Free Interzeit: A Space Opera by Samuel Eddy

chaos and flashing lights.
    “Chances of success have dropped dramatically.” Basil chimed, “Recommend withdrawal.”
    “Negative,” Lei yells, “We can’t let them reach the colony, divert remaining power to the cannon, full barrage!”
    The cannon begins firing erratically, destabilizing Tiger West’s trajectory, causing it to go into an unbalanced spin. Among the flashes of light and explosion, she sees its red grinning face swimming after her. She manually hovers the targeting reticule on the enemy, it glimmers, she awaits the green symbols shift towards locking red.
    Suddenly the view cuts out, and she is launching backwards out of Tiger West, its form shrinking away from her.
    “No!” She screams , ” Basil No!” She bangs on the small hull of the escape unit
    She sees the green energy blades impale through her war mech. The epicenter of the skewering site burns, then the whole craft explodes in fire. She drifts alone, further and further out and away from the fight.
    It shrinks and dissipates like everything in the dark does. Fading to twinkling glimmer, and then disappearing altogether without a trace. Out of time, out of humanity, society, and life, she floats once again vacuum sealed. She hits the hull in rage, eyes burning with hot tears.
    “No! You let me fail! I cannot fail!” she breaks down to unintelligible sobs, finally she whispers, so quiet so that even she cannot hear it.
    “…you dumb machine, how could you…”
    The craft drifts.

Chapter 4
    Every hour since the incident has been pain. Nol survived the blast, despite any predictive model of math or luck . Some fateful combination of random chanc e and bioscience saved his life. Hours spent in the crumbled ruins, no air, half his body crushed under indescribable weights.
    She screamed in the end, it was so loud, ear shatteringly loud. Her cool confidence, and courage shattered with the walls. They were smashed, she screamed and screamed all the way to the end. She screamed herself to death, and Nol laid there, tears flowing, locked under the heavy debris .
    When the air got thin, he let himself go, ready to shed his mortal coil. Somehow , someway , he awoke again. The white of the room was offset by shaded images of trees and and grasslands projected onto the walls. At first he thought he was dead. The caretakers eventually told him otherwise, but the extent to which he believed them was limited. There was no coming back from what he had seen.
    He had been quarantined. His visitors were sealed in clean suits . His being seemingly drenched in radiation was another factor which defied all reality and sense. People had taken lesser doses and suffered burning degeneration, cell failure, a rot from the inside out. For some reason this torturous fate was managed and passed by .
    Once his own contamination levels came down, the circus began. Of course he would have died without the help of the Earth government, and so in a certain way much was owed to them. No one asked him if he wanted to survive though, he just did. Perhaps that was selfish in a way, in most ways, if not all of them. Perhaps, but the circus was a cruel form of servitude to expect repayment with.
    After each operation, some group, some “important” person found a timely political use for him. Time and time again they strolled him out in front of crowds to relive his story. One of the few living witnesses of the attack, his words and emotions resonated with billions. With no time to grieve, each successive appearance buried him deeper and deeper. The weight of the building crushed him more and more each passing day.
    Everytime there was a new carrot. “We’re going to fix your collapsing lungs next, but the Terrestrial Senate would like you to attend this or that memorial service.”
    “Your left leg has gone into cancerous metastasis, we’ve scheduled the operation, in the meantime however, there is a survivors group meeting with the F ederated Martian D efense C