A blaring alarm and rapidly flashing red lights woke Cerridwen up. She jumped out of her bed with eyes that could barely be kept open and stuck her head outside. Black smoke, pluming from behind the door of the store, floated in the hall, blocking out her entire view. She ran blindly towards her minor hoard. She wrenched its door open and began to search its shelves. She raked up the black sacks and threw the useless boxes behind until she found an orange-and-white bottle with a valve on its top. She rushed to the store. She had goggles and a respirator on, thereby she could breathe, but she saw only the pitch-black curls of dense smoke surrounding her and swirling with her every move. The flames belched, and the sparks bounced in the corner where there were wires and ducts.
Cerridwen put the fire extinguisher on the ground and touched its top. She found the valve and twisted it. A light-blue film released from the pressurised bottle sprayed the entire wall with expanding foam. She could not distinguish the details of the setting, so she directed the jet where the orange afterglow was the brightest. The white foam filled the room, and the flames faded away, leaving only a sluggishly flickering, plastic slush.
Feeling her muscles relax, she sighed with relief, and her hammering heart slowed down. Using only the sense of touch, she felt her way in the darkness and reached the cockpit and locked the hatch before the smoke charged inside. She turned on a blank desktop and among the text displayed on it, she began to search for the command for the immediate air purification. It took her a few minutes; she did not have time to acquire the knowledge about the board computer operation. Also, she discovered that the automatic extinguishing did not work because the medium had vaporised from the cracked duct.
On the screen appeared a notification that the carbon dioxide content had decreased to the recommended level. She stood and slid the door a bit. No sign of smoke remained, only a few items floated in the air. She returned to the store to calculate her losses.
She halted in the doorway and froze. Arrayed in the corner, the plastic chests with foodstuff had melted, only the ones with medical supplies had survived. She went about checking the chests with a hope that at least part of her supplies had survived the fire. There was not even a single trace of the bags with yellow powder. Blankets, mattresses and protective suits became a useless, clumped mass too.
Cerridwen calculated that using the calories and vitamin supply, which she hid in the cabinet next to the bed, she would survive perhaps a bit longer than a week if she limited the physical effort. She also added a few days, when she would drink only water. For the first time since she got here, the most primitive form of fear overwhelmed her like an animal immersed in quicksand. She had no chance to crawl out of it. The spatiotemporal communication device had no signal, and in the endless, empty space nobody could detect the weak, subspatial radio signal. Depending only on herself and the coruscium surrounding her, Cerridwen clenched her shivering fists and formulated a plan on the fly. She was not going to die of starvation like the raw-boned cattle.
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She brought the syringes with silvery liquid, bottles with unsigned substance, two respirators and boiler suits out of the damaged chests. She repacked them into the black sacks and carried them to the infirmary. Afterwards, she came back to the cockpit to survey one of the screens. She thought that if the other ducts had been damaged, another fire could break out. A few minutes of blundering among the nooks of the board computer, Cerridwen unlinked the majority of systems. She left only the crucial ones that were needed to keep her alive, then adjusted the temperature to a level low enough to use less fuel and simultaneously not chill her body.
Waiting for her heartbeat and breathing to return to the regular rate, she sat on the bed in the infirmary. She reached for the cabinet to grab a hermetic bag with the yellow powder and a bottle of water with a straw. She connected the straw to a valve in the bag and squeezed the bottle. The blend of vitamins swelled under the influence of water and turned its consistency into a paste. Cerridwen opened the valve in her respirator and took a sip of the substance. She gulped it down her searing throat with an effort, flexing all her neck muscles and muttered in disgust. The mash had no taste and was cold and glutinous, but it supplied all the essential nutrients and a lot of calories. After a not so gourmet meal, Cerridwen lay down with a thought that for the next few days she would not take even the slightest drop of the horrible pulp. She was not happy about that at all.
Every second of inaction was finishing her off, just like the starvation. That was when the darkest thoughts hit her. When she no longer could endure being in one position, she rolled from one flank to the other. She struggled to focus on the schedule for the next few days, but all she’d planned was to lie and wait.
The memories of home and the day she left it possessed her mind again. She remembered the wafts of the smell of the ocean and tropical floral air. She enjoyed it when the warm wind blew her hair while she stood on the balcony, observing the life of the capital city dwellers.
When she was younger, she thought that the hundreds of people on the streets forty storeys below resembled a colony of insects bustling about. Now she knew she was not wrong. They were just like insects, deprived of thinking, obeying the primaeval hierarchy of the group, busy with their simple jobs while the rulers could decide about their future with one move just like the queen of the colony who could devour the weakest links at any time.
They can’t fight, so they deserve the fate like this, she thought with disgust as she recalled a programme she’d watched a few years ago. Deep in the alien forest, decapodous, immobile worms waited for the fat, barely crawling queen to devour the drones attracted to her pheromones.
Not one of them tried to defend or, at least, flee.
Just like those vermin. They’ll buy every lie as long as they believe it’s for the greater good and higher ideals and instead of fighting, they’ll choose to stand and wait for someone else to fight for them.
