The Red Desert
Chapter 1: Reflections of a Fool
A Gundam Wing fan tribute. No claim to owning any part of the series is intended.
`Where am I?`A familiar voice echoed in the man's mind. It was the first voice he had heard in awhile, and it took several moments for him to realize it was his own. Something which is called reflex returned to him then, as the man quickly examined the various controllers and screens before him.
`What is this? Mobile...Mobile Suit?' Something was flashing red on the radar screen.
The man's sky-blue eyes narrowed as he focused on it, trying to remember what to do.
A mechanism behind him beeped in an alarming tone.
Somehow, he knew it warned of an impending impact.
Reflexively the man's hands grabbed the left and right joysticks that lay before him and jerked them sharply, while simultaneously pushing down with both feet on a pedal he wasn't sure would be there.
The vessel immediately rocketed away from its previous position and entered a perpetual spin. The resulting G-force sent waves of crushing energy against the man's body. His ribs began to feel bruised and he was having trouble breathing.
`I'm being crushed like a pancake...'
`Is this really how I'm going to die?'
The man's temper flared as he quickly came to terms with his own stupidity.
Why had he been so rash?
Suddenly, the multitude of screens in front of the man began to flicker different pieces of the same image. It was taking too long for the screens to turn on, but he knew they were supposed to collectively compose a display that revealed the outside of whatever he was in.
`I won't let myself die in a piece of junk like this.'
With all his might he reached for the joysticks, fighting the insane gravity caused by the acceleration. After several seconds his muscles failed and his arms were plastered into the wall.
He knew the pedal was his only hope.
If he did not time it right, his acceleration would be increased and he would be completely crushed by the resulting gravity.
However, if he could accelerate at the proper moment inside the vehicle's spin, he would be able to slow himself down. The tricky part was compensating for the negative G's that would be caused by the counteracting force. As more little screens began to flicker on and reveal his surroundings, the man felt relieved.
`I guess that's one less thing for me to worry about.'
Through a sea of fuzziness and static, the incomplete but recognizable image of a red planet took shape on the display, and was getting bigger, and bigger...and bigger...
"Atmospheric entry in 15 seconds." were the last words he heard before he blacked out.
The vessel continued on the same course and speed for the next several moments, but did not enter the atmosphere. Instead, an unlikely but fortunate positioning of angle caused the vessel to bounce off of the atmosphere, much like a stone skipping on water.
Somehow through all of this, the vessel's occupant remained unharmed.
The event had destroyed the upper sections of the vehicle, and in addition to slowing it's acceleration significantly, allowed the man inside the necessary time to return to consciousness.
`Is this a dream?'
Blinking himself awake, the man entered an immediate reflexive panic.
He tried to find a way to interface with the machine to find out what was going on, but his arms were broken and the pain involved made this difficult. It wasn't long before he decided that using them was a bad idea.
His brows furrowed then, as a curious thought entered his mind. With his knee he hit a switch that turned off the malfunctioning display screens in front of him. In their black void the man found the reflection of a stranger.
He could see his long blond hair behind him had gotten caught between the tiny crevice of his seat and the battered steel wall.
He could see his skin was fair and his eyes and face came from a formidable lineage.
He could see the worry lines that were presently on his forehead were almost never there.
He could not see anyone he recognized.
`Why hello there. Who are you?' He asked the reflection with a sarcastic smile.
He hit the switch for the screens again, and waited patiently for them to turn on.
They showed the red planet at first, now a fair distance away, but as the vehicle slowly spun it gave the man some perspective of the area. His eyes focused on what looked like an asteroid field that seemed to be orbiting the planet, and began to speculate that he had somehow gotten caught in it. `Now the alarm makes sense...'
He had the impression that he'd been in this situation before, arms broken with little hope of survival. With nothing else to do but stare at flying rocks and distant stars, he began racking his brain for some piece of his past, some small bit of information that would help him. His efforts left him sweating profusely, with no reward but his own frustration.
Then one of the malfunctioning screens began to flicker an image of the asteroid field with a high magnification. The man noticed it immediately and examined it closely.
The asteroids were not asteroids at all, but appeared to be sections of different rooms that looked like part of an apartment complex.
Incredulous and desperate, the man groaned over the pain in his ribs as he bent over to use his nose, pushing buttons with it to magnify the image over the rest of the screens.
`It's a colony...' He kept repeating to himself as he mashed buttons, trying to somehow find evidence of what had happened. Suddenly an electronic voice echoed from somewhere: "Warning! Air Supply tanks ejected. Please replace immediately."
Finding a new hatred for himself, the man carefully maneuvered the vessel to face the red planet, and with a disdainful kick to the pedal sent himself drifting towards it.
He let the increasingly detailed images of the destroyed colony flood onto his screen and take over his thoughts, and as he got closer and the detail improved, began to feel that this was not like any colony he had ever known.
The passageways, though badly damaged, were noticeably different from anything that made sense to him. Instead of stairs there were ramps that had pointy, jagged ridges all along their surface. Every corridor and piece of furniture was circular, and in the rooms that he thought looked like living quarters, there seemed to always be a massive round dish installed in the middle of the floor. He had been searching for some sign of what destroyed the place, in the hopes of locating undamaged sections that could support life.
His search was not going well.
`Looks like you're my only hope.' he said to the image of the planet on his screen. Glancing around the cockpit of the vessel for what he knew could be the very last time, the man managed a laugh. He gently caressed the leather of the pilot seat with one of his fingers, seemingly impervious to the impending danger for a moment.
Then some of that which is called memory returned to him.
`Let's get through this, okay Tallgeese?'
The new revelations in his mind made the controls seem like extensions of his body. He could think of an action to perform with the machine and his body would make the necessary movements like second nature.
In a matter of seconds and several acrobatic motions with his knees, he had brought the legs of the machine against its torso, where he knew the cockpit was. The joysticks that controlled the arms were difficult to manipulate with his knees, so he had to re-position the machine again. He had planned to use the legs to protect the cockpit during atmospheric entry, but without the additional shielding from the arms, he wasn't sure he would survive. He did not realize that the arms had already been destroyed.
With some gentle, carefully timed taps on the pedal, he turned the machine around so that its back was facing the planet, then pressed the button that jettisoned the fuel for the Vernier Thrusters that were back there. Helium-3 and deuterium quickly leaked out of the ignition ports and into the vastness of space.
`I'll use the thrusters as a shield instead.' he thought, hopeful that whoever designed them used enough gundanium alloy to withstand the heat of atmospheric entry. The fuel needed to be vented so that the suit wouldn't implode, and the thrusters had a ton of shielding to protect them from laser fire. He had done this before, he knew, but the details were gone.
As the Tallgeese entered the atmosphere it morphed into a giant ball of fire. Inside the cockpit the pilot had closed his eyes, concentrating on fighting temperatures that were quickly rising, as well as the lack of oxygen that was forcing him to resist the urge to breathe. The cockpit shook violently like a reverberating bell.
`A stove, a vacuum, and a blender too. At least I'm getting the gourmet treatment.'
When he felt his skin begin to sizzle he finally opened his eyes. They darted back and forth quickly, taking in the information on the screens at superhuman speed. Adrenaline kept him numb to the pain and focused, but what he saw made his temper flare as hot as the machine. The multitude of screens were flickering and struggling to stay on, and mini-fires began to erupt from the sparking control buttons on the pilot's interface. He could see the metal at the corners of the cockpit had begun to shrink from the heat and were steadily closing in towards him. Something in his mind reminded him that he could re-route helium-3 to the atmospheric stabilizer in the Tallgeese to initiate a cooling process, but he had already vented it.
Several seconds later the G-force of planetary entry assailed the man, and combined with the heat and pressure from the violent turbulence, knocked him unconscious.
It took three minutes for the Tallgeese to clear the atmosphere. With no pilot at the helm, it fell freely until it hit the ground. Charred and blackened, it had lost over 60% of its weight from the heat. What remained of the machine had been morphed into a large black ball, which stood sizzling in a crater it had formed in the middle of a desert.
As night fell and the red sand blew, the ball of gundanium caught the light of three massive moons in the sky. It shone brightly as the windswept desert cooled it, reflecting the silvery rays off its smooth uneven surface.
Someone, somewhere, had been watching. They stared at their view-screen, mesmerized by the image of what looked like a silver tear swimming amidst a sea of red.
"Life signs?" the observer asked.
"None." a female voice answered.
The view-screen was deactivated then, and the observing vessel in orbit began its long journey back to Earth.
"Mission complete."