Ishmael

Ishmael

Call me Ishmael. It's a name surely borrowed from Melville's great work, but it's me nonetheless. How I wish I was the Ishmael of Moby Dick. If I were he, I would hunt whales from the deck of a wooden ship, and live a life of excitement on the open sea. Instead, I mine ore from a retrofitted escape-capsule, digging materials from rocks and planetoids. This meager existence is necessary, see, as I'm the survivor of a calamity. I'll not go into detail about that, though. What's important is that I've been here, in an asteroid field called Sector 5533 Elijah, for what feels like years.
	It's a good thing I went into practical engineering. I thought my building talent would go toward building warships for some fleet, but instead, I scrape a living from an asteroid field. Oh, I did end up dealing with warships, however. The unmanned drone-sloops which occasionally patrol sector 5533 have certainly been aggressive. They prefer easy targets, like me and my little yellow lifeboat. Those patrols don't come round anymore, though. Not after I laid a minefield three months ago. I certainly never expected to put my engineering skills to that kind of use.
	Now, my skills keep me alive. They are the means of my life of labor and survival. I, in my little ship, mine uranium, iron, and other ores from space rocks. I named my little yellow ship Queequeg, for its loyalty and hardiness are surely worthy of that noble savage's name. It's a good ship, though it used to be naught but a lifeboat. I've upgraded the manufacturing system in its belly, jury-rigged a few thruster banks to its hull, installed a medical pod in the cabin, and even mounted a rickety machine-gun onto its snout, though I've never had reason to use it. Sadly, the Queequg has no method of escaping this sector, as I lack the materials to provide it with powerful thrusters. As a result, I spend my days mining, hoping to construct an engine capable of delivering me from the dark loneliness of Sector 5533.
	In my quest for escape, I found myself digging into the side of a large asteroid. I sat, plugged into the controls of the Queequeg, watching the drill's progress through a closed circuit cam. The drill's powerful motor subtly shook the entire ship, sending vibrations rippling through my spacesuit. If the cabin of the Queequeg had an artificial atmosphere, it would be unbearably loud within, considering the combined noises of the refinery, the assembler, the drill, and the thrumming fusion reactor.
	I sat in pensive silence, watching a holographic blue readout count out the drill's ore collection. It was mainly rocks, but I was close to a generous seam of iron which lay farther into the asteroid. Most of my materials had been used up in the past weeks, and I needed that iron. Finally, the vibration of the drill became sharp and juddering, warning that it was chewing through tougher rock. I checked the ore display, but it signaled that no ore was being picked up. Concerned, I checked the CC cam, and saw not rock, but shiny, mangled steel poking out of the rock.
	This was new. My heart picked up speed. I hadn't encountered any other people while in sector 5533, and a hidden base within an asteroid was certainly a sign of habitation. Maneuvering Queequeg out of the hole it had dug, I swiveled it about, and set it down on the asteroid, engaging its landing gear. I hurriedly unplugged myself from the control chair and went to collect my tools. I was intent on investigating this metal, whatever it was.
	With my welder and grinder hooked on my belt, I opened Queequeg's porthole, and stepped out into space. I immediately dropped five feet, as I was still caught in the ship's gravity field. Before I could fall into the surface of the asteroid, I engaged my thrusterpack. It's inertial dampeners fired hard, stopping my fall, and propelling me forward and out of the gravity field. I coasted over to the hole in the asteroid. Dust and rock debris still floated about it. Little pebbles knocked against my spacesuit as I descended into the hole.
	The dusty pit was illuminated by the ghostly white beam of my helmet's headlamp. I saw, at the back of the hole, a glint of torn steel. I glided over to it and stopped with my boots resting against the face of a steel plate. This was undeniably a man-made bulkhead. I could see rivets on its corrugated steel surface, and broken cables and struts in the hole my drill had torn. After examining the bulkhead, and judging that no harmful current ran through its cabling, I unclipped the grinder at my belt, and set my attention to dismantling the steel wall before me.
	My helmet's visor automatically darkened as sparks flew from the oxygen-assisted grinder. It cut easily into the bulkhead, and I paused occasionally to pull chunks of steel from the ever-widening hole. Eventually, the interior face of the bulkhead gave way, floating gently into the gravity-less interior of the structure. Triggering my thrusterpack, I went inside. My headlamp illuminated a plain, narrow corridor reinforced with solid steel struts. It was faced in white-painted steel, and had unlit gas lights on the ceiling.
	I crept farther into the bunker, for I was now certain it was just that. The left side of the corridor led me to a darkened engineering bay. I recognized the shapes of control-panels, railings, and the domed humps of fusion reactors. Floating down the bay, I reached a deactivated control panel. Gloved hands shaking in excitement, I plugged my suit's power cabling into the panel and fed a bit of current into the system. The panel lit up with a blue hologram. It displayed more symbols than words, but I soon found a power symbol, and activated the bunker's fusion reactors.
	I could hear a humming through the vibrations in the floor, and as it increased in volume, the lights of the engineering bay lit, and the reactors began to glow an energetic green. My booted feet smacked into the floor as a gravity generator spun into action. The rest of the bay's control panels flickered to life, revealing readouts for instruments of all varieties. Two things caught my eye: a weapons locker against the wall, and the controls for a radio antenna. The weapons excited me, of course. Some self-defense couldn't hurt. But the radio, however, was a dream come true. I had been working for a month to get enough silicon together to build even a few measly radio components, and now I was looking at a fully functional antenna array.
	I went to the locker first, removing a rifle and a few magazines of ammunition. I had once been afraid of guns, but my military tech training had dispelled all my anxiety about weapons. I checked the weapon's breach, and, satisfied, slung it over my shoulder. I affixed three magazines to the webbing on my chest. Now I looked like a pirate, great.
	With quivering excitement, I went to the antenna controls. It was a standard communications array, with a nearly infinite transmit radius, and no obvious friend-or-foe lockouts. I gleefully set the antenna to transmit a polite request for rescue. It read, "this is Specialist Ishmael Trainer, I am stranded in sector 5533 Elijah, and respectfully request deliverance." Satisfied that the message had recorded and uploaded, I went to depart the engineering bay.
	Eager to explore the rest of the bunker, I floated back through the hallway. I was a mere ten meter s from the hole in the wall when an LED lit on the ceiling. It turned from green to red, and before I knew it, the machine turret it was attached to swiveled about and opened fire. With power now running though the bunker, its auto-defense systems had engaged. White magnesium discharges blinded me, and I scrambled to a strut in the hallway's wall. I could feel the vibration of high-caliber bullets striking the wall around my cover. Heart racing, I pulled the rifle from my shoulder, loaded it, and jumped toward the torn hole in the bulkhead. Engaging my thrusterpack, I rocketed towards the hole, and fired a mad burst of rounds at the turret as I went. Burning streaks of white flew around me as I flew, screaming, through the hole and into space. However, that's when an impact struck me. I flew out of the bunker, trailing globules of blood from a bullet wound in my shoulder.
	Sickening pain washed through my body, but was soon replaced by shattering cold, as the rupture in my suit vented oxygen and let in the chill of space. Thankfully, my suit closed the rupture automatically, the material puckering around my wound. I felt a surge of numb warmth as the suit's life-support systems shot me full of painkillers.
	Fumbling with my thrusterpack, I floated blearily towards the porthole of the Queequeg. I fell through the portal, tumbling onto the deck as the ship's gravity caught me. I stood, staggering, and lurched for the medical pod in the corner. I flopped helplessly into the bed of the pod, and as the machine gathered me up for healing, my consciousness slipped away.
	I dreamt of the sea. I dreamt of whaling, of being the Ishmael of Melville's old story. I hunted whales with harpoons and rope, and battled the Great White Whale with the crew of the ship Pequod. We fought our last battle with the terrible beast, and our ship was destroyed, sunk. I escaped, floating away, wounded, clutching to the noble Queequeg's coffin.
	I awoke quite suddenly, choking on life-support fluid. The cylindrical top of the medical pod had slid away, and I saw, through bleary eyes, the opaque visor-plate of a blue space helmet. Someone was looking down at me. I stared in wonderment. The visor became transparent, revealing a woman's face.  She grinned. "Welcome back to life, Specialist Ishmael. We got your distress call."
	And thus my story ends. I was found adrift in a nearly powerless Queequeg, saved by the roving engineer Ava, and departed sector 5533 on the war-corvette Sabaton. We leave for the depths of space. There are places to explore, and things to build. We will find them, and we will build them.