Sol-13
an excerpt

“Something slipped through the auto-repulsars and managed to whack them hard enough to turn it off. There shouldn’t even be anything in this part of the solar system,” I was panicky as I maneuvered the controls around. I glanced over at Davij as she sat in the co-pilot’s chair, “You can help. See that cube of screens?” When he said nothing I glanced over and he was staring at me. I gave an exasperated grunt as I swung around a particularly annoying section of a the asteroid field that had popped out of no where.

Finally he pulled his gaze away from the window as we jerked slightly as one of the asteroids hit our side and he looked around. “Yeah, I see it, they’re all back though.”

“I know I know,” and now I could hear Jaret’s boots climbing the ladder to the cockpit. “I need you to turn them on and start getting read outs. Those will give more detailed and accurate read outs than the general cock pit dials because they have computer links with each part of the ship.” It seemed for every chunk of rock I managed to avoid, three more whacked into our sides, jarring the cock pit around and causing our bodies to rock around annoyingly.

For a few moments there was silence before Davij finally managed to say, “Alright, I got it,” his voice came shakily from beside me. I glanced over as the displays flickered on, I spared a brief glance back to Jaret to see him staring out the window in fascination as he held tightly onto an “Oh Shit!” handle above us. “Ok, I need you to set a longer course then. One that I can see up here. It’s sort of like a video game. I need you to follow the places where there’s the least rock until you get to that gold dot ahead of us. That sets the “goal” course for the ship, and it’ll let me know when I’m off course, and pointing away from the goal. Got it?”

“Yeah,” and just like that we steadied out slightly because my wild driving was just being used to steer us around the meteors now, not to direct a lengthy course. Slowly I relaxed, letting myself get into the calm centered feeling. I was doing fine. This wasn’t even something my parents did, just something that was simulated during crisis classes. It’s just like a class Cory, I kept telling myself, and it started to take effect. At least I think it did, because the last thing I remember was seeing a large meteor come out of nowhere and thinking, What the hell? When did they put one that big in? I’m so going to fail. Then the world went black.