Starfire

Chapter 18: -Cruel Salvation-

    He was terrified of what he would see, because he was sure that whatever was down there would mean life or death. He wouldn't survive much longer without food and so little water, and that was completely ignoring the deadly wildlife of the swamp, and his destiny wound. If he didn't find his salvation here, he never would.

   It was as a miracle.

   He let out a small laugh— he couldn't help it. It was like looking at a picture of the past; a snapshot into another time.

   Almost perfectly preserved, there was a Shanien deep-space probe sitting beneath him, as if it had never been abandoned. If it hadn't been buried to the very top hatch in Scutarrii dirt, he would have assumed it was in perfect working order and ready to take off.

   There were two small capsules where the crew members would have been put into cryo-sleep for the long journey, and everything else from waste-disposal equipment to antibiotics scattered throughout. Every inch of space had been utilized to the fullest extent: a picture of efficiency. The funny thing was, nowadays, most of the equipment here would be small enough to fit in his pocket. Those medical lasers with capacity batteries bigger than him? handheld versions of the same were available a dime a dozen. The same engine, or even a much faster model could now be compacted to a tenth of the size with no features lost —except the girth, of course.

  This antiquated tub would have to prove itself one last time to save him. He carefully climbed though the hatch and examined each piece of equipment—all of them older than he was by decades, at least.

   There was only some minor damage to a few of the electronics further to the back, where the craft must have impacted the ground. The whole thing was tilted on its side, but that wasn't too much of an issue. He could still navigate well enough.

   After a short examination of logs and signage, he discovered that the craft hadn't been a simple probe. It had been a designated craft— to carry important people in high places to other high places. Delegates, rulers, ambassadors, even endangered species. And as with every other thing made for the important beings in the Quadrant, there had to be backup plans on top of backup plans, sprinkled with some fail-safes for good measure.

   He scanned the tech, searching for anything that could be useful or even anything that was small enough to carry with him should he find the need to strike out into the marsh once more. If nothing else, he could sleep here for the night.

   After the first look around, he avoided even glancing at the cryogenic chambers. He didn't know what he would see there, and he didn't want to find out. He only had one goal, and it was saving his own skin. If there were any people still alive in there, they would be displaced in time; generations removed from their kin and the world they had known. They would be lost and likely end up wishing they were dead. He would find no help there. It was better not to risk checking at all.

    Most of the other tech was so old that he hardly recognized what purpose it served, or it was so gargantuan that he would kill himself just trying to move it, much less travel with it. In all, it took three complete laps around the ship for him to realize that the heap of wires and diodes in the corner was actually a rudimentary teleport. When he did realize, however, his heart skipped a beat and he made a beeline to the corner.

   Please work. It was a mantra in his head, over and over as he carefully climbed into the ancient thing.

   Getting down into the tube-like device without falling gracelessly to the bottom proved more difficult than he first supposed. In the process, he reopened the freshly healing burn—which had only just stopped bleeding—accidentally sliced his other hand on a jagged piece of metal, and mildly shocked himself on a bare wire that he didn't think still had electricity in it, not to mention chest was heaving for breath the whole way.

   As he went, he tried not to get his hopes too high, lest they be crushed, but deep inside he knew that even if he was wrong, it wouldn't matter. It was either the ship and teleport would still work enough to get him off the planet, or he would be dead.

   Sure, he would have enough supplies to last another few months if he stretched them, but he would die eventually, and that was just as good as if a mighty hand came out of the sky and smote him on the spot. It didn't matter when he died if he was still going to die on Scutarrii.

   The light was already fading in another delayed night-cycle, and he rushed to find out how the teleport worked before he had to wait another day to decide his fate. It was too late to find the lights on-board, much less get them working. The dying daylight was all he had.

   He shook away the thoughts of death and the sinking hopelessness, focusing entirely on the task at hand and the massive shell of machinery that he had crawled into. He tried his best to ignore how like a coffin it was beginning to feel.

   The thing seemed to work like any modern hand-held teleport, but it was just several hundred times bigger, and exactly one hundred percent more dormant. Wires had been jostled free of their cradles, presumably in the crash. Tiny buttons had lost their casings, and tubes of glass had been shattered. He put things back where they seemed to go, but anything beyond that would prove difficult, if not impossible. His hand hovered over the lever as his heart started beating faster and faster in his chest.

   From his recent incident with the live-wire, he knew that the ship still had electricity. He eyed the broken tubes of glass. In the end, it was a matter of the inner workings of the machine. Had they been left undamaged in the crash, like so many of the other machines on board, or had this been one of the few to sustain a blow? He had no way of knowing until he cranked the lever.

    If the tech had been damaged in a way that he couldn't see, he might be forced into a state of half-teleportation. His atoms could scatter, which was the first natural step, but they might never reform. The process usually only took a nanosecond, and in the most optimal of situations, he would reappear somewhere far away, perfectly safe. Or he could be broken apart into so many different pieces that it would be impossible to tell the difference between what was him and what was air, or water, or simply nothing at all. The latter would kill him instantly, the former was his only chance at living at all.

   So many things could go wrong with the teleport, all of them ending in gruesome deaths that he might feel in agonizing detail or dull painlessness. He could be poof and gone or melded with a stone wall in the blink of an eye; the pull of a lever.

   He was half tempted to stay and take his chances, but then he slammed his hand down on the lever before he could second-guess his choice. If he didn't go now, he never would.

   He just had to remind himself of the now-constant ache in his hand that had been caused by the vicious planet. He didn't have a choice. He would die either way, but this way, he at least had the faintest margins of a chance. At least it was on his own terms.

   He squeezed his eyes shut, trying desperately not to think about every single way that he could die. A hum stole into the silence so gradually that he didn't realize it at first; The teleport was gearing up, and his fate would soon be decided.

   Something akin to an electric shock buzzed through him.

   Off the top of his head, many of his imagined deaths might start exactly like this. He pressed his eyes tighter, breath catching and then freezing in his buzzing chest.

   His head felt like it might burst open with the tension of the shock. The longer he stood there, the more the current built up.

   He was faintly aware of the fact that he smelled something burning, but the electricity buzzing though his body was just a tad too distracting to worry about that. It was too late now to opt out.

   The current was starting to burn just beneath his flesh. So, it was going to be a painful one, after all. It built and built. He'd explode soon—if nothing else happened before that. But then—it suddenly vanished, leaving behind a tingling pain and a singeing heat that tore through his body, all the way from his feet, and up into his head.

   He might have screamed, but by that time he was already fading from awareness, so he would never remember if he did, or if he didn't.