In a Flash – Part 1

Hey everyone!

It’s been difficult for me to write a new story post for some time now.  Ever since the end of the short story contest (and even towards the end of the editing push), I’ve felt drained.  I had to do a lot of really late nights with little feedback to work with, trying to make a story as good as I could at this stage of my career without any real input.  I don’t blame anyone, and in the end this is my work, but I don’t have a good support network yet.  In the end, that meant I had to substitute effort for knowledge, determination for skill, and do everything I can while making sure I left it all on the field.  That doesn’t mean my efforts came without a price, and it turned out to be a pretty steep one.

I’ve tried to get back into the swing of things by doing blog posts, making sure to expand my readership by dual posted on Medium along with The Quill.  Now, however, it’s time for me to get back in the saddle and do what The Quill was made for; stories.  I faced a pretty huge decision.  Did I comb back through my previous stories, dust one off, and giving it a facelift?  Or, did I go back to my roots and force myself to type words and refuse to stop until a story has manifested from the snarl of nouns and verbs?

I chose the latter.

Onward!

In a Flash – Part 1

The emergency pressure gauges spiked once more, and as they did a piercing, bird-like warble of alarm filled the cockpit.  A yellow-gloved fist smashed into the source of the noise, silencing the alarm as the owner of the fist let out a grunt of satisfaction.  Merryl took the time to wipe her brow as she brought her arm and alarm-smashing fist back to bear on the real battle: not dying.

It was a battle she was losing.

Her mech had been shredded, the underbelly of the tripedal machine had been thoroughly smashed when a pair of sidewinders had come flying out of one of the myriad crevaices on the craggy Martian cliff-face she had been passing.  It hadn’t managed to compromise her cockpit, which meant predator had swiftly become prey as Merryl unleashed a kaleidoscopic wave of destruction upon her would-be destroyers.  Her victory was short lived as she checked her readouts and the pressure gauges on her energy tanks and saw that she was losing power.  She swore with increasing inventiveness as she fought the leaks, rerouting power and using emergency shutoffs to contain the precious liquid which powered her beautiful baby boy.

It wasn’t enough, though.  The rockets had punched into the energy tanks like widespread grapeshot.  Despite her frantic efforts to redirect the flow of energized liquid, the hydrolectric system had lost too much liquid for her to maintain full operational integrity.

“Ever-loving Mother of Men, how did they get so LUCKY!!”

Merryl slammed her fist into the still-sparking emergency klaxon.  It didn’t fix anything, but she didn’t have anything else to vent her frustration on and it was better than smashing something useful.  The missiles, and their synchronized twin detonations, had been perfect.  WHAM!  Fizzle spark fizzle.  The force of the explosions, instead of lancing into the mech at a single location she could route around, had engulfed the entire underbelly.  BLAM! Spark fizzle spark.  It hadn’t been enough to tear through the drive motors or various reactors and make the whole mech combust, but the red martian sands being covered in the crackling grey ooze which was the life blood of her beautiful baby was testament to just how screwed she really was.

She could maintain the life support systems with the power she had left, or she could power the gyrostabalizer and motivators to move the mech, but she didn’t have enough power to do both.  She was nearly a day of travel from Colony Vega, and her exosuit wasn’t rated for more than five or six hours of EVA before she died a slow and excruciating death.  She had two hours of atmosphere in the cockpit if she did turn off life support, but then there was the nasty matter of freezing to death as the cockpit inevitably lost heat.  No matter how you looked at it, she wasn’t going anywhere.

It was time to see if fate was willing to smile upon her after it had forcibly crammed two missiles down her throat.

Double-checking the readouts, and then triple-checking them, Merryl was reasonably certain she wasn’t leaking more hydroelectrics.  Her work with the emergency seals and shutoffs were keeping the fluid she had left right where it belonged.  She nodded to the readouts and thumbed her nose for good measure, before reaching up and detaching the helmet which was magsealed above her.  With a squishy thwupp the helmet came free of the wall, and she shoved it on while securing the latches and engaging the magseal once more.  Thwupp.  The internal HUD indicated that the suit was sealed and that she had enough power for five hours of full operation.

She lowered the internal temperature of the suit to barely sustainable levels, turned off all the non-essential components including her worthless communications systems.  The modifications netted her an entire hour of extended operations.  Finished with her suit, she grabbed the go-bag from under her cockpit chair and slung it across her back.  As ready as she could make herself, she opened the hatch at the roof of the cockpit which would take her to her salvation or seal her doom.

She climbed down the three meter tall mech, and trudged towards the devastated landscape her weapons had created.  She regretted everything about this mission.  Why had she been so stupid as to accept twenty percent upfront instead of her usual fifty?  She didn’t have nearly enough credits to bribe the cops or the emergency responders to come out and rescue her.  She would be better off opening her helmet to space than sending out an all-frequency request for aid.  So she walked along, complaining loudly about the cold and her stupidity and fate and rockets and space travel in general.

The craggy formation she had been attacked from was a collection of craters with smooth, glassy bottoms.  The Martian sands had flash-kilned into brilliant red, pink, and black glass under her bombardment.  The only indication of her attackers were the craters riddling the cliff-face.  After a few minutes spent marveling her handy-work while walking along, she was standing in front of the cliff-face, looking in vain for possible bodies or miraculously intact energy tanks.  There appeared to be nothing useful left.

“Well, at least I was thorough.”

The sardonic remark was her only company as she paced back and forth in front of the cratered cliff, scanning the nearby sands to no avail.  Sure, she found the occasional scrap of exosuit here, the bit of rocket launcher there, but nothing that smacked of salvation.  As she stepped carefully across the glassy bottoms of several craters, making her way deeper into the destruction, she let out a bark of laughter and picked up the pace.

There, glinting like the empty socket of an ancient skull, was a tunnel which was clearly man-made and hadn’t collapsed from her zealous application of thermo-grenades and plasmic blasts.  She crunched across the glassy terrain and gained the smooth surface of the tunnel.  She walked, ten meters turning to twenty, into thirty, and doubts were worming their way into her guts when the dull metal sheen of a sealed hatch informed her she was indeed correct in her assumptions.  This hadn’t been some group of flunkies looking to snatch purses; she had come toe-to-toe with an accomplished group of bandits.  The skill of the missile placements and the complete surprise they had achieved had hinted at their experience.  Now she prayed that they hadn’t been as paranoid as they were talented and code-sealed the hatch.  She gripped the wheel on the front and began turning.

She let out a whoop as the wheel cranked home and the hatch opened.  The silent rush of venting atmosphere washed over her, and it had barely had time to get past her before she had made her way into the yellow-lit chamber within.  She could see the round interior hatch on the opposite side as she shut the hatch behind her as fast as she could, spinning the interior wheel until it would spin no further.  She glanced at the walls, then made her way over to the wall terminal on the east wall of the chamber.  The terminal was locked, the screen an opaque and forbidding grey.  She smirked.  Merryl had  been in the game too long for something like an unfriendly terminal to keep her at bay.  She pulled the go-bag off her back, and set it down as she rummaged around inside.  After a few minutes, she pulled out a rather unimpressive pyramid of metal.  Hand on one hip, she flipped the pyramid a few times as she scanned the area around the panel.

“Where… are… you… AHA!”

With a grin, she grabbed the triangle mid-flip and slammed it point-first into the wall next to the control panel.  The bottom of the pyramid immediately glowed a soft green, indicating that she had scored a solid connection on the first try.  After a few moments, a soft ping from the pyramid indicated that the panel was unlocked.  She tapped the previously shaded screen which lit up immediately.  With a flourish, she pressed the button which would cycle her into the hideout.

“Open sesame!”

The chamber’s illumination switched to a more normal white light, and the interior hatch unsealed and began rolling into the wall.

To be continued…

Pyramidfully,

The Unsheathed Quill