The Arrow - Reflections on the Night (Commander Ash MacKenna)

[Randal Shayne]

((Space))

 

There was a perpetual chill that started quietly, but grew ever more vociferous as the hours stretched on. Tick, tock, the time marched to a steady beat as the air thinned and eventually faded from all existence, leaving nothing but a frigid void in its wake. Ice plated anything that had been capable of condensation, liquids that froze as temperatures far below that of typical 'zero' were becoming slush, and the groaning of tritanium and duranium, mixed with a dose of cracking from surfaces and materials that were never meant to be this cold made for a mournful but silent song sang by the good ship Arrow.

Of all the sounds and tones and clangs and noises that resonated through the empty ship in the form of mere vibrations, through which there was no medium to carry, the most deafening was the absolute silence. There was nothing quite like the death of a ship, but to die in a blaze of glory and a magnificent explosion of light that burst outwards in a million different directions, igniting the very pitch of the caliginosity of the universe, was to taste of glory. To drift, potentially with no end until running aground on planet or other galactic body was something else entirely, devoid of the honor a ship such as the Arrow should have enjoyed. 

 

And yet, that seemed to be her fate. Again.

 

A tiny glint of light reflected off of the cold, dark, metallic hull as she drifted in orbit of the strange Midnight planet, indifferent to who might have seen it, or who might not have. The star in the distance glinting off one of the newly repaired sections of her dorsal plane. No lights shone as they should have, the red and blue hues of the nacelles had long gone silent and black, joining the oblivion of space against which the only difference was the tiny points of light that indicated that maybe, somewhere out there, life continued on. And perhaps life could once more continue on there, should a way be found to reignite her heart.

 

Trailing behind, like a tiny comet's tail, ice crystals drifted away from the star as the ship reached the terminator and crossed over into the daylight side of the planet. If anyone had been below, they might have seen it as a tiny smudge in the sky, a miniature comet that graced the transition from night to day every 129 minutes or so. Free-falling around the planet without power, the ship was nothing more than a satellite now, but one with so much promise yet left in its cold outer hull, and so many memories yet left within. 

 

Comics drifted upwards in one science officer's quarters, sending a strange display of images and words in large thought and action bubbles around the room, a red dress drifted through another room, along with a healthy (or not so healthy) dose of dog fur. Thread spools tumbled silently through yet another room, ever so slowly revolving in a way that almost mimicked the planet below. A velveteen box floated upwards within a case, inside which two rings came in contact with each other and glowed softly, promising a future to the room and, perhaps, the inhabitants who once lived there. Elsewhere, a ball made its way through the quarters of one security officer, intermingling with a dish that still had remnants of water in it that had long turned to ice, belonging to a certain spiked pig and beloved pet. 

 

Numerous other personal effects found their way out of their designated places around the ship and drifted, left behind by those who had once loved them, traded for the chance to live. Now, as the ship continued its trek onwards into yet another night cycle of its orbit, the ice-tail died away and plunged the tiny metal object into complete invisibility against the inky backdrop of the Cimmerian shade. 

 

And so it would continue, until time would affect her, or somehow, life would return.

 

TBC

 

The Arrow

As simmed by:

 

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Commander Ash MacKenna

Chief Intelligence Officer

USS Arrow

 

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