Merry Christmas Eve Eve everyone! I hope you are all having a wonderful day and are gearing up and ready to have a great Christmas! Here is my writing for the day!
Please leave your feedback, I would really appreciate it! If you have your own response to this prompt, feel free to share it! If you like what you are reading here, check out my other writing exercises and my books!
Prompt: As a lonely astronaut, you crash land on a distant planet. Describe the planet.
Genre: Science Fiction
Source: 110+ Sci-Fi Writing Prompts (+ Generator) | Imagine Forest
Time Spent: 60 minutes
Word Count: 1687
Prompt: As a lonely astronaut, you crash land on a distant planet. Describe the planet.
Steph Granger forced herself to finish chewing the last, bland bite of the morning ration pack as soon as she heard the scanners on her vessel, the Singing Sparrow, notified her that she was approaching her next destination. She knew there was no great hurry, so drank a little water, made sure all her recreational gear was stowed properly, the rest of the cardboard food try put in the recycler.
The best way to describe her mode as she slowly sauntered her way down the short corridor and through a hatchway to reach the controls of her ship, would be boredom. She had jumped at the contract offered by the Earth Senate to be an advanced scout of the Theta Sigma sector, but she had not reckoned on just how boring it would be, spending a week or two conducting scans of a planet, warp jumping to another, rinse and repeat and repeat and repeat. She reflected as she sat down, heavily, that she *really* should have taken her brother’s advice and hire at least one crewmember for this. It would have meant splitting some of the contract money, but it might have been worth it to relieve the loneliness she often felt.
She took a look at the data coming through from the warp sensors which told her that the planet she was approaching, thankfully the second to last of her assigned survey area, was terrestrial in nature, a little bigger than earth, but in the ‘goldilocks’ zone of the star, as far as long-range analysis could determine. She checked the scanners and tasked the jump computers to calculate how to exit warp space as near as possible to the planet’s gravity well. It took several moments of the computer to come up with the solution, with numerous factors such as relative speed, angle, and other considerations for returning to normal space.
The Jump Engine of the ‘Sparrow’ whined and vibrated the ship as it spun itself up for the jump. Once she set the sensors to their tasks and launched a few probes, she would need to do some maintenance on it before she jumped again. Finally, the computer provided its calculations, she approved them, and she set the system to make the jump.
The world seemed to freeze, for a moment, and there was a twin sensation of both being stretched out and also pressed hard against her chair, and everything seemed to blur. The Singing Sparrow would have seemed as if it had burst forth from a small hole in space itself. Several things happened at once.
A small power surge jolted the ship far more than it should have been and caused several of the computers to display errors and take time to reboot themselves. Multiple small ice and rock fragments of the planet’s large ring, hammered against the hull, rocking the ship further and causing a failure in one of the sub-light engines on the vessel, and the registers of the instruments said that this planet was unusually dense, despite only being approximately 7.3% larger than earth, it presented 27% greater mass.
On instinct, Steph switched her vessel to manual control and she began to wrestle with the ship to figure out how to achieve and maintain a stable orbit. This was nearly impossible with the ship both exiting warp space faster than intended, far too deep into the planet’s gravity well, which was pulling them in, and finally damage to the sub-light engines, the ship was quickly spinning closer and closer to the planet.
It was no use, the sub-lights were still not online and several thrusters appeared to be damaged as well in the impacts. The planet, which passive scanners did indicate possessed water, vegetation, and larger fauna, was growing distressingly close, according to her instruments. She had given up struggling and now decided to way until her vessel actually hit atmosphere, that might allow her a few more options.
Too soon for her liking, the moment came, she could feel the vibrations and rising temperature that told her that her ship had reached the upper atmosphere and was beginning to descend. She managed to use a new trick she had taught herself and with a few brief bursts of the thrusters, managed to align the descent so that the brunt of this was taken by the heat shield. The heat was practically stifling inside by the time systems registered that they had cleared these outer layers and thus she was able to maneuver the ship a little better. Finally given a minute to do something besides relax, her hands danced around the various controls in front of her. Little by little, she regained control but there was no stopping the ship crashing now.
The Singing Sparrow barreled towards the ground at terrific speed, but she finally had just enough control that she was able to aim or less, for a flat stretch of ground. She shut down all engines and main power systems and activated the harnesses in her chair. At first the impact was a jolt, and it was followed a moment later by a second, larger and more jarring experience as the lower struts dug into the soft ground and ran for multiple kilometers before the vessel was finally ground to a halt.
Steph was annoyed, she had not had to deal with a crash landing since her first year out of flight school. She went ahead and turned on all the sensors that still functioned, luckily many were on the top of the Sparrow having been stowed there the previous day. The readings said the air was breathable, just, no known toxics in the atmosphere, and potable water.
She set her computer to diagnostic mode and, knowing it would take several hours, she got kitted up for a brief trip out to both see where she had landed and also check the external damage to the ship. She donned a simple protective suit and breathing helmet. It was uncomfortable, but the alternative was risking a painful death, and she was not about to do that. Carefully stepping out of the vessel she got her first shock at the gravity.
Stepping away from gravity plates of The Singing Sparrow, she was almost dropped to her knees by the sudden weight that everything seemed to have. Resetting her expectations, she managed to straighten herself up, but really, really hoped that she would not have to spend long outside the ship.
She took time to have a proper look around and was surprised at how. . .normal, but also strange everything was. Were it not for the large ring system, visible even by daylight, and the faint outlines of four moons in the sky, one would be forgiven for thinking they had crashed in the middle of a wide plane of yellow-gold grassland. In the distance there were several large mountain peaks, seemingly made of a deep, red material. Rather than above, clouds seem to travel along just at about ground level, bringing lingering fogs and mists in the area around them. The trees were shorter than anything else, several streams ran nearby, and there was nothing else as far as they could see. It appeared that while habitable, by human definition at least, and the sky was breathtaking.
Steph then went to survey her vessel. Her landing pylons were all bent backwards and there were multiple scrapes and places were dirt, grass, and mud has been caked in the vessel. As far as he could tell, the outer hull had not been compromised in the crash, but there were definitely some plates loose, and the struts were almost certainly a lost cause. Once she took off, it would be some time before another planet could be visited.
Steph Grainger made her way back into her ship to see the report from the computer. It was not nearly as bad as she had feared. She had been correct that the outer halls were not punctured, the near total removal of the landing struts also did not compromise anything, and other than a few standard part replacements, it appeared that the thrusters and sub-light engines just needed to be cleaned and re-aligned, the same went for her jump engines.
Steph spent the rest of what appeared to be evening on the planet to make a plan for repairs, which with just himself would probably take at least a week, she then ate another bland and unpleasant meal, and took one of her book pads to her small, cabin to get some rest. She knew she had gotten lucky, the chances of surviving a spaceship crash, especially in those conditions, were quite low, much less that the planet would be inhabitable, but everything was going well so far. Feeling both tired and oddly energized, Stephe finished the chapter of the book she was reading, she fell to sleep. For once, she was not bored. It was hard to be bored with a long week of maintenance and repair work ahead and besides, how often did someone crash on an alien planet and survive. She would have quite the story!
Another fun one for me to write, imagine a crash scenario and what might be seen after it happened. Hope you enjoyed!
Hope you enjoyed and that you are having a wonderful day and get to do, or experience, something creative.
– Jon
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