Malik Rosen’s body fell, bonelessly, from his stasis pod when the emergency release mechanism triggered. Dressed in a black skinsuit, the pale, dark haired man violently wretched streams of thick cryogel from his open mouth while his spasming fingers clawed ineffectually at the tritanium floor beneath him. Again and again his stomach heaved, desperately struggling to clear his clogged airway while he writhed helplessly in the middle of an expanding puddle of viscous fluid.
Awareness didn’t begin to blossom across his senses until his chest finally expanded when he took in a deep, shuddering breath. Wet, rattling coughs followed that first gasp as his trembling limbs jerked beneath the onslaught of cramps clenching long unused muscle tissue. After a second, and more successful, attempt to reacquaint himself with the act of breathing, his eyes started to flutter open. Red. Like the light of a dying sun, all he saw was a dull, uniform red as his blue eyes struggled to bring his world into focus.
Malik’s twitching hands began to push at the floor to lift himself out of the thick puddle of gel that had been spilled from his stasis pod when his ears popped. Sound suddenly shattered the silence of his world like a thunderclap rolling across a clear sky. Oscillating between a low grind and a shrill shriek, the rhythmic rise and fall of the alarm managed to pierce his confusion just enough to get his thoughts to coalesce around a single concept.
Danger.
As his vision gradually began to swim into focus, Malik could see other people writhing on the floor of the long sleep chamber. More alarming, he could see at least two of his fellow crew members that were frighteningly still. His deep blue eyes focused on the nearest of the unmoving figures while he clawed his way toward the diagnostic station built into the side of his stasis pod.
“Daniella,” Malik croaked, the rest of his words lost amidst a coughing fit that wracked his entire body. Tears sprang to his eyes, making his blurry vision even less clear as tugged open the cabinet beneath the pod’s vital signs monitor. He tried to blink away the tears leaking from his eyes while his fumbling hands closed desperately around the only hypospray in the medical cabinet. “You have…to breathe. Daniella. Breathe.”
His voice was growing stronger and his ragged breathing more even as the moments ticked by. His muscles, however, continued to spasm until his shaking hand managed to bring the tip of the hypospray to his neck. The device hissed as he pulled the trigger, barely audible with the blare of a klaxon ricocheting through the chamber.
The effect was immediate. The tight knots of muscle clenched across his toned frame relaxed. A groan slid from his lips as he finally managed to unfurl from the contorted ball of cramped muscle he’d been in since he awoke. For one selfish heartbeat, Malik wanted nothing more than to roll onto his back and catch his breath.
He never let the thought take root.
“Daniella, breathe!,” Malik growled insistently as he tried to rise to his feet. He managed one stumbling step before his legs betrayed him, sending him sprawling painfully onto the tritanium floor. His next try proved more effective, letting him cover the distance separating him from the unmoving doctor in two graceless steps. Once he reached Dr. Lisell’s side, he slumped against her pod and threw open her crash cabinet. Armed with the hypospray, he knelt by the woman’s side and pressed the tip against her slender, olive toned, neck. After pulling the trigger, he tossed the device to the side and planted the heel of his hand against her chest.
“Breathe, Danny,” he demanded, gathering himself for a split second before his tired arms flexed to begin administering chest compression. “C’mon, Doc. Breathe.”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Her skinsuit was slick with cryogel so he had to carefully reposition his hands each time his shoulders flexed. As he tried to push the fluid from her airway, he chanced a quick glance around the chamber. Beneath the dull red lights set into the low ceiling, he could make out the rest of his crew. All the members of 2nd Journey were now up and moving except for the doctor he was frantically working to resuscitate.
As if on cue, the next time his arms flexed, a gout of cryogel gurgled past the woman’s lips. She wheezed and struggled to roll to her side as her stomach heaved to push the rest of the gel from her clogged airway. Malik immediately began rubbing her back between her shoulders, urging the short haired woman to expel the cryogel onto the dark tritanium floor.
“Good job, Doc,” he said, allowing himself a moment of sheer relief before he sent his gaze flickering up and down the length of the room. Most of the 2nd crew were sitting beside their stasis pods with a hypospray in their hands. At the far end of the room, a short, blonde woman was rising shakily to her feet. Malik couldn’t resist a smile. He should have known that Captain Catherine DeRosa would be the first one on her feet. Only one member of their team seemed to be struggling, so with one last look at Dr. Lisell, he hoisted himself up to stand beside her stasis pod.
Malik spoke calmly as he made his way haltingly toward where their engineer lay on the floor, “Doc’s breathing now. She’ll be ready to start administering proctology exams any minute now, so if you don’t want to be first in line, you better get your boots on and get ready to find out why our beauty sleep got cut short.”
“Guess I know why you’re in no hurry to find your boots,Mal,” the astrogation officer, Timothy Jackson, wheezed as Malik walked by him on the way to the engineer.
Sarah Spain, the communications officer, barked a laugh and wobbled as she tried to rise from the floor. “Damn it, Timmy. It hurts when I laugh. March your scrawny ass over here so I can drown you in this goop.”
Malik ignored the continued byplay and quickly knelt beside their engineer, one Christopher Mullins. “Gonna get you fixed up, Chris. Just hang tight.” He opened up the nearby crash cabinet and withdrew the hypospray with one hand while he gently squeezed the other man’s shoulder.
“Mal?,” the engineer murmured, his body contorted into a rictus that had him curled into a fetal position. “I can’t see. Can’t see nothin’.”
Instead of replying, Malik pressed the tip of the hypospray to Chris’ neck and pulled the trigger. Only then did he continue, “That’ll get you straightened out. Take five and just focus on breathing. Before you know it, you’ll be making smartass remarks right alongside Timmy.”
“I’m the only real smartass on team two,” Officer Jackson grumbled as he began pawing through the locker beside his stasis pod to retrieve a pair of boots. “Accept no substitute.”
“Enough chatter,” Captain DeRosa said curtly while she furiously dried the cryogel from her hair with a towel she’d retrieved from her service locker. “Everyone focus on making yourselves presentable. We’re headed to the bridge in three minutes. Someone there is going to have some explaining to do. But until we find out what’s going on, we go by the book. Klaxon is sounding red alert. Everybody kit out accordingly.”
Malik had made his way back to his own service locker while the Captain spoke. After quickly wiping his arms and legs down with a coarse white towel, he pulled out his one piece vac suit and stepped into it. After slipping on a pair of socks, he slid his feet into the smart boots that tightened snuggly around his feet and ankles. Then, with an efficiency that spoke of years of routine, Malik fastened his vac suit into his boots and then into his gloves after he’d put them on. After sealing the suit up across his chest, he was reaching back into the locker for his helmet when the ship suddenly shook like a straw shack caught in an earthquake. The crew members shouted in alarm and more than one tumbled down onto the gel covered floor.
“What was that?!,” barked the science officer, Alex O’Brian. As the oldest member of 2nd Journey, the gruff, curmudgeon didn’t even try to keep the alarm from his voice as it devolved into a series of colorful curses.
“That was the superstructure,” Officer Mullins said in a voice so soft that it could barely be heard over the blaring of the klaxon.
“Explain,” the Captain said curtly as she jerked her helmet from her locker.
Chris flinched away from the intensity of her stare, but after an encouraging nod from Malik the young man continued. “With the ionic deflectors active, there are only two things that could cause that kind of structural resonance.”
“Either one of the habitat modules has been launched from Starlight Journey, or she’s beginning to encounter atmospheric resistance.”
“Wait,” Daniella said, speaking for the first time as she looked toward the engineer with wide eyes. “Atmospheric resistance? You mean, like, we’re crashing?”
“Roger,” the engineer said simply.
For a long moment, the only sound in the long sleep chamber of the colony ships 2nd crew was the rhythmic blare of the emergency klaxon.
“Get ready. Double time.” The Captain said grimly. “Its past time we get out of here, find 1st crew, and find out what’s happening to our ship and the 80,000 colonists we’re responsible for.”