Out of Gas
10 Feb 2016Terra Sheer
It's in moments like these that whole lifetimes can be measured in heartbeats. You track the passing seconds by the time it takes your breath to turn to frost on the canopy glass. There's a certain, morbid fascination to it -- the way the ice crystals grow like needles against the black.I shiver. Can't really stop shivering now. I've collected every scrap of anything that might be a decent insulator, cocooned myself in junk and desperation. Every trapped erg is another heartbeat. I'm sitting on a hold full of water that's long since gone from a heat reservoir to a heat sink. The sun is barely and ember, this far out, and my ship's radiators are stuck wide open.
Stupid of me, to forget to close them like that. You've got to remember to keep track of those kinds of things when you're running so near empty. With the kinds of razor-thin margins you operate on out here, it can be fatal to make even the slightest miscalculation. And I'm on ... what now? Two? Three?
Not letting Lydia talk me out of making this damn run. One. Not getting the fuel scoop tuned when I had the chance in port. Two. And now forgetting to close the radiators before the last of the power ran out.
I breathe on a spot of the canopy to melt the ice, rub it clear with my sleeve.
Still nothing.
Did you really expect anything else?
For a moment, the glass shows me my own reflection as it frosts back over. "Looks like you're screwed this time," I tell myself. I try to laugh, but it doesn't help. As my image fades, it doesn't look particularly amused.
I breathe and rub the glass again. Still nothing. You're wasting heat, I tell myself. But I like to look at the stars. A few less heartbeats seems like a decent trade for the view--
Wait.
What the hell? Was that movement?
I try to buff my way to a bigger view, but the ice grows quickly. Without the recyclers working, the moisture just hangs in the air. Until it hits the windows, of course. And I suppose that, in a few more hours, it'll freeze out of the air itself.
But I could have sworn I saw something move out there this time. I'm sure it wasn't just my reflection. Some frantic scrabbling buys me a wet sleeve and a square foot of clear canopy, and it's just as I'm pressing my nose to the glass to peer out that the beams of the other ship's headlights flood my cockpit.
He's circling. Trying to figure out whether I'm alive or dead. Rescue or salvage.
That's my hope, anyway. And as I scramble to come up with some way of signaling him, I try to ignore that doubt in the back of my mind that he might just as well be assessing how likely I am to put up a fight.
But first things first. How do I show him I'm alive when the ship around me is about as dead as dead gets?
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