[Bale, Wayward Cosmos – 2]

Jumping to the console on my left I threw off yet another clump of clothes and slammed my hand down hard on the big button I had painted red – it also had the word SHIT etched in sloppy paint in big bold letters to make it even that much more obvious.

Instantly the power dropped to 5%, which turned off all outside running lights, blacked out the inside illumination; it brought the engines completely down and even killed all non-essential subsystems throughout the ship. The only processes still running were the piloting consoles themselves and life-support. It took me more than a month to wire all those components together into one spot but damn if it wasn’t handy. That single button basically set me adrift in space.

I sat in the pitch black for what seemed an eternity staring at the display which showed the really big blip (them) coming toward the very small blip in the middle of the screen (me). The sudden silence was deafening, a stark contrast to the usual hum of the ship’s systems. The air felt cooler, almost stagnant, as the non-essential systems shut down, and a subtle weightlessness settled in my gut.

I realized after many minutes that I had jammed myself almost completely under the console in an awkward and now very uncomfortable position, peering up through my hands at the blips. It wasn’t like they could have seen me or even heard me inside my ship, I’m pretty sure anyway, but I never took the chance – I couldn’t help but turtle up and physically hide any time this kind of thing happened. Well not any time… I mean there was that one time I was just too overwhelmed with excitement at the concept of non-human communication that I threw caution the middle finger and attempted contact with the outside.

Just the thought of that encounter now so many years ago made me shut my eyes, and squeeze a few more inches under the console.

With my eyes closed, attempting to escape reality, I could see that odd ship like it was yesterday, all shimmery in space. I mean it seriously glinted or glimmered as if it wasn’t really completely visible to the eye through my exterior camera array or the onboard sensors. At first I wasn’t even sure it was really out there or if it was some kind of ghost ship or some such nonsense. I remember hitting reply on the communications relay, which broadcasts out some sort of genericized stream of simplified bytes that represents something like a happy welcome message – that was my first mistake – one I’ve never repeated.

Then I heard it, or was that just my imagination running wild because I was thinking back to that initial encounter or was it really…? Then I heard the audible hail alert again and saw through the darkness that hated green light blinking on the far right communications console.

“Oh shit, they’re broadcasting…