Private Log 08.31.3305 03:06
31 Aug 2019Bishop R88
Leo...are we recording? [LEO:] Yes, Commander.
Start me a cup of tea will you? What time is it, by the way? Not that it matters out here...
[LEO:] It is o-three-hundred hours, Commander. Would you like chamomile tea? It is supposed to have properties beneficial to inducing sleep.
No, I don't think I'll be able to go back to sleep. Just make me Jade or Golden Buddha or whatever we have. I don't really care.
[LEO:] Yes, Commander.
[Two minutes of silence.]
Personal entry, I... I don't know the date... I had another nightmare. I haven't had one in a long time. Not like this. Something someone back on Citi Gateway said. It was like they dug it up. I haven't been able to really get it out of my mind.
[Several heavy sighs]
I was back on the Durango. We'd barely made it inside the mail slot, an explosion had rocked the ship and we'd veered off course at the last second. I didn't know this at the time, of course, I was in the cargo bay with the team. All I knew was how hard it was to hang on to the handrails. Peter had been thrown against the wall, had hit his head. Then the ship's alarms were blaring heat warnings. Captain Frazier came over the comms and told us to hold on, said we would only have a couple of minutes to load as many refugees on board as possible before taking off again.
Then we touched down. It was a rough landing to be sure. The cargo bay doors opened and the ramp dropped. There was a medical team waiting for us. A handful of patients on stretchers and behind them, the most miserable-looking group of people I'd ever laid eyes upon. Men, women, children... All of them standing there with bags and belongings. Someone was actually holding an electric table lamp. It wasn't anything special. Nothing valuable at all. Just...something they'd managed to grab before evacuating.
I rushed down to the platform and started right away. The medical team greeting us wasn't any more prepared than the people Simon had started escorting aboard. I could hear him directing people up the ramp as some... medical assistant... some kid who'd probably never done more than take phone calls in a doctor's office gave me report on the body lying on the stretcher. The patient was a male, been caught in one of the many fires burning through the station. Some Thargoid blast had crippled the orbital's substations and caused chain reactions throughout. He was less of a person and more of a burnt piece of bacon. I'd never seen anything so bad... I mean, back on the St. Mary I'd seen my fair share of burn victims. We'd get patients from the mining colonies all the time. People who'd been caught in some gas explosion when someone fucked up with the helium containers or something. But I'd never seen anything like that. And it was clear by the look on the kid's face as they gave me report, neither had they.
I pushed the gurney up the ramp and we were airborne. The cargo bay doors shut just as a pilon came crashing down on the landing pad. I don't know what happened to the medical team... I'd like the think they survived. Had narrowly avoided being crushed to death as the shuttle bay fell to pieces but... I guess I'll never know.
We rushed the wounded to the med bay and-
[LEO:] Your tea is ready Commander.
[Sighing] ...Thank you, Leo. End recording.