The Final Battle

by Anna Wu

  Chapter 30: Stranded

  Sheen's rocket spun out of control as its nose was crumpled like a ball of paper by the asteroid. "Mayday! Mayday!" Sheen screamed while frantically turning his rocket's steering wheel. He tried to change his direction, but his thrusters were permanently bent downwards. They continued to push Sheen downwards as small asteroids continued to pound him and take pieces of his hull with them.

  He continued falling downwards when he tried to turn off his thrusters. They didn't respond to that, either. "Come on!" He pleaded while slamming his fist into the dashboard. He continued pressing buttons and spinning dials. After several chaotic seconds, the thrusters reduced their power, but not enough to stop Sheen from continuing to spiral to the black depths below him.

  Sheen gave up on the thrusters and went back to steering. "Anyone! Does anyone read me?" He asked. "Libby? Jimmy?" he begged while asteroids continued to slam into him. Several more rocks struck his windshield, spreading cracks across it like a spider spinning a web.

  He looked out the windshield and saw an asteroid beneath him, and the gap between him and the rock was closing fast. He tried to pull up, but his rocket was slow and unresponsive. He closed his eyes and braced himself for the imminent impact.

  Voices from his past swam through his head as Sheen slowly resumed consciousness. "God damn it, Jimmy, I can do this!" "I can do this!" "I can do this!" "You're not skilled enough." "You're not skilled enough."

  The voices immediately stopped when his eyes slowly and painfully fluttered open. He tried to move his head, but let out a weak moan of pain. Every single inch of his body ached. He felt dead. He lay there for several moments, scanning the area with his eyes. Ow.

  At long last, he gathered all of his fleeting strength and moved his arms. They felt like they had been hit with a sledgehammer and had iron weights tied onto them. He steadied himself and gave one hard push on the ground, but his hands slipped on the slippery rock beneath him.

  "Huh?" he quietly asked, still not understanding where he was or what was going on. He waited a moment and tried to push himself up again, this time succeeding. The world spun around him as he sat up for the first time.

  His eyes eerily shook inside their sockets as they tried to follow the swirling landscape in front of them. After what seemed like an eternity, the world settled in front of him and came into focus. He looked around him and saw that he was on an asteroid. Little Boy?

  Sheen quickly realized that this wasn't the asteroid that he had come to call home for the past three days. It was much smaller; it didn't extend past the horizon. It only appeared to be around two kilometers across. The ground was very rocky and bumpy, as opposed to the relatively flat terrain of Little Boy.

  Sheen looked down beneath him to see why the ground had been so slippery. "Ew," he muttered in disgust as he looked down at what he had been lying in. He had been resting in a puddle of vomit, blood, and spittle. He saw that his shirt was also covered with this eerie concoction, so he quickly took it off. He also wiped his face clean with his right arm.

  As he continued to sit down and get his strength back, he wondered where the rocket was. With great effort, he turned his head around. He saw the rocket around ten meters behind him. He let out a deep sigh and got to his feet.

  As soon as he stood up, his right knee immediately buckled and sent him crashing back onto the ground. Focus, Sheen. Focus and stay off of that leg. He stood up once more and shifted the bulk of his weight to his left foot. He managed to stand upright.

  "Ok, alright, doing good," he whispered while painfully limping towards the rocket. "Get to the stupid piece of metal and get back to the others." His hopes for an immediate return to his friends were dashed when he got a good look at the vehicle that had brought him to this desolate rock.

  His rocket had been a bumper car design. He could barely tell that from the wreckage, however. The unbreakable glass windshield that Cindy had prepared had indeed broken. Shards of glass littered the ground and the seat of the rocket. They sliced into the chair's cushions and let the foam flow out, like the blood from his numerous wounds.

  The reinforced plating that Cindy and Jimmy had made to cover each rocket's hull was almost completely torn off. Only a few squares of the metal were left intact. The majority of the hull itself had also been torn away, revealing the network of wires and the metal framework beneath. It was oddly menacing, reminding him of skin peeling away to show the bone and veins that lay just under the surface.

  Sheen let out a moan of pain as he bent down to get a look at the wires. Before he even got a good look, he had doubts that he could fix it. But even his optimistic nature was defeated when he saw the mess that lay in front of him. Several small rocks were lodged inside. Sparks were still flying from several frayed wires. Nearly everything was disconnected. The wires were like a heap of spaghetti now. There was no way that he could figure out where each one went.

  The cockpit of the rocket hadn't fared any better. The seat and floor were stained with blood and reeked of vomit. The steering wheel was torn off, probably floating around in space far above him. The tracking chip that Libby used to monitor their positions had been crushed by his head slamming into the dashboard. Not that that would help, he pessimistically thought. The signal would be blocked by the asteroid belt.

  He looked up to see hundreds of asteroids flying all around him. Little Boy had broken into several shards, but at least one of those shards was big enough to pull several smaller asteroids towards it with its gravity.

  The guns, he urgently thought. I hope they're around here somewhere. I need to give them back to Jimmy and Nick when they come to rescue me. He looked around at the debris that surrounded him, but found no sign of the guns or the bags that he had carried them in.

  He walked towards the back of the rocket, and finally saw the torn bags lying in the dirt. He knelt down beside them and looked them over. The bags themselves were torn beyond repair. They had gotten caught on shards of glass and metal on the rocket, and the rough, uneven terrain that they had landed on had ripped the remainder of the cloth.

  Sheen threw the strands of cloth out of his way and smiled at the cache of guns that lay beneath them. Nearly all of the guns and ammunition that he had packed were lying here and were intact. He suddenly felt a sharp pain biting into his ribs, and pulled the two boxes of ammo out of his pockets. He opened them up and smiled wider. The boxes themselves were dented beyond recognition, but the shells inside were fine.

  He looked in the back of his rocket again to see if there was anything else there. There was no food or water, only a few more tattered remains of the two bags.

  "It doesn't matter," he told himself while leaning against the rocket's steel frame and yawning. He was suddenly very tired. "They know I'm not with them, and they must know the rough location of where I crashed. They'll find me in no time," he whispered before slipping into unconsciousness once again.