Red Buttons
12 February 2007 12:53![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skonen_bladesI don’t push red buttons anymore.
I remember it blinking, lighting up the cockpit in the darkness. Janice was gone. She sat staring around the bullet hole beside me, a little dime-sized hole in the windshield just in front of her beautiful face. There was unbroken silence outside in the forest. I had no idea if it had been stray bullets or automated systems that had taken us down.
I hadn’t received any restricted access warnings and I didn’t think we were close to any battles. The only other option was that we had been purposefully targeted. I lay there, suspended by the seatbelt beside the body of the co-pilot girlfriend I’d escaped with. I looked up at the stars with tears in my eyes. We were only two miles from the safe house I’d found in the confidential files.
We’d both been in a remote med-psych military fac when we came up with the plan to escape. It was minimum security. We’d stolen the mech with codes and keys from a guard I’d befriended. She got the keys with her wiles, I got the codes with booze and fake friendship. The guard knew that we couldn’t use the keys without the codes and vice versa so he gave them up easily enough. He didn’t realize that Janice and I were working together.
We killed him and took the mech out on stealth. The prep had been a hard six months of subterfuge and intense playacting but the trip itself should have been routine.
I saw a few crows fly up from the treetops outside. The wind outside continued to make the trees whisper. The only sound was the click of the red light lighting up the cockpit. On. Off. On. Off.
I don’t push red buttons anymore.
tags
I remember it blinking, lighting up the cockpit in the darkness. Janice was gone. She sat staring around the bullet hole beside me, a little dime-sized hole in the windshield just in front of her beautiful face. There was unbroken silence outside in the forest. I had no idea if it had been stray bullets or automated systems that had taken us down.
I hadn’t received any restricted access warnings and I didn’t think we were close to any battles. The only other option was that we had been purposefully targeted. I lay there, suspended by the seatbelt beside the body of the co-pilot girlfriend I’d escaped with. I looked up at the stars with tears in my eyes. We were only two miles from the safe house I’d found in the confidential files.
We’d both been in a remote med-psych military fac when we came up with the plan to escape. It was minimum security. We’d stolen the mech with codes and keys from a guard I’d befriended. She got the keys with her wiles, I got the codes with booze and fake friendship. The guard knew that we couldn’t use the keys without the codes and vice versa so he gave them up easily enough. He didn’t realize that Janice and I were working together.
We killed him and took the mech out on stealth. The prep had been a hard six months of subterfuge and intense playacting but the trip itself should have been routine.
I saw a few crows fly up from the treetops outside. The wind outside continued to make the trees whisper. The only sound was the click of the red light lighting up the cockpit. On. Off. On. Off.
I don’t push red buttons anymore.
tags