“Environmental, we need the ventilation increased on this deck.” Fenton barked. Zach Jenkins felt the strong pull of the vent, clearing the hallway of fumes, and smacked his forehead...why didn’t I think of it earlier?
“We can access Cryo through the vents, sir! It will be a tight fit, but I think I can make it.” He had to yell it twice before the Captain heard him over the blast of the torch.
Captain Aaronson nodded immediately, looked around and focused on Wes Perdue, “Take Perdue with you. Go!”
Jenkins and Wes Perdue set off at a dead run towards the maintenance tubes. They were young and slim, smaller-boned than most of the rest of the team currently hovering outside of the Cryo Deck. It would be a tight fit, but Zach was sure he could do it. He knew just where the nearest access point was. He had studied the schematics of Calypso over and over while waiting for his application to be approved, and right now, five years later, it just might pay off. Five yards down and left at the corridor, in the corner, was an access panel.
“Shit, we need a hex driver,” Zach looked towards Equipment and Supply, but before he could decide on whether to head there or run back to his coffin for one, Wes Perdue was on his knees with a small pocketknife clutched in his hand.
Damned if the kid didn’t have a Swiss Army knife, complete with screwdrivers and the rare hex driver. It was small and difficult to work with, and it took what seemed like an agonizing amount of time to remove the hex nuts from the access panel, but they were finally successful.
Wes snapped it back closed, pocketed the knife and grinned, “A genuine Victorinox Cybertool Lite,” he said as they pulled off the access hatch, “A family heirloom and my dad’s gift to me before we left Earth. They gave me hell at boarding, I was three ounces over my weight limit.”
It was pitch black inside, and Zach gulped back his fear of dark, enclosed spaces. There was no time to feel claustrophobic now.
Wes looked at him and then into the dark tube, “I’ll go first if you want.”
Zach shook his head, “You don’t know the way and I do. I studied the hell out of every inch of Calypso while we were in training.”
He closed his eyes for a moment and reviewed the air supply system in his mind. Straight up, sharp right eight meters, then up again and across. They should be able to drop right into the middle of the Cryo Deck, in between the second and third rows of Cryo Pods.
“C’mon Jenkins, we gotta move.” Wes was itching to dive in.
“Yeah, yeah, I got it. Follow me.”
A few seconds later and Zach was inside. Damned if it wasn’t close, worse than getting used to the coffins. Arms in front, clawing and clutching, and legs and knees pushing him along. Zach’s legs had slightly better mobility. His shoulders bumped against the sides of the vents and he quickly learned to wiggle them from side to side to help his forward momentum. Behind him, he felt his foot connect with something and Wes yelped.
“You all right, man?” Wes’ muffled reply came back in the affirmative, but the kid hung back a little more after that. There was nothing like getting kicked in the face to curb your enthusiasm.
The ‘up’ sections were easier than Zach thought they would be. There were tiny foot and handhold indents in the vents. Between those and the fact that he barely fit as it was, it was simply a matter of wriggling up the first few feet and using the foot and handholds to pull and push the rest of the way. Inside of the vents, the alarms were significantly muted. Zach could hear Wes grunt and gasp as he wriggled along behind him.
After what seemed like an interminable amount of time, Zach heard Wes gasp, “Christ on a stick, man, you better know where you are going, because sure as shit I don’t want to get stuck in this damn tube.”
“Trust me, we’re almost there.” Zach laughed, then he stopped, realizing that just getting there was not enough, they still needed to get out of the vents and he didn’t have the right tools.
A few moments later, he could see flashes of red lighting the vent. There was the hatch. He moved past it, calling back to Wes as he did, “It’s all you man, you got the tool.” The alarms wailed as Wes wrestled with the vent and cursed behind him. There was nothing Zach could do, no way to turn around or give the kid a hand.
“The hex nuts are on the outside,” Wes yelped in pain. He had used the knife to separate the slats in the vent wide enough to feed his hand through and attack the hex nuts from the outside. As he struggled blindly with the tool, Wes sliced his hand open, cursed and nearly dropped the Victorinox in the process.
Agonizing seconds passed and the alarms continued to shriek. Below them, Zach could hear others calling out from inside the Cryo Deck, confused and disoriented. The access hatch finally gave way with a clatter and Wes half climbed, half fell out of it, clearing the way for Zach to back up and slide out. Wes had rolled out of the way before Zach dropped with a thud to the deck below.
They looked around, the shrieking cacophony of the alarms was intense and the red emergency lights lit up streaks of some dark substance on the Cryo Deck floor. Wes reached down, touched a thick drop. It was blood from the feel of it, sticky and mostly congealed. There were streaks and drops of blood everywhere, mostly on or around the damaged control panel.
One man lay motionless at the foot of it and streaks and drops of blood led away, towards the long lines of Cryo Pods, ten rows of twenty-five pods each. Most of the Cryo pod doors hung open and the newly revived were sitting in stunned heaps on the deck floor or stumbling to their feet, some heading for the main door which now had a large glowing hole in it. The Captain and most of the crew on the other side were still trying to cut their way through.
Zach ran towards a group of newly revived, he hoped to head them off before they got too close to the white-hot door. Cryo left a person a bit addled for the first few hours. It was similar to waking up from anesthesia, there was no telling what they would do. In most cases, a person was revived from Cryo over a period of nearly a day, watched carefully, and when fully oriented, sent on his or her way with a buddy to keep an eye on them.
The alarms and lights were disorienting and Zach figured there were at least two-thirds of the people from Cryo in various states of ambulation, confused as hell, which he had to watch over. Two women and one kid were about ten feet from the white-hot door, lurching towards it like zombies.
He turned and called out to Wes over his shoulder, “The purge is still counting down, get the rest of the Cryo pods open!” He grabbed the nearest woman by the shoulder, spun her around and sat her down, jumped toward the second and slid an arm around her waist as he grabbed for the little girl next to her and picked her up bodily. The heat from the door was hot on his face as he stopped both from burning themselves on the white-hot metal.
Wes turned and ran for the last row of pods, nearly tripping over Daniel Medry and Sam Sydan. She looked confused and was kneeling on the floor next to Medry. The shrieks of the alarms changed in tone. It didn’t seem possible that they could take on a more urgent tone, but they did and Wes knew they had very little time left. He ran to an occupied pod and keyed in the emergency revival sequence.
MANUAL OVERRIDE INITIATED
BEGIN EMERGENCY REVIVAL SEQUENCE ON MOSS, SEAN
03:58 MINUTES UNTIL REVIVAL
SYSTEM RESET ON ALL CRYO PODS IN 04:06 MINUTES
“Shit!” Wes screamed in panic, he ran to the next pod and input the sequence. They had just six seconds to get the rest of the pods started on the emergency revival sequence.
MANUAL OVERRIDE INITIATED
BEGIN EMERGENCY REVIVAL SEQUENCE ON ZRADCE, JENNIFER
03:58 MINUTES UNTIL REVIVAL
SYSTEM RESET ON ALL CRYO PODS IN 04:01 MINUTES
Just five more to go. Somehow he had to get to them
MANUAL OVERRIDE INITIATED
BEGIN EMERGENCY REVIVAL SEQUENCE ON GONZALEZ, ESTEBAN
03:58 MINUTES UNTIL REVIVAL
SYSTEM RESET ON ALL CRYO PODS IN 03:56 MINUTES
“Oh, God
, no!” He ran to the next pod, his fingers flying over the flat glass screen.
MANUAL OVERRIDE INITIATED
BEGIN EMERGENCY REVIVAL SEQUENCE ON DUNN, JACK
03:58 MINUTES UNTIL REVIVAL
SYSTEM RESET ON ALL CRYO PODS IN 03:52 MINUTES
He could see the mist beginning to clear. But he knew it was futile. He had gotten there too late. His heart skipped a beat. Jack Dunn was Kevin Edmond’s partner. They had a kid together.
MANUAL OVERRIDE INITIATED
BEGIN EMERGENCY REVIVAL SEQUENCE ON COOK, ELIZABETH
03:58 MINUTES UNTIL REVIVAL
SYSTEM RESET ON ALL CRYO PODS IN 03:47 MINUTES
It was too late, it was all too late.
Wes stared for a moment. Elizabeth’s face was peaceful, her dark hair in two long braids. They had met at the Cape during training. She had been instantly recognizable to so many of them. A talented journalist, she had written extensively on the Narine conflict and exposed two political vote-buying scandals in the years before departure. During introductions, she had talked about writing the history of the first extra-solar colony – it was mostly likely one of the reasons the Selection Committee had picked her.
The alarms shrieked and Wes left her pod to initiate the revival sequence on the last two, even though he knew it was useless.
MANUAL OVERRIDE INITIATED
BEGIN EMERGENCY REVIVAL SEQUENCE ON MICHALKO, HEATHER
03:58 MINUTES UNTIL REVIVAL
SYSTEM RESET ON ALL CRYO PODS IN 03:43 MINUTES
The locks would not release until the emergency revival was completed and an entire reboot on the system would crash it in the middle of their revival sequence. It was a built-in flaw the creators of the Cryo pods had never envisioned and it was going to kill five innocent people.
MANUAL OVERRIDE INITIATED
BEGIN EMERGENCY REVIVAL SEQUENCE ON BRUEHL, LLOYD
03:58 MINUTES UNTIL REVIVAL
SYSTEM RESET ON ALL CRYO PODS IN 03:38 MINUTES
Wes stood helplessly as the countdown inexorably wound down. Lloyd’s cheeks sported a heavy five o’clock shadow. He had been a pompous jerk during training, determined to outperform everyone until his first experience in zero-gravity had made him lose his cookies. Afterward he had been less of an ass. Wes wouldn’t have considered him a friend, or even someone he wanted to hang out with, but he didn’t deserve this fate.
Wes barely noticed that his face was wet with tears. He grabbed a wrench from the deck floor, sticky with blood, and began to try to break through the thick armor of one of the pods.
Overhead, through the speakers, NARAs calm voice declared,
EMERGENCY REVIVAL SEQUENCE COMPLETE
SYSTEM RESET ON ALL CRYO PODS IN 00:03 MINUTES
Wrench in hand, Wes ran back to the sixth to last pod, the display now read:
EMERGENCY REVIVAL SEQUENCE ON ZRADCE, JENNIFER
COMPLETE
SYSTEM RESET ON ALL CRYO PODS IN 00:01 MINUTES
The lock cycled and the door to the pod opened. Jennifer Zradce slumped into his arms, her eyes still closed.
The entire deck went black.
Departure
“The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible.” – Arthur C. Clarke
Date: 09.19.2098
Calypso Colony Ship
Kit Tanner keyed a command on her comm link and activated NARA, utilizing the overhead speakers to clearly direct the attention of the large group of people jammed into the hallway.
“Hello! Welcome to Calypso! If everyone could please pay attention now. I will be showing you your living quarters for the duration of the voyage. I know you have all read the manuals,” she paused and winked at them.
The manuals were a migraine-inducing monstrosity that some bureaucrat had insisted on creating. An inside joke among the crewmembers, the pages were crammed into a six terabyte program full of every possible response to an emergency scenario. One even included an unlikely situation in which the crew had to isolate themselves in their individual coffins in case of explosive decompression (as if that would work out in the long run).
It had been a constant form of amusement, “Just check the manual, I’m sure it’s there.” Or, “We’ve got explosive decompression and aliens boarding our ship via the waste ducts. Quick, consult the manual!”
They knew what they needed to know. Every one of them had been through hundreds of hours of training, drills and simulations, on land and in space. They knew about the living quarters, and a long laundry list of painstaking protocols and procedures, but the way Medry figured it if a pretty girl wanted to tell them again, he wasn’t going to object. Not at all.
Kit pointed to the badge on her navy jumpsuit. Directly below the World Geographic symbol was her name.
She said it out loud anyway, “My name is Kit Tanner and I’m in charge of getting each of you settled in and oriented to the ship and the areas you will be working in. So please follow me.”
Kit was good-looking and had straight brown hair and slate-blue eyes. Her slim hips and small frame were attracting a lot of attention, and not just because she was showing them where they would be living for the next five years. Deeks, Head of the Cryogenics section, exchanged glances with Medry and Aldridge, the latter quietly wolf-whistled under his breath. They all knew each other, but the guys couldn’t resist teasing Kit, who was taking her first official duties on board Calypso rather seriously.
If Kit heard him, she gave no sign, and instead she briskly turned the corner and headed for a hatch marked Living Quarters. The hallway opened up, wider than usual, and on both walls, there were banks of capsules set into the bulkhead. The capsules were numbered and each had a door with a thumbprint reader. Each opening measured one meter by one meter and were 2.5 meters in length. The capsules were stacked three high, with footholds to the upper two levels. Inside each capsule was a small area for personal items, and several cabinets for additional clothing storage.
Kit waited until the group had all filed in.
She pointed to the capsules, “We call these coffins because they are so small.” She grinned, “Don’t be put off by the nickname, these will become your private spaces where you can get away from everyone else. In as close of quarters as we will have, these spaces will really make the difference over the next five and a half years.”
She pressed her thumb to the reader pad on coffin #018.
“This one happens to be mine. And as you will see it will open for no one else.”
The door unlocked and Kit swung it open. The group shuffled about, each peering inside of the coffin.
“Now each of you received a number with your acceptance letter. This is your personal number while you are on board Calypso. It identifies you, your possessions, your personal coffin, your individual clothing sets and everything else. Forget the imbedded National I.D. chips or any other forms of identification, these three digits, and your thumbprint, will allow you access to your personal storage locker and just about anything else you can think of.”
She looked down at the clipboard in her hand and then beckoned to James Aldridge, “Aldridge, your number is 121, correct?”
He nodded and grinned, pleased to be singled out.
“Right this way, then.”
The rest of the group followed, “And here you are, Mr. Aldridge, in the 42nd stack, at the very end, bottom row. Now if you will just flip open the thumb reader, Mr. Aldridge.”
He smiled at her, “You can call me James.”
She smiled back, “Fine, James. Just put your thumb there.”
He did as he was told, and the lock on the door cycled. “Now you can simply pull on the release and climb on in.”
He pulled the release, opened the door and climbed inside.
Kit turned to the rest of the group, “Please take a few moments to locate your individual coffins now and go ahead and use the thumb reader to access them.”
Medry moved to his coffin, #04
8, and opened it via the thumb reader. The opening made it appear smaller than it really was. Once inside he found it a little roomier. Better than an actual coffin, he imagined, but not by much. The coffin had a short tube to crawl through and then opened up into a small bubble of space. You could sit upright, even fit a second person in, but that was the limit.
The next twenty minutes were spent exploring the coffins. They had all been shown the prototypes during training, but these were the actual real deal. Each came equipped with individual climate control buttons. There were no sheets and a pillow was built into the padded bed. When one of the others mentioned it, Kit explained that due to the limited amount of water on board, sheets and blankets were an unneeded option.
“By allowing each individual to control their environmental heating and cooling, there is no need for linens that would require regular washing.”
She continued in a clear voice, “The coffins are equipped with a vacuum unit that is activated once a week, while you are on duty and not inside of the unit, removing hair and dead skin cells and any accumulated dust.”
Daniel explored the functions built into the walls and listened to Kit, “You will each have access to a full database of music and televid entertainment as well as your own personal server access.”
A keyboard popped out of the wall with a push of the button, flat and slim, fashioned out of what appeared to be titanium.
“All applicable systems are accessible through your thumbprint and crew member code, from anywhere on Calypso, including your individual coffin. Private files are encrypted and accessible only from a secure location, namely your coffin. You will also have full access to learning programs.”
Kit paused before continuing, “As you are aware, we encourage everyone to learn additional skill sets that may be outside of your current profession. The general learning labs will be handling group learning opportunities, but there is a great deal you can learn from the stored information in the databases as well as any additional research that will be uploaded from Earth at turn-around.”
Gliese 581 Page 18
