"Do you think it's over, that's it's finally over?" asked Cirrus as he paced up and down the cryo chamber, bare and undressed, his chocolate skin caked in grease, blood, and sweat. He wasn't alone; there was also one of the ships mechanics, a young redhead whose haggard appearance made her seem much older than she actually was. Her name was Irene Zegman, a Germanic name, but clearly an American sector born and breed woman. However, Cirrus cared little for the battered mechanic as she stripped out of her orange jumpsuit. This was because their ordeal had more than taken its toll upon his mind, which was just now beginning to unravel.
In addition to the woman and Cirrus, there was also an Earth Gov Gunnery Sergeant by the name of Simmons also among the survivors. This pasty skinned military man was already getting into his own emergency cryo tube as Cirrus continued his mental breakdown following a… zombie… infestation? He didn't know what else to call what had just happened. It was just like all those old horrible Earth movies, except real, with lots of killing, and blood, and corpses… it was too much for him, too much for all of them.
This was it, there last option to survivor the horrors of the USM Saratoga, a ship that had been cursed by… what, the undead brought back to life by some sort of damnable alien artifact. They had somehow managed to survive despite the odds, unlike the rest of the crew, and even live long enough to destroy the twisted red sculpture that they had discovered on Zieger 2.
Still, despite their best efforts, the damage done to their military Frigate was catastrophic. The Shock Drivers were hopelessly irreparable; life support was hours away from failure, and most critical ship systems were already shutting down. The only real option was to enter emergency medical cryo sleep usually reserved for severely wounded patients in the ships medical wing. Of all the frigates systems, the emergency cryo units ran off of their own reserve generators separate from the Shock Drivers. In the absolute worst case scenario they could in theory operate around the clock for thousands of years, but… Cirrus secretly hoped that they would not need to sleep so long because jumping into one of those damnable tubes seemed a lot like hoping into some sort of coffin. Yes, the cryo tubes only needed to last just up until they could be rescued. Hopefully, the ships pre- programmed s.o.s. would take not but a few weeks to attract the attention of an Earth Gov search and rescue team. Or so he hoped, because truth be told he nor anyone else among the survivors had any clue where exactly they had shocked out from FTL. The transition was random and given the time dilation from the ships continued transition through FTL they were likely VERY far away from Earth and its colonies. Rescue… could take a lot longer than expected.
"Cirrus, for the last time, we destroyed that marker! And those things just fell apart like they were made out of putty! We're safe! We're alive!" yelled Irene as she tossed her orange jumpsuit to the side and leaned against her cryo tube, nursing the two broken ribs on the left of her stomach as she slowly and painfully pulled her gore covered muscle singlet up and over her head, a silent scream uttered as it cleared her shoulders and fell to the floor with a wet smack.
"You don't know that!" yelled Cirrus, getting up in her face, accusing her with an extended finger.
They were tired, they were all tired, exhausted from the killing, and running, and hiding. Between the nightmares, insomnia, and numerous attempts to stay alive through the whole ordeal… their sanity had suffered and most recent events had taken a real toll upon the three crewmen. Therein lay a problem, three crewmen; they were all that was left of the ships two hundred and sixty complement. The Captain, bridge crew, engineering mechanics, deck hands, and gunnery chiefs… everyone else was dead.
Simmons closed his cryo pod with a hydraulic wush catching both Irene and Cirrus off guard with surprise as his metal casket ascended up into place within the cryo bank where it locked into a hexagon slot with a metallic thud.
"Cirrus," painfully gasped Irene through gritting teeth as she held her bruised stomach, blackened and throbbing, contrasting the rest of her pale skin. Even the lowly Service Technician had to admit that this woman was made out of some tough stuff. Most of the men that he had crewed with over the past few decades would have been in a bed or body bag from such wounds like the ones that she currently sported, "Can you please help me into the cryo pod?"
The aging technician with the hardened lines upon his face and corn rowed hair braided across his scalp nodded politely, withdrawing his fear back internally, before helping the mechanic into her pod. She was light, with pale skin made all the more disturbing from several blood smears across her legs and arms. She was beautiful in her own right… yet it remained such a pity that she was also a Nihilist and stoic Atheist, a non-believe in the true prophet Michael Altmon. In the end… heretics like her would be left behind come convergence… thus his scorn for the woman.
Cirrus watched her cryo pod close, elevate, and lock into an emergency storage port before wondering over to his own long term emergency rescue coffin. But, just as he was about to jump into the tube he heard something inside his mind, a whisper, like nails scratching against the walls of his sanity.
"They will betray you! Kill! Kill! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL!..."
The voices grew louder and louder, driving him into madness, ghosts, the crew that had died, they wanted to protect him from Irene and Simmons. Yes, those two wanted him dead, but the dead sought to protect him. Cirrus's eyes started to redden from burst blood vessels as he grinned wolfishly and walked over towards the controls for Simmons pod.
"Kill! KILL! KILL! KILL!" roared the voices inside his head. And so… he activated the emergency power controls for Simmons unit and turned them off. Red power nodes blinked on outside the elevated and docked medical storage pod as the critical ships systems aptly shut down life support for Simmons cryo coffin. There was some kicking inside the life support pod as Simmons suddenly awoke from cryo sleep and drowned in his own storage nutria.
Cirrus walked over to Irene's pod and reached for the controls. The voices inside his mind continued to roar, "Kill! KILL! KILL! KILL!" So, he started to deactivate the emergency energy nodes meant to power the pod until rescue… until something inside his mind finally broke. At first, it felt like relief incarnate, and then there was encroaching darkness, like worms going over his eyes from out of the sides of his peripheral vision. Blood started to flow from his ears, eyes, and nose… and then he collapsed to the floor screaming in agony.
The voices inside his head subsided before he could kill Irene in her sleep, but now something else was giving him orders. The naked technician stood to his feet and started to walk towards the chambers exit repeating the same words over and over again without emotion, "It must be made whole… It must be made whole… It must be made whole."
Cirrus stopped briefly to pick up a shard of glass from the floor outside the medical cryo bank. The small piece of reflective plating was left over from the undead riots throughout the frigate. Leftover, from a partially demolished overhead lighting conduit like all the other refuse filling the blood smeared hallways.
"It must be made whole. It must be made whole…" he said, as he started to engrave strange letters into his skin, dribbling red blood down his naked body as he did so.
Irene awoke struggling to breathe; her eyes were reddened from frozen ice crystals upon her irises. She kicked violently, gasping for air, drowning in nutria, her numb, cold flesh banging against the sides of the cryo coffin in desperation until at last the chamber cycled open and descended from the corpse rack.
The tube rolled open and Irene breathed deeply, rank musky air entering her ragged lungs just beneath those still throbbing broken ribs. The room was dark and filled with lingering fog as she swept her naked body out from the cryo tube and tumbled to her knees and palms. She gagged on nutria, churning it from her lungs and stomach, splashing white jelly like liquid down upon the steel meshed deck plates.
Again she deeply inhaled a jagged breath, her stomach pulsating as she once more upheavaled more cryo nutria. And then, there she sat on her hands and knees, breathing raspy sharp gasps before slowly standing, nursing her broken ribs with a spare hand.
The room spun dizzily causing Irene to come crashing down against the side of the recently cycled cryo pod. She was disoriented and confused, probable side effects from long term cryo stasis.
Where was everyone? Cirrus? Simmons? She looked over the cryo bank and noticed that Cirrus's pod remained unused. He never went to sleep? And Simmons… her eyes hardened with anger as she looked at his tube, the power nodes intentionally redlined at the controls.
"You bastard!" she yelled while stumbling to the cryo bank, checking the display and rotating the tube from storage.
Simmons tube landed on the deck plates and opened to reveal a sticky mess of decomposing human flesh intermingled with white cryo nutria. Evidently the cryo banks had attempted to maintain his body even in death, thus his corpse had hyper inflated and exploded inside the tube. The white mash of decomposed flesh stuck to the sides of the tube… cracked open now after such a long sleep, what remained was an intermingled mish-mash of white sticky cobweb nutria flesh and the vague resemblance of several human limbs. Not only had Simmons died horribly, drowning in a nutria solution, but his body had semi-lived on for decades, partially decomposing and regenerating until he was barely recognizable.
Irene wept bitter tears for the poor Gunnery Sergeant, cursing Cirrus with venom under her breath , knowing damn well that he was most likely entirely responsible for Simmons death. Then again… why was she still alive? More to the point, why was she awake? Had the automated ships systems awoken the cryo pods once an Earth Gov rescue ship had arrived?
Irene limped to the portside window of the USM Saratoga, adjacent to the Medical Bay. What she saw outside was another ship of strange design, sword shaped, with unique gothic design flourishes along its poorly crafted hull and elevated command bridge. It was clearly human… but… it also wasn't Earth Gov. Maybe a Free Trader or Scavenger Clan?
"Is that a Junker?" she asked herself as she continued to look over the craft. It was small and had, based upon her knowledge of engineering, a primitive plasma driver for its main engines. Perhaps, this was some sort of asteroid mining ship, a Shallop, private company, not Earth Gov? But that design… it was so strange, like a floating cathedral in space. How long had she been asleep?
It was now that Irene heard footsteps, heavy footsteps, with what sounded like a gas mask breathing recycled air. She turned away from the window, still nursing her broken ribs, just as a man entered the medical treatment center like he was on some sort of nonchalant stroll. As if equally startled he looked at her and quickly rebutteled on his initial patrol.
He was tall, wearing a gas mask, with a heavy grey trench coat over his broad shoulders. Oddly, he reminded the battered woman of some pictures from Earths old war documentaries of a World War I German soldier, but more rugged with oddly advanced yet equally worn-out military equipment.
"Uh… hi…" he spoke, "So… I take it that you're the one who set up that s.o.s. signal?"
The man seemed strangely uneasy as he looked over the medical bay, and discretely towards the corner of the chamber, evidently attempting to avoid eye contact with her…"So… right…" he spoke, uneasiness clearly in his voice, "Not that I'm complaining, but could you please put some clothes on?"
Irene's eyes widened as she suddenly remembered that she was naked. At once, she covered herself with open palms and made for where she had dropped her… suddenly her eyes widened in fear… her jumpsuit was just a mound of rugged patched clothe that was barely recognizable now.
The man in the gas mask walked to her side and clearly understood the problem. He pretended to cough discretely into the filters of his gas mask with a fisted hand before stripping off his grey trench coat and putting it over her shoulders. His cloak was warm and heavy… traits that made Irene smile with fondness.
"Let's… get you somewhere a little less… creepy," he replied while motioning at the heavily rusted blood caked walls, and walking towards the medical bay exit. Irene tugged his heavy trench coat around her shoulders while still pained by her broken ribs…
The ship, she noticed, looked rusted and worn out. It was entirely different from when she first went into cryo sleep. How long had she been out? What year was it? What happened to Cirrus? There were so many unanswered questions.
Irene's feet tapped wetly upon the rusted deck plating as she followed this… man… her rescuer down the numerous corridors. At some point she finally managed regain her voice, "I… there is a RIG station nearby…"
He stopped and looked back at her. Despite his gas mask it was quite clear that he was quite puzzled by her statement. "What's a RIG station?" he asked, genuinely curious and surprised.
She looked at him in equal shock and quickly asked, "Who are you? And what year is it?"
The man nodded politely while looking the young redhead over from ankles to face before at last responding with, "You can call me Heinz… as for the year… it's the 40th millennium by the Imperial Calendar. I think… that you have been asleep for a VERY long time."