Chapter 20
The Crash
‘Hyper drive failure.’ The automated voice bellowed out around the rig. I had fallen asleep in the captain’s chair and hadn’t been paying attention. My dreams had been unsettled and vivid. Those men I shot on the stairs. My boss’ face as I slammed the butt of the exe down into his skull over and over again. It haunted me and tortured me. But what hurt more was that I was proud and glad too. I was happy I did it. There was no going back, that was for certain, and there was no way either to take back what I had done. But I didn’t want to take it back.
I was glad. They drove me to it. I had to keep thinking that. I had to keep that truth alive even though it was over now. I had to keep remembering what broke me and why I ran away and stole this rig in the first place. But that didn’t stop the nagging voice. The programmed voice that told me I should have stayed where I was. That I should have put up with it. Should have just kept bowing down to the devil I knew. And not come here on this God-forsaken mission into the depths of space.
‘What!’ I shout at the console in front of me as the warning bellowed out again and again. I start banging my fists against the screen over and over. In frustration. In guilt. In the solemn and sad realization that I had no idea how to fix it. The shutters came down over the windows just as I realized we had reached the far away planet I had been aiming for. I can see the desert on the surface of the world below as the last of the shutter sections closed against the window. The machine is going into crisis mode and I have no idea what is going to happen to me. I’m just a miner. Just a thick headed miner. I have no idea how to land it. Or what to do in an emergency.
‘Come on! Think!’ I scream to myself and stand up just as the lights fail. The warning beacons start erupting and blaring alarms sound from every corner of the miserable pod that was the command deck of the retro fitted rig. I have to think fast. I’m sinking into the surface of the planet and I’m going to hit the surface hard and fast. I have to think about my training. What little precious training those jerks had given us way back at the start of my sad episode of life that was my employment there.
These things have jet engines. They were supposed to work in conjunction with the hyper drive to throw the rig into full reverse upon landing. They wouldn’t do the job on their own but they might slow the machine down enough to stop it killing me flat on impact. I rush over to the console in the centre of the small command room and start flicking through the on screen commands. Most of them were utter jargon and may as well have been written in Japanese. But I know what the pictures represent and I know what a jet engine looks like. At least in it’s most basic form.
I have to hold on tight as the ship enters the upper atmosphere and the force of gravity starts to take over. The feeling of speed and inertia is dizzying and upsetting but I hold on. I have to. I want to pass out. I want to let go and just call it a day but something drives me on. Something keeps my hands gripped onto that console for dear life.
Now I can feel it falling. In space it was hung. In the absence of air and gravity and all other forces that normally act upon anything on a world and it’s surface. There it hung in a feeling of odd peace and serenity. But that is shattered as the machine sped further and further to what is likely to be my grave.
I keep cycling through the options on that screen as my stomach churns this way and that as the craft I was attempting to fly gathered more and more speed. There! I’m certain it’s picture of a jet. In it’s most basic form but that it is. I only have enough energy to slap the screen and hope my finger tips hit something as the gravity and speed throw me asunder. It must have worked.
The engine roared into life with an ear splitting blast and the power of it throws me from one side of the room to the other. I slam my arm against one of the terminals on the wall and fell in a heap to the floor. I preyed that it was enough. The overwhelming feeling of fear had blinded me into submission and now I’m out of ideas. There’s nothing else I can think of doing. I have exhausted my options and done the best that I could. Now I just have to lay here and hope.
I feel the rig slow but only a little. The sand would be soft enough to absorb the brunt of the impact. That’s what I comfort myself with as I pathetically sob into my arm. There must be something else! There has to be more I can do.
The hyper drive! If I can just kick that back in then just a small blast of the reverse thrust will save me outright. It will be enough to balance out the dizzying effect of the fall and slam the ship into the surface of the planet at just the right time and speed to stop it from killing me. It’s a long shot but it’s worth it.
I pull my bruised and battered body off the floor and stagger back to the machine in the centre of the floor. I start cycling once more through the screens on the display. I wish I knew how much time I have. I wish I could get the screen up off the windows up front and see the world spiral ever closer but I have no idea how to do it and have more important things to do.
There’s nothing. No screen that I can find in my deadly spiral that looks familiar. I cry out in frustration just as the jet engines fail on me too. The rig suddenly speeds up once more and the alarms intensify yet again. I’m breathing hard and on the verge of hyperventilating. Nothing I can do. Just wait for the impact.
I can hear and feel the bottom sections of the rig crumple first. The explosions rocket around me and throw me against every wall in the room. But it’s not over. The rig breaks apart so fast and so intensely that I have no time to think. About how it will feel to die. The rig finally falls and I black out immediately as the floor below me snaps and buckles. It throws me one last time to the floor and there is nothing but black after that.
I can’t open my eyes for a long time. And I shouldn’t have been able to either. Because I should have been dead.
Kraken Orbital Page 21