Sam could feel the vibrations from the hull on every floor, through every wall, and through every object he touched; the lighting flickered constantly between the artificial white, infinite black and overwhelming red as the Nova Luna’s power continually shutdown and restarted.
The sensor array detected no activity outside the ship, and when he looked through the portal window, all he could see was the emptiness of space and the stars that filled it – it made no sense why the whole ship should be vibrating as it was.
He caught sight of his reflection in the mirror in his quarters again, the same, strange blank square in his eyes looking back at him; he looked closer, and suddenly realised what it was… a computer terminal viewport – he crossed his quarters through the alternating light show, to get to his viewport.
He sat, and managed to get the viewport powered up.
He read the text on the screen: ‘Nova Luna Life-Support inactive; Food and Recycling Systems inactive; Main and Secondary Sensors inactive; Defence Systems inactive; Semi-Automated Maintenance malfunctioning; Heat Shields and Door Systems inactive; Nova Luna.’
He stopped reading for a second to compose himself, before managing to read the final line: ‘Nova Luna wreckage discovered by the Nova Sunshine, scrap recovery attempt taking place, low traces of power still detected from Luna’s EternalCore, Total Shutdown Protocol initiated’; Sam slumped in his chair as the lights cycled through red to white to black for one last time, realising that by just a stroke of luck he’d survived far longer than he should have done.
Posted for Six Sentence Stories, where the prompt word this week is ‘Stroke’.
This is the final part of the Nova Luna story arc. We last visited Nova Luna here.
The Mansionic Perspective 
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