I is for Icarus [A to Z Challenge 2015]

Another Friday means another flash fiction piece for Flash! Friday. I'm tired and out of sorts today but I just couldn't leave it alone after coming so close last week. It's a like a drug, I tell you. You can  read the actual entry here.

Enjoy and come back tomorrow for the letter 'J' and all the pretties that I am pairing with it....

Icarus

by Jessica Marcarelli

I kneel in the slime left by a thousand rain cycles and hold out my cup. Acid from the atmospheric vents overhead drips over the porcelain rim.

A man stumbles by, his skin blistered like all the other sufferers here. Rumor has it the disease rose from terraforming imbalances as the first miners arrived.

It’s called the Icarus Syndrome, taken from some Lost Earth myth. Named for the hubris of those who can’t leave well enough alone. They sent me. Government officials who can’t let go of a trillion pounds of whatever passes for coin these days out in the ‘verse. I was sent to spy out the ore that will power a thousand worldships.

Except the miners never found it.

And I’m not interested. My hope is in the ship legend told me was buried here. Solar wings on a battered hull. An engine fueled by the same acid falling into my cup. Soon, I’ll sail close enough to the bloated monstrosity of a star this system calls a sun to collect the energy the ship needs to make that one jump all the way back to the ancient world where humanity took its first wide-eyed steps into the void.

This vessel is my ticket home.