Chapter Seven: Point of Impact — Part 5

Charles was brought out of cryogenic sleep, adrift in space. His mind felt sticky, his nerves raw, his head throbbed. He took a drink of water from the escape pod’s limited supplies, trying to settle his nerves and thoughts, to still his aching mind. Of the crew aboard the Conquest, only Charles had survived the collision with the Resistance ship, and only because he had the foresight to retreat to the pod while the Captain still thought that the opposing vessel would pull off its suicide collision course. Now he hung in space, the pod’s computers confused by some parameter they couldn’t quite predict. It would be several minutes before he could figure out exactly what kept him from progressing. Charles had to get his own body and mind back on line first, and his body ached enough that he found himself worried that he might be in worse shape than he thought he was.

Once his hands stopped tingling and shaking, Charles sat in the chair near the control panel, dehydration and low blood sugar causing his stomach to lurch, and his head to ache. He quickly drank a powdered and extremely sweet artificially flavored orange drink, and started working his joints out. All of his joints popped painfully at first, the discomfort dissipating as his flexibility returned. The stiffness and pain brought him some concern. He checked the pod’s diagnostics, to make sure that decompression of his life support system had not occurred, and continued to work the stiffness out of his neck, his hands, and his knees. His knuckle joints popped consistently as he moved, adding to his concern.

Bringing up the ship’s diagnostics on a small screen set into the wall of his pod, Charles figured out the cause of his current condition. He had been exposed to an extreme but necessary increase in the ship’s internal air pressure, which had been slowly returned to normal before allowing him to leave his cryochamber. The pressure had been transferred to the cryochamber. All this had happened as a means of protecting him from the initial electromagnetic pulse that had ripped through space, and his pod, during the nuclear detonation. Though there would be no knowing about the permanent effects of the radiation he had been exposed to, in the short term, he had survived the assault with little or no permanent damage.

Once his stomach was settled enough to eat solid food, Charles chewed on a protein bar and let his mind slowly regain its focus. He brought up the pod’s error screen and began checking his environment, reading the details of the information on the screens around him. The computer’s voice chronometer told him that he had been dormant for several weeks. It also told him that the escape pod had awakened him because it found a discrepancy in its command logic and it needed a human mind to clarify things. The discrepancy confused him, because normally the computer would doggedly follow a command, unless it was asked to plot a course into a star or engage in some other life-ending action. Neither the radiation nor the EM pulse had done any damage to the computer system, and the pod had done a remarkable job of ensuring that a minimum of damage had been done to him as well. As the computer explained in its static, highly scripted way what the problem was, Charles found himself having to wonder just how out of touch with the spoken language the programmer who had first written the text coding had been.

The pod’s computers were programmed to find and follow the Excelsior’s survival pods, and should have done so without pause. For over three weeks, the computer did a point-by-point analysis of the space around it, and created the appropriate course. The problem wasn’t in the time it took to find the escape pod and plot its course – that had taken a mere couple of days, it was in the computer’s discovery of a quarantine beacon. This brought the Enforcer a great deal of concern. Either the scientists were dead from the plague, or the resistors had somehow gotten hold of a quarantine beacon, and were using it to keep the Cynosure out of their system. Charles pulled up all the information about the quarantined system, now greatly worried that the Cynosure had an enemy it was fully unaware of. The computer pulled up an index, the entry some several hundred years old. Charles unintentionally lipped the words, his voice still hoarse, his vocal chords feeling, if not bruised, then definitely stressed, from the effort.

“Biological Conditions: Hostile; Air and water born bacteria and/or viral vectors. 0.00% human adaptation. Tectonic structure unstable: Earthquakes/ gravitational shifts common. Richter variance recorded between 2.9 and 9.5; Atmospheric: Humidity in excess of 120% (Earth Standard) continually overcast. Rain and electrical storms common, hurricane force winds common. End of record.”

The Enforcer studied the other planets within range of his survival pod, and then filed a report, ordering the pod to break communications silence for a transmission. “Send message back to command, private digital transmission code. Record message: Enforcer Alpha. Both ships lost. Fugitives escaped in life pod to Quarantined Planet 4AB99AD, presumed dead. Beacon is secure and appears to be legitimate. As per initial orders, I have set course to nearest habitable colonized world. I will send planetary information across tachionic channels upon arrival. End recording, transmit.”

The computer sent the message, and the Enforcer slipped back into his cryochamber to await his return orders, dreading the suffering he might have to endure if the fault of his condition was with the cryochamber, and not the hostile environment around the pod. Enforcer Alpha had never imagined leaving Earth, nor had he imagined being three years adrift in an escape pod. He wondered what he would experience when he reached the nearest colony world. The Authority, he knew, would not be happy with his lack of success. At the same time, they would have three years to cool off while he made his way to his next destination.