All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
08 Nov 2016Hersilia
Hersilia awoke to the burning hot floor of her Asp Explorer and once again, the flashing of a red warning light which filled the cabin. Cautiously she staggered to her feet, clutching onto the arm of the pilots chair for support. Her mind swam with subconscious thought. Pitch black, terrifying sounds scraping and scratching at her mentality. She shook her head to clear her thoughts, took a deep breath and turned to face the ships console. Still blurry eyed from passing out she tried to make sense of the ships status. She wiped her brow with her right hand and pinched between her eyes with her thumb and index finger. Her vision was useless. Every object was a blur of it's own rough shape and colour. The scanner was a large circular orange mess, the hologram of her ship was a blobby mixture of orange and light blue, as for the temperature gauge, that was totally unintelligible and bright red. Hersilia forced herself to blink hard a couple of times. Red was bad, very bad. Instantly her hands blindly grasped for the controls. She remembered now. She had been on her way to turn off silent running before she had passed out but she had obviously not got there in time. She fumbled from control panel to control panel, she was still not totally used to the Indagators set up yet. Eventually she came across what she thought was the correct panel. Pale thin fingers traced over the blurred lines of text on the data-panel. The heat was unbearable, the command console at the front had started to steam and spark, becoming too hot to touch. She had to find silent running and turn it off as quickly as possible before the whole ship burnt up from the inside out. Delicately she tapped what she thought was the correct selection. "Cargo Hatch Deployed" the Indagators' computer chimed. Hersilia screwed her face up in irritation and moved onto the next option, leaving the cargo hatch open. Another hard blink to try and clear her eyes, upon opening them she caught the faint shape of an S. Quickly her hand darted towards it, pressing it abruptly.
"Silent Running Deactivated" the familiar monotone voice said. As she slumped back into the pilots chair Hersilia let out a deep sigh trying to forget the events that had taken place within the last few days. The thing she needed the least at the moment was to worry. She had to learn to let go of the feeling of anxiety. Now she had to prepare for the inevitable, or, try to resist it and keep going for as long as possible. For the moment though, she had to rest. Her vision was still a blur and the heat had made her incredibly drowsy. Slowly she let her eyelids close and slipped off to sleep.
--The Following Month--
A smug smile sat neatly upon her thin face as the Indagator roared across the open plains of an undiscovered system just outside the Bubble nebula. She had made her way through the Heart and Soul nebulae, usually scouting out stars and planets she had never dreamed of seeing before. She had come across water-world and ammonia worlds even a few earth-like worlds. These reminded her of home back on Earth. When she first discovered an Earth-like she sat staring at it for days. Remembering the times she spent with her mother and father, going for days out in the park, shopping with her mother, her father picking her up and showing her the ships in the sky and explaining that one day it'll be her up there. The friends she had made and lost, the move to Daedalus station, seemingly so far from her true home even then. A weak smile would pass over her lips before her thoughts would turn to reality. Were people actually living on this planet which spun silently under the black skies of infinity? She would never know as the thoughts of reality brought her attention to her own reality. She must go on, and this is where she found herself. Speeding along an ancient interstellar highway, linked by giant gas lights to illuminate the way to her ever present demise. The time she had spent out in the void hadn't done her any favors, it turned out that the two months of supplies that she had been left with was only enough to last a month and a half at the very most. This meant she had to ration her meals to one a day resulting in extreme weight loss over an extended period of time. Skeletal fingers wrapped around the flight stick loosely, gently pushing and pulling to keep the ship on course. The smug look on her face did not fade, the prospect of death did not worry her now. She had had many hours to think it over and with no other opinion to sway her within the month, she had accepted it and had even started to scout around for her final destination.
"Maybe.." she thought to herself. Maybe some plucky explorer in years to come would stumble upon her ship and recognize it, recognize and remember her for who she really was and not the criminal she had been labelled as. It was doubtful, she knew it to be true but refused to believe it. Lack of communication had taken it's toll on her, the only person she had to talk to now was herself, or the ship, and Hersilia felt like they didn't get on very well. She pushed the throttle to full and flicked the FSD charger. As the countdown begun her smug smile flashed into a grin. She'd never been to the Bubble nebula before, she'd not been a lot of places before. Now, with the limited time left she could.
"Engage."
The whoosh of the engines caused Hersilias' heart to race. Colour appeared in her milky-white cheeks as the grin grew wider and wider. The loud whine of what she thought sounded like bending metal signified the drop into a new system. A bone-like finger squeezed the trigger, the discovery scanner sang it's tune before ending in the age old 'Honk' as other commanders liked to call it. She had arrived at the edge of the bubble nebula in a system with as little as five objects. She sighed, being a little disappointed at the lack of things to explore. For the rest of the day she sped the Asp up and down that system, searching for anything of note on any of the planets or their moons. Sadly she came across nothing until the end of the day when she had decided that she should set down on top of a mountain on the furthest moon, on the furthest planet from the sun and stay there for the night. As she readied herself for another night of sleep something in the sky caught her eye. She'd never seen anything like it and had been far too occupied during the day to even notice it. The bubble nebula now shone above her like bright blue zircon. Hersilias' eyes sparkled as she gazed upon it, the grin which had faded a few hours before slowly rose back to the surface. It was in that moment that she decided. This Nebula will be her final resting place.