by Scott Baron
Vince cycled open the inner door and jumped into the narrow space, then sealed it and opened the outer one to the corridor. With no time to lose, he slid Daisy to the deck as the door slid shut, his fingers rapidly typing in a series of commands on the wall-mounted panel.
“Mal, I can’t activate the suppression system! Purge the pod, quick!”
“Are all humans clear, Vince?”
“Yes! Just do it!”
The airlock door to the void of space cracked open, the vacuum sucking the air from the pod in an instant, extinguishing the flames entirely before sealing shut again.
Vince reached down and helped Daisy to her feet.
“How did you—” She broke into a coughing fit.
“I heard your comms cut out. Sounded like you were in trouble.”
“I…” She stared into his concerned eyes as the crazed adrenaline surge began to slowly clear from her system. “I’m sorry I was rough on you earlier. Thank you,” she managed. “I’m Daisy, by the way.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m Vincent. Vincent Cooper, but you can call me Vince.”
The sooty pair shared a smile, and Daisy found herself vaguely remembering learning something about attraction being heightened in dangerous situations.
“Swarthmore, Cooper, is everything all right down there?” Harkaway called over the comms.
“Yes, Captain,” Vince answered. “The fire is out, and everything is okay now.”
The captain sighed audibly over the open comms.
“Good work, all of you. I want you to clean up, eat something, then get some rack time. Being pulled out of your cryo and neuro-stim cycles and thrown into a situation like this is going to feel far worse than a hangover tomorrow. We all need to get some rest. Mal and Barry will keep watch.”
As Daisy showered off the sweat and soot from her ordeal, she couldn’t help but think about the turn her day had taken.
Still six months from home. That’s a helluva long time, she mused as the warm water flowed over her body, easing the stress of the abrupt wake up.
She rinsed her hair, dried off, slipped into the clean sweats she had brought to the shower pod, and stepped out into the hallway, running smack into the likewise freshly-showered man passing by, his hair still damp and mussed.
“Oh, sorry,” she blurted.
Vincent laughed.
“This is how you repay me? Attacking me in the corridors and stepping on my foot, now? Such a violent woman,” he said with a grin. “Well, I suppose we’re even, now. And for the record, I am sorry I stepped on your foot earlier.”
The pause left a crackling in the air as they stared at one another.
This is crazy. You just met the guy.
Daisy’s heart beat loud in her ears, and she could feel the heat in her belly spreading lower. She studied Vince. Tall, fit, and damn good-looking.
I almost died, she rationalized. What the hell. Just a meaningless fling. I deserve it.
She grabbed him by the hand and pulled him down the passageway.
“Um, where are we going?” he asked, a little surprised.
“My place,” she replied, matter-of-factly.
The quickening pulse suddenly thundering in his neck revealed his thoughts on the idea.
“Um, okay.”
Daisy cycled open the first door and pushed him inside, shutting it behind her. By the time the inner airlock door opened, they were both in an advanced state of undress.
“Come here, you,” she growled, pulling him to her. Her hands traced the musculature of his body as he pressed his mouth firmly to hers. He trailed off to the sweet spot below her ear, gently latching on as he cupped her breasts. Daisy shuddered as he slid to his knees, pulling her sweatpants down as he went. His mouth teased her hips, lingering on the most sensitive spot, then grazed across her belly a moment before dipping lower, his warm tongue darting forward, just right. Daisy groaned and reached out one hand, grabbing a shelf to steady herself against the bulkhead as her knees suddenly went weak.
Not a bad way to wake up from cryo-sleep. She smiled to herself as waves of bliss washed over her. Not bad at all.
Chapter Four
The cold bite of hard metal ringing off your forehead is one hell of a way to wake up, and Daisy was none too amused by it.
She had jerked abruptly to consciousness in her bunk, as she had so many times in the six months since her rude cryo-awakening, but this time Daisy had actually bolted upright and somehow managed to slam her head into the titanium rack above her bunk in the cramped space.
“Fuck! Sonofa—” she blurted, her fingers gingerly feeling the rapidly growing bump on her head as she checked for signs of blood.
Clean fingers. Be happy for small victories. It would be oh-so funny if the crewmember whose job relied on her sharp analytical skills suddenly rendered herself comatose, she grimly mused.
She had been having that strange dream again. Beautiful green trees, fresh air, and blue skies.
And silence. Total silence.
Lingering on the fringe of the vision, there had been something else, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it, and the nascent ache in her head put a quick end to any hopes of remembering further details, at least for the time being. Pretty much everything was momentarily on the back burner as the rapidly increasing pain demanded her full attention.
It was going to be a double-dose of pain meds kind of morning.
Gingerly, careful not to add insult to painful injury, she removed the slender neuro-stim band wrapped around her head and sat up in her bed. While she had a visceral unease with the mechanical parts stuck on human bodies, she found herself able to rationalize using the neuro-stim far easier, though self-loathing would sometimes seep through in spite of herself.
It wasn’t an actual replacement part, after all. She wasn’t physically changing her body. It was just a simple tool, and one she could give up anytime if she wanted to. For now, however, it was keeping her sharp and letting her do her job a little bit better. Kind of like taking a stim pack when working a double shift.
She’d used more than a few of those when weariness threatened the quality of her work in those first frantic days, but she soon decided she couldn’t risk the residual effects. Even with the chemicals fully metabolized out of her system, Daisy hadn’t really had a single good night’s slumber since she’d woken six months prior. To be fair, however, many of those sleepless nights were also due to a certain well-muscled engineer.
So much for a one-night stand. Daisy smiled at the thought, cozy and reluctant to leave the warmth of her covers. Of course, she knew if she dilly-dallied too much Sarah would just come and lean on her door chime until she had no choice but to rouse herself for their daily pre-breakfast Qi Gong routine.
Why did I ever agree to join her?
“It’ll help you center yourself,” Sarah had said. “Find your balance, focus your energy. Maybe you’ll even sleep better.”
Daisy had picked up the simple movements quickly. Her muscle tone and fitness were exceptional. The muscle-stim surface electrodes had done their job admirably, keeping her body in top-notch physical condition as she slumbered through the lengthy voyage. Now she met with Sarah every morning, and though her friend was far more advanced than she was, Daisy was pleased to find she had little trouble keeping up.
A few months into their routine, Sarah suggested they add Tai Chi. It would be a little bit more strain on the body at first, adding all those unusual movements, but physically, Daisy had no problems with it. Mentally, well, that was another story.
The neural stimulator was the issue. Daisy and the rest of the crew had all been hooked up to one during their lengthy stasis, and once awakened, had continued utilizing the smaller versions Mal had wired into their quarters.
The massively complicated devices were supposed to not only regulate brain activity in cryo-sleep, keeping the wearer in a restful state, but would also gently impart useful information and training updates to the unconsc
ious mind in a slow trickle.
The theory behind it was that mission-specific knowledge could be drip-fed and learned en route, allowing individuals to jump headfirst into whatever tasks awaited them as soon as they woke upon arriving at their destination, rather than spending days, or even weeks, training after being roused from their slumber.
For everyone else on the crew, the system seemed to work perfectly. For Daisy, not so much. It frustrated her to no end that despite her technical know-how, she simply couldn’t figure out why.
Apparently, the early prototypes of the machine had tried to simply upload massive amounts of information to the wearers at once. It seemed logical, the storage capacity was certainly there, but the AI who had designed the system hadn’t fully taken into account the remarkably delicate nature of human gray matter. In the first series of tests, those who didn’t die outright, invariably went mad.
Eventually it was determined, through much trial and error, that only the slowest drip of information could be safely absorbed. A steady but small trickle rather than a flood, and closely regulated and monitored at all times. There wasn’t all that much you could learn in a short trip, but on a longer one such as this, during those months and years of cryo-time, a traveler could effectively update their technical skill set and incorporate any new revisions to operations protocols.
Unfortunately, while the rest of the crew slept well and were fully able to wear their neuro-stims out of cryo stasis with no issues, Daisy found early on that she could only use the neural stimulator if she flooded her brain with copious amounts of sleep drugs. That simply wasn’t an option for someone whose job depended on a clear and logical mind. So it passed that she resolved to see if she could find a fix.
That’s when she began tinkering with the device.
After her first week of unrestful sleep, she decided to try a new work-around, tweaking a few lines of the device’s base code and disabling a pair of inhibitors from the machine, altering the rate and intensity of data flow during her sleep sessions. It took a little trial-and-error, but fairly quickly, she found a mix that worked well enough most of the time.
As she tinkered with the neuro-stim, Daisy had been pleasantly surprised to find herself innately aware of the ins and outs of the complex system, though at the same time, she also felt that a full understanding was always just out of her reach. She was a tech, and a damn good one, but the neuro-stims were simply far beyond her training, and much of the time she was working on instinct alone. It was hit-and-miss, and, unfortunately, that occasionally meant bad dreams.
And bumps to the head when she woke from them.
Given the option, she’d have simply chosen to go back into cryo, but after the accident there had been so many repairs to make, and so many lingering glitches in the ship’s systems, that the captain had felt it best if they all stayed awake the remainder of the trip.
At least she had Vince to help pass the time. Him and the massive entertainment collection Captain Harkaway had seen fit to load onto the ship before departing.
Currently, she and Vince were spending their evenings together working through the science fiction and horror classics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. As crew of an actual spacecraft, they found themselves regularly amused at things that weren’t supposed to be funny. If only the filmmakers had known how far off their predictions of the future would be.
Daisy sighed and finally resolved to get up, sliding her feet to the warm metal floor. She cautiously rose onto her slightly off-balance legs, hoping she hadn’t hit her head harder than she thought. Of course she was fine. The artificial gravity just always felt a bit off near her bunk at the far end of the sleeping pod. An annoyance, but one she’d finally grown more or less accustomed to.
“Okay, that’s not so bad,” she muttered, then slipped into her workout sweats. Ready to start the day, she cycled open the pair of airlock doors and headed into the belly of the ship.
No compartment in the entire vessel was sealed by a single door. The redundant airlocks not only provided an extra layer of security against catastrophic air-loss, but were also an essential element of the ship’s re-configurable pod system.
They varied in size, the largest ones nearly twenty meters long, while crew quarters and storage were far more compact. The design allowed pods to be moved, reconfigured, and aligned with one another according to mission needs, and should a true emergency need arise, they could even be sealed off and jettisoned into space.
Daisy began a slow jog to warm her muscles. The workout facility was located in an outer section pod, portside, and was large enough for the whole crew to exercise at once if they so desired. Fortunately, at this hour, it was most often just Daisy and Sarah.
“Good morning, Daisy,” Mal greeted her warmly as she made her way down the corridor. “The time is 08:23.”
“Thanks, Mal.”
At least the crew pods were off the AI’s non-stop monitoring grid. That privacy, she was grateful for. It was a little thing, sure, and Daisy knew there was a good reason for the design, but it still felt weird having the AI keeping constant tabs on not only the ship’s systems, but its crew as well.
Finnegan Hay was prepping vegetables for the evening’s meal at his work station in the galley as Daisy passed through to grab an electrolyte pouch en route to the gym pod.
Finn’s right arm was speedily dicing, far faster than a regular human-grown limb could. It was a replacement part of shining metal from just above the elbow, and like Tamara’s, it blended perfectly into his flesh, though his was a less bulky design. Part of that was due to the nature of Tamara’s work needs as the ship’s botanist. With her much sturdier arm, she could swap her hand out for a wide variety of gardening equipment attachments, all of which were most useful as she tended the ship’s garden pods.
Tamara the farmer. With her gruff manner and sturdy build, Daisy was shocked when she learned the muscular woman was a vegetarian.
“You all can eat whatever disgusting clone meat you want,” she had said when asked about it. “I’ll stick with things that I know where they came from.”
“But, Tamara,” Daisy teased, “it’s just ship-grown cow and chicken muscle fiber. No animal was hurt putting these steaks on our tables.”
Tamara flashed her a look.
“They tell you it’s cow. When your meat just shows up in perfect little trays like that, how can you really know? You might be eating people steaks for all you know.”
“Gross, Tamara.”
“Just saying,” she had replied, only half-joking.
In any case, they had all benefited from Tamara’s gardening prowess.
Fresh produce in space. Daisy never stopped marveling at how lucky they were, and Finn possessed a near-magical ability to make almost anything taste delicious without resorting to heavy sauces. He liked to call it, “Seasoning food with food,” and had spent a few months working with Tamara on some hybrid herbs and spices. Once they were mature enough for harvest, his recipes had become consistently exceptional.
“Hey, Daze. Off to see Sarah?” Finn asked, not looking up from his cutting board.
“Yep. She’s teaching me Tai Chi now.”
“Ooh, Tai Chi. Cool. Stop by after. I’ll whip you up something nice and healthy for breakfast.”
“Savory or sweet?”
“Hmm… I don’t see why not a bit of both,” he replied with a knowing grin.
“Ya see, Finn, this is why we get along so well.”
“That and the fact that you’re happy to be my culinary guinea pig. Tell Sarah the offer stands for her, too.”
“Seriously, Finn, just tell her.”
“Tell her what?” he said, blushing faintly.
Daisy groaned. “Fine, but one of these days she may take a liking to Barry and leave you kicking yourself. Remember, it’s better to regret something you have done than something you haven’t.”
“Well, fortunately for me, Barry’s a cyborg, so he’s not exactly he
r type.”
“I don’t know,” Daisy laughed. “I hear he may have a multi-speed—”
“Lalalalala! I can’t hear you!” Finn cried out. “Go on, you. Shoo! Stop procrastinating and go work out already.”
Daisy laughed and opened the airlock’s inner door.
“All right. See ya in a bit,” she said, then flashed Finn a wicked grin as she made motorized vibrating sounds.
“Oh, come on!” he lamented, her laughter cutting off as she cycled the airlock door closed behind her.
“You’re late. I was about to start without you,” Sarah said, looking up from her splits on the floor.
“Damn, girl, that flexible and still single?”
“Well, you’re the one who jumped Mr. Sexypants only a few hours after we thawed out. I never stood a chance!”
“There are other options, you know.”
“Yeah, yeah. There’ll be plenty of men to choose from once we get home. Now come on, let’s get started.”
For the next forty minutes, Sarah led her friend through the one hundred twelve complex movements at painfully slow speed. Daisy’s thighs burned from the effort, just as her mind ached trying to memorize all the new moves while simultaneously problem-solving the day’s pending repairs in her head.
“So, I was thinking,” Daisy said mid-move. “If I take Faraday suit number three and add a reverse-polarity buffer, then route it all back through a miniature pulse feed, splitting all the frequencies into segregated positive and negative channels, it might create a solid base for my retrofit idea.”
“Which is?”
“Well, if it’s then looped into a micro-mesh layer on top of the existing dampers, it should effectively block out not only the standard stuff we’re worried about, but pretty much every EM blast imaginable as well. I figure it’s the spare suit, so why not give it a try?”