nmyworld

Ral’s muscles still ached from the Earth motion training the day before. His legs felt like rubber and he needed more sleep. Usually, at the end of physical training days, the bunk room was dead silent until they were awakened. But unfortunately…

Ral woke up to a loud sliding noise coming from above him. Two thick metal bars were laying vertically down his body, pinning him on his bed just enough for him to slip out if he needed. A faint alarm had started while he was sleeping, but it began to grow louder and louder until it pierced his eardrums. When he felt he could take it no more, it ended.

“All personnel, brace for impact!” shouted the calm voice from a speaker box in the ceiling. Ral gripped the bars that lay over him tightly and tried to catch a few more winks before whatever happened to him. The strobing red light in the dimly lit bunk hall didn’t do much to hinder his power nap.

He drifted slightly out of consciousness, then back. Thoughts of his fellow space miners and what they were doing without him - or even if they noticed he was gone - crossed his mind. Out again. This was the best kind of sleep. The kind that lasts only a few minutes but feels as if it lasted several hours. His grip on the bars began to loosen until he no longer felt anything but the air flowing in and out of his lungs.

Crash. CRASH! Ral’s eyes shot open and his grip on the bars tightened. The crashes were deep and metallic and continuously shook the room with a ferocity rarely survived in the depths of space. Ral would’ve fallen out of his bed if the bracing bars hadn’t have been there. He lay in his bunk indifferent to what happened next while the men around him said or screamed their random prayers and unmoving last words.

After a few moments of silence and frantic barking of orders from outside the large metal door leading to the hallway, the bars began to retract and the other men in the small bunk hall began sitting up in their beds. Some looked around and began talking to each other, but most just looked down at their beds—probably ashamed of the life that just flashed before their eyes.

The red light stopped blinking.

Ral tried to doze off again but was unsuccessful. The other men were anxious and talking wildly enough to keep the bunk hall next door awake; not that any of those men were trying to sleep after what just happened, either.

“What a ride!” said one man, defiantly. Curiously, it was he that was screaming the loudest after the collisions.

“Shut up you twit. You were crying like my baby sister,” laughed another. This brought a laugh to everyone in the room and caused the once defiant man to lay back in his bed, pouting.

“So what the hell was that?”

“Maybe we’re to Earth?”

“Were we hit? Maybe it was a drill?”

All of these ideas were impossible to validate until they were actually told what happened. They hadn’t even looked through a window since they boarded the ship – not because they didn’t think to, but because the ship had no windows.

Ral, frustrated and tired, sat up and decided to participate in the conversation: “Two missiles probably hit us, but we had fair warning. I think it was a recon party that thought they could get an easy kill. We’ll be expected now. Goodnight.” He lay back down, proud of his perfect delivery.

The men around him fell silent. For most, it was the first time they’d heard him talk when he wasn’t around Talos.

“Good. I like a nice fight,” said one of the men, breaking the silence.

An uneasy chuckle sound out of the men. Their mission had just quadrupled in danger if that was the case. No one else said anything. One man fell back into his bed, followed by a few more, and another, and a few more. Ral could finally get back to sleep.