I am drifting.
There amongst the scattered rock and ice I can see the earth glowing blue and distant in the cold and inky depths of space.
I've never been here before, strange lights now hold the corners of my vision and the roar of my engines seem more distant now.
The harvester claws on the front of my small craft are deathly still, like skeletal fingers of a long dead and long forgotten citizen of an unmarked tomb, exposed by the relentless work of the elements against the earth of the grave and wood of the coffin, the metal of the cutting torch glows red from the now extinguished intensity of blue flame.
The screaming of a dozen alarms fills the cockpit but I barely hear them, drowned out by a single thought that now fills every recess of my mind.
I am drifting.
In an incredibly unlikely game of chance I caught a piece of stone, a rock cast from some distant world that shattered eons ago, that punched straight through the chassis of my craft and bled days worth of precious fuel out into the void.
Even now I could hear the last gasps of the ruptured tank exhaling the life force of my ship as if it was giving up its spirit.
All that was left was a little power in the life support cells that had somehow been spared by the fatal passage of that fragment of a dead planet that now damned me to a final decent of maybe a few hours into the gravitational pull of the sun I had played in the warm light of when I was little.
A thousand calculations per second flew across the heads up display, impossible odds of survival, every equation run over and over trying to find a way home.
I would survive the trip into the blazing center of our solar system, my air would last until the brilliance stripped the metal from my craft and the flesh from my bones, but another option appeared in the corner of my eye, I could divert power to turn one more time.
Not enough to return to the sanctuary of home, earth was too far now to hope to reach, my speed was more than enough to forbid any hope of rescue, if they left now they would only be able to chase me to the very edge of space, every second my velocity increased and the small glow of home became more distant.
If I turned I would prolong my fate, I would drift forever or until the eventual embrace of some far off moon caught me on its barren and alien surface, an unmarked tomb on an unnamed world at the bottom of a crater hewn by my own momentous decent, a fallen star sleeping forever beneath the corpse-arches of twisted metal that had carried me so far, alone in the depths of space.
Or I could go into the light, at this time my hands had been still, as I traced the circles of outer solar orbit, the golden red blazed brilliantly on the left side of my ship, illuminating all in soft yet indomitable rays of shining solar flame.
At my right hand was only night, an unbroken sea of stars and the promise of a voyage that would extend long past the few short days where the air and water would last.
All of this ran through my mind in mere seconds, the debris had only just struck my ship when all of this and more came flooding through me.
I disengaged the latch that held my helmet in place and let it fall to the floor between my feet, I flipped the main breaker, silencing the myriad of alarms and radio chatter, snuffing out the flashing warning lights, all was manual now, no tempered glass shielded my eyes from the radiant visages of the celestial spheres, the direct gaze of the sun was nearly blinding.
All that was left was myself and the ships wheel, the choice to go into eternal day or the unbroken night, the choice to commit my tomb into the far distance of the cosmos, to find stars and moons man had never seen, or to step fully into a pyre more brilliant than that of any earthly king.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, knowing that it was to be numbered among my last, my body relaxed as I made my resolution, it was all quiet now, nothing to break the holy communion of my human soul with the infinite stillness of space, my eyes opened again, the cosmos mirrored in their reflection, I had made my decision, and I turned the wheel.
I am no longer drifting.
I have made a choice in the sovereign council of my own will, I go on a course that I have chartered, that I have chosen, and in that I take some little comfort.
I will see you all again, when the spheres grow tired of their circles, and when the light of all suns grow dim, when the distant worlds grow tired of their distance and come home to that final gathering of all matter.
Until then I wish you all well with all of my heart, chart your own course my friends, I will see you at the end, fair well.
I.A.