Ooorah Smackdown Anthology

Floaters

Round 1, Part 1 Entry

Story based on the prompt in the picture above

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A dull thumping reverberated through Margot's body.

Cold. She was cold. A shiver ran over her skin raising goosebumps.

There was something digging uncomfortably into her back. Lying down, that's what that meant.

Flashes of yellow lit up her closed eyelids.

That kind of light only flashed on the space station during emergency drills.

Is that what happened? Was there an emergency? She was lying down. Maybe she was the emergency? Had she been injured?

She wiggled her back slightly. No major pain. Toes worked, so did her fingers. So, her arms and legs were still attached.

Sound. Sound was missing.

She cracked an eyelid. Tools were lying scattered around in front her on the metal-grating. The sharp edge of a cutter a mere inch from her nose.

Gingerly, she shifted her head back, alert to any pain, and turned it to look up at the room she was in. It was an alcove of some sort, with one closed door opposite a window.

The walls definitely weren't the pastel colour shades she'd grown up looking at. This dull grey was the colour of working freighters.

"No sense painting a ship that just gets grimed up anyway," her pappy had explained.

Her pappy. He worked on the docks. He was a mechanic. He'd taught her everything she knew. All four of his daughters, whether they liked it or not, had accompanied him to work and learned how to service all types of vehicles. Her sisters' faces flashed in her mind as she recited their names: Chihiro, Brumhilde, and Jeeva.

Jeeva. Jeeva. Jeeva.

Jive! That was the name of the ship she was on. It was a freighter, a small H-class one. It did runs into deep space collecting anything useful they found floating around. Like dead ships, floaters they called them. They currently had a tail of about four, held in tow by magno-links that she'd personally put in place. Each one was uninhabitable, but useful for storing extra cargo on their journey back home.

Like the first two which had any useable nook and cranny stuffed full of an asteroid collection that was rich in the universally-rare element iridissium that was used to power hyperdrives. There were other materials that worked, but an ounce of iridissium could run a ship for a century. Their scans showed the rocks they'd picked up contained at least a tonne of it.

"We can all retire when we get this load back home!" The captain had crowed once it was safely stowed. He'd slapped everyone on the back then proceeded to get drunk for three days.

"Captain!" Margot yelled when memories of how she'd ended up on the floor flooded in fast and furious. She groaned and gripped at a sharp pain in her side that lanced through her when she'd jerked upright.

Slowly, she looked around, assessing the room and her body as she traced through the events in her mind.

They'd located a possible floater. They didn't have bio-register scanning capabilities to see if anyone was on board, but it didn't have any running lights and the portholes were equally dark. When it spun fully, they could see half the ship had been caved in.

"What caused that?" The pilot Gert had asked as they all stared at the concave depression.

Captain shrugged and leaned so close to the Bridge's large front window his nose almost touched. "It looks like something rammed it. There haven't been reports of pirates in the area, have there, Poreth?"