Tales from the Drift: Old Lessons, Hard Futures

Chapter 44 - The First Rule of Survival

THE DRIFT // UNKNOWN SYSTEM // UNKNOWN PLANET

Brego, or someone like him, sucked in air. Gasped for it. His throat constricted around the dry, sooty, scorching heat. He gagged. Coughed. His eyes strained with effort; squinting shut against roiling smoke. He felt the pulse of his veins in his ears with each ragged hawk and hem.

His nose was assaulted with the smells of burning chemicals. Harsh. Acrid. Hazardous. His chest ached as his lungs fought hard to pull whatever oxygen they could from the mess spilling into the air.

He pawed at himself. Found the release for the harness holding him hostage against the chair. Something made him hesitate, and that hesitation dared him to open his eyes.

There was an intelligent and logical reason behind why he had not pressed harness release. His mind hadn't remembered all the details, but it had known enough to stay his fingers and check his impulses.

His chest was pressed against the harness, which was fulling strained against his weight despite still managing to hold him snug against the back of the chair. His feet dangled out in front of him. He spotted the source of his difficult breathing: a churning plume of black smoke which billowed up past his position from somewhere below. As the wind shifted, it engulfed him.

Release harness. Fall. Likely to death.

Don't release harness. Don't fall. Suffocate to death.

In that moment he remembered he was, in fact, Brego. Not someone like him, and while still a poor fool, not quite the same poor fool who had awoken to a most unpleasant, dangerous, and surreal situation.

Brego gave out a cry of terror. His realization was also his body's realization of the imminent danger. At the back of his mind a small voice reminded him, pleaded with him, urged him, that panic was the enemy. His momentary ignorance had kept him alive. Now, fully aware, calm precision was his ally. Not panic. Panic was ever the enemy.

Brego didn't heed the voice. It was difficult to hear it, despite it being his own, over the screaming. Also, his own.

The chair lurched.

Or rather, the section of cabin to which the chair was still attached lurched. Steel scraped and groaned. The straining harness began to rip. He felt it give. His body jerked as it dropped less than the span of his little finger.

That little was enough. His body stilled and he ceased his screaming. Brego heard the voice in the back of his head now.

"Panic is the enemy," he muttered through cracked and swollen lips.

His eyes took in his surroundings.

The source of the plume was from a natural formation and not wreckage from the Wrath. He was suspended above it, perhaps at a distance equal to double his own height. Not too far a drop, all things considered. Were luck on his side, he'd break nothing and have only bruises. Were luck not on his side, he'd break any number of bones. Most probably his neck. Or perhaps a rib would puncture a lung. Or perhaps he'd crack a hip and break a leg and so, still, slowly suffocate beside the plume.

The ground around the plume didn't look forgiving. There were some spots which were mostly flat, but it was all rocky. Sharp and jagged formations jutted from the ground and split the terrain into tiers of narrow wedges.

The rock itself was a gradient of browns with blue-green striations. Thick, scaly patches of lichen clung to the smoother bits. Somewhere nearby and beyond the craning of his neck and twisting of his gaze, liquid was boiling and bubbling.