Prompt #20 is to write about the color of hunger. I like the characters from yesterday, so let's see what else happens to them.
Matches awoke, sensing the 740's deceleration. She moaned a bit, but got herself up. She was still tired and sore from the training Cutter put her through. She didn't complain, though, because she kind of knew what he was doing. It was a cruel and random world, and it made sense to be prepared.
She stretched and yawned, then said, "OK, Cutter, what's going on?"
"You can sleep longer," Cutter said. "We've only just entered Gwill Nolls gravity. We're hours away from contact."
"It feels closer than that," Matches said. "Are you sure you did the calcs right?"
"Of course I did," Cutter said. "I'll double check, but I think you've just gotten more sensitive."
"Could be," Matches said and walked over to the shower. Even though all the world was blackness to her eyes, she was able to walk and interact with the ship as well as any seeing person. She knew the 740 very well, and Cutter made sure that stuff stayed where she knew it was. "Can we spare some energy for hot water?"
"No problem," Cutter replied. "We'll recharge from Gwill Nolls's radiation. Take five minutes."
Five minutes, Matches thought. I'll need five hours to work out all the kinks.
But after the shower, she felt much better. She dressed in her contact clothes, then took a moment to say her usual prayer.
"Would you like to do the navigation drills, Matches?" Cutter asked.
"Yes," Matches said, "that will be good." She walked to the cockpit and began practicing the maneuvers, responding to Cutter's terse commands with flawless precision.
Cutter told her that he could not override the thruster controls due to a safety feature of the 740's design, so that she must actually push the throttles and handle the orientation controls. She suspected that he was lying, that he really just wanted her to feel useful and capable despite the fact that she couldn't see. If he was lying, it worked pretty well.
"Contact," Cutter said, after a few hours of practice. "in three.. two..."
Matches waited past the silent "one" and began, "This is 740 approaching Gwill Noll 5 on standard approach 4. We carry food in stasis."
"Thank God," a voice replied through the speakers. "This is Golf November 5. Roger seven four zero on standard 4."
Thank God? thought Matches. That's odd.
"Cutter," Matches said, "what's with the 'thank God'?"
"It's mission related," Cutter said.
Matches usually didn't want to hear about the mission, just what was going on in the next few minutes. This seemed exceptional, however. "Tell me," Matches said.
Cutter said, "Gwill Noll 5 has been in draught conditions for about 5 local years. They're desperate for food. We're the first of a flotilla launched by..."
Matches said, "That's enough." Too many details and she'd start to lose her stomach for this kind of thing.
After they landed, Matches walked out onto the gangplank. She wore dark glasses to obscure her blindness. She walked confidently, responding to Cutter, who was prompting her with brief commands through the glasses's earpiece. The training was good. Matches relied on Cutter as she would have relied on her own eyes.
"Hail," Matches said. "With whom do I have the pleasure?"
"It's a girl!" said the man in front of her. "They sent a stupid girl!"
"What?" Matches said. Cutter told her that there were three large men, the closest a meter away, the other two slightly behind him.
"Kill her," said the man.
Cutter's commands were lightning. Matches's responses were thunder. She ducked under the blast from one of the men, then swept the feet out from under the leader. He fell into the man with the blaster, who sent another shot into the shoulder of the third man. He howled and fell, taking the leader with him. While the shooter reacted in shock at having just shot someone on his side, Matches jumped back into the ship, planning to retrieve her own weapon.
The man recovered enough to fire once into the open hatchway, into the belly of the 740. It hit something which made a screech.
Matches new that sound. The fool had hit the stasis regulator. She couldn't see, of course, but she knew what was happening. The field went from green to red to gray. There was nothing to do. The bacteria, kiloliters of it was held alive in the stasis until they could be placed in the environment of the world to which it was designed. When the stasis field failed, the bacteria would die in moments.
The man with the gun ran away, along with the other two idiots. Cutter sealed the door and jettisoned the gray, useless cargo. Matches pushed the emergency thruster and the 740 lifted off.
It might be another week until another ship came by. How many people would die of hunger before then?
Matches returned to her quarters and cried.
Cutter wished he could cry too.
Copyright 2012. Timothy H. Ruppel. All rights reserved.
This work by Timothy H. Ruppel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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