4. Darkest of the hours
Dan was coming back to his senses, could breathe normally, meaning they did not lose atmosphere, yet, weightlessness signaled that the ship…
Dan was coming back to his senses, could breathe normally, meaning they did not lose atmosphere, yet, weightlessness signaled that the ship stopped accelerating to any direction. Living on this ship for two earth years at this point, Dan was confused, this state the passengers could enjoy only at port navigation or special occasions. This time there was no public announcements, no warnings, and if they planned to stop anywhere for an extended period, the ship hull, the main drum would spun up by hundreds of engines to provide earth-like gravity. This was a well practiced process, while the minutes passed, nothing happened, just darkness and silence.
Mostly silence, a few screams and moaning could be heard in Dan’s room, coming from the audience area, but Dan could not focus yet, feeling sharp pain in his side, his watch alerting to elevated blood pressure and hearth beat, he knew he was injured. Though he could move with bearable pain, even he knew that in space, any injure can become fatal due to internal bleeding and the body’s inability to heal the wound.
His survival instinct kicked in, the noise of the thousands injured came into sharp contrast just as a weird whistling sound from same direction. He pushed himself to float to the window where he looked at the VR concert earlier, but in the darkness of space could not see much, let alone the source of the sound. Could this whistling be a leak? thought Dan when emergency lighting with its bare cold white dimmed to life, mostly along walkways, fluorescent signs showing the evacuation paths, though these were designed for localized fire or other incidents, not whatever they were going through right now.
Took few more seconds to accustom to the now bright lights, as the atmosphere was rushing out along a few cracks on the hundreds of meters observation deck behind the concert stage, now Dan noticed the thousands of shrapnels all over the reinforced see-through aluminum and glass. These shrapnels had different color than the walls and structure around Dan, thought it could be only paint outside, somehow this detail disturbed him, these shrapnels came from somewhere else but they had kilometers of the ship on both sides, a huge force would need to push these through.
Looked down to the few lines of chairs near him, saw dozens of bodies that were not moving, almost all of them were thrown around like rag-dolls, barely any of them in a seat, noticed a few bodies shivering, a few quiet calls for help, some words he could not recognize either for language he did not speak or for the gurgling through blood.
The seconds became minutes as the shock and his injuries slowed him down mentally and physically, he knew the cracks will worsen over time until the whole thing fails. Typically bulkheads should drop and close around areas losing pressure to protect the wider ship even if it means trapping people inside, this time without enough power the bulkheads could not close. As the whistling became louder and louder, Dan pushed himself out of the room, toward the back of the concert building.
If he can just get through the hallway, to the entry and assembly hall, he could manually close one of the bulkheads before the inevitable collapse. A sad side-glimpse on his friend, Fred frozen in blood, half of his face deformed by the blown glass, he was not as lucky as Dan, as most around him suffered similar fates, thrown into the ceiling or back-walls, breaking neck and skulls, shrapnels cutting them up and blood just collecting on their bodies as fluids won’t detach in weightlessness.
- “Anyone? Climb toward the exit!” — he shouted back into the auditorium, a desperate idea knowing that even if they hear him, likely can’t move from their injuries.
Flying through the unlucky ticket master’s body, now the whistling was almost deafening and Dan started to feel some pull back to the auditorium, had to climb on the sliders to get ahead, simple pushes were not enough, not much time left before collapse, he rolled over the side of a bulkhead and tried to push it in. The vacuum behind the door was keeping it in place. He opened the manual override hatch and released the vacuum seal. A year ago he worked down in the docks for a while, many accidents lead to workers lost to the vacuum of space, actually Fred pulled him out of a trouble once.
No time to reminiscence now, he pushed the door again but it barely buckled with all his strength that could be mustered right now. A shape was closing in from the hallway under the door, now under, as his orientation changed with the now howling wind rushing through him downward, the shape became a body, climbing slowly up, few moments and it was at the door, rolling over just as he did a few moments ago, he looked at the woman, surprised that she could make the climb,
- “Help push this in!” — Dan shouted to her face as he could now barely hear his own thoughts, this pulled the woman out of her moment
Together they could push in the door and Dan dogged it, using the manual valve to seal it and the abrupt silence sat between the two survivors, both inhaling deeply from the exercise, their shock and confusion what still happened and their surprise that anyone else survived.
Their staring of each other was only broken by an immediate silence from behind the bulkhead signaling that the observation deck finally gave way. They both could imagine the devastation and bodies now falling into deep space, movies and VR entertainment, the news often showed disturbing scenes like this. Though the scope of those events were never this large, the auditorium had four thousand seats.
- “I am Dan” — broke the silence
- “Call me Ava” — young lady’s voice, her blue eyes looked back at Dan, who had a strange feeling, could feel coldness from her stare though shock may do strange things to people.
- “We have to go, find help, are you hurt?” — Dan was usually a lone wolf, still, he never rejected a situational alliance, they could help each other to get to safety and figure out what happened.
- “I am fine, but you are not” — Dan could not figure out how she knew his broken ribs without any visible signs but they had no time for this.
As now the wind was no more, they could float again, which made their progress easier, though seeing no other survivors for minutes, they continued their way toward the ship stern as Ava pointed out the shrapnels were all flying that direction, indicating whatever happened, it happened at the bow of the ship.
Squeezing through debris for an hour, pushing themselves over long corridors, opening and resealing bulkheads as they went, the continuous efforts took huge toll on Dan, he could move much harder and draw faster and faster breaths, just hyperventilated and the world became dark again around him as he lost consciousness turning at a corner now hundreds of meters from the auditorium.
