Dr. Delecta remembered with crystal clarity the nightmare first moments when the Firebirds met, a persistence of memory she doubted would ever fade. When she first woke in the stasis chamber of the Ghazali, Banu Delecta had been confused and groggy. She had stared around the dim chamber, blinking in the flashing red emergency lights and flinching at the alternating siren screeches and the automated voice yelling, “EMERGENCY! HULL COMPROMISED! UNSCHEDULED DECANT.” Briefly unable to process the emergency, she waited for the quiet voice form her own stasis chamber to give her instructions, but none were forthcoming. Then the emergency decanting drugs hit and she was suddenly clear-headed and aware of the situation, distant flickering red stars turning into tell-tales from dying stasis chambers on the far side of the hold and the many sounds and smells of stasis resolving themselves into a meaningful story as the scattered fragments of her consciousness gathered together. She could smell the stale odor of her own body and she was suddenly aware of ravenous hunger, which meant that she had been under for days. Over the stink of her own body and the chemical residue of the stasis chamber she could smell burnt plastic and maybe emergency foam, and the rotating beams of the emergency lamps cut scythes of red through a haze in the stasis hold, clear signs of a rapidly-extinguished fire of some kind. The Ghazali had suffered an emergency, and the troops and agents it carried were being urgently awoken from stasis. Everyone volunteering for this mission had been given a designated role, and as a combat medic of course Dr. Delecta had been woken more urgently than the rest of the unknown sleepers in her stasis hold, because it was her responsibility to check them as they emerged from their own sleep.
She stumbled out of her stasis chamber and looked around, unfolding her tall frame awkwardly in surprisingly light gravity. With wakefulness came the memory of the moments before they settled into their chambers, and she rushed over to the chamber next to hers to check it. The long, sarcophagus-like lid of the chamber was sliding open, releasing puffs of chemical-stinking cryo-steam, and to her great relief a line of small lights at the head of the chamber were flickering green. Beneath them a small screen read salient details of the occupant, whose huge, heavily muscled male body was slowly becoming visible as the cryo-vapours cleared. Before she inspected him physically she checked the readouts.
Adam bin Niran Abayad
Gunner / soldier
Elapsed stasis time: 77:14:21
Status: Stable
So, they had been under for just over three days, and the man she had joined the mission with was safe. She reached into the chamber, checked his pulse and shook his shoulder. “Adam!” She whispered urgently. “Wake up! There’s an emergency! You’re needed.”
He was already coming round, eyes flickering and big, calloused hands clenching on a small rectangular plastic tablet in his hands, on which was painted an image of a woman in a white robe, head bowed and tears welling from both of her dark eyes. She stood against a dark, geometric background with a halo-like disc of light silver-greyish metal embossed behind her head and left shoulder, his Icon the Lady of Tears guarding him against the Dark Between the Stars while he slept. With an impulsive twitch he almost dropped the tablet, fumbling to catch it as his eyes snapped open. He grunted at her as she repeated her request, and then sat up suddenly, dark eyes blinking in a flat, impassive face. Long dark hair fell down to his shoulders, and he spat out of the chamber as he sat up, a traditional soldier’s first act on waking from stasis. “Emergency?” He hissed, lurching upright on shaky legs. Dr. Delecta was tall but he towered over her, wearing just the dhoti he had slept in like a loincloth so that his thick, muscly legs and herculean upper body, all muscle and scars and dark skin, glowed like a demon in the flashing alarm lights. “Fire?” He looked around, and she left him to orient himself, satisfied that he was okay and confident he would be ready for action quickly.
As the combat medic she had a responsibility to deal with the waking crew members, so she took stock of the room and began making a plan. She was in a standard military-style stasis hold of thirty two stasis pods in four lines of eight, but it appeared that only a small wedge of chambers on the corner nearest her own were still functioning, showing green flickering lights in their status screens. The rest were blinking bright red lights, and she could see some had smoke or blood in them. A moment of basic triage and she was in front of the closest chamber with green status lights. The display read Al Hamra, which she was sure was not his real name, and indicated he was a squad leader. He was already awake when she reached him, probably on a more urgent decanting schedule by dint of his designation, and was looking around, dazed and bleary-eyed, as she checked his pulse and gave him a quick explanation of the situation. He was shorter than her with a lean, dusky-skinned form, a strange geometric pattern tattooed on one chest and a completely shaved head. As she fussed about him he watched her from beautiful, almond-shaped eyes with irises of brown flecked with unique spots of gold – some kind of rare and expensive cosmetic effect, or a strange genetic anomaly? She did not see any sign of an Icon in his grip or in the chamber itself, which suggested reckless courage or a complete lack of familiarity with space travel. She pointed him in Adam’s direction and moved on to check the next stable chamber, where she found a tiny woman still lying supine in her open casket, sleeping in just wine-dark underwear and clutching a small soapstone statue of a richly-dressed man in a scarlet kaftan, who held a staff and an orb. Her wasp-thin torso was covered in a network of straight-line tattoos, which extended down to almost her elbows and knees like a kind of circuit-board diagram of black and gold ink. This was a classic marker of someone with a stationary background, who had grown up on orbitals or spaceships. Her status screen gave her name as Saqr Geroushi, designated as a pilot, and like all pilots she came out of her stasis sleep with a snap, suddenly surging upright to face Dr. Delecta. “What’s wrong?” She demanded immediately, green eyes already clear and bright as she looked around the room at the emergency signals. “Gravity’s low,” she told Dr. Delecta before she hopped out of the stasis chamber, running one hand through short, spiky hair highlighted with streaks of purple and bleached platinum. “Graviton projectors must be damaged, and mainline power might be out. What a ride!” She turned sparkling eyes on Dr. Delecta. “You’re the medic? Who’s in charge?” Dr. Delecta pointed her to Al Hamra (not his real name, for sure) and moved on to the next chamber, where a man with a messy, unkempt beard was standing up, leaning unsteadily on the door. Obviously not used to stasis, he was shaking slightly and his light ochre skin was tinged a distinct sickly, sallow shade around his beard. She stepped in to hold him up, reading Siladan Hatshepsut / Sensor operator on his status screen as she did.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Stay still,” she warned him, reaching with the other hand to his wrist to check his pulse and temperature. He was short, squat, muscly and hairy, a slight paunch protruding over ragged dhoti. He took her advice, leaning on the chamber’s edge, as she explained the situation and told him to get over to Al Hamra when he was feeling stable. As she did so the last of the green-lit chambers discharged its occupant, a startlingly pale-skinned woman with gold hair who moved easily over to her, lithe and tall.
“Olivia Greenstar,” she introduced herself, making a slight bow and looking around urgently at the damaged stasis chamber. “What happened?” Dr. Delecta shook her head, pointed to the squad leader and moved off to check the rest of the damaged chambers.
It did not take long, because all the remaining chambers had flickered to red and their occupants were clearly, obviously dead. One or two moaned, and one rolled over vomiting as he tried to exit his chamber, but then sagged back and started twitching uncontrollably in the bed where he had been lying, dropping his plastic Icon card by his side as he began to die. She picked it up and slid it into his hands, noticing the lines of thick radiation burns over his skin, the cloudy white film over his eyes, the bleeding nose and grotesque blisters around his mouth. After a quick check she returned to the group of survivors, who had just finished quick introductions. “Banu Delecta,” she introduced herself as they turned to look at her. “Combat Medic, for what it’s worth.” She had no medkit until they could get their gear.
“How did they die?” Al Hamra asked, nodding to the horror show behind her.
“Radiation surge, I think,” she replied, gesturing with one hand in a line through the stasis hold in an arc that took in the damaged chambers. “It must have gone through this area and missed our chambers.”
“Thermal weapon?” Adam suggested, coming to stand at her elbow. “The ship’s computer isn’t working, could have been an ion cannon.”
“Not on a ship the size of the Ghazali,” Saqr disputed him. “This is a generalized emergency and there’s no way an ion cannon would trigger it. And I don’t think a thermal cannon would penetrate the hull, without slicing the ship in half. And what weapon could do it? The Ghazali’s huge.”
“We’re supposed to have a destroyer escort too,” Olivia reminded them. “What’s it called? The Zafir? That thing looked heavy duty.”
“Zafirah,” Saqr corrected him.
Dr. Delecta tried to remember the briefing. The Taoan system’s only mining colony had released a distress signal, and the Colonial Agency had hastily grabbed the Ghazali to do an evacuation run. A former cruise liner, it had a huge number of stasis holds and lots of living space if they needed to evacuate the whole mining colony, and it had conveniently been in the Kua system when the emergency signal was received. The plan had been to enter the Portals at Kua, jump to Hamura and spend a few days in-system waiting for their military escort before entering the Portals and jumping to Taoan. The escort, the Zafirah, had been scheduled to enter the Portal to Taoan about twenty minutes before they did, to clear out any resistance in the immediate vicinity of the Portal station in Taoan on arrival. It was a beast of a ship, a kilometre of glistening, dagger-shaped death, and even with its crew recovering from stasis it was unlikely to have been defeated quickly enough to enable a full-scale attack on the Ghazali. “We’ve been in stasis just over three days,” She told them. “So it seems like we should be in Taoan. It could be an attack.”
“Let’s get our gear,” Al Hamra ordered, and began herding them to the lockers at the entrance to the hold. They dressed quickly, everyone donning the same basic deck clothes, grey coveralls with rudimentary knee and elbow pads, and grabbed the tools they had brought with them. For most of the group this was just a flashlight and a data tag, but for Siladan a tabula, and for Dr. Delecta her medkit, which she slung over one shoulder.
“There’ll be more stasis chambers near here,” she told them. “I need to check them and look for survivors. Does that work?” she asked Siladan, indicating his tabula, and to her surprise it flicked on. “Can you get deckplans.”
Siladan nodded and pulled up a schematic of the ship, which was huge and complicated. After a little fiddling he managed to pinpoint their stasis chamber, which was isolated among a network of cabins and storage chambers on the port side of the giant ship, somewhere midships. “Judge curse it,” she hissed, when she saw the distance to the remainder of the stasis chambers. “Why so unbalanced?”
“Typical cruise liner design,” Saqr answered her rhetorical question. “Hangars go on the starboard side along with escape pods and most of the stasis chambers, and that’s the side they dock the ship. Then the passenger cabins go on the opposite side, so that when the ship is attached to a station they can see out into space, not just the station body.”
“Great,” Dr. Delecta hissed, but Adam calmed her with a hand on her shoulder. “There’ll be other medics over there,” he reminded her. “Let’s focus on the urgent tasks.”
“Yeah, forget getting over there till we know what’s going on,” Al Hamra said. “Siladan, is that an observatory near that armoury?” He pointed to a large open space some distance forward of their stasis chamber, pinching the schematic to zoom in.
Siladan nodded. “Looks like maybe a pool with a viewing dome on the outer wall.” He traced the line to a room across from the entrance to the pool area. “That’s an armoury, you’re right.”
“Okay, then let’s go there,” Al Hamra suggested, looking around to the others. “We get weapons and then go check the pool area. If we’re lucky we’ll see what’s going on from the viewing dome. If not, we have to think about getting to the bridge.”
They nodded agreement, Siladan slid away his tabula, and they stepped out of the stasis chamber into a long, dark hallway. It smelled slightly of smoke, and flickered with red and blue emergency lighting. The sirens had stopped wailing, but the corridor was still alive with the sound of sprinklers, an automatic door opening and closing rhythmically somewhere behind them, and occasional bangs and screeches as electrical gear sparked and failed. A thin mist of sprinkler spray and plastic smoke hung in the air of the hallway, sparkling with blue and red light as the emergency lights flashed, like a disco somewhere in the tunnels of the underworld. Dr. Delecta looked to Adam, who shrugged and gave her shoulder a firm squeeze.
“Let’s go,” Al Hamra ordered, and they started hustling down the corridor.
As they did so a long, lonely howl sounded somewhere far ahead of them, cutting through the hiss and static of electrical failure with its primal warning. Moments later it was joined by others, a chorus of primeval bloodlust far away in the darkness.
They headed towards it.
