Enmity : a scattershot Future History as a Collection of many very short stories : 00:00:00-3

00:00:00-3
Clearly this was a mistake.

The distant location amid swamps, alligators and saw grass, the razor wire fences and armed patrols, the welded seals and the bright red warning signs were all clues that I should absolutely not be doing this. I knew I would feel this way, three years of planning started with the instinctive awareness that it was too dangerous, too risky. The last second ticked over with a rush of tingling goosebumps and a rising in my bowels.

Then the thunder. A bone shaking vibration that was too large for sound. My homemade acceleration couch/environment suit did less to diminish the punishment of that oscillation than the bare insulation of the unmanned shipment rocket. The next second the pressure built up, forcing my skin around my face and body as if it dreaded to leave the Earth more than I did. Now I know why they insisted on a catheter. The acceleration was limited only by the construction of what was basically a garbage scow, certainly not by the limits of human resilience. I felt tears in my lips, my eyelids, a burning stretch on all my upper surfaces. As thrust increased in the next seconds, I was intimately aware of how loosely our bones were tied together. Each one seemed ready to separate from the next. I lost consciousness before they began to dislocate and break.

When I awoke, I was in space. I queried my biome for status and looked at a blank wall to read the results. Several broken bones, including my skull. Organ damage, internal bleeding, everything I expected. The concussion was being worked on to the exclusion of everything but the major points of blood loss. They need the blood.

I drifted, aware of time in a secondhand way, not passing through it but rather skipping across it. Hours passed and I awoke mostly functional again. The pain was not as important as functionality, another reason I should not have done this.

But I was able to move, and unpacked the Insider suit, my only hope of survival. I placed it against the leaky, inadequate wall of the Titan shell and activated it. The outer shell welded itself to the metal skin of that death trap rocket, cut the airlock I would desperately need, and rotated the outward portion of the suit into place. At last I could see. Earth rotated into view and past, explaining the odd sensation of spin I had been unconsciously complaining about. I cut myself out of the environment suit and felt the vacuum plucking at my ears and eyes. I stepped forward into the captured Insider suit and felt the inward portion rotate into place behind me. Now I was comparatively safe, locked into my coffin. Three days of food and water, 10 days of air, headed towards the sun at 30 kilometers per second. I turned on the beacon.

Now, let's hope someone wants to scavenge this tub before I die.

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