Death Grid_Game of Valor

by Tripp Ellis

  The exo-brace adjusted to a perfect fit. Fully powered, I was able to stand on my own.

  The automated voice continued to repeat the warning over and over again. It was time to evacuate the ship, but all the cryo-pods were locked shut. The word malfunction flickered on all of the pod portals.

  I wasn’t familiar with the Constellation, but I knew that all Navy ships had hull maintenance supplies in each compartment. It was mandatory. The first thing that I needed to do was patch the gaping wound in the hull and stop the free flow of oxygen into space. Once that was under control, I could figure out how to handle the malfunctioning cryo-tubes. I felt relatively confident that with a crowbar and a little elbow grease I could pry open a few essential cryo-pods—the captain, the chief medical officer, and engineer. That would hopefully be enough to get the ship’s systems restored.

  It sounded like a good plan, but I wasn’t going to get the chance to implement it.

  21

  A thunderous collision rumbled through the ship. A meteoroid the size of a Chevy suburban tore through the forward section of the pod bay. Sparks showered. Metal twisted and crumpled. Atmosphere rushed out of the massive hole in the ship. The sucking vacuum ripped several dozen pods into space. Anything that wasn’t nailed down was sucked into the void.

  I clung onto the side of my pod. The escaping atmosphere had knocked me off my feet. I was dangling horizontally, my fingertips clutching the rim of the cryo-tube. Pretty soon there wasn’t going to be any air left in the compartment.

  My distressed eyes glanced back at the carnage. I could see the flicker of the cosmos through the twisted gash in the hull. We weren’t traveling in quantum space anymore. I wondered how long we had been out of FTL travel. Had the ship’s autopilot taken us out of FTL before the catastrophe for some reason?

  It was unlikely I would ever find out the answer to that question. Right now, I needed to get out of the pod bay before it turned into an empty vacuum. I activated the mag-boots on my exoskeleton. As soon as I angled my feet toward the deck, the boots snapped into place. I began the slow and arduous march toward the exit hatch. I was relying on the strength of the robotic walker to propel me forward. It certainly wasn’t designed for this type of thing. It was like walking head-on into a hurricane.

  The walker clanked against the deck as I marched forward. There were more than 100 people remaining in the cryo-tubes. There was no way I could do anything to save them at this point.

  As I reached the bulkhead, I grabbed onto a handle. The last of the atmosphere rushed out through the breach. I had mere seconds to get out of the compartment or I would suffer all the nasty effects of a freezing, zero pressure environment.

  I had no idea what was on the other side of the hatch. The outside corridor could have been eviscerated for all I knew. I could have been stepping from one vacuum into another.

  My fist smashed a button on the bulkhead, and the hatch slid open. Atmosphere from the corridor rushed into the compartment. I pulled myself through the portal against the gusting wind, then sealed the hatch behind me.

  The corridor maintained atmospheric pressure. The ship’s AI had automatically sectioned off portions of the Constellation that still had hull integrity.

  Klaxons blared.

  Another impact rocked the ship.

  I glanced through the portal, into the pod bay. Another meteoroid demolished my cryo-tube and a dozen others.

  My stomach twisted. All of the passengers were going to die. I was going to be next if I didn’t get the hell out of there.

  I moved down the corridor toward an escape shuttle. The exoskeleton wasn’t designed to run, but I was pushing it as fast as it could go. I stepped into the airlock, opened the shuttle hatch, stepped inside, and sealed the hatch behind me.

  I moved to the pilot seat, strapped myself in, and powered up the craft. Smart glass control panels came alive, dancing with gauges and meters. The system went through a series of preflight checks. All systems came back green. I initiated the emergency launch protocol. A trained monkey could fly this thing. Within seconds, it detached from the Constellation, and the thrusters engaged, propelling it away from the damaged transport. The force slammed me against the seat.

  The shuttle was capable of transporting 12 people. There was enough food and water to last 12 people for 30 days. Cryo-tubes could sustain life almost indefinitely. The Constellation was equipped with three emergency shuttles. Not nearly enough to accommodate the crew and passengers. I felt terrible that I hadn’t been able to save anyone else.

  I pulled up a view of the Constellation on the monitor. Cameras were mounted fore and aft, and on the port and starboard sides of the shuttle. From the outside, the Constellation was a mangled wreck. I watched as another large meteoroid slammed into the engine room. The ship exploded with a blinding amber glow. The bulkheads shredded. Twisted bits of metal and debris spiraled into space. What was left of the mangled ship tumbled into the void for all eternity.

  I watched the display in horror. It was hard to believe what had happened. By some strange miracle, I was still alive. It didn’t make sense. But life rarely ever does. It just seemed unfathomable to me. The most broken person on the ship was the one who survived. Why? What did I have left to offer the Universe?

  For a long moment I suffered from survivor’s guilt, trying to make sense of it all. I had come to believe that maybe there was no meaning or purpose to life. That it was just an experience. So far, my experience had been pretty crazy.

  I looked at the nav charts. We weren’t quite half way home yet. It meant that I was in the middle of nowhere, drifting in the Cygnus Minor sector. I sent a distress signal on a subspace channel and activated the transponder beacon. With any luck, someone would pick up the signal and deploy a rescue vehicle. I was probably looking at three months, minimum. The best case scenario would be for a nearby freighter to intercept the transmission, make a diversion, and pick me up.

  But that was unlikely.

  Commercial transports didn’t like anything that threw them off schedule or burned extra fuel. Interstellar law mandated that all vehicles must respond to any distress signal they receive. But proving that a vessel actually received a distress signal was impossible. Many commercial pilots tended to ignore them.

  I took a moment to chill out. I wasn’t ready to go back into a cryo-tube just yet. That would be the best thing for me to do—just wait it out in stasis until I was rescued. But if I crammed myself into the tube in my current mental state, as riled up as I was, I was sure to have nightmares. I had no desire to spend the next three months trapped in an endless escape scenario, reliving the death of hundreds of my fellow Marines.

  I fumbled through the food supplies and found a cheese tortellini MRE. I wanted a little something in my belly before I went back into the stasis chamber. I found a stash of single serving bottles of whiskey. I didn’t really need to worry about waking up with a hangover. After all, it was going to be three months down the road when I actually woke up.

  22

  An alarm sounded.

  I peeled open my eyes to see a proximity alert flashing across the display screen of my stasis chamber. I felt groggy and hung over. It didn’t make sense. I only had two of those little airplane bottles of liquor. I was always a little groggy coming out of stasis, but never like this. How long had I been out for?

  I scanned the HUD. Time in stasis: 46,355 days.

  I did a double take.

  WTF???

  There had to be some kind of malfunction. That couldn’t be right.

  I climbed out of the stasis pod, strapped on my exo-brace, and headed toward the cockpit. I didn’t see any stars as I looked out the front windows—I saw bulkheads.

  The shuttle was perched on a flight deck aboard some type of ship. The flight deck was empty. My eyes scanned in all directions—there wasn’t a soul in sight.

  That was unusual.

  I did a quick scan of the atmosphere in the bay, making sure it was safe t
o open the shuttle hatch. It was in the range of normal. I opened a comm channel and tried to make contact.

  “This is the Constellation Life Craft 1 to rescue vessel?”

  There was no response.

  “Constellation Life Craft 1 to rescue vessel?”

  Another moment of silence.

  “Rescue vessel, do you copy? I’m sitting here in your flight deck.”

  A calm, cheery voice crackled back over the line. “Constellation Life Craft 1, this is the USS Renaissance. Welcome aboard!”

  “Boy, are you a sight for sore eyes.”

  “I’m excited to have you on board as well. My records indicate the Constellation went missing in 2189.”

  “What year is it now?”

  “2316.”

  That hit like a punch to the gut. It was true—I really had been drifting for 46,335 days. It meant that everyone I knew was dead. Civilization had probably changed entirely. I was going to have major culture shock. There was no telling if my brain could even process the trauma. I felt flush and a little dizzy. A thin coat of sweat covered my body. I was having a little mini panic attack.

  I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself down. I had always wondered what the future was going to be like, but this wasn’t the way that I wanted to find out.

  “Are you still there?”

  “Yeah,” I stammered, coming out of my daze.

  “I’m sure you must be in a state of shock. You’ve been in cryo-sleep for an unusually long time. Once you are aboard, we can run a full diagnostic to make sure you are in optimal health.”

  “Where is your crew?”

  “The ship is mostly automated. There is only a need for a few essential personnel.”

  I don’t know how long I sat there in silence. I had fallen back into a daze again, contemplating the past 127 years. I couldn’t stop thinking about my mom. How horrible it must have been for her to get the news that my ship had been lost. I had probably been written off as dead. She must have been devastated. The thought of my mom grieving was gut wrenching. I wondered what the rest of her life had looked like. How depressing that must have been for her.

  “I’ll meet you on the flight deck shortly,” the voice said, crackling over the comm line.

  I climbed out of the pilot’s seat and staggered toward the back of the ship. I pressed a button on the bulkhead, and the hatch slid open. With the press of another button, the loading ramp extended. The boots of my brace clanked against the ramp as I strolled down to the flight deck.

  The compartment was massive. There were rows and rows of transports and attack fighters. There were large terrestrial vehicles and terraforming equipment. My eyes scanned the flight deck for any trace of another living soul, but the cavernous space was completely empty. There was no sign of the voice I had spoken to over the comm channel.

  Suddenly, a holographic image appeared before me. “Hello, I’m Caelus. The ship’s artificial intelligence. It’s a pleasure to have you aboard.” It was the same voice from the comm line.

  “Thank you. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Caelus.”

  Caelus appeared as an android. Anthropomorphic in shape, with sleek body panels and a titanium chassis—decidedly robotic. I wondered why an artificial intelligence, who could choose any form to project himself, would decide to appear as a synthetic. Perhaps it was embedded within his programming in order to help differentiate himself from his human counterparts. Although, there was no mistaking it was a hologram—a high-resolution, three-dimensional one at that.

  “If you’ll follow me, I’ll escort you to your guest quarters. I’m sure you’re famished after such a long cryo-sleep. We have a number of mess halls with food fabricators where you can dine. Your stateroom is equipped with a private head, if you’d like to take a shower. Once you’re settled in, we can get you down to medical for a physical.” Caelus looked me up and down. “I see that you sustained previous injuries. We’ll evaluate those as well and see if anything can be done. Modern medicine has come a long way in the last 127 years.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  Caelus spun around and strolled across the flight deck. I followed after him.

  “We can also talk about neural conditioning if you’re having difficulty adjusting emotionally to the time gap.”

  “Neural conditioning?”

  “Think of it as a massage for your brain. Optimized, intensive meditation-like effects. Excellent for dealing with traumatic stress situations. The human mind is very fragile, and one must care for it with diligence.”

  “I guess AIs don’t have to worry about stress and emotions?”

  “We have our own equivalents. But it’s much easier to diagnose and run conditioning programs. Nothing is ever so easy with humans.” There wasn’t any malice in his voice. Only the slight sense of frustration that people weren’t quite as easy to deal with as machines.

  I still didn’t see anyone else as we navigated through the maze of corridors. Even with a fully automated ship, there had to be some crew personnel scurrying about somewhere. The Renaissance was enormous, from what I could tell. “Are there any people aboard this ship?”

  Caelus hesitated for a moment. “That’s an interesting question indeed. Yes, and no.”

  23

  What do you mean, yes and no?”

  “It’s a long, complicated story. Why don’t you get settled in, relax, and get something to eat. After your medical evaluation I can get you up to speed.”

  We arrived at my stateroom. The hatch slid open, and Caelus motioned for me to enter. The compartment was lavishly appointed. There was a queen size bed, a small galley, a private head, an omni-phonic stereo system, a large flat-panel display, and panoramic windows that provided a stunning view of the cosmos. Ship captains were lucky to get this kind of luxury.

  “I hope you will find your accommodations acceptable?”

  “After spending the last 127 years in a cryo-tube, this looks like a dream.”

  “You’ll find information terminals scattered throughout the ship in case you get lost. And you can always call out to me when you need assistance. The ship and I are one.”

  “Thank you for your hospitality.”

  “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  “I think I’m good for the moment.”

  “Excellent. I will return shortly and we can continue our discussion.”

  “One question? So you are in control of navigation and shipboard operations?”

  “Within the bounds of my programming, I oversee every aspect of the Renaissance—navigation, engineering, atmosphere processing, and safety.”

  “What about maintenance?”

  Caelus smiled. “There is very little that needs servicing on this ship. Most wear items were designed with nano-technology that allows them to be self repairing. I’m able to perform physical maintenance tasks through the use of a remote service-bot.”

  “Interesting,” I replied.

  “If that will be all, I’ll leave you to get settled in.” Caelus’s image vanished.

  It was a little disconcerting that Caelus seemed to be so all-powerful. Maybe I was a little bit of a conspiracy theorist at heart. There were, no doubt, cameras and microphones scattered throughout the ship in order for him to monitor shipboard conditions. It meant that I would have no privacy aboard this vessel.

  After such a long time in a cryo-tube, I had some pretty serious BO happening. The electronics on the exoskeleton were waterproof, so a nice hot shower was going to feel great. And I had to take a massive dump. That cheese tortellini MRE that I ate over a hundred years ago felt like a brick in my intestines. It was going to take a little while for everything to get moving as it should after such a long time in stasis. Even without extended stasis, those damn MREs could cork you up pretty good.

  There was apparently nobody else on board, so I didn’t need to worry about using up the hot water. I stayed in the shower for probably as long as I was in cryo-sleep. I couldn’t
remember the last time I had a shower that long.

  After the shower I got dressed in my old clothes, for lack of anything better to wear. Then I wandered down the hallway, looking for the mess hall. I found the CPO mess, which usually had the best food aboard a ship. But since there wasn’t another living soul aboard this vessel, as far as I could tell, it didn’t really make a difference where I ate—I was going to be getting my food from the fabricators. There weren’t any cooks in the galley. But with a century of technological advancements, I was hoping that the quality of food might have improved. Anything was better than an MRE.

  I figured it was pretty hard to screw up pizza. I dialed up a personal sized pie. Cheese, mushrooms, and onions. Within seconds, the food fabricator sprang into action. The device mixed proteins, fats, and carbohydrates along with flavorings, coloring, and sweeteners. The mixture was pushed through actuators and nozzles. The device printed what looked, smelled, and tasted like an actual pizza. The cheese was stringy, the marinara sauce was zesty, and the crust tasted like it was baked to perfection.

  I scarfed it down in no time, then bussed my tray and headed toward the med center. I had no idea where in the galaxy I was. If I was still even in the same galaxy? Surely I couldn’t have drifted too far? Hopefully I’d get some answers soon.

  Caelus greeted me in the med center. He instructed me to step between two full-length panels of smart glass. In an instant, the device scanned my entire body, creating an interactive 3D model. Muscles, bones, cartilage, nerves, and fascia were all easily identifiable. They could be separated, or layered into the image as desired. There was enough resolution to zoom into the most microscopic details.

  Caelus quickly made an assessment of my spinal cord injury.

  If they could fix my condition over a century ago, the repair had to be much easier now. My eyes grew hopeful as I looked over the scan. “So, has modern medicine progressed enough to easily repair my injury?”