Digital Asylum

This is my entry to the Inspired By Images Of Eve Competition 2. More details and links to all entrants can be found at Starfleet Comms

****

Darkness

There was no light, all was quiet but his own blood soaked cough as he woke. The cold mocking surface of the deck plate pressing against his broken jaw was a good indication he was still alive. The fact his sinuses, throat, and just about every inch of his body was covered in lacerations and blood didn’t help the matter. Illidian only felt more pain as he weakly lifted his head, hearing the sickening sound of wet tacky blood releasing from the floor. Sore joints, acidic stomach, the acrid copper smell of blood, all permeated and tainted his senses as he gathered himself and his surroundings.

With difficulty, he began to first take an assessment of himself and then his situation. He appeared to be in some small storage closet, an empty one at that. The absence of the ever-present hum of a starship drive told him he was probably still on station. For a while he just sat there and listened, stretching a limb here and there to try and ease the pain. Someone gave him a good work over. The silence became too much when he realized anxiety was getting the best of him, and his heartbeat was pounding in his ear drums. He felt his body pulsing with each heartbeat, a strong but dull throb of his veins made him feel like he was going to collapse again. He couldn’t stand it any longer, and in a panic born on desperation, he opened the door and collapsed to the floor in the adjacent hall.

His vision swimming with spots and narrowed like a warp tunnel, he dizzily looked at his new surroundings. Again there were no lights, but this time there were banks of ports out into space by which to see in the gloomy darkness. He slowly came to recognize the spot, it was the stations medical ward, but nobody was there. For a minute he struggled and fought to remember what had happened to him, and then it hit. His vision blurred for a moment and he had to fight to stay alert as he lurched sideways and was sliding down the floor towards the view ports. Medical carts and equipment slammed into him as they too moved with the shift in the stations gravity. Illidian cringed as what looked to be a very heavy cart slammed against a view port and bounced to the floor, the viewport standing defiant against the vacuum of space. The groans of protest as tritanium supports struggled to hold against the massive shift in gravity could be heard with a deafening rumble.

Just when he thought it the noise alone was going to liquefy his brain, the shift subsided, and the station hung there like a marionette with half its strings cut. Illidian put all his effort into climbing up the now-uneven surface and set about trying to get out. This station wasn’t going to last long if its gravity generators were in this bad of a shape. After a few failed attempts and wasted precious minutes, Illidian finally dragged his bruised and battered body out of the medical ward and out toward the main hallway in that portion of the station. He had to get off this station. As he made his way to the main hanger section, he started to find his path blocked by emergency blast doors, and had to waste yet more precious time finding an alternate root. Debris, luggage, even a child’s doll, all littered the floor as witness to the mass panic of a full blown evacuation.

“What in the fuck is goi..” Illidian broke out into coughing fit as the burning rasp in his throat gave indication he had been screaming himself hoarse prior to waking up. Clearing his throat a little, he continued down the main hall, using the walls as a means of support in walking on the sloped deck. He got to yet another blast door and let loose with a flurry of curses that only halted when he realized that one of the hangers control room doors was stuck propped open, probably from the evacuating crew. He slide on through the narrow opening and the carnage that lay beyond shook him to his core.

The hanger, nearly the entirety of the central part of the station, had been utterly destroyed as if a giant sphere had instantly expanded from the inside. Structural supports, debris, and large chunks of slag which could only have been damn near every ship, floated around the hanger, many of them slowly towards the unshielded exit of the hanger bay. No one could have survived that big of an explosion. As he frantically looked about the hanger for some signs of life or even a few bodies to indicate people had been on station at all he found it a futile effort. Small traces of ash were seen clouding his view, and immediately he understood. An explosion of this magnitude would have incinerated anyone within several hundred meters, and once the hanger decks gravity generators kicked off, nothing could have survived the firestorm. The image of the disaster burned into his mind as he slowly looked about the hanger, slowly drifting his gaze towards the hanger entrance. His heart sank further as he realized none of the ships floating outside the hanger we lit with fires of propulsion, only destruction.

The station was in full evacuation mode, everyone was in the hanger, and something went wrong. Despair sank in, as if he swallowed a lead weight, and he fell to his knees and vomited up bile. The station lurched again, violently this time, as a large chunk could be seen sheering off at the support and falling towards the planet with sickening speed. Illidian let out a cry of dismay as the station fell into free-fall at the loss of one of its gravity support units, until he slammed into the floor in a heap, breaking his leg. The emergency gravity unit must have finally kicked in. The pain of his new injury overwhelmed an already taxed body, and in a dazed stupor, Illidian mind began to torture him with the onslaught he endured before he had woken up in that cramped closet. Then he just sat there, no thoughts entered his head, no remorse or regrets, nothing. He just sat there for what seemed like hours, in the dark control room on a dying station. Darkness took him.

****

He woke with a startle that nearly saw him slide across the control room when he almost fell from his position, giving him a fresh reminder of his injuries and his situation. Illidian looked up to see a flashing light, indicating an incoming signal over on one of the consoles. He struggled to pull himself along the consoles, desperate to answer that call. Out the viewport he could see a Federation Interceptor slowly approaching the dying station. When he was within reach of the console he slammed his hand down on the button to open channel and fell to the floor. His painful grunt alerted the person on the other side that someone had finally answered.

“Icarus Station, this is Daernon of the 5th fleet, Gallentean Federation, please report the situation, over.”, it took Illidian until the pilot repeated his hail before he could catch his breath.

“Daernon… this is Illidian, station tech…” Illidian paused comprising the situation in whole. “Icarus station has suffered a catastrophic explosion, systems failing, station is going to fall planet side. I don’t see anyone else alive, presumed to have been in hanger during explosion. I am injured and have difficulty moving.” He sat there waiting for a reply for what seemed like ages, until the pilot finally responded back.

“Illidian, how was your vacation?” It took a moment to register just what the fuck the pilot was asking him, then it dawned on him.

“Situation, cover comprimized, I was detained and interrigated, association unknown.” His thoughts flash to the brutal interrigation methods used on him churning his stomach, and he focused on something the assailents kept showing him. “Objective lost, they have it, and I believe the explosion is a cover, over”. The last words echoed Illidians wounds as an agent that failed at his mission. The comm light went dead, as he presumed, the pilot was now hurtling through space at breakneck speed to relay the intel. He had failed. Illidian laid his head back against a controller chair and let out a long sigh.

The last thing he felt was free fall.

~ by UbentoBox on July 25, 2010.