The alarms were blaring, louder than they ever had before. The ship’s computer sent a message to my interface, “HULL INTEGRITY FAILING.” I ran to the bridge to see what was happening. Spark was standing at the ship terminal looking at the damage report. His long tail was flicking a little on the end showing his annoyance; He had a slight frown on his glowing visor. A large hole needed patching in the cargo section. “You have to go down there. The ship won’t stay in orbit long with that big of a hole in it.” I nodded and hurried to the airlock to go outside and fix the problem. My body had been designed for harsh conditions including space repair so this assignment wasn’t troubling. As I entered the airlock I took the small puck that served as a helmet for spacewalks. I popped it into the small round screen on the side of my head and its nanites intertwined with my own; They created a small film over the top of my visor to keep more oxygen in my systems for longer space-times. I clipped a movement on and pressed the button to depressurize.
With a hiss, the air left the airlock and I was in a true vacuum. I stepped into the dark abyss above the planet our ship had orbited for hundreds of years, an unexplored planet called Earth. I used the pack, which I could control through my interface, to float over to the rent in the ship’s hull. A stream of boxes and frozen worker protogens floated around the hole. It was huge and the edges were glowing with heat. An asteroid could not have done this. I looked down and saw a large red laser shooting up from the planet’s green and blue surface. It flew past me and rammed into the ship’s main thrusters; they blew up. I quickly flew back to the airlock to get safely inside before the crash began.
The inertia from the ship going down was changing the gravitational direction. Everyone was slid around trying to find a purchase on the ship’s ground. I grabbed onto a bar behind the ship’s main portion to try and not get caught in the chaos. A loud bang shook the ship and the section in front of me blew up. The hole pulled air through and many of the other protogens around me. I held on until the protection systems sealed that part of the ship off from the outside. In the madness, my head hit a wall and everything went dark.
My vision systems came back on and my system boot showed across my interface, “Unit SPROCKET Online.” My limbs all ached. I looked at my surroundings, and the ship was in pieces scattered through a large wooded area. Soldiers of a species I did not know about patrolled the area and carried many powered-down protogens behind them. I quickly hid behind a rock. I looked around the site only a while longer and only found a weapon to protect myself with. I was sneaking out of the area to escape. A patrol went by and I stood still behind a tree. They turned straight towards me holding a device that was beeping rapidly. I had been detected.
I sprinted to try and make my escape before the patrol could catch up with me. Bullets whizzed by me and ricocheted off my armor as I tried to run. I had no time to return fire and soon one of the bullets hit one of the only unarmored parts of my body, my midsection. It passed through with a wet thunk and flew through my front with ease. My light teal blood dripped onto the ground as my energy started to fade.
I tripped on a log and fell onto my chest spitting up nanite-infused blood. I turned over and, in a last attempt at protecting myself, shot towards my pursuers. The shot missed and after some time, everything went black.