- Berry
Jon Accidentally Destroys a City
Jon was wet. Not just wet, soaked. Soaked to the point where his clothes clung to him like they were covered in glue. Soaked to the point where his feet and fingers had long wrinkled and his hair dragged down his face. He slid his soaked self along the edge of the lower engines of the pier, which was suspended hundreds of feet above the ocean. The pier was large, covering almost half the planet, which was why Jon wasn’t worried about removing one of the engine’s power cells. It wasn’t like the whole damn pier was going to come crashing down. That’s what he told himself, at least. And it had proven true in the past.
Jon was something of a self-proclaimed space pirate. He didn’t do much pirating, however, and he was rarely in space. But he thought it sounded neat and who was going to stop him? He had brought his ramshackle ship the Beaver down to this part of the pier many times, always to get power cells. They usually ended up being replaced faster than Jon could steal them. Jon didn’t like the word ‘steal.’ He liked ‘liberate’ a bit more. A liberator. That was another one of Jon’s titles. He preferred space pirate.
Jon wiped his hair out of his face as he neared the power cell, which was inconveniently sticking out of the bottom of the engine, out of sight and out of reach. This was the tricky part. Jon clamped his left hand around the circular bar around the engine and snuck the other hand under the lip of it. While he fumbled around for a zip cord from his belt, Jon thought about his first time here. He thought, specifically, about who was with him when he was here. Misty.
Misty was Jon’s first and only crewmate until she went missing a few months ago. Misty and Jon have a special thing happy people liked to call a ‘bond.’ Or had, rather. Jon didn’t exactly consider her dead, but he couldn’t exactly consider her alive, either. She had most likely fallen into trouble with the Mydragos that she always talked about. They were also space pirates, from what Jon could tell. But not the cool type of space pirates. Not the Jon type of space pirates. They fit better with what he liked to call the classic definition of space pirates: straight-up bad people, who stole because of the pure greed and hatred for the outside world in their hearts. Stole because they wanted to cause grief to those above them and beneath them.
In any case, Jon figured he had thrown out enough exposition for the day, and quickly refocused on the task at hand. He finally grabbed the damned zip cord, secured it to his belt, tied it off on the edge of the engine, and jumped off the pier.
Freefall was bliss. Bliss soon replaced by a sharp tug at the waist, and Jon let out a wheeze of air as the cord drew taut and swung him back towards the engine’s bottom. He helicoptered his arms for a second to regain his vertical orientation and snatched the power cell.
As the engine slowly whirred to a stop, Jon pressed a button on his belt and the zip cord pulled him back towards the engine’s base. He placed the power cell in his satchel and was just pulling himself onto the platform when he felt a hard boot press into his knuckles.
“Thief!” A cold, grim voice from above him barked in Jon’s face. “Hand over the power cell, or else I will—”
“Steve? No way, is that you, Steve?” Jon flicked his hair out of his face. “Remember me?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about, scum.” The guard ground his boot into Jon’s hand.
Jon winced but continued, “No, wait. I know that’s you, Steve. You tried arresting me the other day, remember? Over at pier 35? C’mon please tell me you remember?” Jon could almost sense the confusion on the guard’s face.
“Err—” The guard hesitated. “You must be thinking of someone else. I wasn’t at pier 35, that was my buddy.”
“Was his name Steve?”
The guard sighed. “Yes.”
“Damn it, unlucky I guess.” Jon slowly reached his free hand into his satchel.
“Yeah, guess so.”
“Hey, did Steve ever tell you how I escaped?”
“Uh, yeah. He said you paid him off.”
“What? No no no, you must be thinking of someone else. I do not nearly have the funds to be paying off guards left and right. Are you sure you’re thinking pier 35?” Jon’s hand finally found what it was looking for: the Beaver’s remote.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure.” The guard fidgeted with his rifle.
“Well, shit, now Steve’s gone off and ruined my reputation.” Jon shook his head as he pressed the ‘call’ button on the remote. “What a shame. I liked Steve.”
“Me too,” said the guard.
“Yeah, well good for you. Do you mind lifting your boot for a quick second? My other hand itches.”
“Uh, sure?” The guard slowly lifted his boot. A faint whirring noise became noticeably audible in the distance.
“Thanks, mate.” The whirring got louder.
“No problem.” Even louder.
Jon could see it now: the Beaver, in all its haphazard glory. Fortunately, the base of the engine platform was blocking the guard’s view of the ship. He had no idea. Smirking, Jon itched his hand, grabbed his knife from its holster, and in one swift-ish motion kicked off of the platform, spinning, and sliced through the zip cord. Jon spun to face the guard as he dropped off the pier.
“Good talk,” said Jon.
And he fell into the beaver’s now-soaked cockpit. The windshield was back up before the guard even had the presence of mind to fire his gun. The bullets harmlessly deflected off of the reinforced glass as Jon primed the engine.
“Good talk, indeed.”
And he shot off into the rain.
↞↠
Jon was halfway to the nearest outlaw base when he got the first message on his dashboard.
//Incoming Alert//
Mayday, mayday. This is an all-system alert. This is Voyager Station Pier on Agora, we are going down fast. Please send ships for rescue ASAP. Repeat, this is Voyager Station Pier on Agora . . .
Jon did a double-take. Shook his head. Triple-take. There it was.
The pier that he just stole a power cell from was falling out of the bloody sky.
Jon wasn’t a man for heroics, but the sheer magnitude of this predicament made it impossible to keep flying away. He pulled a hard left turn and sped back towards Voyager Station Pier.
As he shot through the rainy sky, Jon tapped on the message for a video feed.
“Shit.”
Voyager Station Pier had already hit the water. Fires burned from broken propulsion engines as fuel seeped out and mingled with the stormy water below. Through the grainy video, Jon could just barely make out little yellow dots that must have been the liferafts. Ships were pulling away by the hundreds, and civilians scampered along the pier’s upper levels like rats, trying desperately to find a ship, a boat, something to save them from the cruel waters beneath them.
Jon put his ship on autopilot as he nervously tabbed through news channels on his dashboard. All of them were covering the pier. He kept looking. He needed to see it. The keyword. There.
‘Reported power loss to main engine.’
Jon couldn’t help but slump in his chair. This was his fault. He was the reason that the pier was in the water. That damned power cell that was still sitting in his satchel is the reason that thousands of people are losing their homes. He felt his heart tear in half as he flew closer and closer to the burning city. His eyes began to water as he stared infinitely into the rainy skim that brushed over his ship’s cockpit. He only would’ve made about 500 units from the sale of the power cell. 500 bloody units. That sum seemed incredibly insignificant compared to the insurmountable cost of the lives that would surely be lost in the chaos and calamity of a city going down.
Jon’s dashboard beeped, snapping Jon out of his depressing line of thought and back to the depressing reality he found himself in. He had arrived at the pier. Jon’s ship slowed to a measly drift as he nudged closer to it. Jon hesitantly peered over the dashboard, looking down onto the wreckage like a scared child who had just dropped a prized toy off of a cliff. Except the cliff was on fire and the toy was on fire and everything was bloody on fire because it was all his fault. It was all his fault. He was crushed.
↞↠
Jon didn’t know how much time had passed when he heard a sharp whine coming from the center of the city. He wiped the tears from his face and checked the Beaver’s frequency detector. It was going nuts. Not good, thought Jon. He had only heard that sound once before, and it was when the hyperdrive engine in a space sailer went ballistic and took out a small orbital hub. Space sailors were massive ships hundreds of times larger than the Beaver, capable of carrying a virtually infinite amount of supplies and fuel. That whining was the tell-tale sign that something similar was happening here, but it didn’t make sense: the noise was coming from the center of the city, and there was no need for a pier floating above the bloody ocean to need a hyperdrive engine. Something was off.
Jon quickly pitched his ship into a descent. He needed to figure out what was going on with Voyager Station Pier.
As the Beaver moved closer to the center of the pier, Jon pulled up his hood to block some of the shattering whine. This was really not good. He pulled up to a drop point, opened the cargo door of the Beaver, and dropped down onto the slick surface of the pier.
Jon could feel the pier shaking under his boots as he stumbled his way over to the central building. The noise got worse each second and Jon felt himself instinctively covering his ears to muffle it. He was almost there when he heard gunshots. Damn. Jon hastened his pace to a sprint as he pushed past the endless swell of people trying to get off of the pier. As he ran, he reached into his satchel and set his ship to hover at 1000 feet to make sure no one hijacked it.
Once inside, Jon quickly spotted a dark figure holding a gun to a man in a scientist’s coat’s head. Jon pulled his knife from its sheath and slowly approached the figure. He couldn’t hear what they were saying to the scientist, the noise was so loud. He was just closing in when the dark figure turned and saw him.
“Hey, Jon. Long time no see.”
It was Misty.
“Don’t worry Jon, I haven’t forgotten about you, let’s just say some other things have had my priority recently.” Misty glanced at the quivering scientist, still pointing the gun at him. “Like this fella.” She pointed the gun at Jon. “And I can’t have any so-called space pirates getting in the way of my plans.”
“Woah,” said Jon as he raised his hands in the air. “I’m not trying to do anything like that. I just came because of the noise. You know that’s a hyperdrive engine, right?”
Misty sighed as if she was disappointed. “Yeah, I know it’s a hyperdrive engine, Jon. I’m not an idiot. I had planned to shut it down, take its core for myself, yeah? Besides, who needs a damned hyperdrive for a floating pier in the sky? Until this bastard shows up, calls the guards, and tells me they rerouted the hyperdrive to help power the city. He says that some idiot keeps stealing power cells from below. Says they need something that that idiot can’t steal. Says his name is Jon.”
Jon swallowed. “M-M-Misty I had no idea—”
“Oh no no no no, Jon. You’re not going to explain your way out of this one. You see, I’ve been planning this gig for months. Planned the whole thing out. Every. Last. Bit. Except I never planned that you, of all people, would show up and screw it all up. Like you screw everything up. You couldn’t even keep me from the damned Mydragos, eh? No, you couldn’t. Just like you couldn’t keep your nose out of making a quick unit or two.
“Now I’m responsible for this whole thing going to shit, all of these people. This whole crash. Except, and, this is the best part, you decided to show up. Now, who’s to say you didn’t pull out the hyperdrive core?” Misty pointed to the scientist. “This dumbass right here’s the only one who saw me. So, mister labcoat, why don’t you help me get off this damned wreck, and how about you tell your friends that Jon bloody Keeran caused this whole thing. Does that sound like a good idea?” The man nodded. “Good,” said Misty. “Now, let’s take care of little Jon, shall we?”
“Wait.”
“Wait what, Jon?”
“I have a ship.”
“And?” Misty looked irritated.
“And you don’t.”
“Pfft. How do you know that?”
“Since you didn’t think stealing the hyperdrive core would cause the whole pier to crash, there’s no way you planned to exit anytime soon. And, if you remember what I’ve taught you, you would’ve planned to buy a ship and take that to get off-world. Because it’s dangerous to leave immediately after a heist. You know that.”
“I-I-I . . . shit.” Misty lowered the gun.
“Gotcha.” Jon flashed his classic Jon smile and continued, “Now, follow me. My ship’s this way.”
↞↠
Back on the Beaver, Jon punched in the coordinates for the nearest orbital hub and primed the engines.
The trip to the hub was silent. Misty had stashed the gun somewhere in her bag and had let the scientist go. While the ship hummed gently, Jon thought about the last time she was here with him on the ship. She was so different now. She talked differently, acted differently, dressed differently. The Mydragos had changed her. Jon missed the old Misty.
They were halfway there when she finally chirped up.
“What are we gonna do?”
“What do you mean?” Jon turned to look at her, but she was staring at the floor, eyes glazed over.
“I mean, we just took out a whole bloody city. A city. That’s a big deal.”
“Yeah. I don’t know, honestly. I thought we could at least take a break at the orbital hub before they check the security cams and come after us.”
“They can’t check the cams. The feeds are all sourced locally, so whatever computer stored the video is at the bottom of the ocean.”
“Oh. Shit.” Jon still couldn’t get over the fact that he caused a city to go down. Sure, it wasn’t technically his fault, but he felt so guilty. He hadn’t even bothered to check the news out of fear of seeing the death total. “Ah . . .” Words eluded him. What else could be said?
“I missed you, y’know? I didn’t mean it when I said it was your fault they got me. I didn’t.”
“I know. And I’m sorry. I had no idea you were in that deep.”
Misty started to cry. “It’s not your fault. There was no way for you to know.”
“I’m still sorry.” Jon turned on the autopilot and moved to sit down next to her. She leaned over and put her head on his shoulder, crying silently as the ship ebbed through the endless black of space. Jon leaned his head on hers and put his arm around her. “It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay.” They waited in silence. “I missed you too.”
END
And that's it! Thanks for reading this far. I hope you have a wonderful day
