Chapter Text
Prologue
A young man awakens to the sounds of metal creaking and glass tinkling softly in what sounds to be a cramped area. The first thing he’s aware of is a small red light blinking slowly on a mangled panel of buttons and switches, then followed by a searing pain in his arm and the warmth of his blood as it drips down his brow. He painfully wipes the grime from his eyes so that he can see his surroundings and try to figure out what happened.
Again, the first thing he notices is the panel of important looking knobs and that incessant light slowly flashing away. He looks up to see a spider web of cracks and fractures in the glass canopy that used to protect him from the cold vacuum outside, now threatening to give away at a moment’s notice. He wonders in amazement how the glass is even still intact let alone holding enough air for him to breath in what remains of his tiny cockpit. He looks to the right, but a wave of pain flashes through his arm like lightning as he realizes his left shoulder is pinned in like a vice to the chair he sits in by a mangle of steel and wire .
“Great,” he attempts to say but the word comes out so broken and grizzly that he wondered for a moment if it was even his own voice. “Pinned in this tin can, floating through space, with this God damned flashing light giving me lip! It’s mocking me, I know it! Saying, ‘It’s ok, rescue will come shortly! Everything is alright!’ My ass it is! One little bit of debris and this whole enclosure blows me right out into the Grim Reaper’s arms! It wouldn’t be so bad though, if this LIGHT WOULD STO---”
He staves the onset of insanity for just long enough to realize that the light he was just shouting at was indeed a rescue beacon. It really is telling him that rescue is on the way. He stretches out to flip the broken switch for the communications relay, but something stops him. That mangle of metal and malice has him trapped in his seat, just out of reach of the console. He takes a deep breath in and with as much power as he can muster, he lunges forward. His ears buzz and ring as the most intense pain he has ever felt rushes to greet him. He reaches the switch and flips it as he looks back at a piece of him that he left behind. “I suppose I didn’t need that arm anyway…”
With the flip of the switch the broken speakers come alive with the sound of electricity and a voice in the distance. “Click...Zzzzzzttt. C--e in, co-e in, th-s i- Com-and! Can anyone read me!?
“Loud...and clear…” his words crack out before succumbing to his wounds. A dark shadow passes over his pale face and somewhere far away he hears the sounds of machinery, people shouting, and monitors beeping into what seems to be eternity.