White Noise
“Unit Seven to Base, Come in Base.” Static greets this attempt at communication, as it has the previous twenty tries.
Sterling doesn’t want to give up hope. He knows that the chances grow slimmer and slimmer every hour that the Nightingale is still in orbit. They are probably half way out of the system by now. He has to try though.
It had been a routine patrol on this desolate rock, and he had donned his gear yesterday morning, never knowing that the day would end with him in this pit of slime, and Base Command on board the Nightingale nowhere to be found across the com channels.
He knew - as did all of the Night Bird squadron - that every drop held the chance of death, but somehow, he had never considered that there might be fates worse than death among the planets that the Federation patrolled.
He checks his pulse rifle again, and it is just as empty as it was the last time he checked, and the time before that.
In his earpiece he hears what might have been a voice amid the static.
“Unit Seven. Repeat transmission, Base. Unable to hear.” He strains to listen, and decides that it was just his imagination after all.
He tries to shift position, and becomes aware again of the intense agony of his shattered leg. If it weren’t for the black armor he is encased in, he knows that he would have passed out long ago.
Maybe that would have been a blessing.
In the distance beyond his vision, the sucking sounds of something wet sliding its bulk along the stones comes again, followed by a rumbling that is reminiscent of purring – or of a hungry stomach that wants to be filled.
(c) 2016 - dustygrein