Stasis (Alpha Ship One Book 1)

by L. D. P. Samways

  “Good,” I said, placing the tablet down. Suddenly the walls beside me disappeared and the tables and chairs housing my crew appeared beside me. I noticed that they were also done with the test. I was about to ask how they got on when another loud buzzing sound went off.

  “Prepare for test two,” a robotic voice echoed off the walls. The lights went off and everything went pitch black.

  “Good luck everyone,” I said under my breath, but nobody replied. I guess they were in the zone, as was I. But none of us could have imagined what lengths we’d have to go in order to pass the up and coming tests. If we’d have known, then I reckon none of us would have agreed to play on.

  But you know what they say about hindsight.

  Chapter Seven

  After taking part in the first test, we were immediately moved to another section of the warehouse-like room. In this new section we were put into pairs. I was with Dale and Jess was with Raj. We weren’t allowed to talk. So we remained silent as the Ursines left the room and locked us in. Another set of bright lights came on and out of nowhere, a bell tolled. I didn’t quite understand what was being asked of us. We just stood there, in our pairs, staring at the blank walls around us. The room was small. About the size of the living quarters back on the ship. Not so small that it was hard to move around in, but small enough to feel cozy.

  But we were feeling anything but cozy in that room. We were all feeling a little frightened if I’m being honest. At least I was, and judging by the look of sheer terror that my team mates shared on their faces, I was certain that this test wasn’t going to be pleasant. Call it a gut feeling, but whenever a collective group of people showed the same range of emotions at any given time, it meant that trouble was brewing. And I could feel the trouble around me. Before I had a chance to ponder the situation any further, the bell tolled again, and the same robotic voice that had been commanding us through the previous test came through a set of speakers on the wall. I looked up at the speakers and watched the grill bounce as the sound made everything around us vibrate.

  “You will fight, with your fists. The first human to fall to the floor loses,” the robotic voice said through the PA system. I shook my head. They were trying to shove a wedge between the four of us. Get us hating each other, that way we would be easier to control, easier to command, and easier to manipulate. I knew it. My crew knew it. But that still didn’t change anything. We had to do as we were told, or the plan of escape, whatever or wherever it may be, would falter. For the time being we had to play ball, or lose our upper hand.

  The Ursines thought that they were the ones in control. But we were. And we knew it. So we went along with the test. Dale and myself were the first to fight. Raj and Jess watched on from the sides, their backs propped up against the wall. They watched on, concerned expressions on their faces. Dale and I nodded at each other in mutual understanding. I guess we agreed then and there that we’d play this thing straight. We had to. There was no other way to go about it. If we didn’t convince the Ursines that we were being submissive and following their orders, then we’d risk being terminated. And being terminated wasn’t going to help anyone. So we knew that we had to give this our all, and going first meant that we had the opportunity to convey that message to both Raj and Jess. I knew that their bout would be a lot harder to make convincing. I knew for a fact that Raj wasn’t the type of man to take joy in hitting a woman, so I thought that he’d struggle with it. But thankfully, Jess wasn’t one for shying away from a fight. I knew she could handle herself fine. So all that was left was Dale and me.

  And Dale was more or less eight times the size of me. A big man indeed, and I had the task of fighting him. And now that we had our mutual agreement in place, the agreement that we would go all out in this to convince the Ursines of our willingness to fight, all that was left to do was for somebody to start the bout.

  “You first, big guy,” I said, bracing myself for the punch. And I didn’t have to ask him twice. He clocked me hard with a right hand. Luckily, I didn’t go down, for I feared that the Ursines would think I’d thrown the fight or something, and that wouldn’t be a good start. I didn’t want them to think that we were going to take it easy on each other.

  I steadied myself, my jaw aching. As I shook my head, I felt a bolt of lighting shoot through the back of my skull. I focused my vision, seeing Dale standing a few feet in front of me, his fists raised, with his legs spread apart. He cocked his shoulder back and threw another stiff shot. I saw this one coming and ducked, extending my elbow into his crotch. He doubled over, letting out a painful cry. I straightened myself up and watched him as he teetered over. He was just about to go down when he put all his weight forward and lunged onto me. I nearly fell on my ass but remained stern, embracing his weight as he pushed me into the wall behind me. As I said, the room we were in was small, so movement was a little difficult. That being said, I managed to lean against the wall, taking all his weight as he began to drive his right shoulder into my ribs. I let out three heavy gasps for air as he focused on my mid-section. I couldn’t breathe, and before I passed out, I hoisted my left knee up and cracked him in the chest as he wrapped his arms around my waste. I did it again, and he let go, stumbling back a few steps. He got back into his fighting stance with a smile on his face.

  “Not bad,” he said, running in toward me. I still had my back against the wall. Before I could move my whole body, he extended a punch in my direction. I quickly moved my head to the right and his fist barely grazed my face, the brunt of his punch landing firmly on the hard wall. I heard his knuckles crack and he immediately withdrew the punch, grabbing his fist with his left hand and cradling it close to his chest. I could tell that he was in agony. I guessed that he’d managed to break his hand. Sensing my chance, I stepped forward, cocked my left leg and kicked Dale in his groin.

  Poor Dale Dykstra didn’t see it coming. He was too busy nursing his injured fist to see my cheap shot. But he didn’t need to see it to feel it. Dale squealed like a wild animal and hit the floor with a thud. I found myself grinning and turned to see both Raj and Jess staring wide-eyed at Dale on the floor. I guess I’d underestimated their understanding of the situation. I think they thought we’d play fight or something. Basically, lie. But that’s certainly not what me and Dale had done. And before I could audibly defend myself, the bell tolled and the robotic voice sounded off once again.

  “Well done, human. Next fight!”

  Dale was still on the floor, rolling around in agony, cupping his nether regions as Raj and Jess made their way from the wall toward the middle of the small room where we had just fought. I moved out of the way, my hand brushing gently against Jess’s, but she didn’t even look in my direction. She just ignored me as I slowly walked toward the wall and leaned against it, waiting for their fight to begin. Raj looked terrified, and his usual deep brown skin had become a few shades lighter as he stood opposite Jess in the middle of the room, staring at her. Jess had her fists up, yet Raj didn’t. He looked a little uncomfortable with the idea of hitting her, but he’d have to do it sooner or later, or he’d lose, and truth be told, we didn’t know what the Ursines had in store for the losers of the test. Maybe they’d execute them for being poor warriors. Or maybe they’d execute the winners for being so quick to fight and defeat one of their own kind. We just didn’t know. The only thing we did know was that there would be another fight and it was about to happen.

  But there was a problem, Dale was still rolling around on the floor, cupping his manhood. I called for him to get up and join me near the wall. He didn’t respond, he just continued to roll around, so I quickly walked toward him and without saying anything to the big man, I grabbed a hold of his shirt, clasped my hands around his shoulders and dragged him off the fighting area, toward the perimeter of the small room. He didn’t put up a fight. He did whimper under his breath though. I remember thinking that I got him good with the kick and felt a little ashamed, but we were in extenuating circumstances that required
us to do things to one another that we would never usually do. But as their captain, I felt as if I’d set a bad example by going for the cheap shot. It probably looked a little hokey and it would most likely make my crew a little upset. But I swallowed my doubts, dragged Dale over to the perimeter and collapsed against the wall, out of breath. The guy was far too big to be dragging about like that. I was lucky that I’d managed to do it at all.

  “Fight!” The robotic voice snarled through the speakers. It seemed a little agitated, as if it wasn’t happy with how the start of the second fight had been delayed. But they didn’t need to wait for too long, Raj put his hands up and turned them into fists. It looked as if he was ready to take part in this.

  He and Jess squared up, both of them now had their fists at the ready. They looked like boxers as they circled each other. But I could see Raj’s lips moving as he danced on his feet like a pro. Before I could discern exactly what he was saying, Jess swung her right arm back and cracked him so hard I thought his head would roll off his shoulders. But luckily for the trained medic, all that happened was him crumpling onto the hard floor like a sack of potatoes. He was out cold and Jess had won in record time, beating mine and Dale’s fight.

  I looked over at her as she stared at Raj on the floor. I saw a lot of anger and malice in her eyes. She then turned her attentions to me and it looked like she was snarling. Her top right lip was vibrating as she breathed heavily, sending me some very evil looking daggers in my direction. I gulped a little, my Adams apple feeling like it was stuck in my damn throat.

  “That’s us beat, then,” I heard Dale say from beside me. I turned in his direction and saw that he was now sitting up by my side, the back of his head resting against the wall while he stared up at the ceiling. He looked like he was still trying to catch his breath. I felt a pang of regret shoot through me. I was just about to apologize for my cheap shot when the robotic voice screeched through the sound system once again.

  “Good job humans. You fight well. Some of you at least. Now for test three.”

  Chapter Eight

  After being escorted out of the second test room, we were walked back to the cubicles where the first test had been held. This time the walls were up when we got there, and the booths had already been formed. We were told to get into the same booths we’d occupied before. Without hesitating, the four of us made our way into our booths. This time, they fully boxed us into the booths, a fourth divider came up from behind us, locking into place, affectively turning the booths we were in, into cocoons.

  For a few seconds, it was pitch black in my booth because there was no natural light finding its way into the space. But after a few seconds, a dim light lit the area up. It wasn’t coming from any light fixtures. It was emanating from a computer tablet on the table in front of me. The chair I was sitting on compressed a little as my bodyweight was being held by the tight and coarse fabric the chair was made out of. The best way I could describe the chair I was sitting on was to compare it to a swivel office chair, the only difference being that the base of the chair, the long tube that would hold the structure together, was missing, meaning that it floated as I sat on it. There was a gap in between the feet of the chair and the chair its self, making the thing look quite futuristic. I was impressed by the technology.

  Back on Earth, we’d had similar technology, but I’d never seen it being used on chairs. We’d used it on railways, making trains and carts hover over the track using magnetics. But to use it on a chair was both impressive and pointless. I just didn’t see the point in having a floating chair. But I guess that’s what separated humans from the rest of the galaxy. We usually thought we had things sussed out but then something that challenges those misconceptions would put us back in our very insignificant place.

  All the thinking that I’d been doing regarding the usefulness of the chair had distracted me from what was being displayed on the tablet computer’s LED screen in front of me on the work desk. I leaned in and examined the screen. It flickered a little in the darkness, the only light coming from the dim screen. I read what was on the tablet. It was written in surprisingly well written English.

  Human, you have done well in your tests so far. You are ranked in first place compared to the three other humans you are being tested against. We can now confirm that your lead is very slight and if you fail this test, you risk falling behind. Whichever of you humans finish in last place will suffer a serious and permeant punishment. Make sure you are not last on the leaderboards.

  This is the last test before punishments and prizes will be given out. We wish you luck. You have three minutes to complete the exercises in front of you. The countdown started as soon as you entered this booth.

  Good luck.

  I felt my heart flutter in my chest. I noticed that on the screen in front of me there was a digital countdown. It was now on one minute and twenty-four seconds. It was counting backwards. That meant that I only had a small amount of time before it reached zero. And if I procrastinated further, I could risk being last and suffering a permeant punishment, whatever that meant. So I didn’t hang around feeling sorry for myself or my crew. I swiped left and commenced the test in front of me.

  What stared back at me on the screen was confusing. All sorts of numbers, long and short, dotted the screen. Multiplication signs were dashed in between the long numbers and small numbers. The test was simple. Work out the problem in front of me. But I had no idea how or where to start. There were far too many numbers, all grouped together, with no clear guidance on how to work it out.

  The fluttering in my chest soon changed into thumping. It was an evolution of the fear and anxiety that was ravaging my body. My head was beginning to hurt. A very sharp pain shot across the left side of my forehead, all the way down my face. I felt my teeth clenching, shooting more pain up my face and through my skull. For a second or two I thought that I was suffering from some sort of medical emergency, but then I remembered that from time to time, I’d suffered from debilitating anxiety attacks. I’d suffered from them when I was a youth, coming up in the flight school. But I’d overcome them when I managed to get my wings. I suppose success had helped keep my crippling mental ailments at bay. But whenever I thought I couldn’t do something, or that a decision I’d make would cost lives, I’d experience my panic attacks times ten once again.

  I could count on my left hand how many of those incidents had occurred in the last ten years. The answer was two. And they’d both happened in the space of four days. The day my ship was hijacked by the Ursines, forcing us out of hyper sleep, and the day I couldn’t figure out the math problem in front of me.

  I looked at the countdown and noticed that I only had thirty seconds left. It was “do or die” time. And I had a feeling that death was not too far off. There was something about the way the message on the tablet had greeted me and congratulated me on my lead in the tests that had struck me as odd. It’d said that whoever would finish last in these tests would suffer a permanent punishment.

  I couldn’t think of a more permanent punishment than death. But then again, life in prison is pretty permanent.

  I snapped myself out of my panic. The immense pain I was in was excruciating. I looked at the countdown. A little less than twenty seconds remained. I stared at the multiple numbers on the screen. Numbers like 23667542234, 3949493838 & 383831112003. I then stared at the problems. 142999483827 + 39388766662222 + 33982772111933 and so on. Each long number and small number grouping was always followed by a plus or a minus sign. Then right at the bottom of the screen there was a text box with a flashing cursor where I assumed you were supposed to report your findings and end the test.

  I looked at the countdown and saw that I only had seconds remaining. So I took a punt, sweat dripping down my face and tapped on the text box. A digital keyboard popped up and I switched to the numbers section, and typed my answer.

  “Infinity” was what I wrote into the box. I pressed enter and waited, finding time to breathe. The countdo
wn reached zero a second after I pressed enter, and the booth around me disappeared into the floor once again. I looked to my left and saw Jess. Her face was just as sweat ridden as mine. I turned to see Dale and Raj, who looked just as anxious.

  I sighed.

  “That was hard,” I said, surprising myself a little. The sound of my voice was gruff and high-pitched at the same time. I was in a dire need of some fluids. I heard Dale clear his throat.

  “It’s nice to know that they are testing us on resilience, and not results. It takes a lot for somebody to keep on coming back for more. That, in my opinion is worth far more than winning. Especially when winning at any cost only gets you a hollow victory,” Dale said. I turned to him, a look of confusion on my face.

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked.

  “Nothing. I’m sure you saw the leaderboard results on the tablet,” Dale said, not even looking at me. He was staring straight ahead, into the darkness that surrounded us in the big warehouse-like room. I was pretty sure the Ursines were staring back at him in the darkness.

  “Yeah, I saw the leaderboard results. It only showed my score, so I’m sorry if I’m not congratulating you on your place. All I know is that I’m pretty happy with my position,” I said, fidgeting with my hands. They were sweaty and I was trying to dry them off, wiping them on my trousers as I also looked forward.