Chapter Text
Ryley Robinson has never considered himself a particularly brave or intelligent person.
Sure, he has his good traits. He did well enough in school to be assigned to training as an engineer, and he’s not bad at it. It’s not what he really wanted, but most people on Alterra worlds don’t live out their childhood dreams - that would be impractical. You get assigned on aptitude, not passion. So he trained as an engineer, and he did well enough at that to graduate, and well enough to get a job.
Non-essential systems maintenance chief. In practice, he’s a couple steps above a janitor. But that’s fine. He has a job, and he’s good at it, and he doesn’t have to talk to people much (which is ideal because he’s no good at that). He’s a dab hand with a repair tool, and he can ‘have a chat’ with Ozzy from the cafeteria while he fixes the vending machines - in reality this constitutes Ozzy talking at him with Ryley nodding every so often, which is honestly nice - and occasionally sneak into the PRAWN bay on some technical pretext, admire those beautiful machines and daydream.
He’s good at his job. He’s good with his routine. He wasn’t, isn’t, prepared for this.
“Attention!”
the automated loudspeaker shrieks.
“Hull failure imminent. All personnel abandon ship!”
The noise of overlapping sirens is deafening, and Ryley clamps one hand over his ear and grabs his repair tool with the other, because he’s still an engineer dammit and if the ship’s damaged it’s his job to fix it. The hallways are packed with screaming, terrified people from all decks - even command, nice to know we’re all equal in an emergency. He hasn’t been assigned a lifepod. No one has. They never bothered with it at the onboarding meeting.
On the vidscreens in the main leisure deck he sees chaos. Vanity installations, designed to give the illusion of windows - they’re supposed to show the serene stars outside. Now half of them are blanked out and the other half show them pitching wildly towards a massive blue emptiness. Ryley’s no expert on slingshot manoeuvres, but he’s fairly sure you’re not supposed to get so close to a planet when you do one.
It finally hits him what his mind’s been refusing to process - this isn’t a maintenance issue, and it’s not a drill. The ship is crashing. They are going down and if he doesn’t get to a lifepod he’s going to die.
Now he sprints madly to the outer decks where he knows the lifepod hatches are - he checked them this morning, all green for go. Not so non-essential now, are they, he thinks mildly hysterically. They’re already half occupied. He throws himself into the first one he sees that isn’t full, watches others run past him to the next and the next. There’s two seats in the lifepod, so he holds the hatch open and waves wildly, but suddenly the ship heaves and he falls backward.
They’ll hit atmosphere soon. Thankfully he’s already wearing his AEP suit - makes a habit of it, because the lining is smooth and doesn’t itch like standard issue uniforms.
Sick to his stomach and feeling like a coward, he runs for the left seat. Straps himself in. Hesitates for a few long moments, but then the ship pitches again and metal screeches horribly, and he punches the launch button.
“Launching in three, two, one-“
The Aurora screams as it tumbles into the upper atmosphere, a wild and awful sound of tearing plasteel and buckling supports. The lifepod finally jettisons, more of the ship coming into view through the tiny upper hatch as it throws itself free of the doomed ship. He’s left it late, he’s lucky to be alive -
There’s a loose panel flying off one of the boards and it’s heading straight for him.
His last thought before impact is the sheer irony that he might survive the crash only to be taken out by shoddy Alterra design, and then the plate slams into his skull and everything goes black.