“ It’s a long shot, Sir,” Kira reminded them all.
“ But it’s better than anything else we got,” Sharp finished for her. “All right, do what you have to so we can get there. It’s not like we’re using our fuel for anything else. Then we’ll get the ship ready for a deep sleep and go for it. Our engines will run for a couple hundred years, but that’s just energy. We’ve got the chemicals on hand for a couple months of food and water, more if we go sparingly, and probably twenty years worth of cold sleep chemicals and nutrients.”
“ You’re talking about a deep sleep, not just a few months at a time?” Eric asked. Kira glanced up at him and, in spite of her earlier concerns, reached out to take his hand in hers.
“ Yeah, and it won’t be easy coming out with all of us down but as long as nothing messes up our computers again we should be able to do it.”
Kira nodded. She felt her heart beat faster in her chest. It excited her to have a plan. To have hope. It was a slim chance but it was a chance and that’s what mattered. “So what are we waiting for? I’m looking forward to putting another eight years under my belt!”
“ Can we wait a few hours, at least?” Eric said. He squeezed Kira’s hand and then admitted. “Risky stuff, going in deep like that. Just in case anything goes wrong I’d like to get under her belt too, if you don’t mind?”
The others all laughed, causing Kira to blush. Most had the good grace to let it alone but Tarn added to it, “Sounds good to me, you starting the line?”
Kira displayed a small but very wicked looking knife and said, “Tarn, you can touch me with anything you want, as long as you can get it passed this first.”
Sharp whistled while Kevin chuckled. Tarn stared at with wide eyes then grinned. She squeezed Eric’s hand to reassure him then fed the necessary commands into the nav station to steer the ship towards the unnamed system. That finished she stood up and then gasped as Eric picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder. Catcalls from the rest of the crew made her face burn but at no point was there any way she could deny the grin that split her lips.
Chapter 13
The display blinked, shifting from an unpowered darkness to a black non-light that nevertheless revealed shapes in the room. A moment later colors and lines sprang into existence, casting shadows from the dust covered stations, chairs, and other objects on the bridge of the Rented Mule. The display quickly coalesced into lines of text. A window displayed the sensor readings collected automatically, indicating the layout of the solar system the Rented Mule was entering.
Colored lights sent shadows fleeing their prismatic brilliance in the cold sleep chamber. Chemicals released into controlled intravenous lines, introducing countering agents to the stasis inducing drugs in their systems. With heartbeats reduced to single digits in the span of a minute the absorption took the better part of two hours before the lights changed again and announced the next stage of the process.
Electrodes activated, triggering stimulus to the atrophied muscles of the nearly flatlined sleepers. As the heart rates began to climb into the double digits basic nutrients and simple sugars filled the IV lines, restoring glucose and energizing the depleted muscles. Once the changes were made the system resumed a standby state, administering the new changes over a span of several days.
When next the lights changed it was not only to signal the introduction of a gas into the enclosed chambers, but also to engage the overhead lights and raise them to a low level. Intubation tubes, filled with fluids siphoned as the bodies warmed and returned to life, retracted. A final injection, this one purely synthetic adrenaline, was delivered before the electrodes were triggered with a powerful jolt. Each body convulsed, breath exploding from dry mouths as eyelids opened. The cover of the chambers popped open, hissing as the low pressure maintained internally was equalized.
Kira lay in the chamber, unable to see through the blurriness in her aching eyes. Her throat was dry and her chest felt heavy; each breath was an experience in swallowing razorblades. Kira tried to speak but barely managed a moan. It evolved into a weak attempt at coughing, and that upset her stomach and made her attempt to vomit. With nothing in her stomach, the dry heaves only left her aching and breathless. The only benefit from the process was that the tears watered her eyes enough to make her eyelids feel less like sandpaper.
Fighting the agony of muscles long gone unused, Kira forced one arm across, pulling the IV out of one arm then repeating the action with her other arm. The other necessary connections were removed, albeit slowly, before Kira faced the daunting task of needing to climb out of her chamber.
“ I can do this,” Kira whispered with a voice that was so weak that the pulse pounding in her ears nearly drowned it out. She reached up to the sides of the chamber and tried to pull herself up. She collapsed, having hardly moved. Fresh tears ran from her eyes down the sides of her face. “I’m not weak!” The rasp in her voice claimed otherwise.
Gathering her legs slowly in the cocoon she reached up and tried again. She managed to pull herself up enough to lean over the edge of the chamber, pinching the flesh in her armpit against the cool metal. The pain helped to focus her and distract her from the exhaustion that made colors dance in her vision. Kira gasped for breath, counting internally until more than a minute had passed, then she pulled her legs beneath her again and used them to help boost her over the edge.
Kira crashed to the cold metal floor. She felt needles and daggers stabbing her body inside and out. The pain was so great she blacked out for a moment, then came around with a gasp of air as though she had been drowning. She managed to roll over and lay there, the cool floor stealing what little warmth her body had managed to reclaim. She felt herself shiver, then she felt the hollow nausea she had come to associate with being so hungry her body was on the verge of malnutrition.
Still she lay on the floor, unable to comprehend the amount of effort it would take to move. Her breathing and heart eventually calmed to the point that she could hear little more than just herself. The faint background hum of the ships air filtration and recycling service provided her only auditory companion. She steeled herself, feeling sorry for the men trapped still in their tomb-like bunks. They’d once been so strong and filled with life, now they were shadows of themselves that required machinery to exist. To be reduced to something so powerless was terrifying. She knew that Emily, if she was still around, would be terrified of being in a situation like the one Kira found herself in.
For Kira it was miserable, but she was accustomed to being disadvantaged and without resources. Now she clung to one thing and one thing only: hope. Kira knew now who she was and who she had been. She knew that she had done incredible things, even if she had not been aware of it at the time. Most importantly she knew that if she could bend her mind to it, she could survive this too.
It was with that belief clutched desperately in her heart that Kira rolled on to her stomach and pulled her knees beneath her. She reached out, grabbing the hateful sleep chamber again, then managed to rise to one shaky leg and then the other. She bent over it, supporting herself with her arms and legs, and tried to will away the nausea and the shakes that threatened to pull her back to the metal floor.
Minutes passed before Kira felt the rubber in her legs turn to the electric pins and needles associated with the return of circulation. She realized her jaw was clenched only after the agony began to pass and her sinuses were burning with the effort of harsh breathing through the dried out passages. She dared to open her mouth, then slowly turned to look upon the other cold sleep chambers that lay beyond her. To get to them she would need to walk around hers, a task that seemed no less difficult than swimming the liquid methane oceans of Europa.