Something of her innocence gave him pause, and her viridian eyes enamored him with an innocent vulnerability that for a moment made him catch his breath. He asked sternly, “You’re not from the Academy, are you?”
“The Academy?”
The shuttle’s computer stated flatly, "Oxygen will be depleted in 4 minutes. Warning. Insufficient oxygen levels."
Leah held her chest, “Why are we already out of oxygen? I thought this was supposed to save us!”
"It is. Just not the way you think."
"So why are we here? My dad ...”
"These are cryonic chambers.”
"What?”
“We don’t have time to talk about this. You and I are getting into these chambers because we have no other choice. If you were from the Academy ...”
“But I’m not, and I’m not getting in there until you tell me what it is.”
"Our only chance to live," he said as he opened his chamber. “You get inside. We live. Simple as that. You don’t get in here right now you’re going to suffocate. Now get in!”
"There has to be another way. We can fix the oxygenator or make contact with the other shuttles ..."
Josh made sure his eyes bore a hole straight through her head as he spoke. "Listen to me. I don’t know how you got in here but there’s no going back now, do you understand? We are the last people alive and if you don’t get into this chamber you’ll be responsible for the death of the human race.” He grabbed her shoulder and pushed her towards her chamber.
The girl teared up and shook her head, resisting the pressure he was applying to get her closer to the chamber. She said weakly as she pushed back, "I can't get in there. I can't."
“Why not?” he snapped angrily.
Leah began to hyperventilate. How long would they be drifting in space? Would she ever wake again?
He spun her around and spoke so absolutely that the words bled on his teeth as they came out. "You’ll be put inside that chamber whether you want to or not. I will not be left alone!”
He calmed himself after the terror in her eyes reached a more sensible part of his soul. He continued softly and let his hands slip from her shoulders. “We go to sleep. We’ll do it together, and we’ll wake up together.”
"Oxygen will be depleted in 2 minutes. Warning. Insufficient oxygen levels."
“Okay,” she said, her mouth quivering. She stood near her chamber and stared through the glass. “Okay. I’ll do it.”
She cried and trembled with fear as Josh opened the glass casings. Once open, she slid onto the cold mat and lay on her back, the casing slowly falling over her. The glass would soon be secured around her and there would be no way out and any second thoughts to escape now would only turn into wild panic and she forced her thoughts back from that abyss and remembered Josh’s words, “You get inside. You live.”
Josh slipped into his chamber.
“Wait! What’s your name?” She asked just before the casing closed.
“Josh.”
“My name is Leah,” she said.
“You’ll be fine, I promise.” He said just as the chambers locked shut and sealed them in.
They stared at each other from behind the glass as a hissing sound filled their individual chambers with an air mixture designed to put them to sleep. Josh's eyes became heavy and his body numbed with a dream-like heaviness. The last thing he saw was Leah touching the glass and staring at him with terrified eyes as if she were about to drown. This would be their last breath.
Then they were unconscious. The computer system ran its program to put them into cryogenic stasis. A needle found each of their arms and injected a substance that acted like antifreeze. There would be no heat provided for them in the chamber, only subzero temperatures to halt their metabolic processes. The humid air within the chamber covered their exposed body parts with zyenen solutes, their skin cells absorbing it until the flesh became resistant to osmotic contraction.
The last two humans in existence went into cryostasis for the long journey into the unknown, in search of a miracle or a stroke of improbable luck to save the human species.
The shuttle that carried their bodies forth, a feat of great engineering ability, was constructed with precious metals that required the exploitation of men and land to extract, and which wars had been fought over to retain so that a select few could escape a dying planet. It was a sacrifice only the privileged were capable of bestowing upon the less fortunate for the greater good.
As the years quietly passed, the shuttle maintained its energy reserves by capturing radiant solar waves, regardless of how miniscule and faint they may have been. In order to conserve energy, only the shuttle’s sensors and transmissions operated, along with sustaining the cryonic chambers that were maintaining optimum living conditions for Josh and Leah’s frozen stasis. Larger energy requirements were reserved for course adjustments and collision avoidance.
At one point, over the course of thirty six years, the shuttle passed through a dead zone that couldn't provide enough energy to replenish what was being consumed. The shuttle went into hibernation which, had Josh and Leah been conscious to know, was the closest they had come to death. Everything was shut down except to provide energy for the cryonic chambers. No transmissions would be sent, no scanning of nearby planets for hospitable conditions, no collision avoidance. It floated along in its last pre-planned course completely blind until, eventually, a sun that was eighty three light-years away began providing increasing levels of solar atoms needed to restore its energy cells.
After that dark period the shuttle became swallowed by the mystery of space, a dark and strange world of colliding galaxies, fantastic supernovas and expanding volumes of amber-colored gas so large it would take them a thousand light years to travel through had they passed into it. In this void there was timelessness, with time only kept by the light of a trillion stars, quasars and planets that have been traveling through space for billions of years since their inception and even after their death.
The long-dormant console on the shuttle booted to life as information was relayed to its mainframe from the shuttle's outboard sensor. A reading that had been picked up had drawn the shuttle towards a planet with promising conditions for life. Enough detail had been downloaded to begin analysis on the planet's surface, water, and type of atmosphere.
This was the only time the shuttle had ever picked up on anything considered worthy of further analysis. The myriad planets it had passed were too cold, too hot, too violent, too dry, or too toxic to sustain human life. Countless trillions of these rocks were all settled into a purposeful orbit among the universe, useless to humans, mere debris that had formed in the cataclysm of creation.
Until now. One possible bright light that was submerged in the abyss. The shuttle corrected its course to take it into proximity of a planet capable of sustaining human life. A program aboard the shuttle, written ages ago by a long dead development team from earth, began executing its programming to take the shuttle into orbit, calculating a course for entry and a location to land its precious cargo.
Inside the cryonic chambers Josh and Leah remained frozen in time, Leah’s hand still slightly outstretched towards Josh as it had been those many years ago in her last cognitive moment. It would take days to fully reverse the cryonic process without damaging their tissue, including their brain cells and vital organs. While the cryonic chamber had been designed to operate for decades, even centuries, it had been impossible to test the effects on organic tissue for that length of time.
There was no guarantee they could be revived at this point or that no permanent physical or mental damage had developed in that time. Humanity's desperate attempt to avoid extinction had taken a long, perilous road into the deepest unknown mankind could ever imagine.
The shuttle computed a trajectory that would allow it to descend through the atmosphere without turning into a giant fireball. Gravity reached out its irresistible grip and pulled their shuttle towards destruction. Inste
ad of being torn apart and bursting into flames, the shuttle angled its nose properly, and a white trail streaked across the sky as moisture from the engines crystallized in the freezing mesosphere.
Josh and Leah were in the process of reanimation as their shuttle tore through the sky. The port side wing had been compromised long ago by space debris; minute rocks spewed forth from an exploding star, having punched holes in it through and through. The shuttle couldn’t correct its course properly due to the extra drag being induced from the holes and peeled layers of metal, and the console lit up with warnings. The projected landing sight was now impossible to achieve as proper adjustments could not be made. The onboard computer processed a new course based on its inability to adjust for the drag that pulled the shuttle to the right.
The shuttle roared in low over a desert of evergreen trees, the blazing engine engulfing the tops with fiery orange flame that consumed dozens of trees per second. The shuttle desperately maneuvered above the pinetops to keep from crashing at such a speed as to turn the entire thing into pieces spread about the land.
The damage on the port side wing succumbed to airborne stress and sheered off at the tip. The shuttle careened to the right as it favored the remaining intact wing, dipping and brushing the canopy below with the right wing shearing off the crowns. The computer rebalanced the engines to give the shuttle more tilt to the left but there was little the computer could do to compensate for the structural damage. Just as it passed over a clearing, the shuttle nosed up as the belly landed hard in the soft, loamy soil of a clover field.
It ground through the green matted landscape and left a blackened furrow three hundred yards behind it as it ripped apart everything in its path, sending dirt and roots and small trees aside.
Once it came to a rest, the engines smoldered and smoked under the afterglow of an evening sun. Steam mixed with the black smoke and wafted into the still sky with the engine giving off staccato pops as it cooled against the frigid air. The sudden cacophony of the crash was immediately followed by a tombly silence. Inside, Josh and Leah remained unaware of their predicament and miraculously intact.
Warm blood flowed through their veins as the dying computer diverted the last vestiges of the shuttles energy to resuscitate them.
Two days passed as Josh and Leah slowly returned to consciousness. Josh was the first to awaken. All he could see were blurry outlines and his body felt stiff, slow, as if he were underwater. Josh instinctively reached out with both hands, his mind so slushy and disoriented that it couldn’t piece together a single cohesive thought. When his hands clumsily pressed against the glass, he couldn’t figure out what it was or why he was touching it.
Leah came to in the same way, and they both fumbled about in their chambers for nearly another day. When Josh’s mental faculties returned, he was able to locate the release valve and open the glass chamber. He righted himself straight and his momentum nearly toppled him over the other way. The air inside was cold and crisp, the shuttle now allowing outside air to flow in. Josh violently coughed and hacked as the air hit his lungs and pain flayed every nerve ending in his body.
He focused on Leah who was trying gently to figure out how to get out of the glass chamber. He almost collapsed to the floor when he stood, but caught himself and found some strength in his legs to stand up next to her. He reached over and pulled the lever from the outside, and the glass casing lifted.
Their bodies broke out in a drenching sweat, shaking. He tried to speak but nothing came. He sucked in some more air, coughed, and a sensation of fire gripped his chest. Leah’s hand found his arm and the familiar touch registered, her hand gripping tightly as if to say, “Don’t leave me.”
His mouth was dry and his body started to convulse with shivers. Leah’s body quickly followed suit as frostwhite air came out with each of their breaths.
Supply. Josh remembered the supply room and stumbled away to find it, leaning and grabbing onto the walls. He hit the button to open the door, but it only slid open a foot before stopping. Josh hit the button again and again but the wiring was fried. He squeezed through the opening but, was not thin enough to slip through, despite having not eaten in years. He pushed it hard but his strength wasn’t there and it only moved an inch. Boxes of food and clothing awaited them on the other side. He slammed a weak fist against the wall. Ice formed in the shuttle and crystallized against the metal surfaces.
He fumbled his way over to the shuttle’s main console. The three separated windows above it had been the viewscape to the cosmos, and now it allowed Josh to catch a glimpse of their new home. The hard landing dug the shuttle deeply into the earth, edging the nose farther and farther down as it went so that almost three quarters of his view was nothing but black soil. The other quarter revealed green grass and the base of a vast forest in the distance, which was being lost under the retreating dusk.
The console was working and Josh brought up the date to compare it to the time they had left the Westbound. When the number appeared, he couldn’t help but speak, and his voice eked out a dry whisper, “Can’t be ...”
Josh carefully made his way back to Leah who was sitting up, her breathing rapid and shallow as she shivered. He cleared his throat in frustration and attempted to speak, but still nothing came. She coughed violently and thick mucus jumped out of her mouth.
She too tried to speak but nothing came. Josh walked to her and put a hand on her arm but she startled at the touch. Leah coughed some more, doubled over now as the coughs pushed every last ounce of air out of her lungs. The freezing air was punishing.
He rubbed her arms a bit and then went to the broken supply door and with renewed strength, pushed as hard as he could. Mechanically operated, but without power, the door began to slide but it resisted as if rusted to its frame and took every ounce of mental and physical strength to budge it another inch. With each push his muscular arms regained their old strength and he forced it harder each time, straining red in the face until it was forced open.
Josh slumped to the ground next to all of the supply containers. He rummaged through until he found winter gear, taking an oversized coat and a blanket back to Leah who was shaking and curled up on the floor. Josh wrapped the blanket around her and put the jacket over it. Nearly frozen himself, he went back and bundled up in a large parka, gloves and heavy boots. He needed to keep himself and his blood moving.
There was everything they needed in storage. He grabbed a Mason rifle off the wall and checked it. It was an old carbine that required no external energy source, just bullets and a finger. Josh grabbed the bullets and loaded them before setting the rifle down to scrounge through the rest of the room. There wasn’t a lot in there. It would be just enough to set up a shelter and get their feet down before having to survive on their own. Josh slung the rifle and made his way to the compression door, briefly checking on Leah before he did. She was still recovering from stasis shock, just staring through disheveled hair but now only shaking in intervals. He would leave her there to recover as he examined the new world.
With a few pulls of the lever, the door to the outside world sprung open and clanged loudly against the side of the shuttle. Sandy ice blasted him in the face as he stepped down from the threshold. It was quiet. Ice on the ground, but it was new ice. It hadn’t yet frozen the ground solid. The shuttle sat in an open field full of thick, short grass nestled with the clover which danced with each gust of wind that breezed through the thickets of pine trees that lined the plain, like some frigid beast blowing the contents of its lungs across the valley.
The sun had just disappeared behind the slope of a mountain and the shadow of night crept upon them. He wouldn’t be doing much tonight except staying inside to keep warm. Josh squatted and grabbed a chunk of earth with his gloved hand. It all seemed too familiar. He was born and bred on the Westbound, never having set foot on earth, but everything that he had learned about it seemed to be staring at him in the face. It was impossible that this was earth, however. Earth had been
left behind because it was dead. This place was very much alive.
Josh leaned his head back, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath of air so pure it made him light headed. He felt invigorated here as if life had been restored to his body and soul. Here, he was free. All those that had come before him were dead, and now this was his place, his time.
Before heading into the shuttle for the night, he remained there marveling at their predicament, the lush world at his feet, and the untamed freedom of it all. The air was turning far south of freezing, and in their current condition, he needed to make sure they stayed warm all night. In the morning, he’d try to figure out where they were and what kind of dangers awaited them on this alien planet.
Chapter 3
The next morning Josh was up early. Leah slept soundly under multiple layers. The ship was freezing and Josh quickly put his winter gear back on. The floor was so cold he did a one-legged hop as he slid on his thick snow pants and boots. Once dressed, he rummaged through the supplies and found some energy bars and water, placing some next to Leah for when she’d wake up.
A Cold Black Wave Page 3