Battle Scars and War Wounds
22 Feb 2016TheDarkLord
My Mark 3 Cobra dropped out of supercruise with a jolt. A hold full of luxuries had apparently prompted the formation of a welcoming party in this anarchy system. One, then three, then five ships on the scanner. Small ones. Two Sidewinders, two Adders and an Asp.Strategy here is to minimise inbound damage per second. Take the smallest ships first.
The forward-facing Military Laser lances out and destroys one Sidewinder whilst I am still out of range of its pulse laser. Pause. Retarget. The second Sidewinder also perishes as the two Adders and Asp bear down. Now I’m in range of the beams of the larger ships and my laser has overheated. I flip the ship around and retreat. Switch to the rear view and use the backward-facing Military Laser to burn the Asp out of existence.
My first two shield banks are down. The forward facing laser has cooled, so I turn back in on my two remaining assailants. The second use of my forward armament results in a dramatically increased temperature spike. I’m taking heavy fire. The planetary disc still looks tiny as an Anaconda drops into the party. It too is after my cargo, and opens fire with all of its weapons.
My ship can’t take it. I’m not going to get through this intact. She breaks up, dispersing wreckage and cargo across local space. From within my escape pod, I see my canisters of luxuries tumbling away, and the pirates swarming to gather them. The gaping maw of the Anaconda’s cargo scoop is the last thing I see before the light goes out with a great clang.
“Shields offline,” announced the ship computer, as I awoke with a start. It took me a while to process where I was, and my head felt like it was about to explode. The cabin lights were dim, but there was a glow from outside. It had gone dark, and my vision was blurred, the instrument lights too bright to focus on, mottled colours sliding in front of the canopy glazing. There was an awful graunching sound of metal being tortured.
“Taking damage.”
I applied a small amount of reverse thrust, but my hands were as slothful as my brain, and I was shivering. It was cold, and I was covered in a damp sheen of my own sweat. I’d obviously fallen asleep in an asteroid belt. Images from then and now replayed in my mind, crossed each other in my consciousness. It was disorientating. I couldn’t work out what was real, was sure there were enemies all over my scanner. I rubbed my eyes to clear the sleep from them, and looked again. But the scanner was resolute in only showing me roids. The quiet was unnerving. I banked the ship towards the black and boosted away from the spinning boulders. An empty whisky bottle rolled off the console and smashed on the deck floor. I aimed into the vast emptiness, set a slow speed, and headed to my cot.
The thin mattress and scratchy blanket hadn’t miraculously got any more comfortable, but I tried to get back to sleep anyway. My mouth felt like something had crawled in there and died. Those residual battle images cycled through my mind, channel-switching to the heartbeat of my hangover, stopping me from nodding off.
After half an hour of trying to sleep, I threw my feet off the bed and sat up. Further rest would evade me until I could calm my mind, and get rid of the infernal thumping in my head. A fresh jolt of headache, another mental channel switch. Her laughing facing came to my mind. Pale skin framed with auburn hair and the most beautiful blue eyes, sparkling at me before she threw back her head in giant guffaw.
And the pain dropped to my chest.
I headed back to the cockpit. I couldn’t remember anything about her except that she was real, not mentally reprocessed from a vid. And there was love and loss and pain and suffering there. The only way I could progress was to concentrate on piloting this transporter. I set course for the nearest station, working each control deliberately, my body finally generating some oxytocin to calm me.
As my engines disengaged on the landing pad, I realised that these snapshots from my past indicated that the memories may be in there somewhere. But if they were this muddled and disjointed it was going to take some sorting out. Why hadn’t I done this during the rehabilitation?