They Reign - 2
#2 of They Reign (TF Themes)
THEY REIGN - 2
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Welcome to chapter 2! This scifi story is sponsored by
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BIRNBAUMER 2 SYSTEM
FEBRUARY, 2280
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The sleeper compartment of the Space Service Auxiliary vessel Anders Lexell was an elongated room with the curved, cavernous ceiling that gave such areas the almost inevitable nickname of a vault, which was what the crew of the Lexell called it as well. The stasis pods were placed back to back along the walls, with open space between them. Eight on each side, on this voyage, twelve of them held occupants in their dreamless sleep.
They had slumbered for fourteen days, give or take.
Two weeks, during which their small ship crossed the distance between their readiness station at Shapiro-Zipperstein A and over to Birnbaumer 2. On the galactic scale, it was but a tiny little hop. The ultra long range freighters and cargo carriers could go on for a year without stopping for replenishment, their crews held in suspended animation to better withstand the hardships of superluminary travel and to conserve resources. That was the thinking behind even this brief trip being undertaken in the stasis pods. They would arrive with their ship's consumable resources intact for any emergency that might befall them, allowing them to fall back if needed. Even more importantly so, the crew would wake up feeling as if they had just departed the station over the mining colony, rather than spending two weeks in listless boredom while contemplating what horrors had befallen to the nameless men and women of the Birnbaumer 2 outpost.
The boredom the ship could offer was even more oppressing than the variety they got to enjoy on the space station, where the distractions were few.
The people slept, but the ship's disembodied crewmember, the computer, maintained a careful eye on both the biological cargo and the ship's thousands of subsystems, all running together to ensure the smooth operation of the ship and the safety of her crew. It was the automated system that maintained their course and heading via star sightings, and which bled air and warmth into the habitable part of the Lexell when their day of approach came to be.
Such proximity alarm initiated the wake-up sequence as well. Choice drugs and electric impulses coursed through wires and tubes onto the occupants of the pods, their precious cargo still sleeping away. Their pods fogged up when the warmth was cranked up, only disturbed by the odd, erratic movement of a limb or a tail reaching out reflexively towards the light that shone over each of the pods.
"Everything is well."
The computer voice was a standard model, a gentle female tone that had been found to be most effective in soothing out crewmen during the confusing initial moments after emerging from their suspended animation.
"Everything is well."
It took almost an hour before the transparent covers of the pods slid open.
" - oh God, Charlie!"
"Space belly again, Lester?"
"Chemical alarm!"
The ribbing comments were directed towards the badger whom had climbed out of his pod and was now retching by a stainless steel sink on the far end of the room. The naked badger coughed and spluttered, with nothing coming out of his maw but vile noises that attracted the attention of the others, emerging from their long sleep.
"We've all had it one point or another," noted Captain Hodge, who was bleary-eyed and slightly rumpled, but none the worse, it appeared, "nobody's any worse for it."
"Bruuhgh," the badger grumbled, paws clutching the sink, "It's the Stilopaxine, sir, I'm allergic, I think. Makes me want to puke."
"Maybe you need a desk job, then, with less flying."
The teasing voice belonged to Rina Morrow, the pilot. She climbed out of her pod without concern for her very apparent nudity, even in front of the mostly male crew. As soon as she was on the floor, she threw her arms up into the air and stretched her spine luxuriously.
The nakedness required by the sleeper units was a very small indignity for the spaceman or a spacewoman alike, and the general disposition towards it was pragmatic. Nobody seemed to bat an eye at her stark nudity. Everyone had seen everyone, and everything of everyone. There were no surprised there.
"Bah," the badger grunted away, "shit..."
"If you start spewing from that end too, you're gonna mop it up!" someone quipped. The badger thought it might have been Yates, the engineer.
"Oh shut up, guys!" he grumbled either way.
The two other women shared adjacent pods on the other side of the room. Lynch was the rescue engineer - the mare looked like she'd woken up from a simple nap. In the second pod, Pitman yawned violently, her ears flat.
"Are we there yet?" Pitman drawled in her feline manner. She was a lynx. "We better be."
"Let's hope so," her closest co-worker, Larsen, spoke up from two pods down the line. Rescue specialist Banks and field medic Chandler slept between the vulpine Larsen and the feline Pitman. Their job title of "private security" hid the more juicy details of their work description. Larsen's eyes were as sharp as those of any fox.
Most of the attention was at Morrow's calisthenic post-stasis stretching. Even her tail was in on it, swinging broadly into various angles while she spread her limbs.
"We are there, indeed" said Captain Hodge. He had commandeered himself a computer access terminal and called up the navigational display, "the stars say that we've just slipped into the system. ETA is 2 hours 14 minutes. And just that you know, we have not picked up a recall signal while we were underway, so this is still the real deal, boys and girls!"
"I'm gonna put us in orbit this time around," Morrow declared.
"Don't trust the computer, darling?"
That was Franklin. The lion was doing some slightly less energetic stretching than his female counterpart, but he had the bulk that she lacked, which made his movements all that more impressive. Certainly he made more of a thump on the deck plates.
"It burns too much fuel," she replied to him.
"You like running a tight ship, don't you?" Franklin spoke to her in a semi-flirting manner. It seemed to please her. The cheetah directed a tail flick to the lion's way.
"Always," Morrow said.
"Let's start hitting the showers!" Captain Hodge announced more loudly. "We need the ship up and running before we reach the planet. There's a lot of people waiting for us there."
"If they're still alive," Franklin said.
"That is always the assumption," the tiger told to the lion without ire in his voice.
"What do you think, Banks?" Franklin spoke to the rescue co-pilot, whose long lapine ears drooped from the post-stasis exhaustion.
"Why do you ask me?" the hare retorted.
"You usually have a gut feeling about these things," the lion told the hare. "Just like Lester over there!"
The badger rolled his eyes. That seemed to trigger another wave of nausea that brought bile into his throat and made him cough and retch into the sink.
"Ughhh..."
"I'll just wait to see the pictures," Banks opined. "I need a shower now. This pod stinks."
He hopped out and landed gracefully onto the floor, right next to the more expansive form of Chandler, the polar bear medic.
"Not worse than your cabin on the station, I bet," the bear was quick to comment.
"Ha, ha," the hare stuck his tongue out at the bear.
Banks chuckled all the way during his lumbering walk towards the door leading into the shower compartment in the next room.
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Technically, if going by the book, the first hour after waking up was reserved for the biological and social needs of the crew. They would shower in leisure, put on their flight clothes, enjoy a bite to eat, shuck away the after-effects of stasis with some companionable banter. In practice, most of them rushed through the steam showers, grabbed their jumpsuits and rushed to their stations to take over from the computer still dutifully keeping an eye on all the systems for their sake.
When Captain Hodge arrived onto the grandiosely named main command bridge, fresh, uniformed and wearing his ANDERS LEXELL cap, both Morrow and Lester were already occupying their positions. The pilot had coffee with her, the cup plugged into a decisively non-standard holder on her high-backed acceleration couch seat. Lester had apparently skipped breakfast altogether and now just distracted himself in the work. He still looked ill.
"No incoming signals from the outpost, skipper," he told to Hodge upon the tiger's entrance," no response on the SLRN bands."
"Keep hailing them," Hodge replied. The Captain crossed the small space and sat by his own station. The chair felt comfortably familiar under his weight. The console appeared to sense his presence and piped in the ever-changing synopsis of the ship's systems data the computer thought the Commanding Officer should see.
"Aye, aye," Lester breathed out," continuing to hail them on the standard channels."
"Nothing on basic radio either?" Hodge asked.
"Nothing but a loud gas giant about 1.5 billion clicks away," the badger said. "Nothing from the outpost."
"We're still several light minutes away," Morrow noted. "If it's low power, it won't stand out from the background radiation. We're also not exactly on the ecliptic plane either."
"I've got the parabolic aimed and scanning," Lester said. He sounded moderately annoyed. "Let me do my job, please."
Morrow chuckled.
"There's not much for me to do yet," she said. "Just thought I'd help out a bit since I've got the time."
Captain Hodge chuffed.
"Happy letting the ship drive itself for the moment, Morrow?" he asked.
She flashed him a look.
"It does an okay job flying a straight line, but for the rest..." she waved her paw to mimic a death spin.
Lester coughed. Perhaps even the sight of her gesture made his head spin again, and his stomach churn. Hodge was quick to notice it.
"Maybe you should ask Chandler for something for that," he said, "surely he's got something in his backpack."
The badger raised a paw.
"I'll be fine," he said before going on to punching in further commands for the computer to continue calling the outpost.
"95 minutes...mark," the pilot added.
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The_Anders Lexell_had three deck levels. The top level contained the command bridge upon which the crew of the small ship discussed their approach vector. Level two was where the crew quarters and the sleeper vault now stood empty and waiting for their occupants. Almost directly below the stasis room, seven people lingered around a hologram projected from the ceiling and the floor simultaneously. Lockers surrounded them, loaded with the ship's equipment.
"Alright," Commander Franklin ruff-ruffed, sounding business, "Wong, what do we have here?"
He was addressing the horse, whom stood on the other side of the hologram. The stallion's hands held a data pad that he used to control both the display, and to read up on the information that had been requested of him.
"Okay," the equine nickered," I pulled this up from the colonial records. It should be accurate at least up until '78, so it's not really optimal but it's what we've got for the moment."
"We'll be getting scans, won't we?" Larsen asked.
The fox stood with his arms crossed over his chest. His compatriot Pitman fell naturally to his side.
"As soon as we are in range, we'll do a full sweep, of course," Franklin replied. "The Captain has promised us a geostationary orbit, so we'll be getting full updates throughout. We're not going to be going in blind."
"What kind of a place is this, then?" the rescue specialist, Banks, questioned from the horse, across the hologram that the hare studied carefully. "I can see it's fenced up."
"There is a perimeter fence, yes," Wong replied, "the base area it is a square some 300 meters long on each side, and it is surrounded by a lightweight titanium fence about five meters tall."
"Sounds like they want to keep something out," Pitman hissed. "Or something in."
"Bugs..." Larsen suggested. He drew the 'ssssss' in the end very long, almost like a cat. Pitman smirked at that in approval.
"It's mostly botany and mycology, apparently," Wong said, "the fence is there to keep the few larger indigenous species of animals away from the outpost. Some of them are described as predatory."
"Predatory enough to attack?" Lynch asked.
"Or to enjoy people as a snack?" Pitman suggested.
"I don't have the data," Wong replied, non-pulsed by the comments. "But the hazard report the Science Initiative has filed does not include the possibility of animal attacks."
"At least not by that point in time," the lynx thought aloud.
Banks stepped closer to the hologram and pointed out the cluster of buildings on the northern side of the complex.
"Are these standard modular structures?" the hare asked.
"Everything is as standard as it goes," Wong said. "Bass-Welch manufactured drop and go modules with integrated foundations. You're pointing at the laboratory block over there. Support and habitat blocks are on the other sides."
"That's where they keep the monsters," Pitman mused.
Franklin chortled.
"Nobody is keeping anything down there," the lion said.
"Well not anymore if it already came loose..." Pitman replied.
"I knew a guy who definitely let something loose in his apartment...it was growing on the vents by the time he thought about cleaning up..." Lynch said.
Chandler rumbled with mirth.
"You're saying that these people are slobs like your ex-boyfriend and were sloppy with some of their fungi?" the medic stated.
"Well I could have sworn that the growth in his apartment was preparing to walk out on its own accord at any moment..." Lynch nickered.
There was a round of chuckles. Even Franklin had to join in, despite being the boss and thinking that he had to set the example in business-like behavior.
"Perhaps we can rule out sentient fungi as the cause of the communications blackout," Franklin noted.
"It's probably equipment failure they just weren't up to fixing on their own," Lynch suggested. "A cascade power spike in some shitty distribution bus and they blow both redundant transceivers. They'll go dumb and deaf on the SLRN bands."
"If that is the case, we'll be getting their signal in an hour and a half," Franklin said, "and we can scrub this whole mission."
"Except for fixing the radio, if we can," Wong said, "we are entitled to reimbursement from the Science Initiative, of course."
"Of course," the lion nodded in the horse's direction, "I'd just prefer that their own support ships did these kind of missions. But I guess it can't be helped."
"Has anyone considered that it might be sabotage?" Larsen proposed.
The fox got many a curious look for that.
"Go on," Franklin urged.
The fox scratched his muzzle.
"Didn't you say before bedtime that they have bio and materials contracts?" Larsen noted.
"Yes, they do," Franklin said. "They have several corporate sponsors besides the Science Initiative and the universities."
"So, you know, maybe it is sabotage," Larsen said, "Or industrial espionage for all we know. Might've been a hit and run. Has happened before."
"To steal the walking fungus?" Lynch asked.
Franklin grumbled.
"Could we quit being focused on the alleged sentient mold and talk about something else?" the lion stated. "Like our deployment plan?"
"Standard search and rescue, I suppose?" Banks proposed. "Isn't that what we've been told to do?"
"Go kick the door in and say hello," Pitman mimed cocking a pistol.
"No kicking if we can help it," Franklin rebuffed the lynx's militant comment, "we don't know what's going on. There might be a lot of really scared people down there and we're in to help, not to give them a further scare."
"We'll behave," Larsen nudged his eyes towards the confident lynx.
Pitman mimed putting her pistol into a hip holster.
"The landing site is at the center of complex," Wong spoke as he maid the the said formation to light up on the hologram," as long as it's clear, we should not have any trouble setting down. We'll have to identify a couple of auxiliary sites once we're in visual range, but hopefully it won't be much of a struggle to actually get there."
"Are we doing a standard rescue drop?" Lynch asked.
"Sure," Franklin chimed in,"as long as the circumstances permit. We'll try to contact them from orbit, and if there's no reply, we'll drop a hello buoy and see if they pick it up. If that doesn't work, then we're going down and go by the book."
"Gonna be one helluva wake up call," Larsen mused.
"It sure will be," Franklin agreed in a grumble.
A navigational display on the wall told that the ship had 72 minutes until orbital insertion.
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