Someone was slapping her. That definitely wasn’t part of the dream. It didn’t bother her that it was part of the reality, because it helped to clear her head in a way the excess of visual and audible alarms did not.
“Daniels—Daniels, we—can you hear me? It’s Oram! Christopher Oram!” His tone was intense and no-nonsense, as befitted someone already fully revived. Though still clad in his soft white sleep suit, he was plainly in better shape than she was, only sweating slightly and not visibly ill. In contrast to his slender frame his voice, like his grip, was strong, and he plainly had no time to coddle her or anyone else.
“Wake up! Daniels! Wake up! I’ve got no time for this. I need you—I need everybody—now! We’ve sustained some serious damage and…” He looked to where another recent revivee was stumbling toward them. “Tennessee—give me a hand over here. I’ve got to see to the others!” Leaving the still unsteady Daniels to the newcomer, Oram hurried toward another pod that was opening.
“Come on, darlin’.” An old friend and colleague, Tennessee helped to ease her out of the pod and steady her. “Jacob’s in trouble.” Big, powerful, with his head of thick black curls and facial hair that usually looked more hacked than trimmed, he resembled someone you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley behind a bar instead of a fully qualified colony ship pilot. When appropriately stimulated, or agitated, he could sound like the former, too. In his sleep suit, he looked like a giant, albeit suddenly intense, teddy bear. He leaned toward her, his voice strong.
“Jacob needs us.”
It was the final jolt she needed to snap her fully awake. Whirling, she looked toward the pod beside hers. Jacob’s. Unlike nearly all the others in the crew chamber, it had not opened. Her husband lay motionless within, still locked in the Morphean grip of hypersleep. He was smiling, which was normal. Swirling vapor began to accumulate beneath the transparent lid, masking their view of the sleeper. That was most definitely not normal. Worse still, she knew what it signaled, and what would happen if—
“GET IT OPEN!”
When repeated efforts to engage the pod’s external controls produced no response, Tennessee moved to the manual override. Wrenching, pulling, leaning with all his weight on the levers did nothing—they wouldn’t budge. Seeing what was happening, Oram returned and began trying everything he could think of to get some kind of response from the pod’s instrumentation.
Nothing worked. The only result was an increase in the amount and a thickening of the vapor within, abruptly accompanied by an intensifying shower of sparks and crackling sounds from the base of the hypersleep unit where it was attached to the deck.
Within, Jacob’s visage twitched in a semblance of rising awareness as the pod’s programming struggled to respond to Oram’s increasingly frantic external instructions. Trapped between catastrophic mechanical failure and insufficient response time, Daniels’ inert husband could do nothing to shape his own fate.
“Stand back! Get out of the way!”
Sergeant Lopé joined them. With his beard tending to gray, he had the mien of a kindly grandfather: a kindly grandfather who could easily dismember any trio of assailants. As the experienced leader of the military complement assigned to assist the ship’s crew, the lean professional soldier couldn’t match the technical skills of those who were fighting to save Jacob. In lieu of technical knowledge, he brought more primitive but equally useful abilities to the effort.
He grabbed a mechanical clamp they anachronistically called the “jaws of life.” Jamming the device into the pod’s inoperative release mechanism, he quickly and efficiently settled it into position.
“Lock it in on your side!” he yelled to Tennessee.
Working together, the two men finally succeeded in attaching the rescue tool to the pod. Every latch had to be tight, the vacuum seal complete. A partial success was no success at all. Under the device’s prodding the pod would open completely, or it wouldn’t open at all.
Leaning in, the two men applied brute strength to the apparatus. It wouldn’t matter if they broke the pod. Empty spares were on board should they need one. Teeth clenched, muscles bulging, they were joined by Daniels, who added her desperate strength to theirs.
Nothing happened.
Inside the pod, an explosion. Compared to the cacophony of other sounds throughout the hypersleep bay, it wasn’t loud, but it was significant enough to cause both men to draw back reflexively. On the other side of the clear plastic lid there was a sudden increase in vapor and for the first time… fire. Uttering a primal whine, a hysterical Daniels threw herself onto the pod, clawing desperately at the ineffective rescue device.
Within, her husband’s eyes suddenly snapped open as he finally began to awaken. Through the vapor and the intensifying flames, there was recognition. His gaze locked on hers. It lasted only for an instant. Just like his smile. Both were his last.
Daniels continued to scream, and the inside of the pod was engulfed in flames as if someone had tossed a torch onto a pile of combustible material. Though initially resistant to fire, when the interior finally caught it burned hot and fast. Everything ignited—bed, support tubing, instruments… Jacob.
Fire suppression technology was common throughout the hypersleep bay, but not so much within individual pods. Because they were designed to open easily and immediately, via the activation of failsafe devices if necessary. At worst, they could be opened by a specialized rescue device like the one Lopé and Tennessee had used. The one that had failed to perform its intended function.
It took all of Tennessee’s considerable strength to pull her off the pod and away from the internalized inferno. Still sealed tight, still unopenable, the pod kept the blaze contained.
Desperate to provide what comfort he could, Tennessee could only wrap his arms around Daniels and hold her, letting her sob uncontrollably against him. Their efforts defeated, Oram and Lopé could do nothing but look on. Neither Oram’s skill nor the sergeant’s strength had been sufficient to get the recalcitrant pod open.
With a little more time, Oram thought…
Time. There hadn’t been enough to save a life. Now he had to act swiftly to ensure the survival of others. Thousands of others. He spotted the heavily bearded, thick-lipped, solidly built Cole and the slender, youthful Ledward, a pair of privates who had revived alongside Lopé, and designated them to deal with Jacob’s remains. Then he headed purposefully for the ship’s nursery with the sergeant in tow.
The scene that greeted him was shocking, made bearable only by the knowledge that it could have been worse.
A segment of hypersleep pods had broken free from their brackets and fallen to the floor. Despite their tough construction some had cracked, fatally exposing their unwary occupants to incomplete revivification. Others had been spilled from pods whose lids had completely and prematurely snapped open. They were just as dead. Sparks continued to flare as revived crew members fought to suppress their source and shut off power to pods that no longer served any purpose.
Two more revived privates worked their way through the damage, searching for less damaged pods and sleepers who might have survived the disaster. Oram recognized the ever-earnest Rosenthal, whose physical attractiveness belied her stolid professionalism, and the equally young but blonde Ankor. Leaving his side, Lopé moved to supervise their efforts.
His gaze shifting away from the disaster, Oram saw Karine checking the embryo containment units. Acknowledging the arrival of her husband with a quick glance, her straight, dark blonde hair gleaming against her dark skin, she stayed where she was, doing her job. Assuring the viability of the embryos was far more important to her than anything else. Her concern and interests lay with the ship’s bio, not its tech.