| Generated by Google Gemini Pro text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 3.1 |
August 19, 2526. Comms Officer Jeffries is operating the auxiliary station
when the call comes in. He presses the tentative emergency button before the
message completes, then listens intently to the rest.
We’re experiencing a major hyperflare! You need to prepare for what comes
next! You need to prepare for— is all he catches before the signal is cut. It doesn’t matter what the
guy was trying to say, because there are only a few possibilities, and none
of them is good. He doesn’t get the chance to hit the genuine emergency
button before someone else hits it for him. He’s only on secondary duty
right now. Everyone else is working the problem as the whole of Terminator
Sentinel Alpha goes into mauve alert. His daughter is his number one
priority now.
Jeffries races out of the room, and down the corridors, sliding against the
wall as other people are racing to their own responsibilities. He finds
Breanna in their unit, already putting on her integrated multipurpose suit.
He smiles at her. “Good girl.”
“What are we doing?” she asks.
“Crew of Sentinel Alpha,” comes the voice of the captain through the
intercom, “we are preparing for a hard turn into the nightside of the planet. Brace
for inertial dampener disruption. Everyone is at PREPCON ONE. I repeat,
all hands to PREPCON ONE! This is not a drill.”
“That,” Officer Jeffries replies to his daughter. “Get your helmet on.”
“What about you?”
“I ran out of the room without it,” he explains.
“You should have an extra one in here,” she argues.
“It’s in maintenance.”
“Goddammit,” she complains.
“I just need to get you to safety,” is all he’s able to say before the
inertial dampeners glitch. He’s suddenly thrown against the wall. IMS units
have their own onboard dampeners. It doesn’t save Breanna from the lurch
entirely, but she survives it. Her father does not. Well, he does survive
for a moment. His head is covered in blood. He’s enhanced, but not enough.
He should have been wearing his full suit. Why wasn’t he wearing his suit?
“Get to the pod,” he instructs. “Get out of here. You need to get underneath
the magnet.” And then he dies.
She knows she doesn’t have time to mourn him. He wouldn’t want her dying up
here too. Her body is more advanced than his, but she can’t survive
everything. She runs out of the room, and down the corridor until she
reaches the escape pod bay. She has always thought that each unit should
have their own, instead of all in central locations, but this is an old
ship, and they didn’t think of that yet. All of the pods are gone save one.
She bolts towards it, but another girl shows up at the same time from the
other entrance. “Cashmere.”
Cashmere switches her gaze between the pod and Breanna. “They’re technically
large enough to fit two people.”
“Not with helmets on,” Breanna argues. There’s another lurch, but their
magboots keep them upright.
“You ever heard of sixty-nining?”
“Jesus! Not the time!”
“To save our lives, there absolutely is.” Cashmere doesn’t wait for
consensus. She pushes Breanna into the pod. Then she gets on top of her
facing the opposite direction, filling in the space between her Breanna’s
legs with her helmet. “You gotta operate the controls.”
“I know,” Brenna argues. “This better work, or we’ll both die. Goddamn pods
designed like goddamn coffins!” she mutters as she’s engaging the pod. She
flips on the boosters, and jettisons the pod out of the bay. It flies from
the ship at Mach 20. They can see the planet below them through their HUDs.
“Beginning decay.”
“I can see that,” Cashmere says.
“I know, but you’re supposed to announce it. Didn’t you read the manual?”
“I’m waiting for the adaptation!”
“Just let me know if you pass out, okay?”
“Will do, captain.”
“Targeting the northern pole,” Breanna announces. “Twenty minutes until
atmospheric drag.”
They lie there together for another few minutes, not saying anything, but
just stewing in the awkwardness. Suddenly, alarms start going off. They no
longer feel the soft curve of their arc, but the shudder of turbulence.
“What happened?” Cashmere questions.
“The atmosphere is too close. This doesn’t make any sense.”
“It’s expanded,” Cashmere guesses.
“How?” Breanna cries
“I don’t know!”
They begin to plummet like a stone, at a far steeper angle than they planned
on. Their ablative shielding peels off piece by piece. It’s too early to
pull the parachute, though. They have to wait until they’re closer to the
surface. “Wait for it,” Breanna says. “Wait for it,” she repeats. “Brace for
chute.”
“Oh, I don’t think we can brace any more than this.”
Breanna can’t rely on the computer to make the calculations as its
estimation of the distance to the planet was about 500 kilometers off. She
hovers her hand over the button, forcing her mind to stay alert so she
doesn’t succumb to the g-forces. Finally, it’s time. “Now!”
The chute opens. The pod flips up so she’s fully upright, and Cashmere is
upside down as they wait to complete the descent. “Do you know where you’re
going?”
“There’s a dome not far from here. The thrusters will be able to push us
close enough to it so we don’t have to walk far,” Breanna answers.
They fall and fall and fall, slowly, but certainly not gently. Her mental
calculations are slightly off when it turns out they were actually a lot
closer to the dome than she thought. They end up crashing into the side of
it. The only reason they don’t slide down from there is because the chute
gets caught on something. Now they’re hanging, and they don’t know what to
do.
“Rescuers are gonna find us six months from now, and will think that we died
having sex,” Cashmere mused.
“No, they won’t,” Breanna contends. “I’m gonna figure this out. Just...shut
up.”
