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Mayday: Winsford Falling

"What in the deep cold!" Alice exclaimed, rubbing her gloved hand slowly over her console display. The zero gravity inside the cockpit of her miner craft made her movements slow and sluggish, but she swore there was micro dust particles obscuring her view. It had to be something like that, for a whole space station could not just vanish.  

A sudden lurch occurred, just as she was finishing her pouch of tomato soup rations, causing Alice to choke a little. She crushed the empty pouch in her gloved hand like it was nothing and tossed it over her shoulder in the general direction of the recycler. Something was very wrong out there and Alice could not be sure if her readings were correct or if the Winsford's sensors were just malfunctioning.

Yet, she looked at the display and felt cold tendrils of fear clutch at her throat. The station was gone, her temporary home vanished, as if it never existed. In its place was what her sensors called an anomaly, a tear in the very fabric of space.

Cursing under her breath, Alice guessed that the lurch she had felt earlier must be the pull of the singularity, which according to her instruments was getting bigger. A black hole was the biggest most unstoppable squall of space weather. A force of nature that sucked in matter, sound, and even light particles.

"Those idiots," exclaimed the dark-haired woman. Suddenly realising that the hole must have been created by accident, probably from the experiments that were being conducted in the locked laboratory. The Driscoll Science Station had been her home for the past eight months, a compact spherical station, spinning artificially on jets of superheated thrust, to create an 'out is down' artificial gravity. The crew considered of three scientists, four controllers, two technicians and another pilot. While Alice damned the scientists for dooming them all, she did feel a twinge of loss, knowing that they must have all been crushed into atoms instantly, when the singularity was born.

Flicking her radio on, using the controls on her armrest, she directed the small antenna atop her ship towards the distant planet of Niburai. Alice then punched the button that would record and transmit her distress call.

"Mayday... Mayday... Miner craft Winsford, from Driscoll Science Station requesting help. Station is gone... Air and fuel are nominal for now..." Alice's voice broke as she called out her situation. She had no way to resupply, and her reserves of air, fuel and food would only last her a few short cycles, provided the black hole did not swallow her first. She gulped down a big breath and finished her message with a warning. "New singularity created at stations location... Please... Please avoid area if rescue is not possible."

Alice was panicking now, she had very little hope of surviving this sudden disaster. Out of her small round window, she could see the asteroid that she was mining slipping back towards the hole. She had already increased her thrust output to a full 1G just to retain her position.

A sudden alarm and red flashing lights filled her console, and one of her overhead lights fizzed and popped loudly, making Alice cry out in fear. Her screen flashed a warning about a hull breach and that the Winsford's structural integrity had dropped to sixty percent. The automated systems kicked in and a claw above firmly pushed a spacesuit helmet down over Alice's tear-streaked face.

The message that she had sent, had been compacted into a tenth of a second zip-squeal laser targeted data packet, but it would still take about two hours to reach the planet. Then if Niburai could mount a rescue mission, the preparation and launch time would be another hour, maybe sooner if competent officers were on duty. Then any rescue craft would have to do a full 5G burn to intercept Alice, flipping their craft over and decelerating half-way along their trajectory, so they did not smash past her. In total Alice estimated that nobody would reach her location for at least seventeen hours. She only had fuel and resources for three.

Alice gave up, slouching back in her command couch, she just let the tears fill her helmet and float around before her eyes. Looking up, she spotted the picture on her dashboard of her daughter Jasmine. The girl was happily blowing out candles on her third birthday, her brown eyes glowed and her darker mixed-race skin shone with youth and vitality. Jasmine was currently home with her birth mother in their high rise flat in London, thousands of light years away. Alice missed her wife and daughter outrageously, but taking this job has been the only way to secure a home for her family and education for Jasmine.

She felt a little guilty about not being able to see Jasmine grow. The picture on Alice's console must have been taken some three years ago now. Such were the problems with long distance space travel and the sheer amount of time it took to get anywhere. She also worried that her wages, that were beamed to her family, might not be enough, which when coupled with the fact that Alice's needs on the station were all given to her free of charge as part of her job expenses, added to her guilt.

The Winsford spasmed again, and the remaining lights around Alice flashed and exploded. She was showered in sparks and a few of them even felt warm against her thick-skinned space suit. The ship was now falling back towards the black hole, and even a double gravity 2G burn was failing to keep the ship in place. The miner craft creaked and groaned loudly as the immense pressure around the ship pushed its armour inwards, just as Alice had crushed her food pouch earlier. The plating pinged and popped as screws and rivets were forced out. Alice could also feel the compression from the black hole on her flesh and skull, it felt like she was sinking into very deep water. Her ears popped loudly, and she felt sure she had gone deaf.

The static riddled screen cracked before Alices eyes, but somehow manged to remain operational showing a proximity warning and a rapidly decreasing distance counter. The Winsford was falling into the singularity now, which had tripled in size as it ate asteroids, debris and even light.

Five hundred kilometres and falling...

Alice saw spots forming behind her eyes. Some were colourful, while most seemed as black as space, or even blacker, like the hole that was going to eat her alive. Unless of course her skull and chest collapsed first.

She managed to turn her head to stare out of the tiny window, where she could now see the edge of the black holes funnel. Lines of light zipped past the window as the hole consumed everything. Then a figure appeared beyond the glass. An angel with golden hair that swam in zero gravity and was surrounded by a halo of stars. The angel glowed as if smothered in its own personal sunbeam of hot fiery light. It raised an arm out to Alice, and smiled through the porthole to her, offering her help. Alice tried to lift her forearm to take the angels outstretched hand, but the blackness of the hole was holding her down, she could barely move a muscle. The angels face morphed and changed into that of her daughter and Alice sobbed, realising that she was just hallucinating and finding patterns in the fires that were enveloping her ship.

Two hundred kilometres and falling...

The screen finally shattered in on itself, and a hole tore into the rear of the Winsford. Anything that was not fixed in place was sucked out of that cavity. Shards of glass, and metal, and circuit boards hurtled out into the black maw. A maw with no teeth, but an all-consuming stomach that would never be full or satisfied. Jasmine's picture fluttered past Alice's face and she felt her heart miss some beats, whether from the pressure or from her anguish, she did not know.

With the last of her strength, Alice wiggled her fingers on her armrest and opened a wide range radio transmission and wailed with all her might.

"I love you, Jasmine!"

Alice did not care that the black hole could swallow sound transmissions as well as light. She just hoped that her message of unconditional love would fill the universe. She hoped that it would be heard on every planet and every moon. So that everyone, everywhere would know that she cared for her daughter. That she loved the girl with every inch of her slowly imploding heart.

The Winsford crossed through the Ergosphere of the black hole where it was crushed into infinite unseeable space dust. The dust crossed the event horizon of the singularity, and nothing remained of Alice, except her final words bouncing around the cosmos.