The End to Come - Page 28 3D Render, Digital Artwork by emarukk

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The End to Come - Page 28

3D Render by emarukk

As the shuttle propelled itself through the vastness of space, the loud roar of its engines faded into a steady, quieter hum. The intense burn had ended. The immediate crisis was over, but the tension lingered. Olivia remained strapped in her seat, gripping the handlebars tightly as if they were her anchor in this unfamiliar place. The cockpit was dimly lit, and the ship's utilitarian design offered no comfort. Everything surrounding her was cold, sharp, and alien, with bare metal, access panels, and restraint bars. The silence between the system alerts only heightened her feeling of isolation. She felt small here, uncomfortably small, engulfed by the hard, echoing interior of a foreign vessel. She longed for her mother's comforting embrace and her father's reassuring presence. People often said her parents were overprotective, and sometimes Olivia had pushed back against it. Now, a protective home felt like the most precious thing in the universe.

The shuttle heated up as the engines fired up and the generators hummed. It soon became uncomfortably warm and dry. Olivia's thin station suit felt cumbersome on her. A slow wave of motion sickness began to build. It wasn't abrupt but a gradual unfolding. Her stomach turned lazily as if only now realizing her body was in an unnatural state. Despite the artificial gravity that had just engaged, her legs felt unsteady and detached, as if the floor beneath her wasn't entirely real. It seemed to shift. Her sense of direction and self were drifting apart. Perhaps the gravity here was weaker than on the station? Everything felt confusing and disturbingly strange.

She swallowed hard.

The air tasted different here. It was stale, processed, and metallic. Olivia longed for the humid warmth and fresh breeze of Verdantia's corridors. She even missed the subtle scent of soil, coolant, and greenery. This shuttle was a confined space of plastic insulation and synthetic air, pressing against her senses like a heavy glove.

"Aldo," she whispered hesitantly, her voice delicate and unsure; it was strangely ironic that the space girl was clueless about real space travel. She understood schematics and technology, yet she was utterly unprepared for the sensation of powerful engines igniting and the shuttle hurtling into the void. She had watched it unfold in Star Ship dramas, where heroes raced against danger and time with ease; on-screen, it was all smooth and thrilling, not like this chaotic reality. Perhaps this shuttle was just outdated and unreliable. Olivia, caught between curiosity and fear, asked uncertainly, "Is everything… normal?"

A brief pause lingered in the air before Aldo responded in his trademark unruffled drawl without bothering to glance back. "Everything's fine," he assured, his voice smooth and steady. "Just one intense burn and a few steering adjustments. If you're feeling queasy, there are bags tucked under your seat."

Her hand searched blindly under the seat until her fingers encountered the edge of a folded bag. It was oddly comforting to realize that this queasiness was a normal occurrence. The bag rustled under her touch; it was sterile but had a layer of dust, suggesting it hadn't been touched in ages. Unsure how to open it, she examined it with shaky fingers. She gazed at the old brown bag as if it were something daunting. Even after figuring out how to open it, she hesitated to do so. The uncertainty gnawed at her stomach almost as intensely as the nausea itself.

Her breath quickened, coming in short, sharp bursts. The relentless pull of gravity anchored her in place, but within, she felt like a top spinning wildly out of control. A wave of bile began its relentless climb upward, her stomach a churning cauldron of unease, slowly inverting and knotting into a tight, wet coil of nausea that coiled tighter with every heartbeat. Though she hadn't eaten anything since the rebel attack began in Verdantia, a distant memory over 60 hours past, her empty stomach seemed ready to stage a mutiny. She had only sipped a scant amount of water the whole time, little more since stepping foot on the shuttle, and now even that seemed determined to rise up and make its escape.

Olivia squeezed her eyes shut as if she could shut out the turmoil by doing so. "I'm not a drifter," she whispered fiercely to herself. "I'm a stationer."

Her loathing for the shuttle was visceral, a deep-seated aversion that eclipsed all other concerns. She longed for the solidity of stable ground beneath her feet. Her head spun with a dizzying intensity, and she clung to the harness as if it were a lifeline, her breath shallow and rapid, her lips pressed into a tight line to hold back the tide. The shuttle jolted once more with a sudden correction burn, perhaps a mere ripple to Aldo. Still, to Olivia, it felt seismic, as though the entire vessel growled around her with a deep, hungry, mechanical groan that resonated through its vibrating hull.

The deep, metallic hums intertwined with the sharp staccato pings of the guidance beacon, stark reminders that they hadn't yet made the jump; they were still hurtling through the void, still exposed, still accelerating toward the distant interstellar gate. The cacophony scraped at Olivia's nerves, each sound a jagged edge of impending danger.

She didn't cry. But she yearned to.

A line from an ancient prayer from the Golden Era came to her mind: "We pass through the seam of the stars with our breath held."

Hope flickered on the horizon. Out there, somewhere, Orvos awaited. Her parents might be waiting there too. Or perhaps not. But at this moment, all she could feel was the relentless pounding of her heart, the clammy sweat on her palms, and the oppressive press of the void surrounding her. She was moving forward, propelled by forces beyond her control. Yet every fiber of her being screamed to turn back, except for the contents of her stomach, desperate to escape.

PROFILE

Digital Drapery CoFri, Apr 18

Karma: 6,775

"Sass & Stardust" - A Space Drama in Verse
On The End to Come - Ep. 28: A.K.A. "Houston, We Have Nausea"

Olivia, sweet starchild, strapped in too tight,
In a shuttle from hell with fluorescent spite.
Engines roar like they're sick of your sass,
And gravity's playing musical chairs with your mass.

This ain't the spa at Space Station Zen,
It's a sweatbox of doom with burnt wires and men.
The air? Recycled. The vibe? Decay.
The barf bag? A veteran of a dozen doomsday.

She grips that handle like it owes her rent,
While Aldo just shrugs like this ride's heaven-sent.
"Minor burn," he mutters, cool as frost
Sir, you're not on fire, but the vibe is lost.

Poor Liv's caught between terror and thrusters,
Recalling sweet soil and greenhouse clusters.
Now it's just circuits, alerts, and alarms,
And the ghost of calm wrapped around her arms.

But breakdown? Nothis is legend in bloom.
She's not faintingshe's crafting her own costume.
Give her a cape made of stars and tech tape,
Cause baby's about to reshape fate and escape.

If trauma had medals, she'd wear a whole rack,
With a title like "Galactic Girl Who Fought Back."
A hero is forged in sweat, fear, and fight
And Olivia? She's rising, full height.

So pass her the ginger, hush that red light,
And watch a queen claim her cosmic birthright.

Final Word: Shuttle? Awful. Scene? Divine.
Olivia? The legend we didn't know we needed, but now worship full-time.

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