Free HELIX: A SciFi Short Story by Drew Avera Page B

know which is worse, the fact we are crashing uncontrollably or that there are no pilots, no anyone in the bridge.”
    Grant looked around, holding his breath as Ben’s words were proven with a sight he had refused to acknowledge at first. They were in fact alone.
    “Where did everyone go and why didn’t we realize we were alone until now?” Grant asked, daring to reason the answer should be obvious despite the churning of fear in his body.
    “I…I don’t know,” Ben whispered. He had always been the one with answers, the fearless one amongst his friends, but there he stood, watching KG894 grow larger as the Helix fell, aided by the gravity the ship could no longer combat against. They were nothing more than an advanced version of Sir Isaac Newton’s apple falling from the tree, proving that gravity was indeed the enemy of flight.
    Ben and Grant dropped their gazes from the banks of indicators and windscreen of the Helix that revealed their impending doom. No good would come from watching death rise towards them like a bird taking flight; instead they leaned against a bulkhead on the other side of the bridge and dropped their bodies down into a seated position.
    “This situation doesn’t make any sense to me,” Ben said, his eyes moist with fresh tears threatening to stream down his face.  Never in his fourteen years of living on the Helix had he experienced anything of this magnitude, nor had any training evolutions taken place that resembled their current plight.
    “What should we do?” Grant asked; his voice on the verge of cracking. “We can’t call for help, but maybe we can eject from the ship into an escape pod and land on KG894. Do you think you can pilot an escape pod?” He asked, allowing a tremor of hope to form his words.
    Ben shook his head, he had played on many flight simulators growing up, but he had never learned to land any of those crafts on a surface bearing gravity. “We would die either way,” he said solemnly.
    Ben could feel hope escape his friend’s body as he exhaled a barely audible sob next to him. The younger boy had put all his hope into Ben and now the fourteen year-old boy felt responsible for crushing his best friend’s hopes of normalcy. A flood of thoughts entered Ben’s mind as he dissected the situation a hundred different ways, his eyes looking outside the Helix and towards the pale light of KG894. A bead of sweat ran down his brow as he thought, pleading to himself to find a way, any way to save himself and his friend.
    As Grant sat with tears running down his face there was a sound, reminiscent of static across a radio frequency, but that was impossible because the communications systems were down, or were they?
    “Did you hear that?” Grant asked, sitting up and looking around the room.
    Ben’s ears perked up as both boys stood and listened intently for what had caused the sound.
    It happened again, this time more audible, more hopeful.
    “Over there!” Ben pointed at an unlit console, mostly in shadows on the other side of the bridge.
    Ben and Grant scrambled over to that side and looked at the station. There was only a small indicator resting flat on the horizontal surface, the readout nothing more than a dim, orange line scrawling across the four inch plane. The sound appeared again, louder this time, but accompanied by a sign-wave along the orange line.
    Ben squinted as he tried to read what the indicator was for. The only clue he had was the letters “DC” labeled under the right corner of the screen. He thought for a moment before speaking. “I think this is for emergency DC power, I remember reading in one of the manuals that electrical power can be reset so long as there is a power source. Surely this might have something to do with it,” he said.
    “If that’s true then how do we reset it?” Grant asked.
    Ben hunched down over the console, straining to read the controls in the dim light. “Do you have a flashlight on you?”
    Grant looked