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guidanceofficer-fr · 6 years

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Astral Discoveries

Prompt: Space-themed lore!

I decided to actually focus on the stars for once.

Summary: A troubled flight controller of the Baikonur Spaceflight Agency contemplates the importance of his role. A stranger from the Starfall Aisles helps him deal with grief after two cosmonauts died on his control team’s watch.

Warnings: Extensive discussions of death, guilt & spaceflight disaster. Also, very long. I’m sorry, mobile users. (It’ll read-more on reblogs, I swear!)

@fr-community

Clear skies were a rare treat in the Shifting Expanse. They came only once a month, or every two months, if at all for a whole season. The breaks in stormy weather were traditionally a time for Lightning dragons to cram in as much outdoor labor as possible, while they weren't under the constant taunting of the stormy sky. Though there were no electrons hopping busily from atom to atom in the few clouds above, the dragons who harnessed them were busy far below making their own sparks of creative magic happen. Even dragons working desk jobs like Pathfinder felt the rush of the sunny swells; as projects were completed quicker down at the Launch Base, the demand on the workers in Mission Operations grew too.

But Pathfinder had no urge to rush now, under a clear starry sky. He'd been rushing for the past seven months to keep up with a tight schedule from the Spire. The whole agency had. It was an old story: the Stormcatcher needed things done /now,/ so people cut corners to get the work done. He'd notice, after all, if you faked a few figures. So the work had to be done honestly, and fast. But quality takes time, time the Baikonur Spaceflight Agency hadn't had. They all rushed like workers under sunny skies to complete the newest crewed spacecraft and the systems that would support it. Hasted decisions were made; "it'll have to do" became the unofficial motto in all the Agency's divisions, adopted by dragons who didn't have time to relax, to think deeply and thoroughly about the problems they'd been given, and solve them in the best manner. Everyone knew if they'd pulled off the mission, it would be a miracle.

But miracles don't exist in Lightning. The sky strikes wherever the land beneath it is vulnerable. If you leave yourself exposed, you're struck. Miracles don't save you. Preperation does.

That day at work had been the hardest day of Pathfinder's entire career. There are no words to describe the feeling in your bones as you watch a rocket explode eighty seconds into its launch. Dragonkind, for all its ingenious, couldn't invent a language capable of describing the inescapable sickness of watching a vessel of hope--a physical testament to the dreams and work of an entire world of dragons--turn into an atom bomb, shaking the windows of the blockhouse with a terrifying force, obliterating the poor crew within. There was nothing in Pathfinder's lexicon that could describe the horrifying beauty of cracking a firework in the dawn on the high desert, the blinding light which cleansed Sonrieth briefly of the unforgivable sin of incompetent engineering, an angel of probability, judge of Murphy's law, carrying out its awesome duty to smite down any vehicle vulnerable to its own flaws. It paralyzed him, even now, to remember that day.

And yet, in the moment, Pathfinder had been anything but paralyzed. The holy fire had cleansed him of any emotion, and all that was left was cold, dead precision. It became an obsession, checking over the logs for any funnies in his own console, then moving to help his more paralyzed team members process the information while it was still fresh in their minds. He'd been given congratulations (or, more accurately, been acknowledged) for how his actions helped out his team. In the moment, he'd performed the best he could have.

Doing his best work wasn't a comforting feeling anymore. Doing his best work hadn't saved two starry-eyed cosmonauts. No. The agency had been unprepared. And he was a part of that agency, meaning part of that guilt lay on him. He wished he'd had some of the experiences of the military types in the control center, who had trained with the Air Force before being transferred to Baikonur. At least they had some experience with mortality. Comparatively, Pathfinder had lived a sheltered life, teaching at computer museums and studying software engineering.

Then again, he shared a space with people who'd worked with test pilots, not all of whom came back. They hadn't seemed any less shocked than he was. But what did he know? Social cues were the last thing he was looking for when he was stressed.

"They're beautiful, aren't they?"

It took Pathfinder a moment to realize someone had spoken to him. When he did, it startled him, and he froze and turned an ear to the speaker.

"The- The stars, I mean. You guys must not get to see them much from out here."

Pathfinder nodded. He wanted to speak, but a pain in his throat told him when his voice came out it would be unstable.

The dragon behind him was silent for an awkward portion of time. Pathfinder wondered if he was waiting for a response. He didn't quite understand what he was supposed to say, though, other than a note of affirmation... It wasn't worth revealing how shaky his voice was feeling just to add a "yes." Still, though, the stranger stayed silent, so he closed his eyes and beckoned his courage to speak. Just when he was about to, though, he heard the other dragon's voice again:

"If it's alright, I'd like to sit with you."

Pathfinder gulped to keep his emotions from getting the better of him. "Yes. That's alright."

He heard motion behind him, and a fairly large Imperial lay on all fours next to him. Without waiting for another word from Pathfinder, he spoke again. This time, he was softer, about as soft as an Imperial could hope to be. "They called us all out from the other launchpad in the Aisles. My flight came in a few hours ago. I don't- I don't know what to say."

Pathfinder's voice was barely a whisper. "Me neither."

He was tempted to introduce himself, but he stayed quiet. An introduction to another Agency member would mean reciting his title as Guidance Operations Officer and Software Engineer for Baikonur Mission Operations, and MO wasn't something he wanted to think about right now.

"Thiore sure is bright tonight."

Pathfinder nodded, though he wasn't sure how the other dragon knew the fifth planet from the sun apart from the other stars in the sky. "Hmm."

As if reading his mind, he shifted his weight to point. "She's the bright one up there," he said. "The one just to the- to the left of that lightning tower to the northeast."

"Interesting. I thought planets didn't twinkle."

He couldn't see his companion, but he practically feel the expression change. "Twinkling has nothing to with whether it's a star or a planet. See- see, it has to do with- with the atmosphere. The atmosphere distorts the light from the star, or the object, so planets appear to twinkle too."

"Well, I stand corrected."

"Don't- don't feel bad about it. I've heard that same question from plenty of other smart dragons."

He smiled, and Pathfinder could hear it. He considered that a fair response, and didn't feel a need to add anything else to the conversation.

The pair lay under the stars for hours. It was hard for Pathfinder to fully relax; he was used to being on top of everything, or trying his hardest to be on top of everything, needing to know exactly where the spacecraft was and everything that could be pushing it off course. It was why he worked with a team to start with. No one person could handle that task without other dragons there to process data and hand it to him to use, and they needed his information as much as he did. So everything was a conversation, every little funny, every speck of error... and every number in the trajectory of a broken spacecraft that led the Range Safety Officer to explode the remains of a decapitated rocket before it hurtled down towards the town miles downrange.

"I- This is- This is an odd question... I'm not sure how to phrase it..."

Another awkward silence passed. He figured he couldn't complain, considering he could barely talk at the moment himself.

"Do you think they're up there?"

He turned his head. "Who?"

"The cosmonauts."

It hit Pathfinder like a brick to hear those two words. He felt a painful lump in his throat that he didn’t know was there. He shut his eyes quickly, trying to keep hot tears from rolling down his face. He wasn’t about to sob in front of a colleague. It had never happened, and it wasn’t going to happen today.

“I can’t think of anywhere else for them to be, can you?”

He heard a sigh next to him, as if it took physical labor to bring words to his comrade’s lips.

“No. I- I can’t.”

The wetness of tears on his eyes felt cold in the desert evening.

“And you know what?”

Pathfinder didn’t turn his head, fearing his tears were more visible than he wanted them to be. “Hmm?”

“I think- I think-” He sighed. “I think they’d want us to keep trying.”

He felt a grin form on his lips. He blinked, trying to keep tears in, but he felt one on his cheek.

“I think that’s a good guess.”

“No… You see… They didn’t die because they wanted to give up. They died because they were as determined as we were to get up there and touch the stars.”

“And we rushed them,” Pathfinder almost spat out. “We were too caught up in the stars, we didn’t focus on what we could have done down here-”

“We did what we could, and-”

“But we didn’t!”

Pathfinder’s breath was heavy. He was whispering, but with such force his words were practically a hiss. “We didn’t do what we could! We did shoddy work, and now two innocent cosmonauts are dead! While you guys were out-” He gasped- “While you guys were out at Tereshkova launching tracking satellites, we worked our asses off to keep up with deadlines that we knew we couldn’t meet! We knew we weren’t ready, and now two dragons-”

He stopped himself. He’d never thrown a tantrum at work before. But he’d never had blood on his hands, either. He didn’t know how to wash it off.

The air was silent. A satellite passed by somewhere up above. Pathfinder focused his vision on it. He wondered if he could judge the height of the object by how fast it was orbiting. But he’d already missed when it crossed over the horizon; there was no use counting how long it took to cross over the other. Ah, well. He kept his eyes fixed on it. It was like a miracle, he realized, all the work it took to put that thing up there, that it even bothered to stay.

Was that what he was supposed to be? A miracle worker?

“... I think you’re right to be angry, and I think they’d think so too.”

He sighed. “You think?”

“Well, I- I can tell that you have a lot of passion for what you do, even if you don’t want to talk about it. And I don’t know you, but out in the Aisles, well, we don’t ignore things like that. We channel our passion. That’s why Arcane dragons can be so intent on being dreamers. They use those dreams.”

“So what, am I supposed to dream of cosmonauts not being dead?”

“No, I- Listen. Passion doesn’t have to be a dream. It just has to energize you. It has to be enough to wake you up in the evening, or the morning, if you wake up then. It has to be the driving force behind what you do. You need to let it invigorate you, let it ignite the breath inside of you.

“What I’m saying is, I think it’s good that you’re so angry and regretful. In Arcane, we don’t throw that away. We use that anger to remind us to do better.”

Pathfinder nodded. “So I have to feel it fully, so I remember that I never want to feel it again.”

His companion was silent.

“Well… Something like that.”

Pathfinder lay in contemplation for a few moments. It was late, and perhaps it was getting to him; while he thought he’d been contemplated, he’d been thinking of nothing at all. He watched the stars pass above, and realized he’d been watching a constellation get closer and closer to the horizon for the past… god, what time was it? He’d better get back to his dorm; the last thing he needed was to be sleepless during the next weeks’ briefings. He was barely prepared as is. Sleeplessness wouldn’t help.

He stood up and brushed off his feathers. But before he left, he turned to the stranger.

“Thank you for talking with me.”

The Imperial’s eyes were still fixed upwards, searching the skies for lost wanderers of the cosmos.

“It was no trouble at all.”

As he headed back to his dorm, Pathfinder felt a strange sense of ease about him. He wasn’t at ease at all; on the contrary, he was still turning the events of the past few weeks over and over in his mind. But he knew he wasn’t wrong in doing so.

Starting tomorrow, he’d be sure he and his colleagues were exacting in their work. They would be slow and methodical, and refuse to proceed to the final steps of a launch until they were sure that their data was nominal. They would design and construct all the devices necessary for a launch with excessive care, leaving no room for dragonmade error in their work. They would leave as little up to the hands of fate as possible; Murphy was too harsh a judge to trust with cargo as precious as life. When the crew climbed the gantries and strapped themselves into their capsules, he wanted them to know their lives weren’t in the hands of fate, but in the claws of the dragons who’d welded its seams and sottered its avionics, and the few who watched over the craft’s telemetry with care at the launch site and back at Baikonur Mission Control.

He’d wronged those first cosmonauts, and he knew they’d want him to right things again, so no more would die as they had. It was Pathfinder’s duty to ensure that; the stars themselves had told him.

#lore #my lore #flight rising #flightrising #fr #this is super sad jsyk

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