(Late Response) Prompt #84: Ice / "Pilgrim"

[ap0cryphal]

Title: "Pilgrim"
Challenge/Prompt: #84 / Ice
Original Fiction or Fanfiction: Original
Characters/Pairings: N/A
Rating:PG-13 / K+
Warnings: Violence
Disclaimer:  Original work, my own stuffs, etc.
Summary:  He exhales frost and charts trajectories.
Author's Notes:  written to the tune of A Drowning (How to Destroy Angels / 2010). recommended listening.

~

Cold world, bad winter.

He exhales frost and charts trajectories. Fingers to mining rig console, eyes weary. Flowers of light bloom far away, a doomed colony's last breath. Orange then blue, red then black. Radiation tags flicker orange to red in his goggles. Shipboard AI screams counter-intrusion static and launches drone swarms to buy time.

Silver capsule: into mining probe. Trajectory: the oceans beneath, past kilometers of ice.

Stupid, stubborn woman.

Silver capsule: her ashes.

Stupid, stubborn woman. Who'll fight for us now?

Dying world, dead hero. And only a traitor to witness her passing, to mark her secret grave.

~