The Fire
Fire engulfed Morisel.
Or, at least... it felt like fire engulfed him. Every nerve across his skin danced with pain. His lungs screamed in agony with each breath... and his mind... his mind drifted from the derelict he'd been searching, back to the end of the war.
He couldn't remember having reached safe harbor, or having handed off the HVT. Certainly it happened, but, memories had a way of washing away the unnecessary parts of an experience. What he could remember was stepping into the crowded dock and seeing the giant monitors. Monitors showing... home. Kalliea. Showing it burning.
Some Concordant-sponsored newscaster was rambling on about how the Federation had detonated thousands of nuclear warheads in a desperate act of terrorism to resist Consolidation... but Morisel knew better. He'd seen the placement of the ships around Kalliea - had noticed and pushed to the back of his mind the odd grid-pattern they'd deployed, encircling the entire planet. Blockades could be successfully conducted with a pair of Dreadnaughts and a few deployable stations, encircling the planet with manned ships was entirely unnecessary... but, at the time, he'd been more worried about fooling the barrage of bureaucracy enough to get down to the planet and achieve his mission. He hadn't stopped to consider the why behind the oddity.
He knew, even as he sank to his knees right there on the gangplank, that they'd won. The war was over. The HVT, all the blood, sweat, and tears that had gone into resisting Consolidation... none of it mattered. Kalliea had changed everything. If they could nuke an entire planet to the point where even the atmosphere itself was a broiling firestorm and get away with it, they could do anything, anywhere, to anyone.
In a single instant, Morisel had lost everyone he'd ever truly known. Even if the Federation of Independent Planets kept fighting, it would be the pitiful death-throws of a dying beast, too stubborn or stupid to just let itself go. So, even his friends in the FIP were dead to him. Instantly, there was just him. Him, and the ship they'd outfitted for the prior mission - 'Salt-Shaker'.
Never leave without saying goodbye
With a jolt, Morisel's mind snapped back to the present and he realized through the window of clarity in an inferno of pain that something had breached his suit containment. He was dying. If he didn't get off this coffin, and do it quickly, Salt-Shaker would be just one more scrapheap for someone else to pick over.
He pushed himself upright amid muscle spasms from the pain washing over his system. A singular objective fixed itself in his mind. Get Home. Get back to Salt-Shaker.
He took a breath through clenched teeth, pushing through the pain with his first step. The halls that had seemed so oddly familiar when he'd cracked this bird open now seemed labyrinthian. What rooms had he passed through to get here? What was the path back? He struggled to clear the fog from his mind but the pain consumed everything. He fumbled through rooms and corridors blind.
He woke some time later back in the first cargo-hold room he'd breached, laying on his side in a two inch pool of liquid. His suits internal alarm systems were blaring at him. Oxygen was low. Air filters were compromised. Suit integrity was at a minimum threshold.
His eyes flickered to the ceiling, fixing on the breached hole. Twenty feet. He was going to die, twenty feet from his ship... in a pool of what is likely the same stuff to have compromised his suit in the first place.
Morisel pushed himself weakly to his knees. All the many times he'd done the impossible... to end here, on some floating ball of garbage heading towards a black-hole was unthinkable. He shoved himself as hard as he could towards the breach and the airlock - an effort that caused him to black out even as he flew towards the airlock.
WHEW, It's been a hot minute since we did one of these! (Four months, to be exact). There's been a lot going on, so if you (very reasonably) don't remember what happened in prior scenes... pop over to the collection linked below.
This post is the fourth in my series of posts following our spacefaring salvager, Morisel - a Collection will be created to contain the story. If you're interested in the fate of our dear Belter, toss a follow, or bookmark the Skipping Stones - A Dead Belt Tale collection. I plan for weekly posts as we navigate this story.
Inspired by the Solo/Co-op RPG game Dead Belt, produced by:
A Couple of Drakes Zine
www.acoupleofdrakes.com
On Twitter: @DrakeandDice • @NaviMusing
Header image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay