“Danny…” said Claire, and she shifted position to be a little bit nearer her sister and the monitor. “What does our dear brother have to say?”
“Working on it,” said Amelia. She was working intently at the keyboard. The image on the screen vanished and was replaced with a light blue window half-filled with rows of text and code. She brought up several smaller windows and pushed these to one side, continued entering lines and running the code.
“Well?” asked Claire.
“Bits and pieces, at best.”
“I’ll take whatever we can get.”
“That is our only option,” Amelia sighed and tapped at several more pads.
The work-windows on the screen dropped away and a new image of their brother Danny popped up. Static noise and broken bits of words crackled through the speakers and Danny’s image jumped and started, eventually smoothing out.
“Good morning ladies… so…” Danny hesitated, smiled his familiar thin smile. “Surprise.”
“Uh, huh…” Amelia grumbled. Claire just grinned knowingly and shook her head.
Danny’s smile faded. “As you may have noticed, you’re no longer in the transport. About that… a bit of an incident here, I’m afraid. The Jensauri chose now to break the truce, and they chose an attack on our transport to announce this change in policy. Our luck, eh?”
“Pretty much, yeah,” mumbled Amelia.
“Since you’re watching this, it means we weren’t able to pick you up on the other side. Sorry about that. So, real quick here… not much time. Catch you up as best I can. Things were getting out of hand. The crew woke Marcus, what with Marcus being, you know, Marcus.”
“Good ole’ Uncle Marcus,” mumbled Amelia.
The video flickered suddenly and Danny’s image jumped and individual words became disconnected from one another. Half a sentence more and the display jumped again, and then again, Danny’s face morphing, the audio hissing and sputtering.
“Oh, come on,” Claire groaned. “It was just getting interesting.”
“Like I said—”
“Yeah, yeah… bits and pieces.”
Danny’s image solidified but the audio continued to break apart as Danny went on.
“ -- took a turn—escape chambers—released—chamber—holding our particular group of sleeper tubes—damaged—tried—not going—” There was a sudden jumble of images, and then Danny’s smile froze on the screen. “More—luck—eh?”
“Wouldn’t have expected anything less,” said Amelia.
“Don’t be a party pooper,” chided Claire.
The screen display jumped and the audio crackled and hissed. Words broke and whole sentences were lost. After half a dozen frustrating seconds, the picture quieted down and the audio cleared.
“… knew from the shipping manifest that there were four survey shuttles on board. He woke me to help, and we transferred you into one of ‘em.” Danny glanced aside, gave a nod to someone off camera. He looked again directly at the screen. “I’ve set a heading for ninety degrees away from all the fun. The plan is to rendezvous with you in thirty days. Alternate meet-up location is a hundred days further out.”
Danny’s expression grew dark.
“You’re watching this, so we missed both rendezvous points. Once again... sorry.” He leaned forward, appeared to be keying something in. “So… get this bucket turned about, set a course for Trinahr, and I hope to see you in about seven months.”
Seven months… The sleeper tubes had originally been programmed to wake their occupants at seven months, that being the scheduled arrival date of the transport at Trinahr. Claire and Amelia had yet to discover what had gone wrong.
Amelia grumbled, “And it looks like we missed the seven month rendezvous as well.”
Danny’s face unexpectedly popped out of existence. The screen went blank; the compartment was suddenly very quiet.
Amelia leaned back in her chair, continued staring at the monitor. She said nothing, was frowning.
“All right, then,” Claire sighed. She looked down at Amelia. “That explains one or two things. It leaves a few holes, for sure, but gives us more than we had.”
Amelia folded her arms across her chest, glanced up at her sister. “It doesn’t help us any, though, does it?”
“What’s to help?” Claire pushed away from Amelia and started back to the table. “We’re already doing what we can; heading home. I’m just glad to know something of how we got here.”
Amelia said nothing to that. She stared at the now blank screen, struggling to keep back the anguish.
Claire looked over at her sister. She let out a long breath, looked down then at her hands, fingers intertwining.
“I know, Sis…” she said softly.
Everyone was gone… everyone they ever knew…
They were alone…
§
Claire and Amelia worked over the next several days to make the shuttle ready for the return journey. It had travelled more than eighty years on auto, and while the ship was able to maintain and service many of the systems on its own, there were some things that were better assessed under the human eye and served by the human hand. Over that eighty years, there had been wear and tear.
While Claire was only twenty two years old, she had been qualified to pilot a shuttle for three years, performed frequent maintenance on her family’s small jumper and knew it inside and out. This long-range shuttle, while different in some ways, was in most ways very similar. Claire felt absolutely comfortable preparing it for an eighty year return trip. She divided her time between the cockpit and outside running a pair of EVAs. As she had seen on her first EVA, the hull had endured hundreds of micro-meteor hits over the years. The ship’s monitoring system hadn’t logged any breaches, but a thorough inspection was long overdue.
Amelia meanwhile focused on the ship’s computer systems, cryo-canisters and inventory. She had been working computers from the inside out since she was nine. She carried on better relationships with computer AIs than with most humans. Claire was one of the few people she got along with, and she could barely tolerate her.
Returning from her second EVA in two days, Claire stood silent as Amelia helped her out of the suit, a clumsy and awkward affair. She slipped into her coveralls as her sister slid the suit back into its locker.
“All right, Sis… what’s up? You’re not the bright and chipper Amelia we’ve all come to know and love.” Claire waited expectantly as her sister secured the suit and gear in place. “That’s sarcasm, by the way; something you may not be familiar with.”
Amelia turned and leaned a shoulder against the wall of the locker, folded her arms and looked down at her sister, who was sitting on the small bench, slipping into her shoes.
“Ship didn’t wake us because of a damaged nav system. The logs don’t match. Not even close.”
Claire stood up. She knew the bad part was yet to come. “Then why?”
“We were running out of time in the cryo-tubes.”
Claire knew what that meant. They were a long way out in the middle of nowhere. They were deep in uncharted space and she had no idea where the nearest habitable planet might me.
“How much is left?” she asked simply.
“Maybe thirty months.” Amelia pushed off the wall, stood straight. “We have all the ingredients necessary in food inventory to process more of the cryo-juice, but it takes time. And to be honest, even if I used all the rations we have, it’d only give us another forty-eight months.”
“You said we had twelve years of rations. All that bubbles down to four years of cryo-juice?”
“Afraid so.”
Claire sat silent for a long moment, thinking over all this new info. “Let’s hold off on that for now. Twelve years rations with eyes open, and two and a half in cryo. That still leaves a lot of space between us and home.”
“Hence my concern,” Amelia said coolly.
Claire thought on that. She stood then, sharply.
“And well-founded concern it is, dear sister,” she stated decisively. “I’m hungry. How about lunch?”
Amelia watched numbly as Claire walked over to the hatch and stepped through into the main compartment. It took her a few seconds to shake herself out of it and follow her to the main compartment.
She mumbled in disbelief. “Claire? Lunch?”
“Absolutely.” Claire pulled a hot-pack out of the food locker, walked over to the warming unit and tossed it in. “And today… I deserve a hot lunch. I worked hard this morning. This old boat is cleared to go.”
“But we’re not,” said Amelia. “We have less than a fifth of the food inventory we need, and that’s including the cryo-juice. What do you suggest we do?”
Claire took the short stride to the table and sat on the edge to wait for her food to heat. She looked side-glance at her sister, gave her a gentle smile.
“Listen, Sis. Considering the course we’ve been on, we can’t be more than a few years in uncharted space. Once our nav system can plot our position, we’ll set a course for the nearest friendly habitable planet and restock.” Claire winked. “No problem.”
“Oh, I so wish you hadn’t said that. I really don’t like when you say that. It never, ever goes well when you say that.”
A sharp ding sound came from the direction of the food warmer. Claire pushed herself from the table.
“Lunch time.”
§
Claire and Amelia were sitting in the cockpit, each going through last minute checks of all systems. It had taken five and a half days for the ship’s nav system to complete the turnaround, but they were finally on course for home.
Claire finished the final checklist of the navigation system. Amelia ran final checks on environmental systems and cryo systems.
The sisters would be going into the tubes for twelve months. It didn’t make much sense to run eyes-open while in this featureless void, but they also wanted to keep some months of cryo-juice held in reserve. The compromise was to initially go in for a year, see what things looked like then.
Amelia had set the cryo-tubes to wake them at twelve months, but as a backup had also reset the low-juice alert to bring them up in the event it fell below eighteen months. Both should trigger at about the same time.
They still didn’t know why they hadn’t been awakened after seven months, which had been the original wake-flag.
“Checklist complete,” said Claire. She set her head back against the headrest. “Nothing now but the waiting.”
Amelia finished her own checklists. She swiped a fingertip across a touchpad and her monitor went black.
“Right.”
“Good.” Claire was looking out into the dark. Now that they were turned around, there was a new splash of stars before them. They were still very distant, but at least there were more of them. Not many more, but more. It made it all seem just a bit less ominous.
Amelia leaned back now in her copilot seat. She let out a long breath. She wasn’t quite ready to go into cryo.
She looked out at that cluster of stars.
“Sure hope those look closer when we wake up.”
“I just hope we wake up,” said Claire playfully.
Amelia gave her a look that said I’ve done all I can… what more can I do?
Claire shook her head sadly, gave a sly grin. “Lighten up, Amelia. We’ll be fine.”
They sat in silence, each lost in their own thoughts, staring out into the empty black.
Amelia looked to her sister, then again forward. “You know, at some point we’re going to have to actually leave the cockpit and get into the cryo tubes.”
“Mmm. S’pose so.”
“Yeah.”
There was no rush.
Episode Two
“Out of the Void”
Claire was by herself in the cockpit, unhurriedly going through the nav systems. She hadn’t been out of cryo long, was still wearing her cryo-coveralls.
Initial checks didn’t reveal the threat of imminent destruction; so far, so good. She next began a run-through of the ship’s most recent diagnostics. As she did so, she gave another quick glance out the forward window.
The cluster of stars they had been traveling towards during their time in cryo was closer; still a long way off, but significantly closer. The splash of shiny objects set against the black of space took up more of the view than before, and if one were to hazard a guess one could now point to the one they were heading for.
Her reviews complete, Claire initiated several new diagnostics. With these running, she left the cockpit and stepped down into the shuttle’s main compartment. The overhead lights were on. Amelia was still asleep in her lower-berth cryo-tube.
Claire took a ration packet from the food cabinet and sat down at the table. She absently ate from the packet as she just as absently watched her sister’s tube come to life. Indicator lights on the cryo-tube board came on; one of them flickered and flashed. There was a change in the background hum as automated adjustments were made to the cryo-juices that were being fed through the feed-lines.
It was another minute before Amelia’s berth sidewall slid aside. It was yet another half-minute before Amelia opened her eyes. It took her a while to orient herself to where she was.
She slowly rolled onto her side and sat up. Seeing her sister sitting at the table, munching on ration pellets, she rubbed at her temple and furrowed her brow.
“Claire?”
“Good morning, little sister.” Claire tossed another pellet into her mouth.
“Is everything all right?” asked Amelia.
“Right enough.”
Amelia was still pulling her thoughts together. “What are you doing up? I mean, we were scheduled to come out of cryo together.”
“Yeah. I changed that.”
“What do you mean, you changed that?”
“I thought I would take a peek first. There was no sense both of us coming up if we had to go right back in.”
“That’s crazy,” Amelia rubbed at her temple again. “And I want to be in on any decisions involving keeping me in cryo.”
Claire shrugged, tossed the last ration pellet into mouth. “You say so.”
“I say so.” She frowned and stood up. “I need an aspirin.”
“Headache? I came out with one too. Better now. What’s up with that?”
“I don’t know.” Amelia went over to the med station and found a sealed packet with two aspirin. She broke the seal and dropped the aspirin into her palm. She tossed them into her mouth and swallowed. “What’s our status?”
“I let you come out of cryo, didn’t I?”
“Please, Claire…”
Claire grinned. “You have so never been a morning person.”
Amelia stepped over to the table and sat down opposite Claire. She stared coolly at her sister, said nothing.
“All right, all right,” said Claire. “We came out of cryo right on schedule. Twelve months. The ship’s systems all look good. I’m running additional di-ogs right now.”
“What about our location?”
Claire leaned back. “Yeah… we’ve made some real progress, but…”
“We’re still in the void…” more of a statement than a question.
“Yup. That we are.”
§
Amelia finished wriggling into her work coveralls and then stepped into her shoes. Her morning ritual continuing on schedule, she left the gear room and entered the main compartment. Claire was up in the cockpit, so she had the cabin to herself.
As per the daily routine.
She selected a hot ration packet from the supplies and tossed it into the food warmer. She had one hot meal each day, and she usually chose breakfast. She felt it gave her the best start to the day.
This was day ten since coming out of cryo. Each day was pretty much the same.
Actually, after the first day, each day was exactly the same.
On the first day they had run complete systems checks a
nd inventories. After that, it was all rather routine; monitoring, mostly.
The shuttle travelled. They were in a void. Empty space. Not much to do.
They had enough rations to last them twelve years. That sounded like a lot, but they had initially travelled in cryo for eighty years. They were only one year into the return trip. They would need to restock if they intended to get all the way home.
When they had last gone into cryo, there had been thirty months of juice in the system. Inventorying after coming out of cryo, they had about eighteen months remaining; close to what they had expected. This meant, however, that without resupplying, they would have to use cryo very sparingly.
And that meant that they would, at least for the time being, ride this time in the void with eyes open.
Amelia could only hope it wouldn’t drive her stark-raving mad.
She brought her hot breakfast ration to the table and sat down. She ate alone, in silence, with only the never-changing background white-noise of the ship going about its own daily routine.
Up in the cockpit, Claire sat staring out the forward view window. She had finished the morning checks, found nothing that needing following up on. The ship was pretty good at taking care of the routine operations, and most of the conventional issues that arose as well. It could even work its way through many of the unanticipated problems that came up.
Those issues that needed human hand and eye turned out to be rare, especially out here in the void.
Claire twisted about in the pilot’s seat and glanced back through the open door to the main compartment.
Maybe Amelia was up for another game of cards.
§
Day sixteen since coming out of cryo. Amelia had been sitting at the computer station in the main compartment all morning. Claire was at the table playing solitaire. She glanced up occasionally and looked over at her sister.
Amelia could be a bit of a bore sometimes. A couple of hundred card games and all of a sudden she doesn’t want to play anymore.
Sisters in Space: The Complete Series Page 2