章 168: ...And Down
"We are stuck here, then." said Mei. "If the shuttle is gone, and we can not fly back out of the celestial through the spaceport..."
I remained silent, watching the fires ahead, below, above and all around us inside the cylindrical city.
"What next?" asked Mei. "Do I just hover here in the cylinder's rotation axis?"
"I don't know." I said. "I have no good ideas right now."
"Well, have some good ideas soon then!" Mei said with fury. "I'm not dying here, not like this."
"Calm down." I said. "Fly ahead dead slow, maybe we can see something in the city that could be of use."
"People keeping spacecraft in their garage? I doubt it." Mei said. An unfamiliar voice joined us just then.
"May... I..."
Leonardo had started to stuggle again, hoping for help to escape from the instrumentation panel that crushed his lower body. Mei and I looked at each other for a moment before silently nodding at each other. We no longer had any hurry, and helping Leonardo seemed like the only good thing to do.
Mei put the spacecraft in stationkeeping mode to hold its position. We approached Leonardo and tried to push away the heavily damaged instrumentation panel, but the bent metal parts were too strong for us to nudge.
"Let's get rid of the seat instead." I suggested. "There should be some first aid and repair kits on every bridge."
"Th...here." Leonardo showed me the repair kit. I took some tools from the box and partially disassembled the copilot's seat, freeing him from the debris. Blood that was trapped in between was splattered everywhere, and now that his body was free from external pressure, he was bleeding far more rapidly. Now in front of us was a man with no legs attached to his body, a man barely awake despite all the pain he was experiencing.
"He needs help." I said. Mei stared at me as if I was being sarcastic. I sighed.
"I will take him to the ship's infirmary. While I'm away, you can take the ship and-"
Before I could even finish my sentence, Leonardo's muscles suddenly contracted in unison, and then slowly relaxed. He let out an alien sound, something very hard to describe. The bleeding started to slow down in time, and his eyes rolled to one side.
That was it. His blood loss was far too great - Leonardo was gone. Our help had only made his death quicker.
"Damn." I said. "If only we could-"
"What just happened has happened." Mei said. "Now, let's get back to saving others, including the two of us."
"For the love of... I know." I said. "I know, I know..."
"What would you like me to do now, then?" Mei asked. "We have unblocked the spaceport, yes, very nice accomplishment, but now we are just standing here!"
"I know that too, I just... I don't know!"
Many times in my life, I had to make the hard decisions for other people. In fact, as the last president of Mars and the first president of the humankind-in-exile (today's Solar Republic), I had made decisions that would affect not only the billions of Martian citizens, but the entire mankind. However, now, after many years of just sitting at home and being the average citizen, my leadership abilities were buried deep into the ancient, hidden parts of my brain. No matter how hard I tried, I could not come up with an answer to Mei.
I simply did not know what to do, even with my own life at stake.
I did not know.
But just then, as if it was a gift from the universe itself, I spotted something in the distance. A brownish dot flying off into the city, ahead of us.
"What is that?" I asked. "Follow that thing. Where is that thing going?"
"Follow what, exactly?" Mei asked.
"That dot in the distance." I said. "Do you not see that?"
"I see that now." she said. "That's a shuttle. Why would anyone be flying further into danger? If I was a citizen here and everything was on fire, if I could get to my shuttle I would just get the %!#@ out of here."
Despite not finding any meaning in it, Mei listened to me and started following the shuttle, closing the distance in slowly.
"It's changing course." I said. "Going slightly down."
"I can only go slightly down." Mei said. "You know that if we go too far down in this ship, the Coriolis effect will make short work of us and we will be going down until we meet the ground."
"I know." I said. "Only go slightly down."
The shuttle we were following made another turn and started heading towards some tall buildings.
"It's going for the government buildings." I said. "Why would it go for the government buildings?"
"Rescue the government?" Mei asked. "Or am I being way too smart?"
"I thought the government buildings were evacuated." I said. "Don't you remember that one woman who contacted us last minute?"
"The who?"
"Oh, right..." I said. "You were being treated in the infirmary back then. There was this woman who gave Tau Rubycon the authority over rescue efforts before being the last person to... make it out of the command center, I guess... Now I'm not very sure anym-"
Mei suddenly jerked the flight stick, causing the ship to suddenly change direction.
"Great." she said, gritting her teeth.
"What?"
"Well, turns out I got a bit too far down."
We had strayed too far away from the centerline of the cylinder in pursuit of the shuttle - now the Coriolis effect was strong enough to pull the ship down despite Mei's best efforts.
"Quick!" I said. "Turn the ship to fly in opposite direction to the city's spin! We might just reduce the artificial gravity effect if we-"
"I know, I'm trying!" she said. "It might be too late already! Brace for crash-landing!"
"Me-Mei, that's a building!"
"I know!"
"Mei, that's a bloody skyscraper!"
"I know!"
"Mei, why are you flying us towards it!?"
"I'm not!"
"Well it's coming this way!"
"OH GOD!"
"Rotate, rotate!"
The starboard side of Tau Rubycon impacted the top floors of a burning skyscraper, sending vibrations through the structure and raining debris to the neighborhood below. If anyone in the vicinity was still alive, they could be unfortunate enough to get hit by rocks, glass and metal from the sky.
"No choice!" Mei said just before Tau Rubycon plummeted down onto a nearby residential area, probably obliterating tens of houses across many streets.
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