I wrote a bunch of prompts you can read about the process here. This is one of them.
>Log date 2243>>
>Location>>>Confidential>>
>Status >>>Transmitting>>>>>
It’s funny but when you join up you think it’s going to be endless excitement and adventure, and sometimes it is, but what they don’t tell you is just how much time you’ll spend sitting around.
‘Hurry up and wait’ seemed to be the mantra most days once we’d finished basic training , and even with all of that down time there wasn’t much to see on Mars at all so when we were posted to the Orion system everyone couldn’t wait to get star side.
We were stationed about five hundred thousand miles off of Rigel because it was a known dropping in point for the Confederacy, and brass figured that it was best to wait for them and hit them as soon as they dropped out of faster-than-light. What Brass didn’t figure though was that they had the drop on us and when we dropped out they were already there waiting for us with most of their fleet.
They say your training just kicks in instinctively when it needs to but you know, I remember the klaxon’s sounding shrill as we scrambled across the deck and seeing the Aspidistra getting torn to shreds through the hanger doors, and I wanted to be anywhere else. Jenson didn’t even make it much beyond the main hanger when a Fed ship took him out and most of the lads didn’t suffer much better.
I took a few of them out before I ran out of ammo but they were all over us because nothing had prepared us for just how ferocious and desperate they were. Picking us off one by one they didn’t seem to have any regard for their own lives and they just wanted us dead. All forward vessels were taken out within the first few minutes and those of us that scrambled were no match for them.
I was left drifting when my main power drive took a hit and I guess I was lucky because I was dead to rights but just slowly drifted beyond the carnage. With my comms down and only life support ticking over I watched as a huge nova bomb took out the main attack carriers of the Foreshadowing and the Callista. In the silence of space they simply evaporated into a billion shards of pulsating light and in a blink of an eye 15000 lives were lost.
I think it’s been five solar cycles since I saw the last of the explosions, time escapes you when you’re drifting through nothingness, and I don’t think anyone is coming to find me. Power is low and there is less than a few hours left in the reserve tanks.
I’m not sure this will ever reach anyone, it probably won’t, but if it does then tell my folks I’m sorry I ddn’t write more often.
Status >>>Received>>>>>
Afterwards 