Dec 1, 2019

Still Here

The spaceship hung in the vastness of the empty nothing like a dead body rotting on a rope. The batteries in the ship had long since died out. No lights blipped on the dashboards, all life support systems were down, and the oxygen had long since ran out from the multiple holes in the body of the ship. It used to be the pride of the crew once upon a time, but now it was useless space junk. Part of a debris belt that spun around the planet like jewels hanging from their places in a broken crown.

After years of floating mindlessly, a timer inside the ship ran its course and something came alive. A previously dead battery sent a spark of current through its systems and a light on one of the dashboards lit up, bathing the broken insides of the spaceship in a garish red. Systems woke up slowly. Coming online one by one. In the dejected insides of the ship, movement created a wave of activity that stopped at the single pod that was still intact.

Inside the pod, a body lay with its hands crossed across its chest. Liquid oxygen, slightly rotten from the time it was in a tank flooded the pod's inert environment. Life support systems monitoring the body started to inject various cocktails of chemicals that were going to bring life back in the body.

Small repair bots crawled out of the belly of the spaceship and started to patch the one room of the ship up where the pod was located. Once the hive mind of the repair bots had confirmed the structural integrity of the pod room, the atmosphere regulators took over and started to warm up the room to a comfortable level.

The pod opened up with a hiss, releasing stale gases that were trapped inside the glass.

The figure in the pod opened its eyes.

It put one hand on the edge of the pod and tried to get up, but it could not. It was still too weak, too feeble to attempt even such a simple task. It lay back and let the nutrient and chemical mix running through its veins take hold and give it some strength back.

A spell of sleep later, the person felt strong enough to at least pick its body up from the surface of the pod and look around the room the pod was placed in. It was as bare-bones and small as any room on the ship had been.

"Who attacked us?"

The computer system came online on hearing the voice.

"The attacking fleet belonged to Subversa Minor 6687."

"Compose message for Subversa Minor 6687."

"Composing message. Please speak the body text."

"I'm still here, motherfuckers."

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So am I.