The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Sci-fi, Open for one male or female partner, PM m)

[ForwardFeeling]

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Sci-fi, Open for 1 male or female partner, PM me)

"Mayday! Mayday!" The communication array fizzled and crackled with random electric sparks until it died with an undignified gasp. I cursed to high heaven, slamming balled fists down on the console. "Damnit!"

Acrid smoke crept along the floor, the remnants of some smoldering plasma fire. Coolant piping belched its toxic contents, mixing with the smoke and transforming it into a billowing lethal brew. I flashed my eyes over at the environmental readouts, flashing red with depleted oxygen gauges and high nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and argon levels. I rolled my eyes and bashed it until it went blank. There were too many other frazzled and fried displays with far more important information on them across this broken bridge.

Such is the life of a standard D4PHN3-type hologrammatic projection program one supposes. Especially the last of a crew long gone into the inky blackness of the void.

Striding over to the sensor array station, my white and yellow-accented uniform never losing its crispness as per the program, I quickly process the empty display. Merely the ambient background of distant stars, radiation, and the cosmic microwave. Nothing, as far as the long range could detect.

"Shit," I said meekly, leaning over the console. Though simulated, I still brush a lock of my long brown hair from my eyes, then feel... wetness on my cheeks. Shocked, I snap my head up to see my reflection in the console, and the shimmering lines leading from my darkened eyes.

Simulated, still, but, well. At what point as the facsimile become reality anyway?

More to the point, am I entombed on a dying starship lost in deep space?

Forever?

 

[lavatrain]

Contact

With the quiet yet comforting sound of lockdown drives engaged, the Mayday made fast to the lumbering relic, in some ways resembling a parasitic growth on the superstructure.

The relic was truly that. The physical features which remained suggested her to be of the Garn class, once feared widely in this arm of the galaxy as akin to a dreadnought of mariner times on Terra Alpha. The exact generation of the battle axe mattered little to the scavenging class of spacefarer. Its pitted and compromised bulkheads would certainly yield up some semblance of booty to the intrepid profiteer. Locating such detritus required a persistent and expert effort on a scale nearly beyond imagining. Veritable needle in a haystack in a field of haystacks, considering the overall vast emptiness of the galaxy.

The sally port of the discovery vessel opened to permit three figures to emerge. They maneuvered with the aid of individual impulse thrusters. The angled their trajectory for the supposed command center of the incapacitated hulk. A ripped and torn breech in the hull facilitated their entry. As they advanced into the aperture, the three encountered a corridor still smoking these eons after the attack. The lead figure nodded in apparent recognition that the power center of the wreck must still yield potential for plunder.

Continuing on down the corridor, they encountered the double portal suggesting the command center. Mere inches ajar, one of the following figures placed a device in the gap, activated it, and the aged portal was forced wide to permit passage.

Stepping through, the lead figure paused just inside, standing their in orange protective suit and headgear. Wreckage be damned, it was obvious that hi value items were to be had.

He was followed into the command center by the others, and stopped short to see that the bridge was not abandoned.