Rocket

This flash fiction piece was written as a story companion to the day 16 drawing prompt Rocket from the 2020 Inktober prompt list. Click here to see the drawing.

T-minus five minutes to lift off.

It comes through the inside of my helmet like an AM radio that’s been implanted in my ears, all crackled and staticky. I didn’t expect to be this nervous.

We’ve been training for months ... well, years, actually. But we’ve been training inside the actual rocket for six months. Where and how to sit, what to touch — and what not to touch. How to tell if something’s gone wrong, and what to do if it does. There are so many lights and buttons inside this cockpit, it makes the 747s I used to pilot look like a fisher price truck dashboard.

Earlier this week, we had an emergency meeting with the ground crew and the engineers because one of the head mechanics found something, “of concern,” when he was going over the combustion systems. They talked about the possibility of a delayed launch. I threw up four times that day. I mean, what if they send us into orbit with a faulty rocket? This thing could pull a full Hindenburg before we even break the stratosphere for all I know.

I should have told them in the final psych check how freaked out I was, but by that time we’d heard back from the mechanics that whatever problem they thought they’d found was user error — the mechanic had just made a mistake. After 20 checks and re-checks of the combustion system, no fault could be found so they elected to keep the mission schedule and parameters the same.

But I wasn’t so sure.

How does someone make a mistake like that? What had he found, a crack, a missing wire? And why couldn’t they determine why he made the mistake? What was it, a trick of the lights? They wouldn’t give us any details. When my co-pilot pressed them, he was told that if he had concerns, he could stay on the ground and one of the six alternates trained for this mission could go instead. That shut him up. In the end, I knew I couldn’t say anything. It was either miss my chance or keep quiet. So I kept quiet.

T-minus two minutes to lift off.

These helmets make it almost impossible to see anything, but I’m supposed to be doing my final checks. I run through the list in my head, reaching around the cabin to verify everything is as it should be. My co-pilot reaches out for a fist bump, the preflight ritual he and I added to the list. I thought it would make me feel cool, on the day, happy and casual and excited like, oh boy, here we go into space.

But instead it feels childish and stupid. We could die. Even if we make it through this launch, we could spring a leak in the airlock during orbit and freeze to death, or our oxygen tanks could be faulty and we could suffocate, or this entire spacecraft could be torn to shreds on our re-entry.

T-minus 31 seconds.

I try to wrestle my thoughts back from the verge of the panic I feel pricking the back of my throat.

It’s fine. It’s all gonna be fine. This is NASA, for God’s sake. They’re not gonna send us into space without the proper equipment and safety checks. After all, they checked and rechecked the system after the mechanic thought there was a problem and found nothing. It’s fine. It’s gonna be great. I’m about to be a part of history. This is my dream. Here we go.

T-minus 16 seconds.

This robotic voice in my ears could be the last thing I ever hear. No, it’s fine. My co-pilot reaches out his gloved hand and closes it around mine. I imagine it’s supposed to be a comforting gesture, but something doesn’t feel right. My intuition is pinging, hard, and I can tell he’s not holding my hand in solidarity or excitement—he’s worried, too.

T-minus 6 seconds.

I count the seconds in my head, and at what would be 2 seconds, a red light starts blinking in the corner of my eye, but it’s too late to check what it is and communicate it to the ground crew.

T-minus 0 seconds.

As the rocket begins to shutter all round us, I turn my head to see what alarm is going off. It’s a sensor indicating a critical problem in the combustion system. Yep, I’m gonna be part of history, alright.

The last thing I hear isn’t the robot voice—it’s the sound of a massive explosion.