Bombardier
In the silence of space, the vast hulking shape of the spaceship slowed to a crawl, its engines pointed away. On the diplomatic deck, the governor of the rebellious planet began to make his speech. One about being pushed too far and that she tried all that she could in order to spare the people.
No doubt it would be a corker.
Deep in the bowels of the ship, however, Timnos crawled over wires and ducts, cursing as each move forward brought another stab at his hands. He was currently in the ceiling of the primary bomb bay hunting down a glitch in the deployment system.
Below him he could see the bombs through the grating. Long, sleek things painted black. A few lights blinked along the bodies of the bomb. Red. Ominous. Well, bombardiers didn’t get a chance to think about what they were doing. If they did, they went mad.
Beneath the bombs was the membrane, a thin goop that stretched over the bomb bay, keeping the vacuum of space out. When the bombs dropped, they would tear through and fall into the planet below, exterminating all life on it.
Timnos shook his head and buried himself back in the wires. Don’t think about it. His hand-held computer scanned the nearby computers but kept coming up blank.
No. Check. Crawl. No.
He was deep in the wires then. Finding the glitch meant he could go to the ship’s bar and drown his memory. Forget who he was until the ship was back in port.
“Where are you, you stupid bastard.” Still nothing.
Further and further he crawled. He wasn’t sure where he was anymore. Somewhere up above him there was a speech that would be recorded for posterity. His role would be forgotten. As well it should be.
His computer pinged. “Gotcha.” The problem turned out to be a small nick in a wire between two targeting computers. Timnos replaced it with the deft hands of an experienced bombardier.
Once he had, he pressed a little button on his computer. The screen when green.
A moment later he heard a horrible clunk. He looked down. The bombs were falling.
They ripped through the membrane, falling to the defenseless planet below, bringing the vacuum of space into the bomb bay. Timnos choked in the crawl space. A moment later he died, the first death in the extinction he had caused.
His body was never recovered.
Michael Frutig 