Chimera 🌈 [ONC 2024]

2: Valkyrie

Leanne had three hours of oxygen remaining. The display on her wrist had been announcing the drop-off every five minutes, callously reading her strained vital signs. Now, she jabbed her finger onto the controls and turned the volume down.

Her breathing filled her helmet. With every bit of air escaping her lips, she imagined the CO2 scrubbers working, the internal fans whirring to spread her dwindling life support. She had to concentrate on that. If she tried to take in everything around her, her mind would collapse in on itself.

Darkness loomed like a living presence on each side. It was only through the automatic guidance system on her suit that she knew whether she faced up or down. She seemed to be doing both at once. Her torch bled through the shadows and found what could be a ceiling or a walkway. She half-floated below it, clinging to grates when they appeared beside her gloved hands or pushing herself along through the zero-gee. She had no idea how far the drop stretched beneath her dangling feet.

From the external appearance of the ship, she reckoned she was in the long central hub. It stretched from stem to stern, split into compartments, with the great centrifuge arcing around it. Endymion station had a small, experimental centrifuge in one of its labs – a glorified hamster's wheel for simulating gravitational forces. It was nothing like what Leanne had seen of the Chimera's elaborate structure. Even in its slumber, Leanne felt the terrifying power of the unknown.

The unknown, cut off from all comms and with her companion... With her companion dead. Leanne could not make herself think it or believe it. She expected at any moment for her radio to crackle and for Cliff's voice to come through it. What she would have given to hear him humming that inane song about coming home again.

She closed her eyes for a moment and tried to ground herself. First: find the command centre of the ship. Second: try to restore power, even if it was auxiliary, backup, anything to get the juices flowing. Third: pull this hulk of metal into a stable orbit. If she didn't do that, oxygen deprivation and unknown shadows would be the last of her worries.

She kept moving, chasing the arc of her torchlight, until her foot nudged against something. She willed herself to let go of the handholds, pushing away so she up-ended. Or maybe this was the right way.

She found a small door, closed with a manual portal lock. An experimental spin of it made the latches click hopefully. It didn't take much more effort to pull open. Her light bled through the tight gap.

She thought back to her days at the BASE's Aquatic Training Centre. She had learned to manoeuvre in and out of modules flooded with water. It was the best way to simulate zero-gravity movements, and to prepare astronauts for the dreaded possibility of a sea-landing going wrong. She had been there with Cliff, side-by-side in the submersed tanks. It had always been two minimum in the training. Two minimum. Never one. Never alone. Not like now.

Leanne forced the thought from her head. This mission had to continue. Cliff would have said that. And if she did not survive, there would be no one to inform his wife and children about what had happened. She would not allow the bureaucratic BASE teams do so: a standard, unemotional speech about astronauts giving their life to the spirit of adventure and the future of humanity. She wanted to be there, to hold Joanne's hand and grieve alongside her.