More of "Art of Drowning"
Jan. 20th, 2007 11:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cinaedI am having way too much fun tormenting Radek in this. ...That probably makes me a bad person. Still, 6,000 words and not even close to finishing, heh.
“Zelenka and Griffin, come in. Zelenka, Griffin, please respond. Jumper Six, come in,” someone muttered in his ear, low and urgent.
The voice dragged Radek slowly but surely out of the darkness of unconsciousness, returning his senses to him one by one. It was only then that he realized he was on the floor, its coolness permeating his jacket and chilling his back. Opening his eyes, he squinted at the ceiling, vaguely recalling Griffin’s order to brace for impact but not much after that.
His glasses were on the floor alongside him, luckily within arms length, though when he slid them back onto his nose, he realized that they’d been bent during impact and now hung crookedly on his face.
“Zelenka and Griffin, come in,” the voice repeated, and this time Radek recognized Rod’s voice. “Zelenka, Griffin—”
“W-we’re here,” Radek said. His temple throbbed, a dull, steady ache, and when he touched the spot, his fingers came away bloody.
“Radek! Thank God!” Rod breathed out, and Radek tried to think of when he’d ever heard the other man sound so relieved. “I thought you were— We all thought you— I've been trying to get ahold of you for over an hour.”
An hour? Radek struggled to stand, biting back a sharp sound of pain when his head spun. The throbbing increased tenfold even as he swayed on his feet and made his way to Griffin, who was sprawled over the console. His hand fluttered uncertainly in the air for a moment, then he touched the back of the other man’s neck, the skin moist and cool beneath his fingertips. “Are, are you all right?”
Griffin was motionless under his touch for a long, terrifying second, and then he twitched and groaned, muttering a feeble, “Not so good.”
“Are you both okay?”
“No,” Radek said bitterly, struggling to help Griffin lean back in his chair, the man’s frame mostly deadweight as the pilot groaned quietly under his breath. “No, we are definitely not okay, not with possible concussions. What happened?”
“The Jumper you were flying dropped off our screens. It crashed into the ocean,” Rod informed him, and there was an odd gentleness to his voice that had Radek instinctively bristling and rolling his eyes.
“Yes, of course, I understood that much, Rod, we—” He looked up, caught sight of the world beyond the windshield, and froze for a moment, the same terror from earlier tightening its grip on his throat. “We—we are underwater.” His voice shook, despite his best intentions.
“Yes, you are,” Rod said in the same gentle tone, and if he had been here in the Jumper, Radek would have glared at him for being condescending, for speaking to him like he was a terrified child— well, he certainly would have glared while desperately trying not to vomit from sheer terror.
“How—how will you find us? How can you find us?”
“We've determined the direction of your radio signal, but not the range.”
Radek stared at the ocean just outside the windshield, swallowing hard even while he reached down to grab his computer tablet from where it had fallen to the floor. “How deep are we?” he asked, not certain if he really wanted to know, and then flinched as the H.U.D. suddenly flickered to life.
“One two zero zero and falling,” Griffin reported.
He resisted the urge to swear, softly and fervently, under his breath, because there was no time, not now, for profanity. Later, later he would curse all he wished. “Rod, you will have to hurry it up. We are already twelve hundred feet deep and sinking at a rate of about, ah—” He paused, struggled to work through the math despite the pounding of his head. “—about twenty feet a minute.”
“Impressive,” came the muttered response.
“Excuse me?” Radek snarled, because it was not impressive, it was fucking terrifying. “I know you must be pleased that your theory that the Jumpers could be utilized as submersibles seems to be correct, but now is not the time—”
“I know, I know. Still, twelve hundred feet. That’s almost the maximum depth of a nuclear powered submarine. It’s—”
“Right now, I couldn’t care less, Rod,” Radek said through gritted teeth. “My head hurts, and we are sinking, so if you would stop gloating and just—”
The H.U.D. flickered ominously, and then a loud splintering sound made Radek’s heart jackknife, flutter wildly in his chest, and he could only stare in horror as the H.U.D. died and a crack appeared at the top of the windshield, a crack which rapidly spread downwards.
“That’s a problem,” Griffin muttered beside him, and Radek reached down to help him out of the chair on pure instinct, listing sideways under the pilot’s weight when Griffin lurched to his feet, one arm slung around Radek’s shoulder for support.
“Can you move?” he asked, still listing a little to the side, unable to tear his gaze away from the ever-widening crack on the windshield, much like a man might stare at an oncoming train he had no hope of avoiding.
“Yeah,” Griffin assured him.
“Rod,” Radek said, and he no longer cared that his voice was almost shrill with fear, that he could in fact taste the fear, thick and sour, in the back of his throat, as he said, “Rod, the windshield is giving way under the pressure of the ocean.”
He and Griffin had just staggered into the rear compartment when Rod’s voice came, urgent but calm, over the communications link. “Move into the rear compartment—the seal should be able to hold.”
“One step ahead of you, McKay,” Radek said, feeling a desperate, petty satisfaction at that, that for once he had had an idea before Rod. He jabbed at the button that would close the bulkhead doors, keep them safe, and then stared in a mixture of incredulity and horror as the mechanism made a complaining, grinding noise and the doors refused to close. “No, no!”
He pushed the button again, and again, muttering, “Ne, ne, ne, ne,” in something akin to a whimper under his breath before he bolted to another panel, further back in the rear compartment.
“The crash probably damaged all sorts of systems,” Griffin said, but Radek couldn’t spare a glance for him, too busy clutching at the panel like a drowning man—oh God, oh God, they were going to drown—and frantically pressing buttons, searching for one that would close the bulkhead doors.
“Jezisi, prosím, prosím,” he muttered, the panicked Czech spilling from his lips as he finally glanced over at Griffin and watched the other man press the button to shut the bulkhead doors as though maybe the sixth or seventh time was the charm. “It is no use, it is too late,” he said, and his voice cracked on the final word, because this was not how it was supposed to end, not from an accident during a simple test flight, not in a sinking Jumper—
“I’ve got an idea,” Griffin said, and half-stumbled, half-ran back into the front section as Radek stared after him.
“What are you doing?”
Griffin turned a little at that, flashed him a grim half-smile. “Good luck, Radek.”
“Good l—” The words died on his lips as Griffin slid onto the pilot’s seat and the bulkhead doors began closing. Moving towards the front compartment on autopilot, eyes on the other man’s back rather than the ever-widening crack on the windshield, he snapped, “Griffin! What are you—Griffin!”
The bulkhead doors closed just before Radek could get to them and he pounded on them with his free hand, ignoring the way the impact sent dull, throbbing pain shooting up his arm. “Griffin! Griff—” He heard the glass shatter, the sound like an explosion, and then water, all that water rushing into the front compartment, where Griffin—
Radek closed his eyes, pressed his forehead to the cool metal of the bulkhead doors, listened as the sound of rushing water quieted and a deadly silence fell.
“Why did you do that?” he whispered as the quiet stretched on, voice cracking halfway through. “Why did you do that?” His throat felt raw, as though he’d been screaming for hours rather than a handful of minutes, and even his bones ached. At last, Radek took a step away from the bulkhead doors and rubbed wearily at his face, feeling the wet, terrible mixture of blood and tears against his skin and staring at his blood-smeared fingers for a long, long moment.
Then he took a deep breath and forced out words past the lump of despair in his throat, a steady stream of babbled words until his voice steadied and he could speak to Rod without humiliating himself. “So, you are in a sinking Jumper, thousands of feet under water. This is the Pegasus Galaxy. You had to know you’d find yourself in mortal peril every so often, and, and you should be grateful that Pegasus only seems fit to remind you of your own mortality once a year. First the nanites, and now this, and, and perhaps next year you will be captured by angry natives who want to sacrifice you to the Ancients and Atlantis will have to save you.” He paused, a weak, half-hysterical laugh bubbling up from his chest at that. “Perhaps, perhaps you shouldn’t give Pegasus ideas. But you will be fine. Rod will think of something. He always does.”
Taking a deep breath, he squared his shoulders, activated his headset. “McKay.” There was silence, and he waited for a one-two-three-four beat before he cleared his throat and tried again. “Rod? It’s Radek, come in please. Rod?”
The silence deepened, darkened, wrapped tendrils of despair around his heart and squeezed anaconda-tight as Rod still didn’t respond.
“Rod?” he repeated, desperation coloring his voice now, and when there was still no reply, felt panic well even as common sense reared its ugly head. “Of course. The radio transmitter is in the forward section. Which is now flooded with water. Which means that you have no way to contact the surface, which means that they have no way to triangulate your position.” He paused as his voice wavered, turned timorous. “Pegasus is just making this ordeal interesting. You thought you were dead during the nanite incident, didn’t you? But things turned out fine—well, not for Dumais and the others, but you, you were fine. And you're not dead yet.”
He took a deep breath, tried to ignore the anxious flutter of his heart and the throbbing of the cut on his forehead, which felt like it was still bleeding. “Okay, you can fix this problem—you just need to, to work one step at a time. Now, you need some light, so—”
The computer tablet which he’d been using earlier was still tucked under one arm, glowing faintly. He could the tablet as a flashlight. Rummaging around, using the feeble light and squinting into the murky darkness, Radek couldn’t quite help the relieved, “Yes!” that escaped his lips when his hand closed around the familiar shape of a flashlight. He turned it on, blinking as the brighter light temporarily blinded him, and then gazed around the compartment. Now, to save himself….
There were more flashlights, and he arranged them around the compartment, thanking God and Marshall Sumner that the military commander had insisted on emergency kits even on test flights.
Putting plaster on his wound was painful and took a minute or two, a few mumbled curses escaping his lips as he put pressure on the cut, but it wouldn’t do for him to bleed—albeit sluggishly—to death while awaiting rescue.
The Jumper gave a soft, almost unhappy groan, creaking dangerously, and Radek shivered, the same terror returning that had roiled his stomach and made sweat break out on the back of his neck, and he couldn’t help but run the numbers through his mind. He was dropping twenty feet a minute, and pressure increased by one atmosphere every thirty-three feet, so that was an additional atmosphere every minute and a half. Which meant Radek was currently under thirty-seven atmospheres' worth of pressure, and counting.
“I have to slow down,” he muttered, forcing his nerveless legs to move over to the other side of the compartment, where he activated an open panel of crystals. “Just—I need to stop sinking.” He touched one of the crystals, which was cool and smooth under his trembling fingers, and then paused. “Wait, wait, I should send a message first.”
Radek glanced around, frowning. “Check and see if you can get the—the radio transmitter up and running. They can't find you if you can't tell them where you are, after all.” He probably shouldn’t still be talking aloud, to himself, not when he was alone in the Jumper—in the back of the Jumper, but it was almost comforting to hear a voice, even if it was his own.
“Come on, Zelenka, prioritize!” he muttered to himself, and then spied the proper cable, grabbed the clip-end, and attached the clip to a crystal on another panel. “There we go. There, right. So—” He attached the other end to his computer tablet, smiling in relief.
The tablet flashed JUMPER INTERFACE ACTIVATED and Radek resisted the urge to sigh, settling for a pleased, “There we are.” He sat down, giving his still-wobbly legs a rest, and frowned thoughtfully at the screen. “So, tell me, how is our radio transmitter?”
TRANSMITTER INACTIVE, the tablet reported, after a few taps to the screen.
“Yes, yes, I know that, so let us activate the emergency transmitter protocol, shall we?” Radek pressed the screen again and smiled at the EMERGENCY TRANSMITTER ACTIVE that appeared on the screen. “Excellent, excellent, so now we’re broadcasting a signal. All it needs to do is penetrate fourteen hundred feet of ocean—” Which meant that a grand total of three percent of the signal would reach the surface.
He cleared his throat, ignored the dismay that clenched his stomach. “So I must boost, boost the signal. That won’t be, ah, difficult.” Frowning at the screen, a thought occurred to him. “How much power have we got to work with here?”
REMAINING POWER AT LEVEL OF USE: 3:05.
“Three hours,” Radek repeated flatly. “Three hours, and you expect me to— What is eating my power? I am working with flashlights here!” He scowled at the tablet, skimmed the facts on the screen, and rolled his eyes. “Inertial dampeners are active? Why? I don’t need them.”
Plugging in the command to shut down the inertial dampeners, he stared at the response of ACTION NOT POSSIBLE AT THIS TIME. “Ne, ne, come on! They are draining what little power I have left! Turn off!”
He typed in the same command again and growled as the tablet beeped angrily back, snarling aloud, “You do not need inertial dampeners while you sink, you—” No, no, later he would yell at the pointlessness of having inertial dampeners while sinking. Right now, he needed to keep his priorities straight, and that was to bully the tablet into shutting down inertial dampeners.
ACTION NOT POSSIBLE AT THIS TIME, the tablet repeated once more, still beeping irritably.
He raised the tablet up and snapped at it, “You are a piece of junk!” even as he shook it. “I am going to die if you don’t—they will not be able to find me in three—” The earlier despair was returning, wrapping tendrils around his heart and throat, and he muttered bleakly, “Jezisi, I am going to die.”
“Zelenka and Griffin, come in. Zelenka, Griffin, please respond. Jumper Six, come in,” someone muttered in his ear, low and urgent.
The voice dragged Radek slowly but surely out of the darkness of unconsciousness, returning his senses to him one by one. It was only then that he realized he was on the floor, its coolness permeating his jacket and chilling his back. Opening his eyes, he squinted at the ceiling, vaguely recalling Griffin’s order to brace for impact but not much after that.
His glasses were on the floor alongside him, luckily within arms length, though when he slid them back onto his nose, he realized that they’d been bent during impact and now hung crookedly on his face.
“Zelenka and Griffin, come in,” the voice repeated, and this time Radek recognized Rod’s voice. “Zelenka, Griffin—”
“W-we’re here,” Radek said. His temple throbbed, a dull, steady ache, and when he touched the spot, his fingers came away bloody.
“Radek! Thank God!” Rod breathed out, and Radek tried to think of when he’d ever heard the other man sound so relieved. “I thought you were— We all thought you— I've been trying to get ahold of you for over an hour.”
An hour? Radek struggled to stand, biting back a sharp sound of pain when his head spun. The throbbing increased tenfold even as he swayed on his feet and made his way to Griffin, who was sprawled over the console. His hand fluttered uncertainly in the air for a moment, then he touched the back of the other man’s neck, the skin moist and cool beneath his fingertips. “Are, are you all right?”
Griffin was motionless under his touch for a long, terrifying second, and then he twitched and groaned, muttering a feeble, “Not so good.”
“Are you both okay?”
“No,” Radek said bitterly, struggling to help Griffin lean back in his chair, the man’s frame mostly deadweight as the pilot groaned quietly under his breath. “No, we are definitely not okay, not with possible concussions. What happened?”
“The Jumper you were flying dropped off our screens. It crashed into the ocean,” Rod informed him, and there was an odd gentleness to his voice that had Radek instinctively bristling and rolling his eyes.
“Yes, of course, I understood that much, Rod, we—” He looked up, caught sight of the world beyond the windshield, and froze for a moment, the same terror from earlier tightening its grip on his throat. “We—we are underwater.” His voice shook, despite his best intentions.
“Yes, you are,” Rod said in the same gentle tone, and if he had been here in the Jumper, Radek would have glared at him for being condescending, for speaking to him like he was a terrified child— well, he certainly would have glared while desperately trying not to vomit from sheer terror.
“How—how will you find us? How can you find us?”
“We've determined the direction of your radio signal, but not the range.”
Radek stared at the ocean just outside the windshield, swallowing hard even while he reached down to grab his computer tablet from where it had fallen to the floor. “How deep are we?” he asked, not certain if he really wanted to know, and then flinched as the H.U.D. suddenly flickered to life.
“One two zero zero and falling,” Griffin reported.
He resisted the urge to swear, softly and fervently, under his breath, because there was no time, not now, for profanity. Later, later he would curse all he wished. “Rod, you will have to hurry it up. We are already twelve hundred feet deep and sinking at a rate of about, ah—” He paused, struggled to work through the math despite the pounding of his head. “—about twenty feet a minute.”
“Impressive,” came the muttered response.
“Excuse me?” Radek snarled, because it was not impressive, it was fucking terrifying. “I know you must be pleased that your theory that the Jumpers could be utilized as submersibles seems to be correct, but now is not the time—”
“I know, I know. Still, twelve hundred feet. That’s almost the maximum depth of a nuclear powered submarine. It’s—”
“Right now, I couldn’t care less, Rod,” Radek said through gritted teeth. “My head hurts, and we are sinking, so if you would stop gloating and just—”
The H.U.D. flickered ominously, and then a loud splintering sound made Radek’s heart jackknife, flutter wildly in his chest, and he could only stare in horror as the H.U.D. died and a crack appeared at the top of the windshield, a crack which rapidly spread downwards.
“That’s a problem,” Griffin muttered beside him, and Radek reached down to help him out of the chair on pure instinct, listing sideways under the pilot’s weight when Griffin lurched to his feet, one arm slung around Radek’s shoulder for support.
“Can you move?” he asked, still listing a little to the side, unable to tear his gaze away from the ever-widening crack on the windshield, much like a man might stare at an oncoming train he had no hope of avoiding.
“Yeah,” Griffin assured him.
“Rod,” Radek said, and he no longer cared that his voice was almost shrill with fear, that he could in fact taste the fear, thick and sour, in the back of his throat, as he said, “Rod, the windshield is giving way under the pressure of the ocean.”
He and Griffin had just staggered into the rear compartment when Rod’s voice came, urgent but calm, over the communications link. “Move into the rear compartment—the seal should be able to hold.”
“One step ahead of you, McKay,” Radek said, feeling a desperate, petty satisfaction at that, that for once he had had an idea before Rod. He jabbed at the button that would close the bulkhead doors, keep them safe, and then stared in a mixture of incredulity and horror as the mechanism made a complaining, grinding noise and the doors refused to close. “No, no!”
He pushed the button again, and again, muttering, “Ne, ne, ne, ne,” in something akin to a whimper under his breath before he bolted to another panel, further back in the rear compartment.
“The crash probably damaged all sorts of systems,” Griffin said, but Radek couldn’t spare a glance for him, too busy clutching at the panel like a drowning man—oh God, oh God, they were going to drown—and frantically pressing buttons, searching for one that would close the bulkhead doors.
“Jezisi, prosím, prosím,” he muttered, the panicked Czech spilling from his lips as he finally glanced over at Griffin and watched the other man press the button to shut the bulkhead doors as though maybe the sixth or seventh time was the charm. “It is no use, it is too late,” he said, and his voice cracked on the final word, because this was not how it was supposed to end, not from an accident during a simple test flight, not in a sinking Jumper—
“I’ve got an idea,” Griffin said, and half-stumbled, half-ran back into the front section as Radek stared after him.
“What are you doing?”
Griffin turned a little at that, flashed him a grim half-smile. “Good luck, Radek.”
“Good l—” The words died on his lips as Griffin slid onto the pilot’s seat and the bulkhead doors began closing. Moving towards the front compartment on autopilot, eyes on the other man’s back rather than the ever-widening crack on the windshield, he snapped, “Griffin! What are you—Griffin!”
The bulkhead doors closed just before Radek could get to them and he pounded on them with his free hand, ignoring the way the impact sent dull, throbbing pain shooting up his arm. “Griffin! Griff—” He heard the glass shatter, the sound like an explosion, and then water, all that water rushing into the front compartment, where Griffin—
Radek closed his eyes, pressed his forehead to the cool metal of the bulkhead doors, listened as the sound of rushing water quieted and a deadly silence fell.
“Why did you do that?” he whispered as the quiet stretched on, voice cracking halfway through. “Why did you do that?” His throat felt raw, as though he’d been screaming for hours rather than a handful of minutes, and even his bones ached. At last, Radek took a step away from the bulkhead doors and rubbed wearily at his face, feeling the wet, terrible mixture of blood and tears against his skin and staring at his blood-smeared fingers for a long, long moment.
Then he took a deep breath and forced out words past the lump of despair in his throat, a steady stream of babbled words until his voice steadied and he could speak to Rod without humiliating himself. “So, you are in a sinking Jumper, thousands of feet under water. This is the Pegasus Galaxy. You had to know you’d find yourself in mortal peril every so often, and, and you should be grateful that Pegasus only seems fit to remind you of your own mortality once a year. First the nanites, and now this, and, and perhaps next year you will be captured by angry natives who want to sacrifice you to the Ancients and Atlantis will have to save you.” He paused, a weak, half-hysterical laugh bubbling up from his chest at that. “Perhaps, perhaps you shouldn’t give Pegasus ideas. But you will be fine. Rod will think of something. He always does.”
Taking a deep breath, he squared his shoulders, activated his headset. “McKay.” There was silence, and he waited for a one-two-three-four beat before he cleared his throat and tried again. “Rod? It’s Radek, come in please. Rod?”
The silence deepened, darkened, wrapped tendrils of despair around his heart and squeezed anaconda-tight as Rod still didn’t respond.
“Rod?” he repeated, desperation coloring his voice now, and when there was still no reply, felt panic well even as common sense reared its ugly head. “Of course. The radio transmitter is in the forward section. Which is now flooded with water. Which means that you have no way to contact the surface, which means that they have no way to triangulate your position.” He paused as his voice wavered, turned timorous. “Pegasus is just making this ordeal interesting. You thought you were dead during the nanite incident, didn’t you? But things turned out fine—well, not for Dumais and the others, but you, you were fine. And you're not dead yet.”
He took a deep breath, tried to ignore the anxious flutter of his heart and the throbbing of the cut on his forehead, which felt like it was still bleeding. “Okay, you can fix this problem—you just need to, to work one step at a time. Now, you need some light, so—”
The computer tablet which he’d been using earlier was still tucked under one arm, glowing faintly. He could the tablet as a flashlight. Rummaging around, using the feeble light and squinting into the murky darkness, Radek couldn’t quite help the relieved, “Yes!” that escaped his lips when his hand closed around the familiar shape of a flashlight. He turned it on, blinking as the brighter light temporarily blinded him, and then gazed around the compartment. Now, to save himself….
There were more flashlights, and he arranged them around the compartment, thanking God and Marshall Sumner that the military commander had insisted on emergency kits even on test flights.
Putting plaster on his wound was painful and took a minute or two, a few mumbled curses escaping his lips as he put pressure on the cut, but it wouldn’t do for him to bleed—albeit sluggishly—to death while awaiting rescue.
The Jumper gave a soft, almost unhappy groan, creaking dangerously, and Radek shivered, the same terror returning that had roiled his stomach and made sweat break out on the back of his neck, and he couldn’t help but run the numbers through his mind. He was dropping twenty feet a minute, and pressure increased by one atmosphere every thirty-three feet, so that was an additional atmosphere every minute and a half. Which meant Radek was currently under thirty-seven atmospheres' worth of pressure, and counting.
“I have to slow down,” he muttered, forcing his nerveless legs to move over to the other side of the compartment, where he activated an open panel of crystals. “Just—I need to stop sinking.” He touched one of the crystals, which was cool and smooth under his trembling fingers, and then paused. “Wait, wait, I should send a message first.”
Radek glanced around, frowning. “Check and see if you can get the—the radio transmitter up and running. They can't find you if you can't tell them where you are, after all.” He probably shouldn’t still be talking aloud, to himself, not when he was alone in the Jumper—in the back of the Jumper, but it was almost comforting to hear a voice, even if it was his own.
“Come on, Zelenka, prioritize!” he muttered to himself, and then spied the proper cable, grabbed the clip-end, and attached the clip to a crystal on another panel. “There we go. There, right. So—” He attached the other end to his computer tablet, smiling in relief.
The tablet flashed JUMPER INTERFACE ACTIVATED and Radek resisted the urge to sigh, settling for a pleased, “There we are.” He sat down, giving his still-wobbly legs a rest, and frowned thoughtfully at the screen. “So, tell me, how is our radio transmitter?”
TRANSMITTER INACTIVE, the tablet reported, after a few taps to the screen.
“Yes, yes, I know that, so let us activate the emergency transmitter protocol, shall we?” Radek pressed the screen again and smiled at the EMERGENCY TRANSMITTER ACTIVE that appeared on the screen. “Excellent, excellent, so now we’re broadcasting a signal. All it needs to do is penetrate fourteen hundred feet of ocean—” Which meant that a grand total of three percent of the signal would reach the surface.
He cleared his throat, ignored the dismay that clenched his stomach. “So I must boost, boost the signal. That won’t be, ah, difficult.” Frowning at the screen, a thought occurred to him. “How much power have we got to work with here?”
REMAINING POWER AT LEVEL OF USE: 3:05.
“Three hours,” Radek repeated flatly. “Three hours, and you expect me to— What is eating my power? I am working with flashlights here!” He scowled at the tablet, skimmed the facts on the screen, and rolled his eyes. “Inertial dampeners are active? Why? I don’t need them.”
Plugging in the command to shut down the inertial dampeners, he stared at the response of ACTION NOT POSSIBLE AT THIS TIME. “Ne, ne, come on! They are draining what little power I have left! Turn off!”
He typed in the same command again and growled as the tablet beeped angrily back, snarling aloud, “You do not need inertial dampeners while you sink, you—” No, no, later he would yell at the pointlessness of having inertial dampeners while sinking. Right now, he needed to keep his priorities straight, and that was to bully the tablet into shutting down inertial dampeners.
ACTION NOT POSSIBLE AT THIS TIME, the tablet repeated once more, still beeping irritably.
He raised the tablet up and snapped at it, “You are a piece of junk!” even as he shook it. “I am going to die if you don’t—they will not be able to find me in three—” The earlier despair was returning, wrapping tendrils around his heart and throat, and he muttered bleakly, “Jezisi, I am going to die.”
