Two steps.
It had only taken two steps to break the ice and send me plummeting two hundred metres to what was unavoidable, grisly death. Two steps and a two hundred ton force that sent gaping fractures through ten feet of solid ice. Solid ice that separated the asteroid's surface from some hidden inner cavern. An inner cavern completely unknown to the slowly passing freighters – and me, once.
Twenty freighters carrying critical technology to the stations across the asteroid belt. Where Earthmen feared to travel even in the best of times. Where Stand will build a new civilisation from the decline of the old.
Earthmen and their Martian drones, always weighing the dangers, never the practical need. If they'd dared to destroy us instead of waiting for our surrender, I would have died in the glorious heat of battle, not in the pathetic creep of the freezing pangs of ice. If they'd guessed we were going to blast into orbit instead of trying to fly over their heads, I would have crashed down on the planet instead of here, in this eternal misery. If they'd just let us go, I would have boarded my wife's transport two hours back and spent the night in bed, not slowly falling through the feathery, dashing dust, waiting for physics to center me in nowhere, there to die... alone, and angry.
But they didn't, they couldn't leave us be, so I pulled away and chased that one annoying dogfighter who kept challenging the fleet. He strutted at me, he teased, he played, he danced, and he pissed me off until I got involved, and then he pulled some trick manouever I wasn't expecting and suddenly he was whizzing over my head and I shot down and away from him, just in time to remember I was hiding not ten metres from an enormous asteroid — and then it was too late, I hit the thing as fast as I could possibly have tried and something must have shattered.
I was going to signal help. I was going to walk around the asteroid, because I knew the fleet was right over there, on the other side. I heard the first step crack, and I didn't move for the longest time, I just stood there hoping, and then I knew I had to hurry because the fleet might pass on by otherwise, and I put my other foot down carefully, cautiously, testing the ice, and it seemed okay, so I started to lean on it and lifted the other foot and everything snapped.
I must have stepped right on a fracture.
If only they'd left us alone! The moment's right here in front of me, and who knows if I'll even end up a number. Patience is for those who have something ahead of them... I only have death, a silent death on the outside, but I'm not on the oustide, I'm here, here, HERE on the Inside, help me, help me, I don't want to be alone anymore.
I'm still here.
Oh God.