| Journey to Centauri is a web-based episodic tale that details the splintering of the U.N. Alpha Centauri Mission on its way to the new world. Previous chapters are listed here. |
Journey to Centauri : Episode 2 Pravin Lal awakened to the hiss of the transparent capsule door breaking its seal and the feel of the ship's foundation shaking beneath him. His heart began to pound and he closed his eyes, breathing deeply, seeking calm.When his heartbeat slowed he opened his eyes once more. His training had prepared him for this: disorientation, sleep sickness, a deep fatigue that seemed to nest in his bones. He spit the respirator from his mouth and pulled the IVs from his arm, then lifted his hands, placed them on the glass lid above, and pushed. The cryocell opened. He was alive. Around him stretched the expanse of cryobay two, silent and vast, filled with over a thousand identical glass capsules, each one bathed in a pale blue light, each with tubes and cables snaking down to conduits in the floor. Over a thousand crew, but his eyes immediately, reflexively, turned to the cell at his left. He climbed to his feet and, ignoring the chill, crossed to it. He looked down through the glass. There, beneath the frost and bluish tint of the cryogel, he could make out her soft brown shape, indistinct, and the darkness of her long hair. Pria. She looked so peaceful, so far away...he still remembered her gentleness, and their last strong kiss before the cryotechs closed the cell, locking her away from him. His practiced eyes scanned the small console above her cell. Everything appeared normal; she had survived. His eyes flickered once across the manual release key, and then he saw the red warning lights flashing at the far end of the cryobay. The ship... he had almost forgotten the danger. He brushed Pria's cell with his fingers one more time and then turned away. From a metal shelf at the foot of his vacated cell he lifted a folded uniform... sleek, comfortable, in the sky blue of the mission's Chief of Surgery, with the U.N. seal on the breast and no country-of-origin markings visible. The Captain had lobbied strongly for that. He slipped into the uniform and flipped on the small computer sewn into the uniform's sleeve. Status report: the Captain would emerge from cryosleep shortly, along with the Chief Science Officer and some emergency support staff. It appeared that large portions of the ship's hull had been damaged, along with two of the three hydroponics modules. The fusion drive had shut down. Pravin entered the Returned to Duty code and headed for the command bay. The ship was racing towards Centauri system at tremendous speed, and without the fusion drive there was no way to stop.
Check out Pravin Lal's Faction Profile! |
