Push and Shove
Ocean waves foamed against his ankles and young Feron wiggled his toes deeper into the pink sand. A ten year old shouldn’t be alone at the beach with only his thoughts. The sun acted as a prism and Feron the rainbow. He was the only one on the beach that morning. He crouch down to put his hands in the water and licked at the salt on his palm. He began to wade into the ocean.
“To the sea,” he said.
He got neck high and was about to step under when two pale arms brought him back to the surface. It was his mother. He blinked and protested to be put down but she hugged him harder and cradled his head against her chest.
“You can’t swim! You can’t swim!” She was crying.
Feron hugged his arms around her neck, “I can hold my breath.”
Present: Currently working for Liara/The Shadow Broker. Status: Surviving.
It wasn’t any planet Feron been to before, and every time he had scanned for it he got an error message. After a frustrated call to a contact that had initially supplied him with the sloppy coordinates, he found it.
It was outside of the Terminus system, farther than most of his jobs ever took him. He was in Trebia space now, in turian military territory. The drell settled back in his accelerator chair, and kicked at a coil of extra cables at his ankle. He was supposed meet his contact within the reserve base, and collect some files. Maybe scout out some other leads if he had the time. It wasn’t to be easy, but it wasn’t exactly the hardest thing he’d ever done.
The longer he looked at the little red planet he was headed for, the more its colour seemed to bleed and thin against the dark expanse around it. He blinked. The red planet blurred.
The white lights in his cabin turned red and his control panel lit up when it registered the oxygen levels were reaching dangerous levels.
“No! What? No! No! No!” He pressed buttons, pulled leavers, and fired up his omni tool. Standing up too fast caused him to sway and almost fell back into his accelerator chair.
He scanned the walls of his ship cabin with a panicked wave of his arm, but his omnitool didn’t register any leaks or damage.
He turned back to his ships’ dashboard console and watched the screens flicker and reboot. Something had hacked his system.
He reeled, and grabbed the controls to pull the nose of the ship up, it began to slow and level out but the steering was jamming. His oxygen levels were thinning rapidly, and with the steering sticking he couldn’t turn away from the planet, not in time. He caught the planets atmosphere and strapped in for a rough landing. He flicked overhead switches and moaned. This crash was going to draw attention, if it didn’t kill him first.
His entire dashboard had gone black, and he knew the systems were dead. Luckily when whatever had infected the console had gone dark, it had stopped pumping out the oxygen. He knew he didn’t have much left, but it was enough to keep him from blacking out. That way he could enjoy the crash.
Whoever had done this meant business. This kind of hacking was advanced, and it meant he had a tail, or they had done this during his last stop.
“Never been to a turian prison before…” he grunted, doing all he could to manually lift the wings and pull the ship out of its harrowing nose dive.
He hit the cloud line and the sky darkened, and his turian cruiser whined against the strain. He caught his reflection in the front window and stared. Not at the ground, but at his own face, a dark and distant doppelganger.
Maybe a turian would see his ship and think it was one of theirs, instead of shooting first. That could give him valuable time to figure out whatever it was he was going to do. If…
If I’m not dead. Smeared across the ground, or impaled, or burnt by an explosion. Make it fast at least. Make it clean. Oh gods, I hope I don’t shit myself. What if Liara found me…That would be embarrassing. A fate truly worse than dead itself. He wanted to just laugh it all away. Instead he let himself escape into his mind, and clung to a memory, like a cocoon, that would soften the blow when he hit planet side. His omnitool registered his speed and the ground nearing, when his own ship didn’t, and wailed at him.
EEP EEP EEP EEP EEP EE–
His ship skimmed the ground belly first, which slowed him down a bit, bumping the ship over a ridge before the nose end of the cruiser chewed into the rocky terrain and flipped over itself and pulled up a cloud of red dust. An awful ripping of metal and crunching of stone followed the crash until the ship settled into the grave it had dug itself.
Feron had crashed away from any obvious eyes. The military base he was going to scout was still a safe distance away. That was good. Probably.
The cockpit was still relatively intact. A quality turian ship, no doubt. Saved his life, so long as he could get out. Feron was wedged against the ceiling and dashboard, but he was still in his chair. He’d hit his head and blood ran fresh down his face. After years of being knocked out his first reaction was to check his teeth. A quick pass of his tongue assured him they were all still there. Silly, but it always helped him re-orient himself. There was pain, but he couldn’t tell from where in his body, or what was causing it. He unbuckled himself and shifted sideways until he fell out of his chair and lay on the floor. Gasping and writhing he grabbed at the floor and focused only on breathing.
The air was filling with smoke. When he started to cough, and his lungs turned hot, he rolled onto his side and started to crawl.
I need…need…I can’t leave…everything.
There had been information in the ship console. It was compromised now, either stolen or locked away within the dead system. He hoped it was the later. If it burned, so be it. Liara had backups. A few data cubes were stashed in a closed shelf by his hide-away bed and he grabbed those and pocketed them. He found one of his helmets on the floor and pulled it on. Wincing when it rubbed against his head injury. It had a small oxygen cache and he greedily gulped it in. The spinning in his head turned into a flutter. He quickly glance around. He could live without everything else. He had trained himself to travel light and not get attached to objects. Though the ship itself…that was something else…it was a friend.
The side hatch was bent and twisted with the metal of the wall. He stood to put his entire weight against the handle, but it didn’t budge. He cried out when he lost his grip and pulled his side. Some kind of shrapnel had pierced his jacket, at his waist. He could feel it now, shifting further in with each movement. His vision spun and he fell back onto the floor.
“Oh fuck…ooooh fuck,” he made a fist and his omnitool booted. “Call…Liara…”
It tried to connect but only lasted a few seconds before the orange light faded and refused to turn back on. It was damaged after all.
He rocked his helmeted head back and rested his aching skull against the wall. He couldn’t tell what was burning inside the ship, the smoke was prominent, and was starting to limit his viability.
“If I’m going to die, I’d rather it be in my ship,” he said against his teeth. “My luck finally run out? Gods…” He held his hand against his side.
He heaved a sigh and closed his eyes. He began to retreat into his mind. Finding someplace warm, and dark.
A flash of blue from behind the glass, and the face of the one he would come to love most of all. “Feron! We’re here to rescue you!” she had said.
