SORTIE:00
Through brightest nightmares
Escape from reality
Within darkest dreams.
Dripping with sweat and blood trickling
down his face, he opened his remaining eye.
Through his cracked visor, he looked
out at the cockpit.
His cockpit.
It was bathed in the crimson glow of
warning lights. Alarm klaxons wailed, viewscreens crackled with
static and frantic comms-net traffic competed for his attention. And
yet, above the chaotic din, he heard the sibilant hiss of leaking
atmosphere.
He sighed and looked down at the simple
two-dee picprint of his fiancee affixed to his dashboard by a piece
of chewed gum. The ghostly echo of her last words rang in his ears.
He plucked it from its place and gazed at the woman he had loved
through tearing eyes.
Then, surrealistically, the picprint
began to fragment and dissolve. He blinked and his fingers held
nothing, the last fragments winking out of existence.
As the collision proximity alarm
shrieked, his eye snapped up to his last operating viewscreen. The
bulk of an escort carrier filled the screen, details becoming larger
as the seconds passed.
His target.
He sprang into action, juking and
jinking his already battered Mech as the escort carrier's point
defenses opened up, solid projectiles and laserbeams crisscrossing
space, slashing up towards him.
A laserbeam sheared off his Mech's left
leg. Solid shot peppered his mecha's frame, gouging and shattering
armour plating. The reactor was pierced by shrapnel, venting
atmosphere and reaction mass like a glittering cloak of stardust.
The operating systems shut down, his
last viewscreen winked out, his life support faded with the hum of
the 'cyclers and his flight controls froze.
Trapped by momentum and inertia, his
Mech was locked in a fatal, suicidal dive towards the carrier.
Gripping the useless controls, he shut
his eye with a scream on his lips.
---
... being a prologue of sorts.
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