Science Fiction Shorts

Zeroes| Distress beacon

I never knew being lost wears you down worse than running out of supplies.That beacon was a lifesaver, a guide back into the embrace of friendly companionship. Suddenly, a heavy weight lifted from my soul.  

     Through the tempest night, I had swallowed betrayal, guilt and pain as a dangerous storm hit the skies, and rain bucketed down mercilessly. For many hours, my eyes watched the horizon, causing my brain to think of the dim lights flourishing in the modern Nairobi we knew, in the dreadful year, 2046. The year war had ignited the skies and blocked the moon. The year that countries clashed, wreaking untold havoc upon one another. The year that I got betrayed to a near-death by my best friend.

     The year of fate.

      Even though I had survived, I was walking in a barren land of a foreign nation. Little did I know, as my head rang in a nauseating ache, my clothes were covered in blood from the mighty war that had happened in the skies between the raging storms before a missile struck the hindquarters of my battleship, causing its thrust to quickly subside as the nose arched downwards, the wings tearing apart due to friction of flow before I quickly pressed onto the eject button, which felt  faulty at first, but flung me into a descent, with my body pierced by bullets from the war as the battleship under me burst into a flame of yellow, its engines rummaging into the ground.

     Zeroes.

     Now, I stared forward. My focus was on an uneven image seated from afar by the hilly terrain slightly over the far, unclear sunset.

     The sky gasped upon the realization that I had remembered its name. A beacon. Tall. And it emitted light, as two warships flew overhead to heat up the Eastern warfare.

     I stopped unsure of my actions. If my own best friend had betrayed me, what would a ally nation do to me? Especially now when I was totally vulnerable, when all my weaponry and food was burned down alongside the only transport I had.

     I should've thought it through.

     My hands cupped my belly where the bullet wound pains surged. I tightened my jaws and proceeded, my eyes almost shedding tears. A man in his old suffering with a "bullet proof" navy blue jacket on, extending all the way to my knees.

     They set me up.

     My eyes watched as the lighting shifted suddenly, left to right, forth and back, and I watched as an unceremonious lighting came through into the dimming ground.

     'TRAP! HELP!'

     I twitched as the light beam struck my eyes as it leaped into the air. When I opened my eyes, the words were gone. Something was amiss. A distress signal of a kind. Something wasn't right.

     I reached into my pockets and took out a pair of binoculars, of which one glass had been broken by my daughter, Eva. Adjusting the binoculars, I was able to sight a familiar figure, the figure of my wife!

     Quickly, and angry, I slipped the binoculars back into my pocket and jogged forward as lightning swung above me, and the sky roared, upset that I was going to lose my family.

     Family comes first.

     I battled my pain and the gale that blew against me until I fell onto my face, as the storm raged on. But despite my inevitable pangs of pain, I had to get up and keep moving. Despite the storm, and all the lightning that zoomed through the evening sky dangerously close to me, I had to rescue my family.

     Unless....

     I heard the sound of engines nearby. Turning, I saw a man in a grey jacket leaping off his battleship, looking at the remnants of my wrecked plane. Out of pure instinct, I crouched. Begging for less than three people to be involved, I crawled slowly towards the plane, keeping off the cockpit by a zero point three mile radius.

     A little too far but as soon I was able to get to the rear, I was able to disable the automated weaponry system using an old trick my father taught me when I was little. I slowly backed up and crept to the cockpit, the pilot daydreaming.

     Slowly, I reached out to the door, ripping a section of the door, unveiling wiring system which I slowly ripped apart to disable the electrical circuit. Going around the battleship over to the man standing by the rubble, the expected occurred, "Alex, there is something wrong with the electrical system!"

     "What?"

     "Yes," the pilot said as he leaped off his seat.

    "You have to be kidding me!"

     The two stood out of the door as I quickly ran and threw myself into the copilot seat, which was could also operate a pilot seat, and quickly switched to an alternative power source as the battleship took off, the pilot and copilot shouting behind it, and firing their weapons at it.

     With the door still hanging open, I decided to hover dangerously over the cumulonimbus clouds. I would be easily spotted by enemy targets.

     My jaws tightened as I threw myself over the murky clouds whose up drought winds rendered me vulnerable to them if the seat-belt would snap. Also, there was lightning. But as the aircraft shook, piercing through the hostile clouds, it finally.... broke... into... the crowded warring stratosphere. Quickly, an oxygen tank dropped, sensing my growing hypoxia.

     I steered the plane so that it tried to avoid an incoming missile and dug into a cloud, but unfortunately, the missile struck, and fortunately this time, the battleship survived.

     As the war continued above me, I changed my mind, having deactivated my weaponry earlier and shoved myself under the clouds. Behind me was a bold aircraft, which I recognized.

    As a powerful concentrated laser beam struck out, I veered leftward, and saw death in slow motion. The light beam went straight ahead, and further, and further until, it struck flesh and blood. Blood I knew. The blood of my family.

     Angry, and starved of justice, I turned abruptly and saw my best friend cruising beside me, moments before there was impact, impact that caused a spark, and an explosion. Tears, and pain moments before.... I woke up, looking at the stormy sky, a destroyed plane lying behind me.

     Again.