Stories 03 Jan 2016 13:11:49
365 tomorrows: Emergency Power
My 3rd published piece of sci-fi flash fiction: Emergency Power.
Emergency Power
[emergency power online]
Sergeant, lock down that…wait, what’s going on? Backup neuro-simulation? So we lost, badly. But, this is supposed to bring up the ranking officer, so why am I…oh, I see…died too fast for station to scan them, and their backups are months old – doesn’t anyone follow protocol around here? Argh, might be an outer empire security station, but still…anyway, focus!
Station status. Damn, generators offline, permanently. Barely running on accumulated solar power, critical levels. Need to send message to command before those bastards move onwards. Let’s see, power up communications array…come on…nope, seems there’s just dangling wires where that used to be. Fine then, directed burst transmitter…hm, that takes a lot of power. Ok, desperate measures, taking storage offline – if this fails it won’t matter whether we keep logs or short term memory.
Right then, compose message. Imperial emergency channel. Station Willow Spiral Minor attacked by Daylight Federation forces. High probability of imminent invasion based on severity and type of damage to station. All personnel body-killed, several months of experience lost, awaiting rescue and re-cloning. Authorization and authentication, Lt. Sarah Clacher, in-sim acting commanding officer.
Align transmitter…blast, station has drifted too far off alignment. Protocol, people! Half a mind to write a sternly worded report, if I wasn’t currently without a body. Encrypt and sign message, store to transmitter…there’s a partial buffer here, mostly dissipated and corrupted. Discarding. Spool up the burst…spool up the burst…come on you old bucket of bolts…10%…20%…power dropping fast, what a hungry little thing…30%…40%…50%…oh no no no, don’t you dare run out of juice now…60%…shine brighter, dammit…70%…
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[emergency power online]
Sergeant, lock down that…wait, what’s going on? …
©️ My 3rd flash fiction short story. Written around 2015-10-19 (Google Docs).
