by Gavin Magson
“We can pick them up on the way back, leave them here for now, Lev. Let’s hope there is something a little more interesting to be found in this relic. Might be some value in them at least.”
There was a gentle hiss and sudden silence behind them as a door slid open. The captain had found a similar panel on the wall to their left and a door he had not even noticed opened from his touch. Ilya motioned for Lev to follow as she walked towards the slowly disappearing light of the captain’s torch.
Chapter 3
Only Duke had managed to hold onto the contents of his stomach; Ilya was recovering, one hand leant against a wall whilst Lev was down on all fours making noises akin to a death rattle as he choked out muttered curses. As they entered the new room several lights had activated, panels in both the ceiling and walls illuminated decades, perhaps even centuries, of human decay.
The light did not reach the rooms rear, however big it was, but no one was in a hurry to find out where the decay ended. Several rows of cryogenic chambers lined up ominously, stretching out of sight into the darkness. They looked similar to the ones the crew had installed on their ship; however these were all filled with corpses in terrifying and gruesome states of decomposition. There was no immediate way to tell how long the bodies had been like this; stasis could have slowed down any decay a thousand fold.
“This ship could have been here for a hundred years... perhaps more. I've never heard of someone staying... in stasis long enough to decompose. We must be close to the front of the ship... perhaps we'll find something of value in the pilots cabin.” the captain spoke in short, quiet bursts as he fought with his body's natural urge to redecorate the floor he stood on.
He started walking forward into the gloom, outlines of more stasis pods appeared with every step. Lev managed to unsteadily pick himself up from the floor and wiped down his vomit speckled beard. No doubt the bodies had brought back vivid, harsh memories of his childhood, thought Duke. Ilya was already following in the captains steps, making sure to focus on his back and not let her eyes wander.
Lights began to dim behind them as those ahead flickered slowly into life, illuminating yet more corpses. Each one was a similar sight: after the food source had run out the bodies had resorted to burning fat, once that had been depleted even the stasis could not preserve life. What was once human was now drawn up husks, some contoured into horrifying shapes. The images were going to take a lot of heavy drinking to forget.
Ilya took a deep breath, cleared her throat and risked speaking whilst her stomach still felt like purging its contents, “What could have happened that left this craft stranded in space long enough for the stasis to fail? There could be hundreds of bodies here, all of them-”.
The abrupt pause was enough to cause Duke to stop in his tracks and turn back, only to hesitate at the look of shock on Ilya's face. Lev was a few steps behind her when she had stopped and now he could see what had caused her to be freeze up; the one intact body in this room of death.
The captain had not noticed anything suspicious when he passed the first time, some of the lights in the ceiling had blown or cracked in the years of inactivity and the others were slow to react. Towards the centre of another row of stasis chambers there was a man who looked not far from the limit of his body’s stored energy.
Each chamber was shaped like a large egg, with the front upper half a clear window to view the occupant. Inside was a tall, sinewy man with near shoulder length hair and a full beard. He was so gaunt and thin that the visible part of his torso showed each individual muscle and every bone as his body fat dropped far beyond dangerously low levels.
“Holy shit! You...you think he might still be alive?” asked Lev, his shocked voice the only sound as all of them stared transfixed at the chamber. Surely no one could have survived such a prolonged cryogenic stasis that left dozens of dead, drawn up husks?
The soft footfalls of Duke broke the silence as he moved in front of the frozen man, mild disbelief evident in his perplexed expression. In his many years he had seen a lot of unbelievable things; this was easily a contender to make his top three, but not quite the coveted number one spot.
He ran his hand over the small terminal at waist height, clearing layers of dust perhaps older than him that obscured the display. He could see that it was the only one with power on the row, and as he leaned around the chamber he could see nothing from the pods ahead.
“Anyone think they know how to work this machine?” asked the captain. He stared back down at the display as it flared into life, displaying a garbled mess of statistics and touch screen buttons.
“I don't think you should do that, captain; what are we going to do with him? He's not registered, you know what happens if you get caught smuggling. He isn't worth it, he's been frozen for god knows how long and leaving him isn't going to damn any of us. Let’s scrap this ship and jettison everything we can't sell.” said Ilya. Her words hung in the air, the weight of what they implied was worrying to Duke.
“And you know the punishment for anyone who believes in a deity, Ilya. We are going to try, because that is what we should do. He could die when we try to revive him, or be so brain damaged that he might as well be. We are human beings and life is worth more than the scrap value for this ship. Now, do you think you can work this thing or not?”
Ilya hesitated for just a moment; she knew that it was a death sentence to be caught smuggling an unregistered human into the city. She also knew that you couldn't stop the captain once he had an idea in his head, and the pained look that had flashed across his face would linger with her for a long time.
She approached the console and started tapping buttons on the screen and was surprised by how similar this aged system was to something she had worked with in the past. Several different readouts flashed past, too many for the captain to know what she was doing; he just hoped she wasn't purposefully killing the man.
“Lev, you might as well go search the front of the ship whilst we are busy here. If you find anything worthwhile just bag it up and bring it back.” said Duke, as Ilya worked away on the terminals screen.
Lev left them to it, he knew that a steaming pile of shit was going to hit the fan, just as soon as they tried taking this guy onto the planet. He followed the darkness, more lights blinked into life as he strode past the numerous tombs. It felt like he must have seen a hundred corpses, as he passed each row he checked to see if any of the consoles showed life from their occupant. It was a relief when he finally came to the last row and found a door out of this cursed room.
The panel was a lot more evident on this door, a simple press and the door in front slid open slowly. He stepped inside the small room, it's only furnishings were two chairs and the instrument table below a panoramic window at the cabins front. There was no sign of the pilots, he assumed that they must have joined the rest of the dead in stasis.
Lev stooped to look under the table, then ran his hand along the walls, searching the cramped room for more hidden cabinets; there didn't seem to be anything of worth. He made sure to feel under the table for any hidden switches but was certain the search was a bust. He had hoped to be busy at least a little while longer, the sooner he finished the sooner he had to face the skeletal abominations.
“It's weird,” said Ilya, “this technology is pretty advanced stuff. Anything else and this guy would be just another ruined corpse, like all the other bodies in here.”
“What's strange about that? Only the rich get the best things, obviously somebody paid a lot of money to build this ship and everything in it. The guns back in that cabinet were definitely expensive, no doubt this is now a tomb to a lot of wealthy people,” replied the Captain.
“I'm not an idiot, I was raised in the slums, just like you. I know the wealthy spit on us and hoard all their money; only they get the best things. What I meant is that it's weird just how advanced this stasis chamber is, because if the readout is right this man has been in stasis for centuries. This machine is advanced by our
standards.”
The chamber door opened outwards, sliding forward then sideways. Catheters, a respirator, feeding tubes and heart monitors automatically retracted in a flurry of movement and the frozen man took his first gasping breath. Ilya and the captain both stepped back, preparing for the inevitable. The man struggled to breath before falling to his knees and evacuating his stomach.
The rancid smell of bile filled Ilya's nostrils as she stood looking down at the hunched over figure. He coughed a few more times, raised his head to the two stranger, eyes unfocused and darting everywhere, before he slumped forward and passed out in his own vomit.
“What did you do to him? If you wanted him dead why didn't you just leave him in the chamber?” asked Lev. The first thing he had seen when he returned from the pilot’s cabin was the unconscious figure, sprawled across the floor and reeking of bile.
“We didn't do anything to him. Why don't we freeze you for a couple decades and see how you deal with emergence sickness? Idiot!” Ilya almost spat the word. She was insulted by Lev's claims that she could kill an unarmed man. Leaving him in the chamber might have been a death sentence but her conscience would be clean. She didn't kill defenceless people.
The captain was rummaging through the pack he had brought along, seemingly oblivious to the bickering crew members. He found what he was looking for quickly, a pair of tattered trousers and an old cloth that had seen better days.
Lev continued to chide Ilya over her sometimes hostile approach to humanity, the animal kingdom and inanimate objects, whilst their captain did his best not to add his own thoughts on the matter. With a grunt Duke rolled the unconscious, naked man over and began to wipe the vomit from his face and torso. It felt like his hands were being run over a carcass, the man's skin was stretched so tightly across his bones that it might as well not be there. When he was done Duke dressed him in the old trousers and finally acknowledge the bickering pair.
“Once you two are done arguing let’s get out of here, this cemetery gives me the creeps. Lev, can you carry this guy for me? I'm too old to carry such a dead weight, my joints will only slow us down. I'll take your plasma torch and we can come back for those weapons. Let's just get the fuck out of here.”
Lev handed over the torch to his captain, knelt down and hoisted the man over his shoulder. He grunted loudly as he stood up; he had misjudged the weight of his passenger.
“Damn, this guy is really heavy. You sure he isn't an Aug?” asked Lev.
“How would we know? If he's been in stasis for well over a century I doubt it, those augments haven't been around that long. He shouldn't be heavy, you'd struggle to find a gram of fat on him.” said Ilya. Neither she nor the captain paused to wait for the hulking Lev to follow.
“You have got to be kidding me. You guys go on a scavenging mission and come back with a person? Shit!” Greg was not in a happy mood, which was no real change from his usual temperament. He'd seen the punishment doled out for human trafficking and it scared the hell out of him.
“Don't worry about it, Greg. I've had time to think it through and I know a way to make it past the docks. If you are that worried we can travel separately and I'll be the one taking the fall, if needs be.” said Duke.
“Why are you even thinking about risking your life for this guy? You don't know him, you don't know why they were left to die in stasis. Have you considered all that fire power? This guy could be anybody, who knows what kind of shitstorm bringing him back could cause?” it certainly sounded like Ilya was unlikely to change her mind any time soon.
She turned to study their living corpse, seeing for the first time the faint white lines that raked his body, scars that marked his gaunt frame. Ilya did not know how she had not noticed these earlier, but it looked like the man had lead a hard life. Her finger traced over an inverted circle, not much bigger than her thumbnail, the scar long since healed; a bullet wound?
Duke let out a heavy, disheartened sigh; he was shocked and appalled by the reactions of his crew. He thought he had gotten to know these people through their years of service, yet Duke had not expected this from them. Lev had yet to weigh in on the situation, but the captain didn't have high hopes for some backup.
When they returned from the ships hold Lev had laid the man down on a long table in their kitchen, his breathing was now a lot easier than when he first passed out. They stood around the man, staring at him, each lost in thought about what smuggling this unknown would do to their lives.
“If you don't mind....I'd like to say something,” said the stranger, his raspy voice barely audible. He opened his eyes and struggled as he shifted his weight, finally managing to raise himself onto an elbow, wincing as the bone hit the hard surface underneath. “I don't know you people....but from what I've heard, it's not worth the suffering... if you get caught smuggling me. I don't want... to die. If you can just dump me... somewhere... you'll never see me again.”
The captain scratched at the stubble on his chin, impressed that the man had shown no sign of consciousness whilst they talked. It made him wonder how much the stranger had overheard; when had he awoken?
“Before my crew decide to jettison you into space I would like to at least know your name, I don't want to think of you as the frozen man.”
The man lowered his head, his expression shifted as he came to realise the extent of what he had lost from stasis. “I...I don't remember my name. I don't remember anything,” he whispered.
“The computer that regulated your bodies condition whilst you were in stasis, it stored some information on you. I don't know how to access the encrypted stuff, but I do know your first name is Ajax.” said Ilya.
Ajax. He liked it. The name had a nice ring to it; it felt like it belonged to him.
“A name. It's nice, to have a name. How long was I in stasis? I should remember things, right?”
It was the captains turn to speak, interrupting as Ilya struggled to answer. “The machine said you had been in stasis for over a century, we can't be certain just how long it was,” a nod from Ilya confirmed his words. “I know this is a lot to take it right now, especially since you are suffering stasis lag. I've heard of people getting it from a decade in stasis, so I'll be honest; chances are your memory isn't coming back any time soon, if ever. It's probably for the best, after all no one you knew in your previous life will still be alive.”
“Maybe you are right. I don't even feel sad knowing that whatever life I had is gone. I just want to live... I don't care how. I'll do anything you want of me.” said Ajax.
“I want you to plot a course back to the space dock above Konar, Greg, it's time we went home. Lev, you and Ilya can finish off scrapping that ship. Make sure the Insects don't try to recyc any of the bodies, we can give them a space cremation; it's the best we can do. In the meantime, I want to have a talk with Ajax about what he can do with his new life.”
Chapter 4
The journey back to the space dock took them a little over a day, most of which Ajax spent eating, sleeping and talking with Duke. The crew had held a quick vigil to the one hundred and nineteen lives that were lost on the unmarked ship, they watched from the holds observation window before jettisoning the corpses toward the white dwarf. The Insects had done a good job of recycling the stasis chambers but leaving the bodies intact.
No one had talked to Duke or Ajax since the impromptu introduction of their new passenger. They had spent the time in conversation, hiding away in the captains quarters, talking about why Duke had chosen to rescue Ajax and what he could now do with his life, should they make it into the city undetected.
The mining ship limped into one of the giant space docks bays and Greg eased on the reverse thrusters, slowing down their mining tug to match the geostationary space dock. Large electromagnets extended to tether the incoming ship, followed by a connecting tunnel so that the crew could board the docks.
Duke lead Ajax through the command room to the external hatch and left him leant up against a wall as he opene
d up the sealed door. Ajax had already started to walk unassisted, although he still needed to stop often to catch his breath. The bulkhead swivelled outwards and revealed a small room beyond it.
The captain ushered Ajax inside, the crew followed them wordlessly behind, each carrying small bags that held their personal belongings. All he could do was look around the rusting room, watching as the female crew member used a console next to yet another door. Ajax felt his ears pop before a lock disengaged, the door swivelled inwards this time. They all stepped outside into the docking tunnel.
Ajax walked behind the crew, staring in wonder at the sights before him with his mouth agape. The tunnel connected them to one level of the space dock and was entirely transparent, allowing him to look down at the distant planet below. It was an unforgettable, beautiful and heart stopping sight, one that he struggled to take in. He couldn't understand how the four crew members acted so nonchalant in the presence of this majestic scene.
The part of the planet he was looking down on seemed to be an entire continent, ringed by deep blue ocean. He was too far up to see any sign of civilisation, but the entire continent was a light tan colour with no visible sign of greenery. It appeared to be an endless desert stretching out in all directions.
Ajax looked up just in time to stop himself walking into the back of the man mountain. He wasn't sure, but he thought that he had heard the man called Lev. Their group had reached the end of the tunnel and were impeded from walking onto a large platform by two guards, both looking stern and foreboding; one held a rifle with both hands, barrel pointed at the floor.
Ajax must have zoned out after being in awe of the sight below, he barely caught the conversations end. The captain reached into his pocket and handed something over to one of the guards who, after a quick inspection, passed it to the other.