Home Planet: Awakening (Part 1) by T.J. Sedgwick Read Free Book Online Page B

He paused, waiting for Kate to look over, and exchanged one last smile, taking the few precious moments to remember her face. He lay down thinking of her, then started feeling guilty once more at wanting anyone but his Juliet.
    The canopy whirred shut, placing the small display in front of his eyes.
    Sixty seconds later, he heard the colorless, odorless gas fill the sealed pod. Seconds after that came the darkness and the first stage of the stasis. The liquid would come next, enveloping their still bodies and filling their lungs. The bodies of Luker, Kate and the others on Level 8 would remain indistinguishable from a cadaver for years, decades, more than a century. Some would not awaken for a very long time. Most would never live again.

5
Present Day, The Juno Ark
    Module 5 was a graveyard. It was probably home to over twelve thousand dead—many of whom I’d known, some of whom I’d liked. And in the case of Kate Alves, was real fond of. In the case of Mike Lawrence saw the beginnings of a close friendship. Now Kate was gone and Mike was missing. Approaching the blast doors to Module 4, I wondered for a moment if the state of the stasis module was all part of the plan. Clearly not Plan A, but maybe it’d been left, the survivors having moved to other parts of the ship or down to the planet. Maybe that’s why some of the pods were empty. The survivors could’ve turned off gravity and non-essential functions and left Module 5 as a giant morgue until they figured out how to dispose of the bodies. In some ways, it made sense. I mean, if the estimated few hundred survivors were trying to make their way on an alien planet, they’d have bigger priorities than disposing of twelve thousand bodies. With no more than two percent of the labor available to set up the colony, and gaping skills gaps, it’d be tough going for sure. But then what of the bullet holes, the slayings? Had there been some kind of uprising or power grab? Reaching the two twelve-foot diameter semi-circular blast doors, I realized there were simply too many unknowns. And the best source of information was the bridge in Module 1. To get there would mean passing through Module 4 then 3 then 2. Perhaps they were all having a big party just next door. Unlikely, but not impossible.
    Getting to Module 4 meant opening the blast doors looming in front of me, then passing through the short link tunnel, then opening the blast doors at the opposite end. Where I stood was the upper route—the lower route linked the modules at Level 1, nineteen floors below. Looking around, I clocked the control panel to the right of the segmented alloy door. All going well, the left and right halves would retract into their cavities and I’d simply float on through. I pulled myself along the cold, brushed metal door and held onto the frame next to the panel. During normal operations—prior to stasis—the doors would have been left open, the panel display alive. Now, it didn’t even have a standby light, the screen dark and dusty. I tapped it anyway, but nothing happened. Looking across at the solid door, I knew there’d be no hacking through this one with an ax. Short of a few pounds of high explosives, it’d only open in one of the ways it had been designed to. From training, I knew there were several ways to open it: locally via the panel—scratch that one—or centrally from a few places that weren’t Module 5, or via an automatic emergency protocol. That left me with the fourth option—finding the service hatch and manual operation. Problem was, I couldn’t remember where it was. Logic dictated it’d be close by and reachable when gravity was switched on. The gray alloy bulkhead surrounding the door was shear, smooth and largely featureless. I glanced down and the recessed service hatch door stuck out like a sore thumb. I slid down and crouched next to the eighteen-inch square cover. As well as the dead RFID reader, it sported a mechanical lock with a small round keyhole