Dec 12 @ 9:16pm: 399 words
As Saturday is the NPI ‘Snippet Day’ I felt the need to join in and post something from this month’s writing sessions. The following is a once-over (I have not gone back and looked much since I wrote it) of a scene about the discovery of a discovery. It’s rather ambiguous given the level of removed-context, but hopefully — if anything — it reads well:
What remained of the cockpit surrounded the sitting form of Forrest. With one foot resting on the knee of the other, he watched the black beyond the reinforced glass screen. It was hard to glean how quickly the ship was moving, or how long they had been travelling thanks to the simple nothing outside; if not for the odd anomaly that blinked in and out of view within a second, perhaps even impossible with the naked eye. They were moving quickly though – he knew as much from the data that had been scrolling across consoles in the navigations bay. Maybe half the speed of light, or just a little more. The Jezebel was an outfitted ship – built for shuttling Plotters around sectors for years on end – so she moved a little quicker than most might.
To ascertain any specifics, he could have asked Fox, but something compelled him otherwise.
Forrest rubbed the side of his face absently, feeling the rough bulge of a slight bruise around his cheek. No doubt his eye was still ridden with burst capillaries, even given the time since it had been subjected to the vacuum of space, especially if his somewhat blurry sight was anything to judge it by. The Judgement… his mind wandered. What had happened to them? That was a fair question to ask of a mysterious ship inserted into the side of a rock. After their discovery of the Serpent, they hadn’t thought to dig deeper than the surface. It was a mistake in hindsight; they had gotten too excited by their discovery to find out anything more, and left immediately on their new course. Then there was the radar readings in the Judgement’s navigations bay – again something he had taken an interest in before Quint had called him and excitement had taken hold.
