“Thank you, Athena. Wake First Officer Kendara Kamaguchi, and Security Officer Greg Flynn. We’ll conduct a physical investigation of the control room and the colonist storage halls.”
The soft hum of machinery filed the room and bright lighting filled two of the sleeping cylinders. Redfeather checked the readouts. It would be over an hour before the process was completed. Kendara was as beautiful as ever. It would be nice to talk to his First Officer and fiancée again. After all, it had been over six hundred years.
His stomach rumbled. He decided to spend the hour in the officer’s mess eating his first meal in over half a millennium and reviewing the ship’s log. The door slid open behind him. He thought that must be one of the pilots. He turned and what appeared to be the bushy tail of a black dog was briefly visible before the door closed.
A dog’s tail. The closest thing to live animals on board were the frozen fertilized eggs stored in the supply hold. Dogs, cats, sheep, cattle, chickens, and a hundred other species waited to be born on Sirius Four. The crew joked that this ship was going to the dogs. Redfeather closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. He whispered to himself, “There’s no dog. Hallucinations. You’ve been asleep for over six centuries. A little food and a little time for your brain synapses to wake up and you’ll be fine.”
He reflected briefly about the vision quests that were a rite of passage for young men of his ancestral Apache heritage. Those men walked into the desert and fasted until they found their spirit animal, who would guide them their entire lives. They fasted for six or seven days before they saw visions. He’d fasted for almost seven hundred years. He spoke to the waking Kamaguchi, “Sweetheart, I should be happy I saw a dog. I’d hate for my spirit animal to be a chicken or a goat.”
He stepped over the small black hairs in the hallway outside the door without noticing them. He ordered a protein drink in the galley and spoke to the computer screen embedded in the table. “Athena, scroll the log. I’ll stop you if I want to review anything. Let me know just before Kendara and Greg wake up. I want to be there.”
“Scrolling log.”
Redfeather watched the days and years roll by. After two hundred years of uneventful entries, he said, “Athena, just show me any unusual entries. Focus on the pilots.”
All pilots received a treatment developed during the early stages of the diaspora to the stars by Eastern European scientists. At first, the process was immediately fatal to over ninety percent of recipients, but eventually trial and error demonstrated that people of Slavic descent responded better than the general population. Bartok and Nadia received the treatment four days before departure. They both transitioned successfully and about the time the ship passed the orbit of Neptune, they were strapped in place and hooked up to their IVs. Redfeather remembered turning control over to the pair from Budapest. “See you in a thousand years, more or less.”
“Da, captain. Sleep well. Nadia and I will watch over you like the fairy godmothers, yes.”
The log showed that Boris and Nadia never slept and never left their posts. They received intravenous nourishment on schedule until 195,311 days ago when the log showed a significant decrease in the pilots’ nutrient solution. The level of nutrient grew less daily and dropped to zero the day before the pilots vanished.
Too bad, thought Redfeather. They were nice kids. He believed the whole idea of live pilots was foolish. Athena was capable of handling anything that could be dealt with during an interstellar voyage, but humanity has an almost pathological mistrust of machines and people insisted on having humans in charge. Nine hundred years is a long time and if the Methuselah Protocol hadn’t been developed, who knows how the millennium-long flights could have been managed.
He wasn’t looking forward to visiting the command center. He expected to find the pilots’ decayed bodies. Starvation was one hell of a way to die.
“Captain, First Officer Kendara Kamaguchi is almost awake. Her brain activity shows she is having a nightmare. She could injure herself.”
Redfeather ran to the sleep chamber, thankful for the artificial gravity Athena maintained at all times during the trip. Once she established the spin, it took no energy to maintain it in space.
He didn’t notice the wiry black hairs stuck to the bottom of his right foot.
The lid to Kendara’s chamber slid open. She sat up and screamed. He held her, but she pounded his chest with her fists. Then she vomited. After a moment she said, “Bats. I woke up and bats were scratching the lid to my chamber. They bit at the plasteel. I was terrified.”
“Just a nightmare. I imagined I saw a big dog when I woke up. It will pass. Greg will wake up soon. The pilots are offline. I’m sure they’re dead. Let’s verify everything else on board is okay and go back to sleep. We still have a hundred years to go.”
Kendara rinsed her mouth and smiled. “Are you Sirius?”
Redfeather laughed. “Yes, I am. You must be feeling better.”
A warning light flashed on Greg’s chamber and the lid slid open. The three officers showered, dressed in clean clothes, and reluctantly went to the Command Center.
Greg Flynn said, “Maybe the Methuselah Protocol didn’t work properly for Greg and Nadia. I never trusted it anyway. People can’t stay awake and alive for a thousand years. We’ve sent hundreds of ships to the stars with Methuselah pilots on board, but they’re one-way trips. We don’t know if it works. Hell, we don’t even know if a single ship even reached its destination.”
Redfeather said, “True, but that doesn’t change our duty.”
The pilot’s command chairs in Control Central were empty. The feeding and waste removal tubes were neatly coiled on the seats and two status chips sat side by side on the console between the two seats. The room was not in disarray. The helmets, microphones, and the interactive reality gloves had been stowed like Bartok and Nadia left for a few minutes to take a shower, have a beer, or perform a visual inspection of the ship.
Kendara picked up the two status chips. “Except for this, I’d say that our pilots will be back any moment, ignoring the fact that Athena reports that our pilots removed these chips a few hundred years ago. Even with the Methuselah treatment, they have to eat and drink. Once they detached themselves from their feeding tubes, their days were numbered.”
Redfeather ran his hands along a feeding tube. “This was removed intentionally. The needle isn’t damaged. Perhaps the centuries were too long. I expect I’d lose my mind if I were facing hundreds of years strapped in this chair. They may have decided to unhook themselves and live out the best life they could make for themselves on this ship.”
Greg spoke to Athena. “Did the pilots access food supplies? Where was the last place you saw them?”
“Food supplies were untouched and I last detected them in this room. Bartok removed his chip and disappeared from my monitors. Nadia vanished eighty-four seconds later.”
“I don’t understand.”
“One side-effect of the Methuselah injections is that recipients are not visible to a ship’s monitors or cameras. I can’t see them.”
Greg shook his head. “That’s ridiculous. There are other ways. Their body temperature will raise the temperature of whatever room they’re in. Not only that, if they move anything or open a door, it would show up on your monitors.”
“Agreed. The door to CH3, Cryogenic Hall Three, opened once and closed 195,359 days ago. All visual and auditory monitors inside that hall are non-functional. I can monitor the status of the individual chambers. That’s why I woke you. One chamber goes offline every day.”
Redfeather said, “Alright, I want to inspect CH3. Show us the way.”
“Follow the yellow flashing lights.”
The door slid open and the officers stepped inside. The gigantic room was a charnel house. Hundreds, no thousands, of the cryogenic chambers were open and empty. Bodies, headless bodies, littered the floor. The corpses seemed mummified and the dry flesh was tautly stretched. The faces of the severed he
ads were drawn into horrid smiles and grimaces. A thin haze drifted aimlessly through the room. It stank of old garbage and spoiled milk.
Greg vomited at the sweet stench. “My sweet lord, what hell is this?”
Redfeather paused and turned on his shoulder camera. “I don’t have a clue. It can’t be a malfunction of some sort. Athena, can you see this through my camera?”
“I have visual and audio. Please walk closer.”
“I think not,” said Redfeather. “Athena, wake the rest of the crew. Close this door behind us. Do not open it again without my express orders. Acknowledge, please.”
“Acknowledged, captain. Reanimation of crew personnel commenced.”
“I want full access to the pilots’ files and the weapons room.”
“Their files are loaded to your personal data stream. The weapons room door is activated and keyed to your retinal scan.”
Redfeather and Kendara helped Greg from the room. Redfeather said, “I want to be there when the rest of the crew wakes up.”
The door closed, but an insubstantial, barely visible mist drifted into the hallway. Kendara held her nose. “What the hell? The stinking miasma followed us out of the room. Athena, are there microbes or viruses in this smoke?”
“I do not detect any smoke. Perhaps, you should point the camera directly at it.”
“I am. It’s right here.”
The smoky haze or mist swirled and two indistinct faces appeared briefly and vanished with the fog into the air ducts along the floor of the hallway.
Kendara gasped, “Faces. I saw faces in the smoke.”
Athena said, “My monitors are clear.”
“Faces in the Mist. Sounds like a bad horror novel. Let’s get moving,” said Redfeather. “The air scrubbers will clean whatever mist made it out of CH3. Don’t worry about it.”
“I saw what I saw. If the air scrubbers are functioning properly, why was the air hazy in the CH3? Athena?”
“There is no haze in Cryogenic Hall Three.”
The captain said, “Let it go, Kendara. With all those dead bodies, the air has to be a little foul. The scrubbers aren’t designed to handle that kind of load.”
Greg said, “I think we should run a diagnostic on Athena. She says there’s no smoke, but we all saw it. She says she can’t see the pilots. I’m sure they’re long dead, but Athena should see their bodies.”
Redfeather agreed. “Athena, full diagnostic please.”
“Running self-diagnostic.”
Redfeather, Kendara, and Greg helped the other six crew personnel complete the reanimation process. Marda was very weak. Greg propped her up and gave her water. “Somehow, her feeding tube became restricted. Her nutrient supply was reduced by less than a hundredth of a percent, but that’s enough to slowly starve her over the years. She needs medical care until she regains her strength.”
Redfeather checked Marda’s vitals himself. “She barely weighs a hundred pounds. Take her to sickbay.”
Greg and Leo, the newly awakened medic, carried her from the room.
Leo said, “I’ll get her on another intravenous feed right away and get a fluid and vitamin drip started. I’ll do a full work up and design a custom nutrient solution for her.”
Redfeather waited until Greg and Leo returned to explain the situation to the crew. Carl, Anna, Susanne, and Hiroshi used the time to wash and dress.
Carl poured a cup of coffee, smelled the aroma, and smiled. “Can I pour anyone else a cup?”
Greg and Leo returned from sickbay. Greg said, “Thanks, I’d love one. We sedated Marda. She’ll need a couple weeks to regain her strength. Has Athena finished her diagnostic? Sickbay smelled funny. There’s got to be some kind of malfunction in air supply.”
Leo took a sip of a blended green concoction and wiped the lime colored foam from his upper lip. “I was uncomfortable in sickbay. It felt like someone was watching me.”
Kendara laughed, “Twilight Zone. Athena’s always watching. She knows if you’ve been good or bad.”
“No, not like that,” said Leo. “It was like someone else was in the room.”
Greg said, ‘I didn’t feel anything like that, but there was a slight haze. That’s why I think we need to do a complete analysis of the air supply system.”
Redfeather said, “Agreed. Athena, show me air supply status.”
“The data is on the wall monitor. The air supply system is operating within acceptable parameters. I have completed my self-diagnostic and I am operating perfectly.”
“Jefferson, I think we should visually confirm the air supply status,” said Kendara.
“Agreed, my dear. Carl and Greg, that’s yours to do. Go through it in detail. The rest of us will clean the mess in CH3. Everything goes into the organic recycler. This is a bad job, but we’ve got it to do. Containment suits and individual air supply for everyone. The sooner we’re done, the sooner we can go back to sleep.”
Leo washed his glass. “And the pilots?”
“They may be two of the bodies. Verify DNA on every single corpse before recycling. If Bartok and Nadia aren’t dead in CH3, we’ll need to search the entire ship. Enough talk, let’s suit up and get to work.”
Kendara’s eyes burned. She wanted to rub them, but she couldn’t reach inside her containment suit. She tried to scratch her forehead against the inside of her helmet. This was dirty, nasty work. Fifty thousand bodies for nine people to identify and clean up. That came to almost five thousand bodies for each crew member. They’d activated and programed equipment to do the heavy lifting and decontamination, but each body had to be identified and logged before it was loaded on a lorry and taken to recycling. She’d fallen into a numbed routine by the third morning. One ID a minute, sixty per hour, and ten-hour shifts; do the math. 600 corpses processed per person per shift worked out to over ninety total shifts, or ten shifts each.
At first, the carnage disgusted and frightened Kendara. By her third shift, bodies torn asunder, throats ripped out, and entrails strewn across the room lost their individuality. The dead ceased to become people in her mind, but only a job to be finished. She couldn’t handle it any other way and remain sane. She ignored the agonized faces, the limbs laying akimbo, and the decayed flesh dried to the consistency of beef jerky.
Hiroshi sat on the floor to her right with his head in his hands. Kendara read the identification of the body she had just sampled, “Mark Robertson.” Mark and his wife, Patricia, were veterinarians from Corn Valley, Iowa. She stopped reading about the dead man and patted Hiroshi.
He flinched when she touched his shoulder. “You okay,” she asked?
“This girl is from my hometown. I knew her. She was my sister’s age. I can’t do this anymore. I’m afraid the rest of her family may be here.”
“I’ll finish up this area. Our shifts are over in forty minutes. Take off now, get cleaned up, and fix a meal for everyone. I’ll stay longer and make up your lost time.”
Hiroshi slipped and almost fell when he stood. Kendara checked the next body and Hiroshi was right: the corpse was a fifty percent match to the girl from Hiroshi’s hometown. It was her sister.
Kendara finished her shift and changed clothes before joining the others for dinner. Hiroshi put a plate of beef noodles in front of her. He silently mouthed, “Thank you.”
Athena spoke before Kendara answered. “Marda is no longer connected to my monitors. Her readings have terminated.”
Jefferson Redfeather yelled, “Athena, is she dead?”
“Undetermined. She is no longer connected…”
Redfeather was out the door before she completed her sentence. He ran. The door to sickbay was open. Marda’s body, tangled in sheets and sensors, dangled head down from the bed. Her bloodless flesh was whiter than the sheets on her bed. Susanne lifted Marda by her ice-cold arms and shoved her onto the bed. Tears were in her eyes. She struggled to reconnect the tangled monitor cables and IV tubing.
Leo checked Marda’s wrist for a pulse. He didn
’t find one and reached for her neck. A bloodless gash gaped open under her jaw. Leo gently took Susanne’s hands. “Stop it. She’s gone. Look at her throat.”
Kendara backed against the wall. “Jefferson, maybe you did see a dog. I thought we were all together. Athena, what happened here?”
“I have video. It’s on the wall monitor.
Marda was asleep and began to bounce and thrash around. Her monitors ripped loose and the IVs jumped from her arm. Blood welled from a gash in her throat only to vanish as quickly as it appeared. Marda slumped down and slid partially off the bed. Seconds later, Jefferson entered the room, Susanne shoved him aside, and ran to Marda.
“That’s enough, Athena. Do you have an explanation?”
“I do not.”
“You can’t see Bartok or Nadia. They could have done this.”
“Possibly, but they do not appear on my screens. The most logical answer is that they are dead. In theory, they could be responsible.”
“Athena, stop telling me the pilots don’t appear on your screens. I know that. Run full scans of the body. I’d like Leo to perform a physical autopsy. Double shifts in CH3 tomorrow. I want that room clean and if the pilots’ bodies are in that mess, I want them found. Athena, send Bartok’s and Nadia’s files to everyone to review and read. We’ll talk in fourteen hours. I want details on the Methuselah system for me to review. Let’s get to it, people. I don’t want to sound heartless, but crying over Marda won’t help her or us.”
The next three shifts in the charnel house passed without incident. Anna closed the door to CH3 and reinforced the “Do Not Open” order with Athena. She removed her hood, leaned against the wall, closed her eyes, and breathed deeply. She almost fell asleep, but a growl brought her to instant attention.
A large wolf bristled in front of her. Its teeth were bared and the fur on its shoulders stood on end. The click of sharp claws echoed in the corridor. A second wolf moved closer. Anna winked at the animals. Anna said, “Athena, don’t respond verbally. Patch me through to the rest of the crew. Redfeather, I’m in the corridor outside the cryogenic hall. Two large dogs--no, two wolves--are about to attack me. I’ll try to get into the hall and close the door behind me.”
Space Bound: A Dragon Soul Press Anthology Page 4