Starfall

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Starfall
Since Ivan resigned himself to death, he would need to leave some record of himself. Some account, details on his escape, evidence that he existed at all. The first to come across his crash site would definitely be local planetary enforcement—perhaps a colonial militia. An actual regimented and trained police force would be too much to expect from this planet, unless he landed right in the heartland of some sprawling megalopolis. 
Ivan laughed to himself as the pod shuddered, imagining coming down on a busy intersection in a city center, smashing right into the heart of rush-hour traffic and causing an uproar. A jolt forced him back to reality with a shouted curse. The exterior grew from yellow, to red, then white under the force of his reentry. The gravity on this world naturally tapered off at nearly twice that of Earth’s, so that meant a higher terminal velocity for his craft. 
When he breached the atmosphere then air friction would reduce his speed significantly, but that meant he had to survive the reentry process. The outer layers of Titanium-A began burning away at a frightening speed; these dinky little escape pods were not ever designed to withstand the force nor heat of entering a planet’s atmosphere. 
They were supposed to keep in high or low orbit, lazily circling the nearest celestial body while an automated distress beacon blasted on the E-Band. He had kicked the comms antenna off of the back of the pod before clambering inside.
A lurch would have thrown Ivan from his seat, straight into the roof of the craft if it weren’t for the hydraulics keeping the seat from accelerating or decelerating too fast. Any faster and he would have died from the rapid force.
The window cracked, but the flames around his pod were starting to ebb away into a gentle golden yellow. Another crack criss-crossed the viewport, breaking the monotonous clear glass into a myriad of snowflakes and spiderweb patterns, reaching out from one end of the window to the other like grasping fingers, or vines of ivy dangling from a tree.
He had precious little time to compose a memoir, or enter a log on the pod’s database. Perhaps his voice wouldn’t even be heard over the din of falling through a planet’s atmosphere, but he had to try.
Reaching for the controls, Ivan hit the buttons in random orders, trying to find anything that would help him. He didn’t want to die and become another faceless body—another Jane Doe in a featureless grave.
He almost cried when he saw that the pod had a built-in recording device. No doubt used for similarly-macabre reasons as Ivan was about to use it for himself. While normally the salvage teams would find these messages, he had to pray that anyone besides ONI did.
“My name is Ivan Petrov,” he said into the microphone. “At twelve-oh-five today, I escaped from a space station in orbit around this planet. One that you probably aren’t even aware exists.”
The altimeter read one hundred thousand feet, dropping at a rate of five hundred feet per second. He had less than five minutes to make an impression on someone. Shaking his head, Ivan laughed. “I’m gambling so much, I’m gambling on you understanding me. On you feeling that something is wrong.”
Ivan grabbed ahold of the straps around his chest, clinging to them with a white-knuckle grip like a drowning man. “I’m gambling on the Office not immediately finding this crash site and destroying it, or denouncing me already to the people below. I don’t know what they’ve said about me, perhaps you already know me as a murderer, or a criminal locked on a penal ship that overwhelmed the guards and escaped.”
Seventy five thousand feet now, the blackness of space gave away to a light blue, that was becoming ever more obvious as the pod rocketed across the sky. A shooting star, trailing sickly black smoke and belching flames.
“I am a doctor,” Petrov paused, then shook his head. “I was a doctor,” he spat. “A doctor of medicine, of psychology, of biology. It was for these reasons that I was sought out by the very men I am now trying to escape. I was taken onboard the Arminov ”
He got himself lost in thought for a while, remembering the white walls and washed-out lighting. “I was promised so much money,” he laughed a pitiful, hollow laugh. “So much money, all I had to do was not ask questions. But the very first day I came here I did, and now I want you to ask them, too, tovarisch. Whoever I am addressing, whoever reads this, please, I beg you, don’t let them get away with it.”
Fifty thousand feet and dropping, the pod began groaning at the disparity between the interior temperature and the exterior. All Ivan could do was pray the thermal insulation held out, or he would be cooked alive by the air friction alone.
“They’ll try anything. They’ll denounce me. They’ll denounce you,” sighing, he shut his eyes, shook his head, and his face morphed into one of pleading sorrow. “I realise that I am being incredibly selfish, but I very much doubt I will survive this crash. Even if I do, they will do anything to make me wish I hadn’t, before saying I died of my injuries.”
Forty five thousand feet.
“I wish there was more I could say,” Ivan gripped ahold of his harness tighter. “Some words of comfort I could give you, but just by listening to this you may already be considered an enemy of the state.”
The altimeter jumped, and Ivan craned his neck to look outside. A mountain range split the sky apart, rolling over the horizon like colossal waves, unbroken patches of grey giving way to reams of white snow.
“I’m sorry.”
The altimeter read one thousand feet, and Ivan only had two seconds to regret his life choices before the escape pod smashed into the largest mountain range in the solar system.
Category:SilverLastname
Category:The Weekly
Category:Short stories