Night Terrors 10 - Castor and Pollux
(Second Draft)
Two men seemingly for now, sitting in chairs aboard a space vessel, each of them is facing forward in a vessel traveling through empty outer space. A silver ink fills their eyes and they sit lifeless syncopated communication system that displays their cybernetic statistics at a panel on the nearby wall with a manufacturer’s logo on it with the letters RKNSK. They move little but speak aloud as their ship slowly approaches a planet only a small blue dot for the time being, called Earth. A reverent connection to electronic communication denoted by the same color silver radiantly glowing from a panel on the device matching yet brighter than their eyes.
Castor: “Stop wasting ammo, sweepers!”
Pollux: “I see them, shut up.”
Castor: “Move or we'll lose them.”
Telemetry radar shows the significance of a disturbance leaving the planet, a large mass at high velocity. The sounds of a traveler's duress begin to sound with stern alarums and Castor lifts his arms and disconnects from the radio connection the chair provides, the panel of glowing silver be half lit now only indicating the other connection, as the silver drains from his eyes internally. A large toxic garbage island in flight leaves the atmosphere of the planet losing debris and remnant composition no longer the need or lost from essential position aboard the ship a burdening weight as the once putrid and partially dissolving heap freezes and solidifies in the cold of the stratus.
Pollux: “Where are you going?”
Castor: “Take the fucking glasses off.”
Pollux: “Sync in and make me.”
Castor: “Pollux we're taking damage.”
Pollux: “How is that possible?”
Castor: “Obviously it’s from this big fucking thing, get over here!”
They arose to the same view, the moon set aside, the mass half the size of Lunar Colony but many times more than their conveyance, drifting directly toward them using a blue beam of searching light and large panels of its propulsion engines slowly pushing the garbage craft afore from aft. Sprawling tentacles of crawling vines strung and flung from barbed arrows jetty into the void to spear the vessel of the brothers of Gemini. One of the lines strikes their vessel piercing the reflective solar panel hull, throwing them from their chairs. In wretched confusion, the protocol of buttons three in all on the console pressed, the stricken panel dejects from connection to the ship discarding the harpoon, and their spaceship breaks loose of the ship now burning and blasting into the deep.
The Gemini ship begins to glow, burning in the atmosphere, a pyre of fire falling from the clouds with great momentum, spinning to fast to turn or control. Within the cabin, Castor uses an override that forces a manual control system to unfold from the console, the ship now a barreling fire he cuts the airstream, aims to avert an abrupt landing and sounds the final prayer. In collision, lopped is the tiny ship to the ground, and after sliding towards a halt, crashes into a car dealership at the edge of the high desert, tearing through several vehicles of inferior quality, reducing them to trash and adding no more damage to the ship than the impact has caused. Circuits shorting, wires flaring, panel controls frying and dying on the ship and Pollux, like the outer hull of the ship, both have a lengthy tear, a slash where the inside shows for the external. Both were punished the same, Pollux no different from the ship had no blood, only fuel, no veins and nerves only wires to view.
As the scorn ship slowly dies, so doth Pollux, his wires wilting as plants in the sunlight. Castor quickly inspects himself and then moves the debris blockade to find his brother in disarray. Pollux swats at the panels out of reach in desperation, beyond being pinned batteries and diodes having fallen from a cabinet are still beyond grasp, but Pollux is there to save the day. In the moments of a breath, Pollux pulls a panel from his pocket beneath his shirt and attaches it to one of the many boxes scattered from within the closet, he pulls a handful of wires from the guts of his brother, and the tension causes anguish but soon ends. Pollux's eyes close and the wires pulled crawl like morning vines to the thin device. The unit becomes a mobile emitter, as the body of Pollux soon turns lifeless and dark.
Pollux: “Am I dead?”
Castor: “We'll see…, it's well damaged.”
Pollux: “And you?”
Castor: “I could be better.”
Castor briefly surveys his own condition and then connects to one of the panel boxes from the cargo and drains the energy from one of the units, the external battery drains into the device as a panel light slowly fades. Lifting his shirt to view his wound an open slit in his skin reveals multiple severed wires sliding across the opening to form a new mesh, before lowering the shirt again. He puts the device that is now Pollux in an inner pocket of his shirt where it had originated followed by a sound of a pneumatic pump and then a latch.
Out into the crash site there is havoc, strewn twisted metal, crushed broken cars in flames across, tossed across the road the sign of the tawdry times trailing the bare components of what is now a wasted vessel, the missing panel burnt or missing panels and a decorative gash from end to end peeling from the edges. The gap is big enough to crawl through and it is so that Castor does, outside waits an angry business owner, ravaged by the crash, with tremendous contempt and a rifle weapon.
The man with the gun is inconspicuous and highly curious with several other peering over debris, but when Castor turns and notices him, they freeze. In dreadful wait, the man loses his comfort and shoots at the sign of Castor's first step. Castor peels a piece of the reddish-gold solar radiation panel from the debris of the ship and throws it while being shot a second time, into the man killing him instantly.
Pollux: “We just got here.”
Castor: “It had to be done… I'm damaged as it is.”
Castor walks into the business' building and then into the office, when he finds the surveillance system he places his hand on the equipment and it discontinues functioning. He then walks out into the sales floor. The safe door is closed but with a single swift spin of the combination dial, he halts the wheel and turns the unlocked handle, within a box of keys he takes them all and leaves the room. Employees huddling behind a desk cower as he passes them he stops and turns to the terrified.
Castor: “Before you become famous, search that ship.”
He gets into a pitch-covered car that is otherwise unscathed, tossing the invalid keys as he discovers each one that does not work, one by the next. Once the car starts, he drives it to the crashed spacecraft and turns-off the car. He steps out of the car leaving the door open, grabs his brother by the legs and drags him to the vehicle, only to throw him inside quite carelessly and back into the shuttle, he grabs a few personal effects with a quick survey and inventory and back to the black car.
Pollux: “Wait, stare at the ship...sorry needed to take a picture.”
Castor: “Remorse is for the dead.”
It is off for them into the desert, with his brother behind his eyes, sharing their life energy. Sure to turn open the windows and wave his hand over the receiver-radio, with a drop of a lead foot the vehicle dashes almost certainly in place as the wheels stress to take hold spinning in the desert dust and old gravel laden road before hauling fast into the dry mountains and desert fountains of rust.