Another Boring Day

Another boring day, deep in the emptiness of nowhere. The metallic hallways open before me as every day before, the frosty light continues to rain over all of us like every day before, the hum of the air conditioning fills the air like every other day before... Ah, the fabulous life aboard a spaceship!
Join the crew of a ship! See the universe! Live adventures! Travel to unknown places! Live dangerously! Have a change! Meet beautiful and exotic women!
Drek. Bull drek. They don’t talk about the long trips inside the inside of a titanic metal whale. They don’t say that all you have to do is go from one part of the ship to another just to repair this, or change that valve, or move those elements. Work for grunts, because that is what we are, grunts. The human force that keeps the universe turning, the unremembered in the pages of history, hidden behind the names of famous eggers.
Gods. To the many people in the planets they are names and deeds, important and distant heroes in the holoreels. For us they are gods. Gods that speak to us through the internal communication systems of the ships, gods who weave our fates with ease, gods that have our lives in their hands. They are human no longer, and we rarely get to see them, but we worship them still. Like Mother Corporation in the flesh.
My God is named Therven, and participates in a world I can barely imagine. We rarely get to see him, because he lives in the sealed chambers near his pod, chambers to which only his seconds in command have access. Like a temple, like Heaven, its doors are permanently shut for us, and only his voice is known for those of us who work in the stomach of the beast.
So I go on in the ship, with a normal, rutinary daily life. I go from sector 3A today to the back of the ship, to the engines. The Voice told me to do so, and I don’t dare say anything against it. The engines are dangerous, the region with the highest power and uncontrolled forces. The warp drives, slumbering until the moment in which they burst into action following unheard and unseen commands. And then, enormous forces try to tear the containment fields as the ship starts to march forward at a speed so high I can only try to dream about it.
But my quiet and rutinary day is shred to pieces as the doors of Hell themselves open: the alert. Red one, everyone to their battle stations. The corridors become a crazed hive of people running from one place to another, like an ant’s nest full of water. I have to reach sector 3A again, and hurry, before all breaks loose and control is completely forgotten.
The lights flash red as I run the paths I have so many times walked through, barely avoiding all those other engineers, mechanics and technicians that cross my way. I have to get to 3A. Just one more twist, and I will be there. The floor starts its routine of gravitic entrapment, catching our shoes with strength as the first volleys penetrate the exterior shield and start pounding in the armor. From the cries, and the sounds, they must be hitting the rear of the ship, probably aiming for its motors.
God in the pod, please, please, take us out of here, take us alive out of this one! There is little more I can think of as I walk as fast as I can, fighting the floor and the tension. I know this way it is safer, it prevents us from hitting the sides or anything due to the impacts on the ship, but I can’t stop thinking I am not in 3A. My little part in the battle, my insignificant adding to it, is to make sure 3A remains sealed and to repair the potential hits on the mechanisms that go on its walls. I barely understand them myself, but I know how to repair them, and there is nothing more I need to know. God of the ship, please take us alive out of this one.
I take the turn, finally inside 3A, and I can finally hear the roar of the guns on this side of the ship starting to fire as the enemy changes its approach vector. Or maybe the ship has turned? Can’t tell, I can’t see space from here. But what I know is that this small detail has put me in the center of the battle. Massive cannons, bigger than myself, capable of destroying cities have ignited, and the enemy is hopefully suffering losses. Please, God of the ship, take them down!
-Dirk, close those valves, from the third to the sixth!- I roar at one of my men as I enter through the main doors of my small kingdom, 3A. Dirk doesn’t like me, but he knows we’re in this together, so he obeys immediately.
I quickly place everyone to work, or change what some of them are doing, my experience tells me so: if this is the side to the enemy, it is going to get a heavy pounding, and if they are inside the shield already… God, please take them down! And we… run, we need to clear the pathway in this zone, so in case the hull is breach we can close the doors and leave as little as possible to the vacuum.
Quickly, orders are shouted and my men react. I am proud of them, too often have we gone into situations like this, they almost don’t need any order at all. But I still give them out, it reassures them, makes them comfortable to know that I back what they do, that the chain of command is in place. And then, the soft voice comes from the communication systems. And that is always bad news. God rarely speaks to say good things.
-Sections 3 A to C, brace yourself for imminent impact.-
Simple words, too often heard. It was the call of the dice. Our ticket had come out, and there was nothing we could do. I looked at my men, and knew that, in the best of cases, only some of them would be dead in a minute… I didn’t dare think of the worst possibility…
It was almost so sudden that I didn’t notice it, like always. One moment I was waiting for what I knew would come, tension and adrenaline rushing through my veins. The next, everything was mad. As simple and that, with no moment in between at all, like if someone had jumped a couple frames in a holoreel.
Air flew to the breach that had just opened, while it threw shrapnel and metal bars all around from the strength of the impact. Two of my men, I didn’t allow myself to remember their names now, were lying on the ground almost dead, another had lost his head, and one had been expelled outside the ship when his feet (and thus his boots) had been separated from the rest of his legs. Blood first was splattered all over the hallways, but then even that was taken away with the fleeing air, that silenced all the starting fires as they had no combustion.
Four of us made it through the doors in time, the rest weren’t capable of crossing them before they closed and sealed themselves. Precious lives, lost to the vacuum like all the material that was being expelled. Like the blood of the ship, running out through a big open wound, their bodies and objects flew outside ever further. A quick and painful death. The nightmare we all share each and every night.
Another round. And another. One after the other hit the side of the ship, tearing large parts of it, and opening enormous craters on the armor of it. The hits, luckily, were a little bellow our deck, but I couldn’t help but wonder who they had claimed with them? A friend maybe? Maybe someone I barely see during the lunch hours? Or maybe even an unknown? Whoever they were, their lives had ended forever. As would ours alls.
-Sector 3A to 3C, please proceed to start with the routine of combat repairs.-
There came the expected death sentence to all of us. To go out into the damaged sectors, under enemy fire, and work with the nanites and bots in an attempt to close the damaged breaches and repair all that could be repaired. To close the wounds as someone was still hitting with the sword.
I didn’t hesitate as I headed back into the corridor, with my few men behind me. As expected, our mechanical allies had closed the bigger elements, and air had been restored; but those were weak repairs. As we took out the different tools needed, I couldn’t help but notice how the next impacts were hitting just a couple decks bellow us. If they just turned a little higher… God of the ship, please turn a bit, take us away from the hits…
As if he had read my mind, I realized that the impacts were constantly moving ever bellow in the ship, away from our zone, and couldn’t help but sigh. Yes, others were dying there, but I couldn’t help but think it wasn’t me. Selfish? Yes, but human nature is so. Survival calls in my veins just like in everyone else’s. Everyone? Well, maybe all but God, who can come back to life after death.
And then, the whole ship shuttered and shook, and all elements flew in the air. I hit the side of the ship I was working on heavily, and blood started to cover my eye like a mantle. A breach in my forehead… but what the hell had happened? Only two things could have done that kind of impact: either a hit on the motors, or a direct hit in one of the cannon’s ammo depots. And none of the two possibilities were nice. Not a bit.
The ship shook a little before regaining stability, so we returned to repairing our damaged side of it. If stability was back… it meant that the damages were not great, or that probably it had been one of the ammo depots. Maybe one of the nuclear warheads had been detonated, or maybe even worse. I couldn’t help but think one possibility after another as blood kept dripping on the floor and my hands kept on working on the wall.
This was the last time, I was sure. There would never be a next flight, a next station, nothing. The God would be reborn elsewhere, to continue his impossible goals, and we would be left for dead, like so many crews everywhere in this rotten cluster. No one would remember us, no one would mourn us. Dust to the stars, food to the void.
But then, all was silent. Well, silent is not the word, of course, the alarms were still sounding like announcing The End, and the red lights still flashed… but the deep resonance of impacts were gone, as were the vibrations that shook the ship when it’s enormous cannons roared. The enemy was no more. Dead or fleeing, I didn’t care. They were gone.
All the adrenaline and the tension left me in a second, and I fell on my toes as the pain in my head started to claim my attention. The last I remember is one of the teams of medics coming my way.
 
No one will remember us. No one will tell our story. Next time might be the last, as the destinies that forge the universe wage their unending wars. And we, pawns in their game, will be forgotten. There won’t be a next time. I need alcohol, because until the next battle comes, my life is a rutinary hell. And then, it only gets worse.
It will be one boring day after another, broken by death and turmoil. That is all I will ever see, all I will ever be. A life of success, of victory and adventure, all in the name of the Corporation!