Ruined Red

I could breathe… It’s strange, but I could breathe. In the blink of an eye, the flames that engulfed the small window disappeared, unmasking the stars for my viewing pleasure. It was all so confusing.

Instants ago, I was facing death in what seemed like a frozen snapshot before I went to spiritual nirvana, or eternal torture, or plain nothingness. But none of those occurred, and I certainly didn’t expect this.

I could also move… It’s strange, but I could move. Now, I could look at Vyo in the eye, his face petrified. Did he experience the same thing I did? I could always ask, but I continued to wonder. After all, duties came first, whether this dream was real or not.

“Vyo, Vyo!” It took a forceful nudge to snap him out of his trance.

He jolted, blinked his eyes several times, even when there could be no dust in his helmet. “What?”

“What do you mean ‘What?’ Tell me something!” I crossly pointed at his side of the instruments.

“Er… well…” He tapped and swiped at his displays, seemingly having figured out nothing.

I, in part, also joined in the fray of tapping and swiping. I grew more confused every time I navigated the system, and the system would show me ‘No data’ and ‘Inexplicable.’

“Have you found anything?” I asked Vyo, this time, a little more kindly now, because pride lay in the knowledge.

“’No data’ on my side—”

“Have you checked—”

“Yes, I checked the comms!” Vyo snapped at me. “Target unreachable.”

I took a deep breath because our verbal communication was slowly breaking down. He too started calming himself down.

“Okay, so no comms, no nav…” I checked the engine and fuel status page and the current staging status. “No service module, no viable thrust… We are stranded.” I stared at the screens in utter disbelief, the horror slowly encroaching upon me.

“Let’s look around, shall we?” He said in a comforting tone, and he took controls and started to spin the capsule around.

By a stroke of mercy from this mathematical universe, our fuel situation was not as dire as I expected. Somehow, it was still full for the RCS thrusters.

It took a full 180-degree turn before a blue sphere filled our windows. We observed it, our mouths agape. It was terrifyingly, unbelievably beautiful.

“This planet…”

“Did we…”

It looked too similar and was borderline eerie. It had all the features, perfect for life, for alien life, maybe human life. Its oceans were one thing, but white clouds in formation, and a tail-end of a large storm, green and brown land with what seemed varying terrain, basked in the healthy sunlight— a star’s light as its sun.

“It isn’t Earth… it can’t be. The geography is all wrong,” I remarked. I’m no expert, but… that surely wasn’t Earth.

“And Earth is… ruined red.”

We fall silent at his remark.

…

“Way to ruin the mood, Vyo.”

“What? They love me at parties.”

“Yeah, only in part—”

Alarms blared, shaking us out of our childish amazement.

“Not again! Uncontrolled re-entry!” He shouted, almost unseriously.

“We have no choice…” I gritted my teeth. This looked to be our best chance at even surviving. If anything, I should be grateful. I’d rather crash land on any planet than die stranded in this cramped prison… with this guy.

Again, the all-familiar rattle shook the entire cockpit, but this time, we were more composed, skillfully correcting our re-entry path, so we wouldn’t burn up again… Again…? Or has it ever happened?

Even with the intensity of the situation, I asked, “Vyo, did you feel like you died recently?”

He nodded, “Yep.”

I fully expected a joke for an answer, but the seriousness in his voice stunned me. “Like… in a toppling capsule, burning up on re-entry?”

“Exactly,” He cast me a knowing look, and we both understood. “Dead or not, here we come.”

…

Finally, the capsule calmed from its fireball state, and we quickly scanned outside the window for any water.

“Land landing,” He stated the obvious.

“Switching to L-Land,” I tapped on the screen.

“Now, we just brace ourselves.”

We watched the altitude tick down as we tensed our bodies to prepare ourselves for touchdown. What lay beyond the capsule was beyond us. What mattered was surviving the next second.

In my head, I counted down the hundreds of feet, like I did in my airliner days. My mind drifted into the past world on its own…

...

I felt the entire plane being thrown, tail first, causing it to pitch down, and ride the shockwave. The cockpit was now facing the speeding ground, but the faster dust engulfed the land below.

The frame wailed as the forces were exerted at the limit of what the aircraft could handle. For certain, the wings were being flexed upwards, and I prayed that the wings wouldn’t fall off.

“WINDSHEAR, WINDSHEAR,” the cockpit blared out, as if the multiple faults, warnings, and actions quickly appeared on the flight computers.

“OVERSPEED, OVERSPEED, STALL, STALL,” the aircraft was baffled about what it was going through.

“TERRAIN, PULL UP! TERRAIN, PULL UP!”

Instinctively, both of us pulled our sticks with all our might, even though it wouldn’t make a difference. But our minds were only filled with one thing: to keep ourselves in the air.

The plane almost toppled over its nose, midair, but our inputs persevered. The air relaxed, and we quickly regained attitude. My tunnel vision widened, and the alarms and horns slowly reached my ears, though they’d been screaming the entire time. We looked at each other, our faces still anxious: ‘This is still not over.’

...

I found myself looking at Vyo, and before I realized it, and shook myself from my trance, and Vyo turned to me.

“We’ll make it,” he reassured, even though none of us could guarantee that. Even if all systems didn’t fail, the outside will.

I peeled myself away and stared into my instruments. Perhaps, I shouldn’t have lied to my psychologist… but I had to, to keep myself alive.

The capsule, with its main parachutes long deployed, slowly dipped beneath a thousand feet, and I began calling out the hundreds of feet in my head, an unshakeable and slightly addictive habit.

‘One hundred…’

“Fifty,” Vyo started verbally calling out, much to my surprise. “Forty…thirty… twenty… ten…”

The instant when I didn’t hear the blast of the retro thrusters, didn’t feel the intense push into my seat, I knew it had gone wrong.

The capsule crashed sharply into the ground, pushing our bodies out of our seats, but thank the seatbelts. Still, I feared my neck had broken in the impact, and I thought the top of my head had touched the ceiling of my helmet.

And we both came back down, just as painfully, into our seats.

Our response was nothing but grunts and stifling of pain.

It took us a few moments to recover and realize that our capsule was slowly being engulfed in flames. The familiar sight spurring us onto our feet. Without panic, we quickly free ourselves from the award-winning seatbelts. Vyo quickly cranked the heavy metal door open. I pushed Vyo outside, and he pulled me outside.

We both jumped from the burning and mangled wreck and ran as much as we could in our heavy suits.

We retired some ways away, and thankfully, but anticlimactically, the capsule didn’t explode, much to my disappointment. The only time when I would have felt awesome.

And I heard a leaking noise, not from my suit, but from the radio in my suit.

“I’m leaking.” Vyo covered the line of crack with both of his gloved hands, to almost no avail.

“Damn it, Vyo!” We were out of options for a problem like this. It was either return to the capsule or die. “Why weren’t you care—” No use in blaming now. It would only make me feel worse after his death.

So, all I did was push his hands against the visor, not too much to risk any more cracks. But there was nothing I could do to help, and this was all I could do.

“Quick, we have to find shelter.” And a sealed one at that. I was wishing for the impossible here, but we’ve landed on a planet after burning on re-entry. Impossible was damn near possible.

I weakly tugged him by his non-sealing hand, into the open, rocky, barren ground, where only sand and dust met us.

I shook my head. I knew I was going to lose him, but I was still going to try. This wasn’t about conscience anymore.

Suddenly, Vyo pulled me back by the arm.

“Greg, hook me,” he pointed at his umbilical cord, which connected to his oxygen tank.

He was pointing at the wrong one, but I knew what he meant. “Good idea, good idea.” I panted as I leapt back to him and started unscrewing the umbilical cord.

“No,” he stopped my hand and gripped it tightly, leading it to the other cord.

No.

“Take my oxygen.”

His words didn’t register in my brain.

“Take my oxygen!” he yelled.

I yanked my hand away, “No, I’m not doing that!”

“You have to do it!”

“No, no, no, you’re not playing hero on me.”

“But—”

“You’re not playing hero on me!” I shouted louder. Then, I quickly continued undoing his other umbilical cord again to hook it to my tank. “We breathe our last air, together.”

Vyo sobbed, but I wasted no time.

…

It took quite a while, because it was frankly a lengthy unlocking process. So, when Vyo suddenly knelt, interrupting my progress, I was furious.

“What are you doing!? Stop being a little child!”

I observed his fingers brushing against a blade of grass on the rocky ground.

“Life,” he murmured, his breath labored now, and I could hear the suit warnings through the radio.

“We have no time for this—!”

“There’s air here.”

“What—” I considered it for a bit. The gravity, the air resistance, though I couldn’t measure it——the feeling! It was like Earth’s, but… “We can’t be so sure! What if it’s poisonous?”

“We’ll have to try!”

“No, no, no. We. Are. Not!”

“I… I have to risk it!”

“Just let me hook you up—”

“I’m doing it,” he began twisting his helmet.“

“Why do you have to be such a problem… child…”

He successfully removed his helmet, the small amount of air weakly hissing from his suit.

I watched, in distraught, but slowly, all my worries deflated as I watched him peacefully breathing in deeply, the new air of this alien planet.

“Ahhh…” he savored, as if he were drinking. “Just like Earth.”

“Just like earth,” I repeated with a chuckle, and laughter of relief ensued.

…

“Are you still going to be in that dumb fishtank of yours?”

I promptly removed my helmet and joined the oxygen-connesieur.

“This is nothing like Earth,” I stated. “It’s more on nostalgia.”

Vyo shook his head, “I remember Earth as I know it… not for what it is.”