash, I think.
I am lucky to be alive.
So many are not. So, so many. It seems to me that I might be the sole survivor.
The brig must have been specially shielded or maybe otherwise somehow protected.
The rest of the vessel seems to have broken up like it was made of tissue paper.
I don’t understand the engineering decisions, but I guess falling out of control through a random planet’s atmosphere was never part of the design brief.
The aftermath of the ship’s crash is…
Silence.
I really thought there would be more people coming out of the wreckage, but I don’t hear anyone.
“Hello?”
I call out. My voice sounds thin.
No other voices come back.
I sit down on the ground and I try to process what just happened, but of course I can’t. The human brain was never made to understand a crash that wipes out an entire crew. We were made to maybe fall from cliffs at worst, not come blasting out of the universe and into an alien planet.
I am alone.
More alone than I have ever been.
I try to come to terms with reality.
I can breathe the air on this planet. That’s a good thing. I don’t know what kind of animals are here. I don’t know what kind of aliens live here. I don’t know anything.
I’ve survived, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to die if I can’t work out what to do with myself. I probably need shelter. I could take shelter in the ship. I should stay here. They’ll send help.
And I survived, and even if nobody else did, there has to be some useful stuff in the wreckage. Food supplies, maybe. Shelter, for sure.