Tin Can

The orange light cut vertical across my sight. All blackness, bisected perfectly in the middle by a sharp needle which then stretched to the edge of my vision. I tried opening my eyes more but the light was too glaring. It burned like a blowtorch. I snapped them back shut, turned my head away.

Coming around to what was – hopefully – away from the light I opened my left eye ever so slightly: the light wasn’t so painful now, just glaring. It light of the local star – Alcyone – was shining through the one porthole of my vessel giving barely enough illumination for me to make out the interior consoles. All systems dead.

I rolled over – fuck, I rolled over – and felt the damning pull of gravity. That wasn’t good. It meant my station, or rather what had been my station, wasn’t in orbit any more. It was now on a surface of a planet. No power meant that the section I was inhabiting was now cut off from the main power supply. Probably meant the battery backups were offline too.

What the hell had happened?

Aside from the difficult pull of gravity, to which my space legs hadn’t experienced in almost a year, I didn’t seem to be in rough shape. No choice but to assess and react.

First things first: physical condition checks out as ok. My suit’s internals were showing yellow statuses, save for my adrenaline, norepinephrine, and cortisol levels; those were high showing red. I did some basic movements & didn’t feel any pain. Likely I was intact.

Second: mental status. Stressed but aware. No vertigo or dizziness. Colors appear correct, nothing is swimming in my vision. I can identify the various consoles in front of me. That means my cognitive processes are working.

Third: power status. Main power & backups offline, suit status showing 87% which meant I was likely sitting here unconscious for a little over 8 hours. Plenty of time to rig something together & save myself.

I decided to spend a while exploring my wreck. It was just one of the outboard pods from the main station. Some meteor storm? Perhaps an electrical fire which caused an oxygen tank to explode? No way to know.

I pulled some panels from the rear of the wreck open. Thank God or the Celestials or my ancestors – whomever – that the Silicon-Lithium-Polymer batteries were still in place. I disconnected them, tossed them on the deck of this low-gravity world. They thudded in place. I moved and lost my grip, fell down beside the batteries.

I heard a groan. A sickening tearing of metal. The wreck moved then, rocking to the side. The batteries of course fell atop of me. They didn’t weigh much in the low gravity of this world yet to my zero-G atrophied muscles & bones they felt like a ton.

“Son of a bitch,” I groaned. I foisted the offenders off me. Is this wreck on a cliff? Did the ground just shift?

Moving as fast as I could, but still painfully slowly, I go back to the single porthole in what was now my capsule. I looked out at the world since I could see it now. If I was on a cliff it was behind me, the porthole was parallel to the ground. Endless light gray stuck out, lit by the slightly orange tinge of the local star.

Which presented another problem: Alcyone was a blue star. And this was an orange star. Now I am lost and no idea where I am.

So what knocked over this capsule onto its side? If I’m on a lifeless moon… I suppose it could be tectonically active? Unlikely but not impossible.

That wasn’t it though, as I’d suddenly become keenly aware. What I could only describe as a sharp-talon claw slapped up against the clear window. It had two front talons and a third rear talon, and it stretched the entire 13 inch diameter of the porthole.

“Son of a bitch,” I swore quietly as I fell backward. It was painfully slow and didn’t end nearly soon enough. My body ached in protest of the sudden movement, my muscles trying not to tear themselves and my bones apart.

When I’d arrested my fall I looked back up at the window. The… animal? Creature? Whatever it was – its face had appeared in the window. It was elongated, sharper at the front like a beak. There were a series of cavities in the sides of its face. No eyes were present – there couldn’t be if this thing survived in dead vacuum. Perhaps a type of infra-red or electro-magnetic detection?

It moved away from the porthole. I scrambled to the batteries. It was outside and I was inside. Whether it say via IR or EM wasn’t important right now, either way this wrecked capsule would look like a damn bonfire against the cold void.

My only hope was to pull up the Solar Positioning System and broadcast a distress call.

It took some doing, and the animal had made a couple attempts at breaking open my tin can, but not with much success. It sheered some long slices in the outer hull, however.

I pulled the emergency SPS out from under the front console. They were kept in key locations through a space station for just this reason. The system had a rudimentary but reliable quantum entanglement system that would report my location back to the main station. Assuming it still existed.

It didn’t take much effort to get the SiLiPoly connected to the SPS & power it up. I didn’t know what system I was in, but someone else would know soon enough. Hopefully.

Being uncomfortably close to the porthole I could see the creature had moved away now, sitting just a few meters away, perfectly enclosed by the porthole. I dare say it was staring at me, waiting for patiently for a dinner delivery.