Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Spaceship

A loud, repetitive beeping awoke me. I reached over to smack my alarm clock, but hitting it did nothing. Then I remembered I hadn’t set my alarm the night before. I was on vacation.

Blearily opening my eyes, I noticed a flashing red light.

Emergency!

Running out into the hall in my pajamas, I hurried to the bridge. My sister, Marian, was still in her nightgown, dancing on the spot singing a little song to herself that went: “Oh no! oh no! We’re in trouble now!”

“What’s happening?” I asked her.

Wordlessly, she pointed out the front window. Hurtling towards us was a collection of –

“Meteorites?!”

My sister nodded. At that moment, the first meteorite struck. The ship shook under the impact, throwing Marian and myself to the ground, but our shields held.

“What do we do?!” Marian cried.

The door that led from the hall to the bridge opened, and Peter strolled in, looking cross.

“You know, some of us need our sleep,” he complained, “What’s all this racket?”

Another meteorite hit us, answering his question.

“Shields functioning at 60% stability.” A cool, female voice informed us.

“Computer!” I cried, “What do we do?”

The computer didn’t answer. Apparently she didn’t have any ideas either.

Peter, Marian, and I hadn’t been in space long – we really didn’t know much about manning a spaceship. But I’d done some reading, and Peter played a lot of simulator video games, and we thought this would be a fun trip. Now we were being bombarded by chunks of burning rock, and suddenly this didn’t seem like such a game.

“Computer!” Marian screamed as another meteorite hit us and we heard the walls creak.

“Shields functioning at 43% stability.”

“Not good!” Peter cried.

“Shut up, Peter!” I shouted, as meteorites thundered against the ship like hailstones.

“Shield stability critical – functioning at 27%.”

“Computer, what can we do?” I asked pleadingly, “Can’t autopilot navigate away from this?”

“Negative. Meteor field is too large to successfully retreat.”

“Retreat?” That was something you did in battle. That gave me an idea, “Do we have any way to destroy them? blast them?”

“Affirmative. Activating laser cannon manual control.”

“Did she just say--”

A joystick rose up from the control panel. The ship gave a lurch.

“Shield stability critical. Shield stability critical. Functioning at 10%.”

Peter did not look concerned by this news. He looked as though all his wildest dreams had come true. Jumping for the control panel, he aimed and fired.

Marian cheered as one of the meteorites exploded into harmless fragments of dust.

“Terrance!” Peter shouted at me, “Take manual controls and get us out of here – I’ll blast anything in our way.”

“Computer, activate manual controls.”

She did so, all the while reminding us that our shield stability was critical.

I steered us as carefully as I could, but I needn’t have bothered. Peter blasted everything in sight with remarkable aim. Meteorites shattered around us. Soon, we were in the clear.

“You did it!” Marian exclaimed, beaming.

Peter grinned. “I’ve always wanted to do that,” he said, “Did you know our ship had laser cannons?”

Marian and I shook our heads. The three of us collapsed into chairs, listening happily to the report:
“Shield repair. Functioning at 30% stability. Shield repair. Functioning at 50% stability. Sheild repair….”


♥/Kat!e


Today's Novel Idea Prompted by: "Your family, friends, and life might be a lot different...if they were in space! Imagine that everything you knew was transported to a traveling space ship. How would your day to day life change?" Courtesy of Build Creative Writing Ideas.

2 comments:

bryandavidcohen said...

Glad you liked the writing prompt. Great story :).

Sincerely,
Bryan
Build Creative Writing Ideas

The Hot Girl in the Comic Shop said...

Thanks! Thanks for running your site -- I get tons of great ideas from it.