Pillars of Creation

I looked through the cockpit window to my left. Far off in the distance, the great glimmering panels of the Dyson sphere began to cross into the path of the sun. Its godlike depiction of humankind only mocked Icarus, for it touched the sun and took it too. Every eighteen hours or so, a few minutes of total darkness swept through the fleet, great freighters transporting for the Government. When the darkness would overtake the fleet in a few minutes, I could finally make my escape to find the great Pillars of Creation I had always dreamt of. I had gotten used to these moments of darkness, taking them to gaze at the twinkling stars that had once bordered my imagination. Unfortunately, these times were few and far between as Government elites stalked shift changes and memorized schedules. They were only passengers, but they were still our superiors. So I had to stay discreet, but I was never fulfilled. Trying to live and preserve the life I had took all the life I had. However, as I finally booted up the escape pod which would grant me my freedom, I saw the path I needed to take.

It had been getting loud behind the vacuum sealed door to the escape pod. I adjusted myself in my seat, checking the flight console with all of the multicolored buttons I knew more intimately than myself. Earlier, I had found the opportunity to sneak down here, to the evacuation dock that only the station engineers and the elites knew about. If all went awry, these pods acted as a golden ticket for escape, about twenty of them, each with its own individual warp system built around the spherical exoskeleton. The soldiers guarding the room knew me well and had assumed that I was there for a final check up. They would attack today, and through the door, I could hear shouts of war shear off the slick aluminum walls, the steel drum ensemble of hell’s furnace guiding these poor grunts to their doom. 

By now, it was only moments before they would attack. The Government had been tipped off that, and when that information got into the hands of the crew, it passed through the fleet as a sickle wraps around the necks of men. I knew the rebels would take full advantage of the eclipse to fulfill their cause. I knew all this because those dreamers and I are of the same mind. The darkness fosters it, our dream, and the light brings it out in great glory.

Far out, past the furthest freighters in the fleet, I began to see my chance materialize. The farside of the cratered moon beside us was beginning to darken in great waves of night. The vantablack ocean of that contrived darkness spoke of human pride.  

Suddenly, BANG! The metallic echo of a body hitting the door shook me from my trance. I slunk down in my seat, embarrassing myself as I tucked my knees under the tight console deck in order to hide. I turned my torso as much as I could and peered through a small hole in the back of my seat. Out of the porthole window, I could make out the twisted face of a guard, supposedly trying to turn the handle I had jammed earlier. They hadn’t noticed me. Lucky. If they had, an unusable pod and a dead engineer would be inconsequential in the shadow of my successful crime. Thankfully, they seemed to give up, and I brought myself back up into my seat to ready myself for the crucial moment. There could be no wasted time.

Far away, darkness began its swift flight across the fleet as one by one each freighter disappeared and reappeared among speckled emergency lighting. The darkness masked these great floating cities, each dotted red light upon the frame failing to depict the ship's true malice as a skeleton fails to caution us of who it belonged to. 

Suddenly, a strike upon the door much sharper than before rippled through the cockpit. Through the window, a person, one no older than myself, gazed at me, a face of insatiable green with eyes that gorge all humanity from a person until a mouse remains, one they squash without mercy. Fully reduced to bestial instincts under that man’s eyes, thoughtless self-preservation was all I had left to save myself. I was going to set flight with or without the sunlight. The moment I had fever-dreamed was just a few seconds away, but a few seconds too many. This villain would ruin my life if it was the last and only achievement of his career. 

My eyes darted through the cockpit and into the starry abyss, the Pillars of Creation watching me, but I was still blind. The image through the glass was tainted, for in the reflection I saw the weapon that would spell my death alongside the most despicable creation of war. My last moment would be here. 

BOOM! And everything broke in horrible unison. Then, night.

Head lolled, I opened my eyes and lifted my head. Hordes of cindering shrapnel and cracked exo-skeletons tumbled past my foggy eyes and into the deep void of peripheral space. Out of the right side of the window, the stricken body of the neighboring freighter stood in broken limbo, the surviving lights of the wreckage illuminating the severed axes. Dark gore leaked into space as the freighter divorced itself more, flying deeper into the darkness left by the fresh eclipse. The sly shadows of the rebel ships swam through that milky darkness and through the first victim as dozens of warp tunnels were left in their wake. The fearless gunman among the Government’s fleet had already welcomed this melancholic dance of war. Among them, neon bullets and silent explosions painted the cries of a devoid nobility too distant to hear, their wishes and woes echoed through that sea of infant carnage.

Now was my chance to leave. The star speckled darkness spoke of my freedom. To be sure, I looked back at the window to see if the man had disappeared. He had. Unnerved by a quick chill that ran down my spine, I pushed the thruster forward, ignited the engine, and disengaged the pod. Behind me, as I drifted into space, a manufactured forcefield appeared so as to not create a vacuum and kill everyone aboard.

Every second now was crucial, the soft methodical vibrating of the yoke upon my sweat stained hands kept a clock on either my death or my freedom. My freighter was still quite far away from the fight, as the rebels had chosen to go the other way after their initial attack. Unfortunately, the Government on my ship had begun to engage with the rebels too, which began to attract attention this way. I would be safer if I flew to the left, towards the distant eclipse in order to make my escape. Even with such little light, the faint glow of that sickly halo would still help, if only slightly.

I tore away, beneath the freighter and away from the fighting. I needed at least 30 seconds until I could use the warp system on my ship. All around me the stressed darkness flowed around my small spacecraft. All if not most of my light came from inside the cockpit, and as I looked through each window, all I saw was myself. I began the warp sequence. 

Thirty seconds until warp. I peeped from both side windows to make sure I was clear. The fleet was getting further from my vision. Along the right side of the freighter I had escaped, a fuzzy silhouette had flung itself into eyesight. It was so obscure in the darkness that saying it was just a light sheer wouldn’t be incorrect. Twenty seconds until warp. I looked back again, uneasy, and that silhouette that had been too vague to see had morphed into a rogue ship clearly recognizing the escape pod for whom it represented. Sixteen seconds until warp. I couldn’t get the ship to go any faster. The warp was too far away and the rebel was only a couple of moments from firing range. They wouldn’t waste any time lining up the perfect shot. Ten seconds until warp. The ship, otherwise colorless in that great shadow, began to glow blood red along the underside of the wings, right along the firing mechanism. Seven seconds until warp. It would take two seconds for my ship to be hit, less and less the closer they got. Five seconds until warp. I was going to make it! After everything, this would not be how I died. Three seconds until warp. They were upon me. Beams of searing hot light ripped through the empty space, berserkers who’ve come to fulfill their duty upon me. Two seconds until warp. I had to dodge. I wasn’t going to make it. It would disengage the warp, but I had no other choice. I cursed the air as I thrust my body upon the yoke, but I was too late. One of the beams ripped across the topside of the pod, skimming it just barely as I was thrown forward in my seat.

I had survived the attack, but the rebel ship had begun to circle back. Unless I escaped now, I would surely die.

Suddenly, the rebel ship, just as its turn reached its apex, burst into a great explosion which shot me back towards the battle. For a moment, everything in the neighboring space was illuminated, that artificial sun blinding me in the absence of the real one. As I shot backwards, I looked up and noticed one of the manned guns on my old freighter turning back towards the battle at hand. They had saved me. Did they think I was an elite?

I was able to stabilize the ship. It was time I started the warp module again. I had drifted all the way back to where I started and I knew I wouldn’t have another chance. Flicking all the correct switches, I turned it on. Error. Frustrated, I tried again. Error. Furious at this excuse for a transport, I could guess what the problem was. The warp module had gotten damaged by the beam because it was built on the outside of the ship. I only had one path that would lead me to my freedom, and I knew what that path was.

My hearing began to dampen and my vision produced a vignette. I pointed the ship towards the crackling corpse of the first victim of this fight. Holding my weightless head, I pushed the thrusters to full speed.

 The bug-like pod flew through that infected darkness, balls of recently liquified metal tapping upon my cockpit window as I weaved through furthest wreckage. Vague shadows of Government squadrons floated around my peripherals as they made their way to the warp tunnels left behind by the rebels. I took the indirect but safer route, choosing to cross through the graveyard of flickering lights before I escaped through the closest tunnel. I didn't know where it would take me, but I knew that wherever it was I would be safe and away from this war. 

Closing in upon the main body of the split freighter, frozen bodies of individuals I could’ve known emerged and disappeared in the darkness, my eyes the first and last witnesses to their deaths. I focused upon the exit, those distorted portals of twisted space-time illuminated by recent explosions of light and energy. I was almost there, the broken bodies of humans and cast materials falling away from any and every earth. The explosions were getting closer, and I could see them begin to wrap around the highest tunnels above me. Reinforcements were coming. I was so close. Why couldn’t my hand reach it? No, I was there. Within the enclosure of my ship, I passed across lightyears and land for time undetermined until light struck me in the dark.

I stretched my hand forward, towards the glass that gave me the sight to support my heart. The most colorful brown of every world I’d ever known consumed me fully, greens and blues and yellows and reds holding their own in that magical dance known from genesis. The Pillars of Creation stood before me, their infinite frames looming above my prostate soul. If not for this ship of Adam’s crime, my cast away body in space infinitely empty would’ve joined in reverence to a dream born alive.