Routine+Check

//Routine check//, I think to myself. I follow the lighted path. The mechanisms in my dull armored suit make small whines and clicks as I walk. The monitors that track my presence flicker the humming lights on ahead of me, and make heavy clicks as they kill the power to the ones behind me. A blank face of metal meets me. The heavy airlock doors slowly scrape upward; a cacophony of screeching metal and mechanical strain fills my ears. I leave the dull metal corridor and step onto the catwalk, suspended by various cables and chains. My eyes adjust to the combinations of harsh, white-purple hues of power lamps, the red glare of work station flares, and the orange glow of heated metal and flames. A harsh blue fills my vision as a maintenance platform levitates past me on an energy field. A crackling smell of ozone temporarily fills my nose.

The soles of my heavy boots let out dull thuds against the metal deck. I slowly walk along the catwalk. Below is a massive crevice of metal, glass, and light. Quietly, the rumble of the ship’s massive engines the presses on. In my head I picture the massive metal wing, cutting through space; a giant slab of mottled metal and thrusters blundering through the darkness, illuminated by distant stars and occasional comets. Sometime in the past, its name was bright and gleaming in bright orange panels. By now, the massive Phoenix label is covered in a haphazard attempt to patch various impact craters and a few rapidly assembled solar panels for emergency power.

I continue walking, and ignore the stench of burning fluids and smoking metal. I pass a dull-eyed “zombie.” It’s what we all call them. About two centuries ago, the United Systems made it legal to take criminals with a death penalty sentence into a special program. Basically, they open up your head and take out all the personal bits, put in a bunch of neuro-mechanical implants, and seal you back up. Anything damaged can be replaced as a part, too. But of course, that’s been going on for centuries. Bionic implants are common practice, and cyborgs among crew members are not uncommon. They make excellent workers, too. They never question orders; they simply follow them no matter the risk. They don’t respond to pain, though they do feel it. We simply snip that little bit out too.

The zombie shuffles its feet slowly, pushing a modular cargo bin probably to the bowels of the ship. It passes without a glance, and I continue trudging on. I glance up, and see more metal walkways, haphazard work scaffolds and something burning in the distance. A workman unfolds his mechanical limbs from his back, and climbs the side of the ship like a spider. I watch as he sprays coolant onto the flames, and then climbs into the station to assess damage. A second later, the whole thing shudders and emits a small fireball, and the screaming, burning workman falls right past the walkway I’m on. The writhing figure becomes small in the distance as it falls, and becomes no more than a small orange spark amid the depths of the massive ship.

I watch as the shrinking spark falls past the massive honeycomb designs of the stations lining the interior of the massive ship. It proceeds to fade, in the layers of smog, radiation clouds, and electromagnetic fields that lay in the dark bowels of the ship. I make no note of the incident, and proceed along the walkway. More half-mechanical maintenance crew scuttle past; whether on levitating platforms or on bionic implants like the one who fell. One of them slips, and hangs on by a crudely welded metal claw. Its illustrious and blank stare show no fear, or panic as it loses its grip and tumbles into the abyss below.

I glance at a supervisor rising past me, his electromagnetic thrusters strapped to the back of his equipment suit leaving a hot ripple of air behind him. He sends a surly nod at me, his grotesque half-exposed metal plated skull gleaming, and continues rising past me.

A shudder passes through the ship, and I stop and hold on to maintain my balance. The servos in my gauntlets click as they obtain a death grip on the thin metal bar in place of safety railings. I glance up, and watch as a smoldering mass of burning metal, fluids, and equipment fall below. My face is splattered by hot blood and small bits of gore as a zombie is smashed apart somewhere above me. I flick a fluffy piece of what may have once been grey matter off my shoulder, and get up. I continue trudging on the steel pathway in front of me. The surface, now slicked with blood, is no problem for my specially designed boots.

Half a torso stares up at me. Blood and motor fluids seep from the exposed innards, an odd combination of mechanisms and vital organs shoved aside. Its left mechanical arm convulses, its tools concealed within the fingertips spasm and fire off small sparks and puffs of acrid smoke. I violently nudge it off the side of the walkway with my already blood coated boots, and proceed down the path. The Phoenix shudders again, this time a whole section of engines and systems fall somewhere to my left. I watch as a massive section of a thruster falls, burning and smashing apart the scaffolds, lattices, and walkways underneath its massive weight. It takes several silent zombies with it into the burning depths.

Two days ago, we lost shielding to the core. The whole ship is powered by little more than several infinite loops of contained split tachyons. The energy is harnessed by massive shield which absorb all the expelled energy. But now, the massive band resembling a constant, undulating bolt of lightning currently residing in the ship’s core is recklessly dispelling massive amounts of excess energy.

Losses of power to vital support systems on the ship leave massive sections powerless. Whole sectors are reduced to little more than scenes of hell. Bodies, dragged onward by their mechanical implants. Screaming, of the few survivors going insane in the perpetual darkness, constant in the blood-slicked corridors and empty rooms of mindless equipment. Engines exploding from unrestricted energy masses flowing through the compressed carbon cables, leaving massive burning craters all over the surface of this massive M-class spacewing. Some say that there’s an uncontrolled mutation in the far left wing, but there’s yet to have any evidence of that.

But hey, what do I know? This is just a check of some engine block at the end of this catwalk. The unholy Phoenix burns; the only thing rising from the smoldering ashes will be the bodies of the dead being sucked into the unrelenting vacuum of space. My boots press on. //Routine check//, I think to myself.