Trouble in Denmark

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. However, it would not have surprised me if the screams Jessica made from within the Hibernation chamber echoed throughout the rest of the ship and made their way outside. I sucked greedily at the drink tube that provided the mix of water, salt, sugar, protein powder, vitamins and caffeine – known as wake-up juice. The screams became louder as my pod door cracked opened and a blast of cold, stale air rushed in and made my body shiver. I had discovered that no matter what I wore in the sleep pod I always woke up cold. This time I had ditched the uncomfortable long johns and went with gym shorts and a tank top thinking the change would keep me from sweating as much. Nope, I was still soaking wet and the stale air from the ship made it worse. I squeezed my eyes shut to help clear the blurriness, took one last swig of wake-up juice and pushed at the pod. The top went out then up and like usual, I slid out and landed on my knees. The floor of the chamber was padded for just this occasion. As normal, I had lost all feeling in my legs. It was one of the various side effects of cryogenic sleep. The doctors didn’t know what caused it, but it happened to over thirty percent of those awakening, and the since the effect only lasted a few minutes with no long-term problems, they simply added padding to the floor. As I waited for the pins and needles to start, I looked around the chamber to see who else was up. This was it. After 200 years of space travel, we would be arriving at our destination.

The sleep pods were organized vertically at a 75-degree angle along the wall of the round chamber with the main control console in the center of the room. There were 15 total, one for each crew member and the captain. Jessica was to my left, her still blurry figure sitting at the bottom of one of the pods. Her screams had turned to sobs. She was our Engineering Officer Third. A pod to my right opened and skinny Albert slipped out wearing nothing but a baggy T-shirt. Across from me another opened and Kelly stepped out and stood like the conquering Amazon she resembled. She was wearing running shorts and a matching sports bra. Kelly was a certified nurse and our second in command of medical. Two more pods opened spilling one onto the floor while the other stood upright. Both wore the service-issued white long johns. After a moment the upright figure doubled over, coughing and gagging. That would be Drum, the Chief Engineer. He was always violently sick after waking. Chief would spend the next twenty minutes dry heaving and then he would be good as new. A low moan came from the other figure who was stretching her legs out. Uni was the backup communications officer and the backup yeoman. She and Albert, who was the assistant cook, were two extra bodies added simply for redundancy. Neither had any real official duties.

I carefully stood as needles of pain shot through my legs. I found it was easier to deal with, and quicker, to stand during the pain rather than lie or sit and wait it out. Kelly had already moved over to Jessica and was getting her to her feet and moving her toward the Ready Room. I limped over and saw the mummified corpse of our captain. Jessica was his niece, which explains her hysteria. There was a soft clank as Jessica opened the hatch to the Ready Room. Her and Jessica disappeared inside. Everyone else started to move slowly toward the open hatch.

I turned away from the captain and looked around. I counted again. Six. Out of 15. I looked more carefully and saw the three cracked pods. They belonged to our Executive officer, Second Navigators, and Second Engineer. They were empty. I limped around the room and inspected the other five pods. They contained mummies.

I limped into the Ready Room and closed the hatch behind me. Kelly gave me a sharp look and I shook my head. She reached into her locker and pulled out her shower kit and disappeared around the corner where the shower and other body facilities were. The sound of running water could be heard and thin wisps of steam were drifting into the main locker room.

“SIMON, report please.” I said to the empty room.

Silence.

“SIMON, report please.”

Still nothing. The dead crew members were one thing, we had been warned this was a possibility. We were Earth’s first colony ship on a 200-year journey to Alpha Centauri. No one had ever pushed the limits of technology or the human body to these extremes before. Unlike the 2,000 colonists we carried as cargo, we were given a briefing on all scenarios, good and bad, so there would no surprises at the end. This was bad scenario 37, and not even close to being the worst.

However, SIMON was guaranteed not to malfunction. I forget what the acronym stands for, Structure Image Machine something or other. Essentially SIMON was the brain of the ship and appeared in holographic form. Its basic form was programmed to be similar to a 20th Century actor named Morgan Freeman. Though it had the ability to learn and change its own form to what it wanted to be, this was my favorite version.

During this voyage each of us was scheduled to wake up seven times to check on various functions of the ship and make sure everything was on track. Every time SIMON was here, in the Ready Room with a smile and a greeting. That it wasn’t here or responding to my voice command was, to put it mildly, not good.

Kelly came around the corner dressed in her towel and went straight to her locker. Without a thought she dropped her towel and started pulling her coveralls on.

“The XO, Gaines and Pullman are missing,” I told her. “And SIMON is not responding.”

“Then I guess you better go find them,” she said. She finished lacing up her crew shoes, pulled the zipper up on her coverall, and carefully hung her towel on the outside of her locker to air dry. “I’m heading to sick bay. I asked Chief to organize the others and get them to the galley.”

“Then I guess I’ll head up to the bridge and see what’s what.”

“You do that,” she said, and was gone.

Damn, it had been 65 years and she was still pissed.

Without the benefit of a post sleep shower, I toweled off the best I could, pulled on my coveralls and crew shoes and left for the bridge. The ship was designed as a single long corridor with various modules tied in that were our quarters, Ready Room, Sick Bay, Engineering Room, Galley, Rec Room, Science Lab, Computer Science Lab, and Bridge. The whole thing was encased in a triple hull and the void spaces filled with a foam designed to absorb radioactive particles harmful to humans. This was designed to keep us safe from solar storms and other radioactive anomalies that could fry through anything thinner.

The Ready Room and Hibernation chamber were smack dab in the center of the ship. The Bridge was at one end, and the Engine room on the other. Everything else was scattered in-between. The ship itself was about the size of an old football field. However, the cargo pods attached to the outside nearly tripled our length and size.

I walked past Sick Bay where I heard Kelly rummaging around. I passed the Computer Science Lab, and it was just the way I left it 65 years ago. Then damage appeared along the corridor. It started with small dents, then smashed lights, their plastic shards still scattered on the deck. A small, ragged hole had been ripped into the deck. Splotches of dark stains appeared on the wall and the floor. Loose tools were scattered about: first a few screwdrivers, then a hammer, a large pry bar and then a sledgehammer. More and more damage appeared as I got closer to the Bridge. Then I was there and saw the worst of it. The hatch had been forced open, the hatch itself hanging open by a thin piece of metal that refused to break.

Inside I found more damage. Two workstations had been smashed and a hole was torn in the overhead. Torn wires were scattered everywhere. Another sledgehammer was tossed over to the side. The damage included two bodies. One was propped up in a sitting position under the captain’s chair. He had a knife stuck in his heart. The other lay near the hatch to the captain’s ready room. Both bodies wore torn coveralls, and both had taken a beating. I was only able to tell they were our Navigator Second, my immediate boss, and the man with the knife in his heart was our XO. By the look of them they had been dead for a long time. A shimmering form hunched over Gaines. The form was dressed in what I recognized as a Shakespearian costume.

“SIMON?” My voice was scratchy, not at all the command presence I thought it would be.

The figure stood and turned to me. The AI was flickering in and out of focus. I wondered if we had a power issue.

“Caaaaaaptaiiiin Giiiiil…” SIMON’s voice caught and stuttered. The image disappeared and then quickly flashed bright and changed clothes in-between, still in the same style of costume.

“Caaapptaaaaaain, there issssssss troubbbbleee iiiiiin Den…maaaaaark.”

The lights on the bridge flashed bright then settled into red emergency lighting. An alarm sounded. SIMON disappeared. The warning light on the Communications station flashed yellow. This meant there was an incoming message from an unknown source. I stepped over the XO and entered my code into the Communication station. There were a few dents in the metal, and the seat had been torn off its mount, but otherwise the equipment was functioning.

“Deeeeeen_maaaaaaaark!” SIMON’s voice screeched and then cut off.

The screen blinked and a flash message started scrolling onto the screen.

I had to read it three times for it to make any sense. It was a query from something called Centi B Dock Station. It wanted to know who, and what we were.