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Author Topic: Damages  (Read 812 times)

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Offline Lion

Damages
« on: September 23, 2017, 04:58:38 pm »
[One shot]

-Sparrow Anderson has lost signal-

The words couldn’t have been brighter on the amoled display of his phone. They couldn’t have been brighter if they had been scrawled in molten metal. Still the words burned into his retinas with the glittering highlights of plasma beams igniting the dark emptiness of space. Grisham balled his hands into fists. The bite of his fingernails against his palm kept him grounded, kept him from going haywire.

That sensation was real, not amorphous like the images that swam in his head. The visualization that saw Sparrow out there burning in the Wastes. Each one slightly different, playing back like camera footage. From to another, she either crashed and burned down with the jet she’d been testing out that day, or she managed to get out of the vessel in time, only for her to damage her flight suit, a crack in her helmet, or her drop pack failed to activate in time and she was splattered out on the rocks and dirt.

That thought was mighty powerful enough to turn his stomach sour. Grisham unfurled his hands and pushed himself up into a sitting position from where he’d laid in bed. 3:35 AM. The red glaring numbers displayed on his table clock. He buried his face in his hands, rubbing at his face and breathing out a slow, steady breath. His forehead was beaded, damp with sweat despite the entire apartment being cooled out.

Not chilly, not even enough to have to wrap yourself in blankets and then some.

If anything would kill Sparrow, it’d have to be fast and vicious, catch her completely off guard. She was steely, resourceful and he’d trained her well. She was a Pilot and a Hellion. She was going to survive. Of that he had no doubt.

Still, that didn’t stop him from wondering at the worst. Reaching out to her and feeling nothing. His eyes flicked back to the clock and he pushed away the loose unruly strands of dark green hair. Three hours and counting. It was the most sleep he’d gotten in five days. It was the most he’d gotten in a long time coming to be technical. He was momentarily relieved, someone else would watch the monitors and alert him of any incoming messages, any readings.

Three hours was better than nothing he supposed, and slithered out of bed, wiping at his eyes and flicking away the crud that had festered in the corners. All Hellions were needed on deck, it was a routine flight test, running through a new program meant to keep things running smooth. Then back to Adstreia and they’d have drinks. She was supposed to be back by now. Gods-fucking-dammit!

HTH. Fucking-A. Made the fucking drop packs, and had been making them for years. For a company that had been in business for more than two decades, you’d think they’d get the tech down pat for that shit. Even improvements, test it out, endlessly, put it through every grueling task that you could think of and then some. Then test it again to absolute failure. Before say an entire Squadron was going to try them out. Before a wiring failure. Before it took people’s lives when they needed it most to save it!

“FUUUUUUCK!”

Grisham pushed himself out of bed and snatched his clock. With a jerk of his arm he launched it against his bedroom wall, where the velocity cracked the frame and smashed it open. The fissure revealed the wiring inside and from there the display went dead, no more red numbers.  First Adal, then Yavul. They were alive, but the absolute worst could have happened and who at HTH would even be responsible. No one. Not a single fucking soul.

Those packs had been issued to his own Squadron. What if Sparrow….what if?

Grisham rubbed his face again, staggering over and kneeling down beside the destroyed clock. His real hand felt no different, and he sometimes forgot that the skin over his right was synthetic. Well-made, no actual conceivable difference. And you might not even know it was a prosthetic if Grisham didn’t tell you. All the way up to his shoulder - which thankfully that joint was still intact - And the muscles and paths of vascularity were just like his old arm before it was turned into a smoothie.

Yavul would be all right. So would Adal. He knew it in the back of his mind that was the reality. The nail bites, the small half moons that still throbbed on his palms. Grisham took a quick shower, fixed himself two shots of Steurig in a thermos and dressed. Three hours was enough.  He wasn’t going to sit around doing nothing. He was going to watch those monitors until something read. Until a message came through.

Closing his eyes, he tried one more time, feeling out there, reaching, felt something of a tangible sign of life. Beyond the dome….Closer to home than he realized.

The cold sensation in his guts abated, if only slightly and he grabbed his jacket and phone, slamming his door shut and headed down to the flight bay.

No. She wasn’t dead. The throb was there. Faint but present, and a ball lumped in his throat. She wasn’t going to die.

“Haru,” he reached out to his dragon, and he felt those responsive tendrils. “You wanna fly, right?”

“As if there was any doubt, Grim,” she hissed in a pleasant soprano. There was an eerie chuckle that followed. “I was just settling in for a nice siesta, but I can’t pass up the opportunity to stretch my wings. Suit up, then, lovely.”

And as if on cue, his phone ignited with a message: "Commander Royal Alberich...you're gonna wanna see this..."
« Last Edit: September 23, 2017, 05:00:35 pm by Lion »

 

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