Neat idea! I've subscribed to you so that I can participate, hopefully most weeks.
I'm currently working on a TNG fic, Riker-centric. It's about 18k words and probably going to clock in around 20 or 22k when all is said and done. Here's a bit from the first scene (concrit welcome):
"Where am I?"
No one answered him.
On his hands and knees then, crawling along the floor in as orderly a search pattern as he could manage, searching for anything that would give him a clue, but the floor was just more of the same smooth metal, featureless except for the occasional scratch or dent. He felt each one carefully, thinking maybe they meant something, but of course they didn't. When he reached the end of the search grid that he had mapped in his head, he sat down in the corner, thinking.
Empty metal box, probably in space.
Had he been taken hostage? Was he someone's prisoner? If he was, where were they?
Riker got to his feet, tipped his head back and screamed, "Are you there? Answer me! What do you want?"
He got no reply. He had a bad feeling that there was no one around to reply. And that was terrifying.
A captor could be talked to, manipulated, fought, bluffed. You had a chance against an enemy.
How am I supposed to fight nothing? he thought, and sat back down.
Time passed. It was impossible to know how much. He was aware of thirst, and hunger. He searched the floor again, and then the walls, running his hands over every square centimeter of the room that he could reach, but the room remained stubbornly empty. He couldn't reach the ceiling, wherever it was. He jumped up experimentally several times, but even in the lower gravity the ceiling was too far above him to be reached. He sat down.
The Enterprise would be looking for him. Captain Picard would tear the Endicor system apart trying to find him.
It was a comforting thought, but the fact remained that solar systems were big, and already he was thirsty, and hungry. Endicor had an planet of over eight billion people, plus multiple space stations, some with populations nearing a million. Add to that the ships flying around, and it could take weeks, maybe months to sift through all of it. Riker didn't have weeks. He had, at best, seven to ten days without water, but realistically, he had less time than that. The room was warm--he'd broken a sweat just crawling around on the floor. He'd been injured, lost blood. Five days, maybe, before he died of dehydration.
The sensors on the Enterprise were good. The people on it were the best of the best. They'd be following every lead, trying to narrow down the search field. But it would be as much luck as skill for them to find him within five days.
And he was assuming he was still in the Endicor system. For all he knew, he was traveling at high warp out of the system.
Will Riker wasn't a man prone to panic, but his heart hammered in his chest as he contemplated spending days staring into the darkness with nothing to do except hope that he might be rescued in time.
"This sucks!" he announced to the empty room. The empty room echoed his words back to him as if in agreement.
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Date: 2019-01-23 11:27 pm (UTC)I'm currently working on a TNG fic, Riker-centric. It's about 18k words and probably going to clock in around 20 or 22k when all is said and done. Here's a bit from the first scene (concrit welcome):
"Where am I?"
No one answered him.
On his hands and knees then, crawling along the floor in as orderly a search pattern as he could manage, searching for anything that would give him a clue, but the floor was just more of the same smooth metal, featureless except for the occasional scratch or dent. He felt each one carefully, thinking maybe they meant something, but of course they didn't. When he reached the end of the search grid that he had mapped in his head, he sat down in the corner, thinking.
Empty metal box, probably in space.
Had he been taken hostage? Was he someone's prisoner? If he was, where were they?
Riker got to his feet, tipped his head back and screamed, "Are you there? Answer me! What do you want?"
He got no reply. He had a bad feeling that there was no one around to reply. And that was terrifying.
A captor could be talked to, manipulated, fought, bluffed. You had a chance against an enemy.
How am I supposed to fight nothing? he thought, and sat back down.
Time passed. It was impossible to know how much. He was aware of thirst, and hunger. He searched the floor again, and then the walls, running his hands over every square centimeter of the room that he could reach, but the room remained stubbornly empty. He couldn't reach the ceiling, wherever it was. He jumped up experimentally several times, but even in the lower gravity the ceiling was too far above him to be reached. He sat down.
The Enterprise would be looking for him. Captain Picard would tear the Endicor system apart trying to find him.
It was a comforting thought, but the fact remained that solar systems were big, and already he was thirsty, and hungry. Endicor had an planet of over eight billion people, plus multiple space stations, some with populations nearing a million. Add to that the ships flying around, and it could take weeks, maybe months to sift through all of it. Riker didn't have weeks. He had, at best, seven to ten days without water, but realistically, he had less time than that. The room was warm--he'd broken a sweat just crawling around on the floor. He'd been injured, lost blood. Five days, maybe, before he died of dehydration.
The sensors on the Enterprise were good. The people on it were the best of the best. They'd be following every lead, trying to narrow down the search field. But it would be as much luck as skill for them to find him within five days.
And he was assuming he was still in the Endicor system. For all he knew, he was traveling at high warp out of the system.
Will Riker wasn't a man prone to panic, but his heart hammered in his chest as he contemplated spending days staring into the darkness with nothing to do except hope that he might be rescued in time.
"This sucks!" he announced to the empty room. The empty room echoed his words back to him as if in agreement.