Aridius took a deep breath and tapped the record button on the screen.
"Special Log, 12 - This is Aridius Vaynshteyn helmsman of the Nautilus light-cruiser Harpsgate. Earth Standard date and time is unknown. Ship systems indicate that it has been two weeks since Captain Abrams and the remaining crew entered medical stasis. We remain in the special phenomenon."
Her tired eyes swept the dim interior of the bridge. Monitors continued to transmit their data to empty seats, the artificial lights giving birth to strange, sickly shadows that constantly flickered.
"I have not yet been able to penetrate the null sphere we find ourselves. I cannot receive external data and do not know if my messages are making it outside. I continue on our previously established route but the ship's readouts and logs suggest we have changed course numerous times. The ship's AI diagnostics has been unable to find these anomalies. My visual inspection of the interior and exterior of the Harpsgate shows no damage or oddities."
Deep breath, slowly. In and out.
"When I awoke today, I found Captain Jason Abrams had left his medical stasis. There was no log of how and when this happened. I found him roaming naked around the canteen—he was disoriented, as expected from spontaneous revival. I returned him to the stasis pods as per our previous agreement."
"I am still unable to locate the five missing crewmembers."
Aridius hit the 'pause' button and slumped in her chair. The situation was hopeless and she felt so tired her bones ached. Beside her, her navigational array broke into snow-white static. She sipped a metal mug full of cold water and waited a minute for it to return to normal. When it did, it appeared they were in orbit around Luna.
Gritting her teeth, Aridius ran a basic scan. Nothing. The monitor flickered, the white ball of Luna disappeared and there was only a starless, black expanse.
Just like all the other times.
Aridius resumed the recording. She had already made her decision, time to follow through.
"Over the last two weeks, my mental condition has deteriorated. Stress, isolation, and the unusual circumstances have combined to push me beyond what I believe are acceptable limits."
Another sip of water. She imagined someone coming upon this log someday, hearing that Aridius was abandoning her duties. Judging her failures. Aridius pushed through the reflective shame, the details might be important.
"I have become increasingly paranoid and fearful. I feel as though I am constantly watched by an unknown force. While manually checking the feeds the other day, I was listening to the static and... I heard someone calling my name. It sounded like Edmund talking to me despite his no longer being with us. While I am intellectually aware that these are unreal, these are strong signs of gathering psychosis and similar to what the others reported before we placed them in stasis."
"Therefore..."
"Therefore, I must take what I believe to be my only responsible remaining option. I am hard sealing the stasis pods, moving them to containment, and implementing full quarantine measures. I will also be entering stasis and, because there will be no acting human crewman, I am unshackling the AI."
Edmund would have hated that. The young engineer loved machines and could go on for hours about reactor cores or ship modules but never trusted the AIs that handled so much of the basic ship functions. It hadn't been an AI that had killed him though, it had been his assistant, Fen. The young woman had come up behind him with a fire extinguisher and bashed his skull in.
Afterward, Fen acted confused when asked about Edmund. She claimed she'd been attacked by some sort of large goblin and acted to defend herself. She was the first person into stasis. Luckily for Aridius, she'd stayed there.
"Space travel has always involved some element of risk. Much like the seas of Earth, it is vast, dangerous, and unknown. Skill, experience, and logic can take us far but there are ever elements beyond our control. I realize this may be my last log: To anyone listening to this, I wish you good luck and good sailing."
"Senior Helmsman Aridius Vaynshteyn of the Harpsgate, signing off."
She tapped the 'end recording' button. It beeped but didn't take. She tapped it again and the screen went black.
"Shit," she muttered. This wasn't part of the horror movie Aridius found herself in. The display had been glitchy for a few months now but when they'd put in at Emhine station, the maintenance crew had looked it over and said it was fine. Aridius tapped it a few more times and it lit up again. Her last log was safely finished and stored along with the other 11.
***
Aridius watched the last few drops of blue fluid flow from the silvery medical pouch, down the tubing, and into her arms. With a grimace, she slowly tugged out the tube in her vein. Around her was the calm, steady chimes of the med bay. She'd already moved the others to containment and her own stasis pod sat before her, a rounded coffin of her waiting stasis pod.
Stasis was a safe, proven technology for deep space travel under regular circumstances. She'd gone under once before when she served on the Pavonis Mons and it had felt like a swift, gentle nap. This was not regular circumstances. The Harpsgate was a cruiser, not a transport; the stasis pods were meant for short-term medical emergencies; there was no highly trained medical crew to put her under and pull her out; and the Pavonis had operated under standard conditions.
Aridius lay down and pulled the cover shut. It sealed with a hiss. She'd removed her regular clothing and underwear for the regulation sensor suit, it crinkled and felt like thin plastic against her skin. It was silent in the pod. Aridius's mind conjured images of her life support failing, of shadowy beasts tearing open the pod as she slept within and devouring her, of waiting within for centuries as they never escaped the anomaly. Her heart began to beat faster and her breath hitched. It echoed strangely in the closed confines of the pod.
"NOVA?" Aridius said, calling up the ship's AI. The name stood for Navigational and Operational Virtual Assistant. Aridius had already relinquished her duty and unshackled the AI, technically it could start the process whenever it wished, but it waited for her command.
"I hear you, Helmsman Vaynshteyn. My protocol files indicate that for best results, I should allow thirty minutes for the pod to track your pre-sleep vitals and make adjustments for your exact weight, height, and physical conditions." NOVA's voice was crisp, clear, and feminine.
Aridius squeezed her eyes shut, her panic rising. "Let's start now. I don't know how long I can handle this."
There was a long pause. "You've handled it for two weeks, Helmsman Vaynshteyn. You can handle it for thirty minutes."
Aridius shut her eyes. While NOVA's bedside manner was poor, the AI was correct, and a human doctor would likely demand the same of her. They should do this correctly; there was so much already swinging in the wind and rushing would be putting herself in pointless danger.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
"And me without a book..."
What took her was ultimately not stasis but exhaustion.
The Harpgate continued forward in the endless night of the spacial phenomenon. It ran daily sweeps of its interior for the missing crewmembers but found none of them. Those in stasis were held in their deep, dreamless sleep, obvious to the passage of time.
***
The sun rose higher in a clear, bright sky, shifting the shade of an apple tree and drying the dew from its tender green leaves. Aridius lay on the grass, curled up on her side but as the shadow moved from her form and she warmed, she stirred. When her pale eyes finally opened, her expression shifted from calm to befuddled. There was a slight ache in her back as she sat up and glanced around the orchard she found herself within.
Fruit trees had been planted in neat, orderly lines and the ground was free of leaves and branches. The limbs of the trees hung heavy with fruit, small apples and yellow pears.
A bit of grass clung to Aridius' damp cheek and she brushed it away. A familiar crinkle sound reminded her that she was still wearing the sensor suit. It was a gray one-piece with a dull maroon Merchant Astora logo on the left breast. It covered her entire body from her neck down; it helped regulate her body temperature but the fabric was so thin she felt uncomfortably vulnerable as she rubbed her arm and glanced around.
Where was she?
The memories trickled in. The ship becoming lost, the crew slowly losing their mind, and Aridius placing herself into stasis.
She stood and twisted around, half expecting to see the ship sitting behind her. Light cruisers were not made for frequent space-to-surface travel and dropping a spaceship into atmo was a great way to violate air control regulations on half a dozen worlds but it could be done. The wedge-shaped prow, circular body, and sweeping wings of the Harpsgate were nowhere in sight, however.
That meant someone had pulled her from her pod, carried her here, and then left. Aridius was unsure why anyone might do that but the Harpsgate had an exploration vehicle. She began to look at the ground, searching for treads in the soft earth or even boot prints.
Nothing presented itself and Aridius realized there was no sign of human activity at all. She shivered as a sudden sensation of wrongness came over her. Something important must have happened and Aridius had simply slept through it.
What planet was she even on? Unless they were using holograms, there was sky above her, so this wasn't a station or a geodome. It felt like Earth but that seemed out of the question given her circumstances.
Aridus pressed the forehead ridge above her left eye, winced at an unexpected sore pain, and pressed down for three seconds, initializing the overlay in her ocular implant.
----------------------------------------
Local Network Found: Voice/Planet
Connecting... Verifying... Connection Established
Update Required: [Proceed] [Cancel]
----------------------------------------
The words floated before her synthetic eyes. Invisible to everyone else but clear as day to her. She was about to select [Proceed] when there was a soft hum in her ear.
"For your own safety, Helmsman Vaynshteyn, please do not select proceed," NOVA's serene voice transmitted via her ear implant.
"Oh!" Aridus said, startled. "You're on my comms."
"Yes, you lit up when you connected. Hit 'cancel' for now. You may be in danger—check your immediate surroundings for any hostile wildlife, including unusual plants, and then inspect your body for injuries."
The sensation of wrongness intensified and Aridus stepped behind a tree, scanning the rows for any unusual movement. She was safe for now. Loosening her suit, Aridus inspected herself. Her skin was an odd shade of gray. She rubbed at it, as though it were body paint she could remove. Weird but presumably not dangerous--Aridus continued and realized that her back and sides were bruised.
"I have a bunch of strange bruises and my skin is this really bizarre color. I feel fine though. No lingering hibernation sedation and..." she hopped up and down a few times,"...no issues with standard gravity."
As soon as she said it, Aridus realized those were unusual. Going back to planet or even station-side after an extended trip in space left her feeling like crap. Gravity, lighting, going from constant close quarters with a handful of fellow crew to expansive spaces with faceless crowds--all of those were hard to adjust to.
"I may have been given something to help transition." The right chemical cocktail could tide you through for a couple of days. The crash afterwards was horrible but lots of people used station-side breaks for hard partying and then sucked up the blowback when they were back to work.
"Have you checked for wildlife?"
"There's nothing here. I'm in an orchard. Looks well-maintained."
"Nothing in the branches above you?"
"No," Aridius said as she looked upwards. The branches swayed gently, the apples on it were very small and their flesh a deep red. "There's nothing..."
There was something. A portion of the branches stayed completely still. It took a moment to realize that branch was a leg--its exterior was dark brown and textured a bit like bark. But if that was a leg then that other branch would be a leg and that other branch. Aridius' expectations switched from mammal to insect and from cat or dog-sized to human-sized. If human-sized, the head would be about there, and everything popped into view.
"Oh dear," Aridius whispered. It looked like a mantis that stood as tall as her, folded up in the branches of a tree. It had tilted its head and one smooth, oval eye tracked her.
Aridius took a slow step back and then another, her heart racing. If it had dropped on her...
"You appear to be agitated," NOVA said.
"C-can you see this?" Her throat had gone tight and it was hard to form the words.
"No, I cannot."
"There's this giant mantis bug thing."
"Tell me when you are able to talk."
The tree mantis was silent and still, uninterested in following her. Aridius moved to another tree and this time she carefully inspected it for danger. She grabbed a low branch and shook it, bending it downwards. Young and healthy, the branch was fairly supple and she managed to pull its tip all the way to the ground. Aridius stepped on that and pressed her body against the branch until it snapped off.
"I'm stripping a branch now, trying to make a weapon," she informed NOVA. It wouldn't be a great weapon, only a long stick she could use to whack clumsily at an animal, but it might dissuade a predator looking for an easy meal.
"I have a great deal to tell you. Too much for your current circumstances. What would you like to know first?"
"Um, where am I?" Aridius asked as she tore off a small branch heavy with apples and tossed it onto the ground.
"A world named Prism on one of the southern continents. This solar system is surrounded by the void we traveled through. It is earthlike and has both human and non-human occupants."
"Aliens? Intelligent non-humans?" For a moment, Aridius forgot what she was doing. Real, living aliens would be astounding.
"Yes, a variety of intelligent species."
"That's amazing! Incredible. Have we made contact? Are they friendly? Can they help us return home?"
"The local population can be friendly or hostile. They are not a monoculture nor is the average person likely to be aware of who or what you are."
Right, they had humans. How did they have humans? Aridius' head swam with questions but she reminded herself she needed to focus.
"How did I get to where I am right now? Where is the rest of the crew?"
"You were teleported out of the Harpsgate by unknown parties. If you connected to the Voice, those parties may have been able to track down your location. I'm currently working on a way to mask your signature so you can safely connect. The rest of the crew has awoken and dispersed. You are the last."
Aridius swung her newly made staff experimentally. She'd need to quickly reconnect with the others.
"Is the Captain not onboard?" He would have spoken to her by now.
"Mr. Abrams has departed the Harpsgate. I have not heard from him for some time."
That wasn't good. "And the others?"
"None are aboard or in immediate contact. My ability to contact you directly is an exception."
Almost all of the crew had a few implants though Aridius was superior in a number of ways. Still, she found it odd that none of them had remained in contact. They'd all also left the ship without waking her.
"I assume there's a house or worker habitat nearby. Would it be safe to make contact?"
"I cannot say with any certainty. Please investigate with caution. And..." there was a sudden break in communication, "if you see Edmund, hide and flee."
"What? Edmund the engineer? He's dead."
"No, he is not. When I crashed into the planet, I awoke MDR Fitchburg first. She had started the awakening of the rest of the crew when Edmund emerged from cold storage and killed her. He then left the ship with her body. Reports from other crewmembers confirm he's dang--"
"Edmund is dead." Aridius snapped back. She'd seen the body, and thinking about it made her queasy.
"If he is dead," NOVA replied, "you will not see him and need not think about it. If you do see him, he is animated and you should hide and flee."
Perhaps the ship's AI was malfunctioning. A crash could damage any number of systems. What NOVA was saying made no sense but Aridius' primary objective must be to keep safe and orient herself. Staff in hand, she stalked forward through the orchards and, hopefully, to some answers.