Trust Me

by CluelessBrony

Arrival

I drifted in the vast expanse of nothingness that I found myself trapped in, stuck in a metal box, unable to move, unable to do anything about it. All around me, small pinpricks of light shined from millions and millions of miles away, a blanket of stars separating me from the vast unknown beyond. A large blue sphere floated under me, and a smaller silver one to my right. I looked down on it, taking in its beauty. Salvation. So near, yet so far. It was tantalizingly close.

It could be worse, I kept telling myself. My oxygen systems could have broken as well. As it stood, my thrusters were the only things to have been taken out by the blast. My thrusters, which were the one thing I needed to get this hunk of scrap metal moving again. I sighed.

It could be worse, I told myself. But I didn't believe it.

I wiped a bead of sweat off my brow. Was it getting hotter in here? I checked my instruments, which informed me that yes, it was getting hotter. In fact, my entire engine system was currently on fire. On the bright side, it looked like I would burn to death before I starved to death. That was much quicker.

Much more painful, as well, but I tried ignoring that part.

I checked my monitors again, taking note of my energy levels, which now rested at a pitiful four percent. I sighed once more, slouching down in my seat. There were times when it sucked being the only known race in the galaxy to sustain themselves on electricity.

I settled down and got comfortable in my seat. With the thrusters too damaged to repair, I had no means to get down to the planet below, which my ship's computers helpfully, teasingly, informed me was rich in oxygen. It was only a matter of time before I burned to death, starved to death, or was hit by a fast-moving chunk of space rock. However I died, I didn't want to have to experience it, and so I closed my eyes and readied myself for sleep. Hopefully I could stay unconscious during the process of death.

It could be worse.

Just as I was dozing off, a loud, sharp alarm jolted me awake. I jumped in surprise and hit my head on the roof of the cockpit. I cursed, checking the computer's systems.

At first, nothing seemed wrong. The fire had grown, but couldn't be what was causing my alarms to go off. I had turned off the ship's internal monitoring systems ages ago. I turned to the monitor showing information about the expanse of space around me.

A proximity alarm. Something very large and very fast was moving toward me. An asteroid perhaps? I welcomed an asteroid. Anything to put me out of my misery a little quicker. I turned on the ship's stern camera and put it on the screen.

Nothing. I scratched my head in confusion. Perhaps the ship's sensor system was more damaged in the attack than I had thought? I debated trying to fix it for a brief moment, then abandoned the thought. I was going to die anyway, what good would fixing the sensors do?

I was about to turn it off and try going back to sleep when I saw it. A star blinked out. Then another, then another. More and more of the spots of light were being swallowed by the unrelenting blackness, and it took me a few moments to process what I was seeing.

A giant ship, black as the space around it. I could make out no detail on the ship, the meager light from the stars and the planet around me not enough to battle back the darkness. Was this the ship that had attacked me before? I had not seen the perpetrator of the unprovoked attack, and had simply fled as fast as I could away from the source of the laser fire, overworking and destroying my already damaged thrusters in the process. Perhaps it was the same ship, and it had come back to finish me off?

A small glimmer of hope started to build inside of me. Maybe it was just a passing ship, and had nothing to do with the attacks? I could hail it and get them to pick me up and take me to the nearest spaceport. Quickly and with rising hope, I lunged at the computer and opened all of the commonly used hailing frequencies.

I cleared my throat. "This is Waz with the Arcnodian survey company! My ship's been damaged and I need pickup immediately. If anybody is getting this, please respond!" I repeated the message several times, to no avail.

I stared forlornly at the screen. It seemed the mysterious ship wasn't interested in helping me out.

I sighed. It could be worse, I told myself.

My sensors picked up a large buildup of energy.

Klaxons started blaring.

A green light appeared on the front of the mysterious ship.

A bolt of green energy fired from the ship, streaking towards me. It impacted with the back of my ship, dispersing on my shields but sending my vessel careening off towards the planet. With an overwhelming brightness, the large black ship powered up its warp drives and disappeared in a flash of light as my own ship lit up with the light of itself burning up in the planet's atmosphere.

I couldn't see outside past the flames, and braced myself for impact. Without thrusters, there was nothing I could do to slow myself down, and even if I could I wouldn't want to. I would burn up if I stayed in here too long. Hell, I was likely to burn up anyways, and I was already traveling at thousands of miles an hour.

My vision returned as my ship slowed down, revealing the new world I was about to violently crash in to. In front of me, a mountain range protruded from the ground, and my current trajectory had me passing dangerously close to them. Between the mountains, I could see a sea of tall, brown structures, sporting dozens of smaller brown limbs, each of which held many flat green protrusions. I'd never seen anything like it before in all my life, and I would have marveled in the beauty of it all if I wasn't in the middle of a crash landing.

The mountains approached quickly and I instinctively went to my useless control panel and tried piloting my ship between the mountains. It was no good. The thrusters refused to cooperate, and my ship smashed nose-first into a mountain with an impact that ripped me out of my seat and launched me painfully into the front of my ship. The metal of my craft was tougher than the rock of the mountain, however. My ship continued on, gouging out a large hunk of rock and sending it falling to the ground below.

I barely had time to scream as my ship dove into the sea of green and brown and hit the planet. The front of my ship tore a rut into the ground as it slid, and the nose crumpled in on itself before completely tearing off. I was sent flying out of the new opening in the front of the ship, my fall ended by something hard and painful. With one last sharp pain on my head as I landed, I blacked out.

Things were worse.