Drabble Wednesday: To Boldly Go... Where?

Today on Drabble Wednesday, we venture into science fiction, to the great unknown. We fly off into the deadly regions of space...

  

Engine Malfunction

The stars are wrong.

Worse, the space station’s vanished.

What I’m seeing on the view screen isn’t comforting. I think I’m in trouble.

“Computer, what happened? Was it the engine?"

“Yes. The new star drive malfunctioned when it engaged.”

I toggle the camera view of the engine room. Only it’s gone. A hole in the bulkhead and lots of debris. At least the ship sealed off the breach.

“Computer, calculate the ship’s position.”

“We are one point four light years from the boundaries of the Galactic Empire. In the Marauder Region.”

Oh shit! No engine and stuck in enemy territory!

~*~

A Pebble in the Dark

A stone. A bit of cold rock. A fragment of an asteroid, a planet long forgotten. Space dust or debris. Spinning, soaring, cast out, travelling aimlessly, speeding an unfathomable trajectory.

A ship. A home of metal and electronics. A place of promise, full of humans in stasis, on an automated course to a distant world. A one way trip to colonise a New Earth.

They cross paths. A collision.

The stone disintegrates, smashing a hole into an array, causing a cataclysmic failure of the pre-programmed navigation system. Lost and off-course, the ship flies on, into the dark reaches of space.

~*~

Stare Into The Abyss

I stare at the stars beyond the space station, through a small viewing window. Portholes, they call them, after the ancient sailing ships of Earth.

I miss Earth. I’ve been out here too long. Starting to screw with my head. Going space mad.

I scrape my knife against the window’s transparent bonded polymer. It doesn’t make a scratch, but it leaves a tiny trail of blood.

I wonder if it’s the captain’s blood, or maybe the first officer. They both bled a lot.

I hear angry voices and footsteps; I guess someone alerted security that I killed my fellow officers.

© A. F. Stewart 2016 All Rights Reserved