by Scott Baron
“What? Who the hell—?” she croaked as her pod opened with a cold hiss.
“Daisy, it’s Barry. Don’t speak. You are waking from a deep cryogenic sleep. You need fluids. Drink this electrolyte pack, but slowly.”
She gratefully accepted the plastic pouch, cracking the top with a twist before eagerly sipping the contents. The feeling of soothing fluid in her throat was utter bliss.
“The crew is being woken from stasis early,” Barry informed her. His face was emotionless. Calm. “There was an impact. Some of the systems that have been compromised have also had their monitoring and control feeds damaged. Mal can’t see them on her scans, and I do not currently possess programming to affect repairs. This is one of your areas of expertise.”
Barry paused, assessing the groggy woman. Around the chamber, others were starting to rouse.
“Can you speak now? You’ve been in cryo for a long time. Your throat may still need time to adjust.”
“Yeah, I can talk,” she managed in a croaking voice. “Wait, where am I?” She looked around at the composite walls and artificial lights. A confused haze clung to her consciousness as she tried to clear her head.
This doesn’t look right, she mused, taking in the cryo lab around her. No, wait. I was walking down a beach. I was going home.
“Is everything all right?” Barry asked her, pausing his scan of her cryo pod’s vitals readout to survey the groggy woman.
“I was having a dream,” she said, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
“A dream? No one dreams in cryo,” Barry replied, eyeing her with an odd expression. “Perhaps it is merely data ghosting. I had to pull you from the neuro-stim cycle prematurely. That might be what you experienced. You have had many years of information fed into your mind as we traveled, after all. Do you know the crew roster? Your duties? All the relevant data for the voyage should have been trickle-fed through your neuro-stim unit during transit.”
Daisy looked at him, confused.
“You’re aboard the Váli. We’re still six months from the moon’s Dark Side base, orbiting Earth. I understand you may be feeling groggy or disoriented, but I really do need to tend to the other crewmembers. The cycle was not complete, and you are all still coming out of your stasis-sleep. The neural stimulators were—”
“What in the hell is going on with my ship?” Captain Harkaway bellowed as he lurched from his cryo-pod, yanking the physio-stim electrodes from his skin as he hopped to his feet. His metal leg impacted the floor with a jarring clang. From hip to tip, Daisy noted, his left leg was entirely mechanical. He rubbed a hand through his gray crew cut.
“Dammit, Mal, what’s the sitrep?” he growled to the ever-monitoring computer.
“We have experienced an unexpected impact, Captain,” the AI calmly informed him. “Short-range nav is down, multiple communications systems and sensor arrays are compromised throughout the ship, and there is unknown external damage. Port Storage twelve has been sealed, and we have been knocked slightly off course from the impact.”
“You’re designed to handle these things, why did you wake us up? Hell, you could have sent Barry out for that. The whole point of having a cyborg with us is he doesn’t have to go into cryo-sleep and can do—”
“There are also several small fires on board, and my sensors have been unable to detect them all.”
“Oh. Shit,” he said as a burst of adrenaline flooded his system. “Get the others up!”
“On it already, Captain, as per protocol,” Barry replied.
“I’m heading to the bridge.” He cast a curious look at the groggy tech. “Swarthmore, you all right?”
“What?”
“Daisy, are you with me?”
“Yeah. Just feeling a little weird.”
“It’s to be expected. Try to pull yourself together and get your head on straight. This is what you do. You’re the tech guru. I’ve got a feeling I’m going to be needing your expertise once we get this whole burning-to-death-in-the-void-of-space thing under control.”
“Yes, sir.”
Daisy slowly slid to her feet, steadying herself on awkward-feeling legs.
“Mal, send a full report to my station in the command pod. Barry, get the others up and moving. If we’ve got a fire, I’m going to need every damn hand on deck, ASAP,” Harkaway barked.
A shining metal fist smashed through the hardened shell of the stasis-pod nearest the cyborg.
“Barry, handle it,” the captain grumbled, then stormed out of the chamber’s airlock doors.
The fist belonged to Tamara Burke, a sturdily muscled brunette with wisps of gray hair streaking her temples. Her entire right arm from the shoulder down was metal, thin seams and indentations crisscrossing the surface at the wrist, elbow, and shoulder joints. Where the metal met her flesh, the foreign material seemed to meld to her body, a faint scar the only sign she wasn’t born with it.
Her metal hand began tearing free of the pod as if it were paper, not heavily-reinforced polymer.
“Tamara, calm down,” Barry soothed her from a safe distance.
She paused, the stasis fog clearing from her head. A slight blush colored her cheeks.
“Oh hell. Sorry, Barry. Training. What the hell happened? I was mid-upgrade when you snapped me out. You know what can happen when you interrupt a neuro-stim cycle.”
“I am aware. However Mal and I concurred it was best to have the entire crew awakened at once. We suffered an impact, and there appear to be one or more unlocated fires on board.”
She rapidly scanned the chamber until her eyes fell on Daisy, standing unsteadily beside pod and looking groggy, while the rest of the crew slowly clambered from theirs.
“Shit, you really did mean everyone. Hey, new kid. Good morning.” She nodded a greeting to Daisy.
“Hey.”
The occupants of two more pods sat up. One was a middle-aged olive-skinned man with thick black hair. Gustavo, Daisy found herself knowing instinctively. The navigator and third-in-command. The other man was in his early thirties and sported a short haircut and muscular physique. Vincent, the mechanic. The name came to her as he swung out of his pod and onto unsteady legs. He stumbled a few steps, clumsily stepping on Daisy’s foot as he nearly fell over.
“Ow!”
“Oops,” he said, regaining his balance and stepping back.
“You nearly break my foot and all you can say is oops?”
“Seemed appropriate.”
“How about, ‘Sorry’?” Daisy groused.
“Well, if you’d given me a chance, that would have come next,” he replied with more than a little snark.
“Oh, for chrissake, shut it, you two. We’ve got a situation, here,” Tamara said as she jumped out of her pod, landing solidly on steady feet and heading for the chamber’s heavy airlock doors.
“Barry, you have the waking process under control?”
“Yes, Tamara,” he replied.
“Okay, get the others moving. We don’t have time to waste. I’m going to get to my station and make sure the botany pods are secure, engage the emergency air filters, and look for signs of fire in those sections. Mal, if you can hear me, I’ll check in when I’m there.”
“Thank you, Tamara. Do be careful. It is disconcerting having a problem of this nature off my sensors.”
As she hustled out of the chamber, another young woman Daisy’s age dry-heaved over the side of her pod. Daisy threw one last annoyed look at the rubber-legged engineer, then turned to scope out her newly-awakened crewmate.
“Hello, Sarah.” Barry leapt into action, electrolytes in hand. “You are waking from cryo early. You need fluids. Drink this electrolyte pack, but slowly.”
Chapter Two
Within minutes the crew was charging through the ship to their duty stations. Reggie, the stocky co-pilot, passed through the thick airlock doors of command and dropped into his seat beside Captain Harkaway.
“Captain, what happened? Mal woke up everyone.”
&
nbsp; “I know. Impact on the port side. Sensors are down, and there’s fire on board.”
“Are the engines all right? I can head down there—”
“Barry’s already on it. They seem to be untouched, but we’ve had a few artificial gravity fluctuations, so he’s going to examine the pulse feeds. Once he’s done there, I’m having him do an EVA outside to check the collection panels for damage.”
The Váli, unlike most ships, possessed an unusual secondary propulsion system, one that allowed for extremely long-range travel without draining power. While the standard fusion engines would provide basic propulsion and maneuverability, the collection panels would gather cosmic energy and solar radiation when deployed, gradually filling a series of reserve power stores, while also directly feeding a supplementary pulse drive.
Without the resistance of an atmosphere, this system allowed the ship to progressively ramp up its speed over time. It also allowed, should an emergency occur, for several short, but intense, bursts of speed. The only drawback being such an act would drain the entire system and require quite some time to recharge.
“Captain, what about the shuttle?” Reggie asked.
“Impact was up top, so it was protected by the body of the ship. Good thing it’s mounted upside-down to the bottom. Unfortunately, that means our comms and navigation array are what took a beating. How are the others coming?”
“I saw Vincent and Finn gearing up. Do we know where the fire is?”
“Negative. We have to do a full-ship check, starting with compartments in proximity of the damaged area. Where the hell is Gustavo? We’re flying blind here.”
“Here, Captain,” Gus called from the airlock door. The command center’s lights reflected off the exposed metal patch of his skull near his cybernetic eye. The metal, like Tamara’s arm, smoothly blended into his skin. Whatever had happened to him, they’d done extensive repairs, including not just his skull and eye, but part of his ear as well. The navigator slid into his seat.
“Plug in,” Captain Harkaway barked. “No wireless, it’s glitching. Go hard-line and tell me what you can see.”
Gustavo pulled a high-capacity data cable from his station and plugged it into the slot at the base of his skull.
“I see where Mal’s problem is, sir. Several relays near Starboard Seven have been damaged. Possible fire, though I can’t be sure.”
“Starboard as well? Get Swarthmore and Moore in there. Those two are going to have their work cut out for them.”
“Affirmative, sir,” he said, switching on his mic. “Daisy, Sarah, do you copy?” Gus asked over the wireless comms.
“Copy,” Daisy replied through her headset. “Sarah’s still suiting up, but she copies too.”
“Okay, listen up. Captain wants you to hit the Narrows. One of you in the exterior layer, port side near Pod Twelve, the other starboard near Pod Seven.”
“We’re on it,” she replied, clicking off the comms.
“The crawlspaces. Why does it have to be the crawlspaces?” Sarah lamented.
“Because of our slender builds,” Daisy quipped grimly. “That, and we’re the only ones who know how to re-wire this thing by hand if need be,” she added, strapping a slim tool kit to each thigh and one to her left forearm.
Captain Harkaway’s voice crackled over the comms.
“Swarthmore, Moore, make sure you each bring a respirator and extinguisher. Mal says we may have a small fire somewhere, but her scans are inconclusive. It could be in the Narrows for all we know.”
Wonderful. Just how I wanted to wake up. A crew full of strangers and a squeeze through a crawlspace… oh, and it might be on fire. Ugh. Kill me now.
“Copy that,” Daisy said in her outside voice. “We’re on it.”
The two women looked at one another. Sarah was twenty-five years old, just like Daisy, something she knew from the crew roster trickle-fed into her mind as they journeyed toward Earth. They had largely similar skill sets, but given the nature of the vessel they were flying in, that redundancy made perfect sense. There was a lot of work for a tech on a ship like the Váli.
“All right,” Daisy said. “Let’s get crackin’. I’ll hit starboard.”
The women bumped fists as if they’d been friends for years, then split up. Daisy felt a comfortable confidence in her partner, though logic told her she’d only just met her.
Freaky thing, those neuro-stims, she thought.
An entire crew of strangers, uploaded into her head as she slept. They were strangers, but not. Years upon years traveling through space, a drip-drip-drip of information slowly feeding into each of them, keeping their minds active and sharp. The system even uploaded new skills and training updates given enough time, though that was all very carefully controlled.
It was said the early neuro-stims drove people insane, pumping far too much data into their minds at once. Only after the inhibitor safeties had been invented and fine-tuned did the system finally gain widespread use. Twelve safeties, in all. It was a lot of redundancies, but then, when it’s your mind at risk, better safe than spiraling into paranoid insanity.
“Entering the Narrows,” Daisy transmitted.
“Copy that. Plug in and update when you’re set.”
“Will do.”
The crawlspaces, while part of the vessel, were the one place standard wireless comms didn’t work. The necessity of protecting vital wiring and processing equipment in those tight areas resulted in the little spaces also being the thickest parts of the ship, shielded from just about anything they could think of. Even so, she and Sarah wore Faraday suits. The thin material wouldn’t protect them from the elements, but the fine mesh would shield them from any unexpected bursts across a wide spectrum of waves and radiation levels.
It was eerily silent, having no comms chatter during a crisis situation. Until she plugged into a hard-line terminal, Daisy was on her own.
She crawled ahead, as one is wont to do in a crawlspace, slowly inching her way toward the area of suspected damage.
Just lovely, she thought as she scooted forward. Up ahead she could see a data hub that had overloaded. It was smoldering, but there was no fire. Her sense of unease was a constant. The weight, or rather the lack of weight directly on the other side of the wall pressing against her side was unnerving. She knew the bulkhead was solid, but having the void of space so close, and while stuck in an area too small for an EVA suit, let alone a hard-hat helmet, left her uneasy.
“I found the source of smoke,” she said, plugging in to the nearest comms port. “I’m swapping out the parts now. Should only take a few minutes. There’s a fair amount of scorching, but only a few relays were damaged, and there’s no fire.”
“Copy that, Daisy,” Gus replied from the command pod.
Daisy carefully pulled the tools she needed from the pouch on her left thigh and stuck them to the Velcro on her forearm. The dim light surrounding her flickered briefly. While the Narrows had illumination, they were almost never accessed, so it was the flashlight collar’s steady glow that provided most of her light.
One by one, she removed the melted pieces. The smell of smoke was still thick in the air.
That can’t be good to breathe, she noted, putting the respirator over her nose and mouth.
Ah, better. The smell of smoke filtered out, she pulled the last relay, stuffed it in her rear hip pouch, and set to work locking in the replacement parts.
“Venting Port Four,” Vincent said as he typed the command into the small panel of the passageway’s airlock door. Inside the chamber, a warning claxon sounded. Moments later the outer airlock door opened to space, extinguishing the fire inside.
“Re-sealing Port Four,” he informed Command.
The door cycled shut. Moments later a green light appeared on the panel. Vincent keyed open the interior access and stepped into the in-between space in the threshold. The door sealed behind him, then the inner door to the pod opened.
It was a mess. Fire had destroyed most of t
he equipment in the room. Tool fabrication machinery was melted, as were several racks of raw materials. Fortunately, the metal storage bins seemed to have withstood the blaze. It would have smelled awful, but the thick helmet protected him from any toxic fumes.
“Looks like we can salvage a lot, sir,” he transmitted. “Finn, how’s it looking in your neck of the woods?”
The jovial ginger opened his comms. “If you don’t mind tea for a while, I think we’ll be fine. Some damn piece of who-knows-what blew through the external storage in Starboard Eleven. Looks like we lost a lot of our coffee supply before the auto-foam sealed the leak. Gonna have to reconfigure the food replicators to stock us up with another batch once I get this mess cleaned up. Can’t be drinking sealant foam with breakfast, now can we?”
“Glad you have priorities, Finn,” Vincent said with a laugh.
“Hey, food is my priority. If we’re stuck awake a full six months longer than anticipated, shit’s gonna get old real quick if we don’t have all our culinary options available.”
“You’re the man, Finn.”
“So I’ve been told. Now go clean the rest of that crap up so we can call it a day.”
“Cut the chatter, you two,” Captain Harkaway interrupted. “Keep the comms clear. We’ve still got crew in the Narrows, and a possible fire.”
“Sorry, Captain,” the pair replied.
“All right, all right. Get back to work, and be careful,” he said, then turned to his pilot. “Let’s just hope it was only bad sensors. I do not need an uncontrolled fire aboard my ship on top of all that’s happened today.”
Chapter Three
“Come on you bastard, get in there!” Daisy struggled in the cramped space, angrily wiggling the last, stubborn relay circuit that simply did not want to click into place. She’d spent several minutes longer than expected cleaning melted plastic from the contacts.
A lot of that got in there. Too much, actually.