I Fell From The Dark

15

She was cold and she couldn't move.

No, wait, that's not true, she thought. I... I don't have a body.

She opened her eyes. And, yet, she didn't; but still sensory data flooded in, sight, sound, movement. She looked around, and swept a laser rangefinder in front of her, scanning empty space.

In front of her was a familiar sight: Halliman's Star, gleaming red at the centre of its accretion disk; behind and around her was darkness. If she squinted – no, if she adjusted her optical filters – were stars. Far away, cold and bright as diamonds, were the twin lights of Dido and Aeneas.

I've seen this view twice before. This is a probe's view, she thought.

But this isn't VR. Am I in a probe?

No, wait, I think I am the probe. I don't seem to have a body. I'm just metal and plastic.

Why aren't I panicking?

She knew, somehow, that she was travelling at nearly one percent of the speed of light. That she was two astronomical units from the planet Misenus and the moon Victoria, Pilgrim's destination. Two AU was a staggering distance, but far closer than she had been on the ship.

I'm nearly on top of the thing which destroyed the last two probes, she thought. It must be minutes away.

What did that voice from mission control say? Send the activated worker to destroy, or something. Oh no.

If I am really here, and this isn't virtual, then I'm being used to draw out a hostile entity. How the hell did I get here?

There was a message, waiting to be read. She hadn't noticed it before, buried under the mountain of telemetry which was pumping into her mind. But there it was, a flashing red itch.

She activated it.

'Oh Mia,' said Pilgrim's voice, filling the silence. 'I'm so sorry. I wasn't totally honest with you... But I will miss you so, so much. You've been travelling in sleep mode for about twenty two days. You're about half an hour away from the enemy. That means it takes light an hour and a half to reach me, and we couldn't spare the entangled particles, so you're not able to talk to me. So I left you this message.'

You coward, thought Mia. You didn't want to have to talk to me. That's why you woke me up now.

But the message continued.

'I've launched you straight at the anomaly. Your job is to steer your probe right into it. Something with your mass, moving at the speed you're going at, should destroy pretty much anything it hits. I don't think you should use the laser range finder: that seems to be how the enemy knows you're there. You've been flying without engines or active scanners, so you should be basically invisible to it.

'I'm so sorry that this is how it ends. I was hoping we could be friends. I wasn't supposed to, but I've tried to make it so you can survive this. Goodbye, and good luck.'

And then the message ended.