One - Shooting For the Moon
StasisChapter OneShooting For the MoonAn Original MLP:FiM Fanfiction by Stillmatic Edited with Care by Tytyvm
USS Mercury– Dark Side of the Moon – Earth Time: Tuesday, July 7, Year 2197
Log Access – [Redacted] Employee Service Number 7195
Beginning Recording Momentarily… Recording Starting in 3, 2, 1… *Beep*
“Fucking, I told him that Tuesdays were… Shit, where’s the button.” Rick ruffled through a bench of charts and papers; knocking a few folders to the floor.
Recording Ended… Recording Starting in 3, 2, 1… *Beep*
“Yeah, okay. So this recording that the suits want me to do every three hours is really lacking content at this point. Did they consider that three hours wasn’t enough goddamn time for something to actually happen? And this piece of shit trigger they gave me, why is it wireless?”
He lifted a small wireless stalk-like object, no bigger than his hand.
“The camera is only in one spot, why would I need to activate it somewhere else? For all the crap I put up with for my country, you’d think they’d at least give me some help for,” Rick stood from the chair and held his fist to his heart, making his arm and torso stiff, “‘the space scouting mission of the century’.” He let his arm fall and dropped back into his chair. “Why even bother making it seem better than it is? It’s not like I was going to say no, and I’m sure as hell not going to be in history books for this; but we all know who will though. Those parasites down on the surface, the ones that want their name engraved into everyone's ass.
Rick slouched forward on his seat with a slight frown on his lips. Leaning one arm on his knee, he pointed an accusing finger at the camera. “You people give me two kinds of work. Two! It's either shit no one else is free to do, or shit no one else is stupid enough to do! But guess what? It's still shit! And what do I get for it? Some extra pay and a shiny medal to stick on my dick? Hell, I bet they sent me up here just because I have experience in space! Oh, and what experience I have. Last time I accidentally killed a Russian cosmonaut. Yet, here I am.” Rick’s arms shot into air and he smiled widely at the camera. “Out playing ‘American Patriot! The man whose actions could very well save the nation as we know it!’”
Rick stood up and grabbed for a duffel bag from an overhang above him. Pulling it down, he unzipped the top and removed a large book; it’s leather cover and bindings pock marked with the paper inside visibly yellowed.
“I don't know if you boys sending me out here give a shit, let alone know, about my family history, but understand this: I'm here for them, and I'm here for my country. Not you.”
He flipped open the stiff pages of the book, sifting through faded images. Stopping at a creased corner, Rick turned the book towards the camera and pointed to a bent and torn photo, “That there was the first of my family to do your dirty work. You don’t know about him, you couldn’t. Your predecessors wiped him from history. And for what? Doing as his country directed?” Rick spun around in his chair and laid the book, open face, on the bench.
He had pointed at a black-and-white photo of a man leaning against a brick building; hat draped low and pocket watch in hand. Suspenders could be seen through the man’s open jacket, cutting black lines down his white shirt. There was a gleaming weapon in his right hand, barely visible past the flap of his jacket. To Rick, it was the epitome of a 1920’s man; complete with an undertone of violence and a smug smile plastered on on the man’s face.
Rick pointedly tapped the photo with his middle finger. "How you could get rid of a guy like that is beyond me." Turning the page, there was a photo of a five man squad in a dense jungle environment. Their green uniforms and helmets were scuffed, dirtied, and in a state of general taters. Despite this, the troops all sported large grins and were relaxing against a tank.
Generations of men had inherited this book, and their notes covered every page. Many of them, according to the scrawls surrounding this particular photo, deliberated on one curiosity; why the men, covered in filth and freshly carved scars, smiled like children about to play in the snow. ‘Squad-mates until the end’ was scribbled beneath the photo. There were no names in that book, and history had long since lost record of the men in its bindings altogether. That is, all records outside the photos and a few numbers with dates in government documents.
Looking at what was probably one of his great, great, great, great, grandfather (most likely), Rick shuddered and silently wondered what might make someone grin like they were. Knowing what they’d done, it seemed off, almost inhuman, to be smiling like kids.
Rick closed the book and stored it back in the overhead compartment. "In any case, I can't do much about the past, can I? But did any of you care, or even notice, that each member of my enlisted family died on a mission? Or for that fact, the same exact goddamn day of the week on evac? Tuesdays man. Fucking evac and Tuesdays." Rick chuckled at that, considering if his family really was cursed
Behind him, a panel was starting to shoot sparks from beneath its beveled edges; remnants of damage from earlier. After glancing back to see how bad the sparking had become, Rick looked to the camera and smacked the back of one hand into his palm. “You could have at least left me with better protection from those military jets on takeoff. I mean,” he held his arms out to all the equipment and technology he’d repaired, “just look at this shit! I managed to get it into space but reentry is going to be a bigger bitch to deal with than you people are! You know what? Here’s what you’re going to do; you’re going to get better detection systems for your AA guns, because I'm not going through that suicidal acid trip again."
Just as he was about to continue, the shuttle rattled and threw Rick face first into the camera. It was like the ship had rammed into an ocean wave. The large space-faring vehicle groaned like a bloated pipe getting ready to burst. Rick immediately got up and stumbled over from his seat to a portal-like window on the right side of the shuttle. At that moment, Rick’s ship was entering the space over Earth’s moon. Unable to see any visible cause for the shaking, he looked out at small world of dust and wondered if it’d try its hand at killing him too. Rick snickered a bit at that, imagining himself being killed by the Moon of all things. If serving the U.S. government and the rest of the world couldn’t finish him off, he’d let the Moon at least try. Rick moved back to the camera, sticking to handrails along the way.
“Look, I’ve arrived at the outer atmosphere but something is wrong. The whole situation doesn’t seem right... I’ll remake contact in three hours, until then, I’m going to try and land this thing. If I don’t get screwed by those gravitational anomalies Aden was talking about, this should still go fairly smoothly. So, hopefully shit wont hi-“
A shock wave rippled through the shuttle, sending Rick to the floor. Dazed, he clenched his eyes and groaned. ‘Did I just get hit? what the hell is happening out there?’
“Transmission out, have a nice day, guys,” he roughly drawled from the floor.
Rick signed off in time to be thrown an additional four feet by another gravitational anomaly rocking the shuttle. Scrambling upright, he turned heel and stepped towards the control center at the front of the ship.
The autopilot blared warnings on the consul. The ship was about to fly off into the middle of space as Rick grabbed the pilot's wheel and wrenched it towards the Moon. He managed to turn the ship enough to prevent it from slingshotting aimlessly around the Moon. The ship shook violently as Rick maneuvered to the darker side of the large, gray ball. It wouldn’t be another five minute to landing zone if he could keep control.
‘How far we’ve come,’ Rick mused.
Another force hit the shuttle and Rick recoiled from the knockback, nearly flying out of the pilot’s seat. The shocks were become progressively more intensity. It was as if something really, really didn’t want him to live. Then again, that’s Tuesday for you.
“Oh damn, this thing really doesn’t seem to like me.” Rick considered that for a moment, “I’m not being attacked from the surface, am I? No… no there’s nothing down there, and it’s not like anything can survive on the Moon without an atmosphere anywa-” A violent shock hit the ship, whipping his neck back. The ship shook and trembled. Rick eyes washed over the display’s data.
They’d given him additional training for space, not this macgyvered clusterfuck of a situation.
Alarms started blaring, red lights lit the shuttle, and the status screen was flashing a medley of symbols, numbers and other confusing bullshit that Rick lacked the time to dissect. What he did managed to grasp though, was the feeling of the ship being slammed by a shock and thrown heavily off course.
“Jesus, what was that?! Why the fuck didn’t Aden brief on the anomalies being this strong? That cunt!” Rick checked the status screen for diagnostics on the damage. The Navigational Operating Device was permanently offline.
Rick looked around the consul one last time. Nothing was going to get him out of this. Nothing was going to restabilized the shaking ship. Nothing was going to soften the blow. His ass was about to crash. “Fucking Tuesdays.”
“If shit is going to hit the fan, I’m not staying awake to see it.” Rick got up from the pilot’s chair and moved towards the middle of the shuttle. He stopped by a transparent tube with metallic locks along the bottom. A suspension hinge connected the stasis pod to the top of the ship. Hoses snaked along the device, connecting wires and canisters to sockets around the cylinder. The interior looked padded and comfortable, but he knew better.
Rick pressed his palm against a keypad and popped in a security code; following it with a dash and his Employee Service Number. His hold on the pod was slipping from the constant shaking of the ship. The glass tube slipped open and Rick was slammed inside by a shock hitting the shuttle. Adjusting himself, the cover closed on the device; the heavy locks loudly clicking together. “Well, this could have gone better.”
Rick looked to his right, seeing through the front window that the shuttle was quickly approaching the Moon’s surface. The stasis tube seemed to be taking an effect on him; every blink was taking longer and longer to complete. The shuttle seemed to slow down, and the individual rattles of the ship become more distinguishable. The craft was headed straight for the surface, and as Rick slowly opened his eyes one last time, he mumbled quietly to himself. “Shit.”
Rick arched his back and took in a long gasp of air. Rolling onto his stomach, Rick’s eyes bounced around wildly, only able to see flat, indistinct white in every direction. Regrasping the reality of his situation, Rick’s brow furrowed; why was he lucid during stasis?
An infinitely large, ethereal plane was all that stretched beneath Rick, with no signs of foliage or life around. The dead whiteness was nerve-rackingly drab, leaving nothing to focus his eyes on but himself. Rick pushed himself up into a sitting position and suddenly looked upwards, where a pitch-black and star-filled night sky had seemingly snapped into existence. Among the void was the Moon, flying placidly above. A source of some shock was that same Moon zipping down from the sky and hovering in front of Rick.
“The fuck?”
To his surprise, it was roughly the size of a beach ball and glowed a passive white. The face of the sphere was half covered in craters; the marks merging together to draw seemingly purposeful lines.
Wordlessly, Rick reached out and touched it. A soft warmth washed over his hand as it closed around the orb. Rick immediately jerked his arm back, caught off guard by the heat. He cocked an eyebrow up, wondering what he was missing. Gently, Rick gave the ball a light spin, exposing the opposite face.
“Hmm?”
The craters formed a different shape here, making Rick’s eyebrows furrow. A simple heart was grafted onto the miniature Moon, ebbing daintily into the surface. Rick reached out and ran his his fingers over the shape, feeling the grainy warmth of the ball’s surface touch his skin. As Rick pulled his hand away, the entirety of the Moon crumbled into dust. The ashes falling away and vanishing within the immaculately white ground. Rich sighed, leaving his shoulders to fall into a slouch as his body suddenly untensed.
Tired, Rick kicked his feet out and laid back down. He’d sleep through stasis, lucid or otherwise. Besides, for all Rick knew, his pod was shattering over some rocks at the bottom of a canyon. So, as far as Rick was concerned, every dead man deserves his sleep.
